Nick Carter

The Terrible Ones

Pride Goes Before a Fall

In the lush green hills, now soot-black beneath a moonless sky, the silent watchers waited. There were many of them, but only one knew — or was supposed to know — that on this night of all nights there was something in particular to wait for. And that one, though knowing where to look, was too cautious to steal out from cover and risk alerting the others who did not know what approached them through the night. Still, the watcher was close enough to hear if there was anything to be heard; and knowing what to listen for, the watcher wondered at the silence from the sea. Waves slapped against the rocks and a low wind hissed, but that was all. Perhaps it was just as well, but it was disturbing.

Below, two men in a boat ducked instinctively as the bright shaft of light sliced through the sky and arced down over the black swell of the sea. They both knew the searchlight’s swath would pass them by, for the landing had been carefully planned. The Republic of Haiti was in no sort of financial shape to guard its entire border, land and sea, to close the gaps against all comers. The little madman who was its lifetime president was trying to do exactly that, for all sorts of adventurers swarmed through his tiny land — Cubans, Dominicans, Americans, Venezuelans, assassins, and photographers from Life—and he had had enough of interference from outside. Thus the searchlights and armed watchers at all the likely points of entry. Yet he could not completely cordon off his side of the island with a solid ring of men, and no one in his right mind would have regarded Cap St. Michel as a landing place.

The vast sword of light swung back from sea to land. Neither those who manned the light nor those who watched from clifftops saw the slender conning tower nosing above the wind-tossed sea, nor the small dark shape, the color of midnight, that rode the waves toward the rocky inlet. Even the men were dark, the younger because he had been born in Port au Prince and the other because he had thought it wise to match the shadows while he traveled at night.

Jean Pierre Turnier guided the small craft into the treacherous shallows. The boat was silent, an engineering marvel devised by those for whom the two men worked. The principle on which it operated was far too complex for most men, even Jan Pierre, to grasp, but that did not matter to him. He only knew that it was miraculously silent, that the coastline of his boyhood was as familiar to him as to any man alive, and that when it came to running any kind of boat he could damn near sail it up that cliffside and land his passenger exactly where he had to go. Damn near, but not quite.

He glanced up at the rock face now towering above them. Two hundred feet of almost insuperable obstacle. Flies, he thought to himself, had been known to fall off. He looked at the other man and wondered if even he would be able to make it. Coordination, balance, endurance, all that he had. Six-foot- plus of whipcord strength and steely nerve would help, oui, but was it going to be enough? Jean Pierre was dubious. No one had ever succeeded in climbing this slippery hunk of treachery. Pirates of bygone days had dared their captives to escape them by scaling this precipice. None of them, according to history, had ever made it. Scores had plunged to their deaths on the rocks below.

The other man looked back at him and grinned suddenly in the darkness. Only the whiteness of his teeth showed in the gloom, and the faintest of glints from his eyes, but Jean Pierre could see the strong bearded face in his mind. He thought of their careful preparations and what he had seen of the man in action. Well, maybe, he thought. Maybe. If anyone can do it, he would be the one. But mon Dieu! what a hideous fall it would be, if there were a fall.

The rocks were very close and sharp as shark’s teeth. A high gust slammed against the little boat and swatted it perilously close to a jagged fringe of stone lining the foot of the cliff. Jean Pierre touched a lever and brought the craft almost to a standstill, as if it were a silent hydrocopter, then eased it slowly and with infinite skill toward the lowest and least jagged of the boulders. He lightly fingered a button and an automatic boathook reached out over one buffered side of the boat and tethered it in place. The boat bobbed erratically in the surf but the tethering hook held firm.

Jean Pierre’s companion glanced at the wall of rock. The first few vertical feet were wet and slippery with spray. Above, the cliff face was apparently dry but bland and featureless as a column of concrete. High above, at the rim of the cliff, low bushes grew in profusion. Beyond them was a thick stand of luxuriant trees.

The older man nodded with satisfaction. The foliage would offer him plenty of cover and his dark green fatigues would make him virtually invisible among the night-dark trees. His eyes stared into the dimness above. Yes, there was the narrow break Jean Pierre had told him about, the small patch of space between the trees that became a narrow, natural path into the hills beyond. Silently, he finished what he was doing. No need to stare any longer at that cliff face. He’d be close enough to it in a minute. He checked the straps that held the curved spikes to his boots and found them firm. Wrist-straps, too, were in place; the knuckle duster devices on his fingers fitted snugly and the sharp, clawlike appendages seemed to grow straight out of his muscular hands.

He nodded at Jean Pierre, raised one clawed hand in salute, and swung lightly from the bobbing boat to the lowlying boulder. Once, and once only, he looked up, and then he began to climb. The clawlike pitons on his hands and feet scrabbled quietly at the rock face, found tiny holds, and moved on like cautious crabs.

It was agonizingly slow. Jean Pierre watched, the sick feeling growing in his stomach as little rivulets of sand slid down the cliff and stopped when there was no longer any sand to fall. Only rock, the barest of rock, met the climbing claws. Ten feet… fifteen… twenty. God, it was slow. Twenty-five.… For one heart-stopping moment the booted feet swung free. Jean Pierre sucked in his breath and looked involuntarily at the sharp rocks near the boat. A pebble rolled down with a clatter and a tiny splash. When he looked up again he saw that the clawing feet had regained their hold and were slowly, slowly, moving upward. Thirty feet… another few inches… another couple of feet. It was time he left; there was nothing more for him to do.

He backed the silent boat away from the murderous rocks and turned it once again toward the open sea and the waiting submarine. The muted glow of his wristwatch dial told him that he must hurry. The baby sub had been ordered not to wait for stragglers. He looked back once. About forty-five, fifty feet, he reckoned, and climbing like a hesitant snail up a garden wall.

The man who was climbing was anything but a snail, and the rock face was anything but a garden wall. The night was warm, and the effort of clawing his way up the precipice was taking every ounce of his will power and endurance. He tried to make his hands and feet work automatically while he thought of other things — other things, like the sweat beginning to pinprick his skin and the itch of his new beard. Mentally, he checked the contents of his gear: Castro-like fatigues, with extra inner pockets. Large sums of money, in several denominations and for various uses, including bribery. A back pack, containing a miracle-fiber suit that was supposed to be absolutely wrinkle proof. He hoped it was. Accessories for the suit.

Other accessories… including a Luger named Wilhelmina, a stiletto known as Hugo, and a gas-bomb called Pierre.

Nick Carter went on climbing.

The claws roved over the rock face, biting into its surface and holding him there by minute fractions of inches of knife-sharp steel. There was no way to hurry, nothing to hold onto, nothing but the claw-blades to keep him from the deadly rocks below.

Not quite halfway, yet. And the strain on his body was becoming unbearable. It was not as if he even knew what would be waiting for him at the top. Sure, he had a name to go on, but not much more. The briefing Hawk had given him flashed through his mind. The name was Paolo, and Paolo should be waiting in that mountain cave a mile and a half away.

“Why Paolo?” he had asked the head of AXE.

Hawk had glowered at him. “What do you mean, ‘Why Paolo?’ ”

“An Italian name for a Dominican?”

Hawk had chewed irritably at his cigar. “So? They’re as mixed a lot as we are. Anyway, it may be a code name. Whatever it is, that’s the name you’ll have to use for him. Paolo’s your contact, not Tomas or Ricardo or — or Enrico.”

“It may be a code name!” Nick repeated. “We don’t know much, do we?”

Hawk eyed him coldly. “No, we don’t. If we knew as much as you seem to think we ought to, we probably wouldn’t be sending you. ‘Matter of fact, Carter, we don’t even know that this isn’t a trap.”

A trap, yeah. Encouraging thought. Nick gritted his teeth and went on climbing. The sweat poured down his face. Every muscle and nerve screamed for rest. For the first time he began to wonder, to doubt, if he could really make it to the top.

It was still a long way up. It was also a long way down. And there’d be no second chance.

Get on with it, goddamn you! he told himself fiercely. He knew that he was good for little more of this. It was becoming physical agony. His hands clawed, found nothing, clawed again, and held. He dragged himself up another painful notch.

No, this was ridiculous. He could not afford to think of the sheer impossibility of it. So he forced himself to think back to that unsatisfactory briefing.

“If it is a trap,” he had said, “what sort of trap do you think It might be?”

He remembered Hawk’s answer but it slipped from his clutching mind as the claws on his feet lost their grip. His body slithered downward with appalling speed and the raking pitons scraped uselessly against unyielding stone. He clung like a leech, willing his limbs and his body to plaster themselves against the cliffside and praying that some infinitesmal outcropping would be hooked by the wildly probing, scraping claws and stop his deadly slide.

Nick dug against the rock wall like some giant cat searching desperately for a clawhold. His flailing feet bit into the flinty surface. Found a tiny fault. And held.

He clung there for a moment, breathing heavily and blinking his eyes against the hot sweat. But he knew his toehold was too slight to support him there for more than seconds and he made himself move on. Sideways first, then slowly upward with a surge of desperate effort that took his last reserve of strength. He knew it would not last him to the top.

This is it, he thought dully. What a hell of a way to go.

Then his feet found a two-inch-wide ledge. Miraculously, the rock wall above it was at a slight angle so that he could lean inward and snatch some sort of respite. He took a deep, grateful breath and made himself relax as best he could. A minute passed. Another. His breathing slowed to normal and the knots in his muscles gradually unwound. The searchlight beam that he had forgotten about cut through the sky behind him. Again he became conscious of it, but he knew it would not find him here. Haitian officialdom was so sure the cliff was unscalable — and God knows it looked as though they were right — that they did not even bother to keep an eye on it. Or so said Hawk’s Intelligence reports.

Nick wiped his streaming face against his shoulder and flexed his straining arms. Incredibly, he felt rested and refreshed. His clawed fingers reached upward; his feet sought and found another skimpy hold. A stubborn root brushed against his hands, the first he’d found. He reached for it tentatively and It held.

Perhaps he would make it after all. It seemed easier now.

The night was silent but for the slap of the water below and the gusts of wind through the trees above. He could hear the scrabbling, slithering sounds of his own climb, but he knew that his tiny, ratlike noises were normal sounds for night and would not be noticed. Unless, of course, there were listeners much nearer than there were supposed to be.

Out in the dark sea behind him the baby submarine submerged. The silent boat was in its special compartment and Jean Pierre was in his, his ear to a listening device that relayed the quiet sounds of a man’s slow climb up an impossible incline. He heard, but he was one who was supposed to.

Someone else heard too.

The watcher who knew what to wait for stole silently away from the clifftop and glided shadowlike to the appointed meeting place.

Nick climbed. The going was rough but it no longer seemed impossible. The hardest part of it, now that he knew he was well past the halfway point, was that uncertainty about what lay ahead. A kind of anger swelled within him.

Treasure! for Chrissake! he thought to himself. Trujillo’s hidden millions, and I’m supposed to find them in Haiti? This whole thing was insane. Somewhere up there in the darkness was a man named Paolo, leader of an outfit with the comicbook name of The Terrible Ones. The Terrible Ones! Nick chuckled silently and bitterly. No doubt the Mafia of the Caribbean, and Uncle Sam was being taken for another ride. Supposedly these people were an organization of Dominican patriots, itching to get their hands on some of the ex-dictator’s loot and use it for the good of their country. That was their story, anyway, and they had gone to Hawk, and the head of AXE had called on Carter. So here was Killmaster, climbing up a cliff in Haiti to meet the kingpin of The Terrible Ones. And what was he to do when he met them?

Hawk had shrugged. “The usual. Find out who they are and how they stand. Help them if they’re on the level. Check into this business of Operation Blast and put a stop to it. That’s all. Now, as to how you’ll be making contact, you’ll go with Jean Pierre Turnier in the Q-boat and aim for Cap St. Michel. Here’s the map…

It always looked so simple, back in Washington.

Now it was Haiti, one hour past midnight, and Paolo of The Terrible Ones was waiting in the shadows.

Nick glanced upward. The rim of the cliff and the low fringe of bushes were now only a few feet above him. He paused for a moment and took breath for the final effort. It was windier up here, and the gusts plucked at his clothes. And it seemed a little lighter, too. He took a quick look at the sky. Yes, the clouds were thinner, and a few stars gleamed above.

It was just as well, for he would need their trace of light to lead him through the trees.

He reached up for the last lap of his climb and moved on steadily.

His clawing hands came at last to the edge and clung there. One more thrust of his weary legs, and he would have it made. He peered over the edge to see what lay beyond, for he had no intention of grasping loose twigs and sliding back down that monstrous slope.

He stared straight ahead at something that should not have been there. At the cave, yes, but not right there in front of him only inches away from his eyes. His gaze traveled up from the heavily booted feet, up the unmoving, stolid legs, up over a massive chest, up to a bearded face.

The face split into a grin of broken teeth. Even in the dimness it did not look like a pleasant face.

“Welcome, amigo,” a low voice whispered. “I help you, yes?”

Nick gave a quiet grunt and nodded as if in acknowledgment, but his brain was racing. Welcome, amigo, hell. There were names and code phrases to exchange, and “Welcome, amigo,” was not among them. He saw the big dim form move even closer to him, and he dug his clawed feet into the cliffside with all his strength. One hand grasped at the roots of a bush and the other raised as if reaching for help. There was a low chuckle, and a heavy boot smashed down agonizingly on his grasping hand.

“Yankee pig!” hissed the voice, and the boot swung again. This time it came straight for Nick’s head.

The sub was miles away, sliding silently through the black sea. Jean Pierre sat in his cramped quarters with his ear to a small black box and his mouth open in horror.

“Yankee pig!” the receiver whispered. Then there was a second thump, louder than the first, and a sound that began as a grunt and ended in a piercing scream.

Take Me to Your Leader

He struck again with savage fury. His head still reeled from the glancing kick and his ears were full of the animal howl, but it was his life or the other’s and he was damned if he was going to lose his life at this stage of the game. The first swift raking of his reaching hand had already torn a lower leg to shreds. Now he had an advantage and he was going to use it.

Nick lunged upward as he struck, driving the steel claws into the thick thigh and slashing them sideways across the lower abdomen. The scream now was one long continuous litany of frightful pain and the booted feet no longer kicked out but tried to back away. The claws caught deep into the flesh and held; there was no retreat for the welcomer with the unfriendly feet. Nick heaved himself up over the cliff edge, exhausted and half-dazed, still clutching his quarry. The big fellow made a handy anchor, with the hand-pitons sunk into the squirming body, and Nick had no qualms about using him as long as he was there. The scream rose and the man staggered backwards and fell. Nick landed heavily on top of him and wrenched his hand free of the oozing flesh. His welcoming committee squirmed under him, legs and arms jerking, obscenities babbling from his throat. For a moment they both lay there, writhing like a pair of unlikely lovers, and then the big man suddenly twisted his body and stumbled to his feet. Nick rolled over, exhausted beyond endurance. He could see the big shape looming over him, clothes torn open and hideous wounds deforming his lower body, and he could see the long knife that appeared in the other man’s hand, but he could not seem to make his muscles move.

The cliff edge was behind him. The big man came toward him, knife poised for a downward thrust and his face a maddened mask of pain and hatred.

For God’s sake do something, Nick told himself wearily, and felt like vomiting. The fellow’s guts were dribbling out.

The knife came downward in slow motion and the man staggered forward. Nick gathered strength and kicked out in a swift jack knifing movement that caught the man in the chest and clawed him up into the air. Again there was that horrible scream, and the man hung balanced in the air like a circus acrobat on his partner’s feet. Only these feet were hooked and deadly. Nick kicked up again, heard the ripping of cloth, and felt his burden fall free. He twisted sideways away from the thing that flew howling through the air, over the edge and off the cliff.

The scream ended with a sickening thud. Then there was a splash. Then — nothing.

Nick sat up wearily. So much for his silent arrival. He rose groggily to his feet and listened to the night sounds. There were shouts somewhere in the distance. He’d better get going.

He moved clumsily into the stand of trees and propped himself against a sturdy trunk while he removed the piton-claws from his hands and feet. They were sticky with blood. Handy little bastards you turned out to be, he congratulated them grimly, and thrust them into his back pack. He stood under the trees for a moment gathering breath and willing his heart to slow its galloping motion. A light flickered somewhere to the left of him. He could not tell how far away it was, but the sounds of men’s voices were still muted. A bird chirped anxiously close by, and he noted its sound absently as he moved on. No doubt disturbed by my stealthy arrival, he told himself sourly, and made for the narrow path between the trees that Jean Pierre had told him he would find.

He did find it, and he walked along it with silent care, listening and watching. Funny, that damned bird seemed to be following him.

Nick looked over his shoulder. Nothing there. And nothing moved in the trees. The bird chirped again… and the chirp wandered off-key.

Suddenly he remembered the small two-way radio in his inside underarm pocket Feeling slightly foolish, he bent his head and chirped into his armpit. Two chirps, and then he spoke.

“It’s okay, Jean Pierre,” he said, very softly but distinctly. “That was the other fellow.”

“Thank God!” His fellow AXEman’s voice came to him as a tiny, distant sound, but he could hear Jean Pierre’s relief. There was a pause. Then: “What other fellow?”

“Don’t know,” Nick said softly. “He didn’t mention his name. But he wasn’t friendly. Neither was he Chinese, nor Haitian. If a guess is any good, I’d say he could have been a Cuban.”

“Cuban!”

“Yeah.”

“But why—? What happened, anyway?”

The lights were coming closer, though not directly toward him. Nick put his lips closer to the tiny mike.

“Look, we’ll chat some other time, all right? If that wasn’t Paolo who just went over the cliff I still have to meet him, and these woods of yours are filling up with people. Tell Hawk I made it as far as the path on the cliff top. And next time don’t chirp me, I’ll chirp you. Okay?”

“Right.”

Nick moved on through the trees. His body felt as though it had been caught in a garbage grinder and he knew he was in no shape for any more heavy action tonight. So he trod softly, listened well, and hoped that it was not Paolo he had clawed to death. The thought that it might have been opened up a range of possibilities he did not care to think about, and most of them spelled t-r-a-p. And if it wasn’t Paolo of course it was somebody else, and that didn’t make for an any more pleasant picture.

He gave up thinking about it and concentrated on heading silently for the cave. Maybe there he’d find some sort of answer.

Lights were stabbing through the trees and voices passed him perhaps a quarter mile away. He stopped and flattened himself against a tree, listening. One of the voices came to him loud and clear in the swinging, lilting French of a native Haitian. It seemed to be giving some kind of order. A military order. Fine. The Haitian military were to be avoided, yes, but not feared as hidden enemies.

The ground began to slope upward beneath his feet and ahead of him he could see a huge and curiously gnarled tree that had been included in his briefing as a landmark. Another hundred yards, then, and he would be at the mouth of the mountain cave whistling to be let in. Damp moss cushioned his footfalls. Through years of practice in silent skulking he avoided twigs that might snap beneath his feet or branches that might brush and rustle against his body, and he came swiftly to the cave mouth like a tiger in the night.

He blended into the darkness of a leafy bush and looked at the narrow crevice in the rock. It was almost concealed by trailing vines and clumps of shrubbery, and if he had not known where to look the chances were he might not have noticed it. If it opened up into a cave of any size within the mountain it would be a good hiding place for a band of outlawed patriots. Just as good for a band of thieves. Or cell of Communist agents. It was too bad that AXE had so little information on this bunch that called itself The Terrible Ones. They could be anything but what they said they were. Dedicated Dominicans? Maybe. He hoped so. In his mind’s eye he saw a company of toughs, rebels of the Fidelista type but maybe a little more pro-West, hard as nails and very likely none too scrupulous, all armed to the teeth with submachine guns and machetes.

And also, apparently, invisible.

Nick slunk back further into the concealing bush and stared. intently into the darkness. His eyes roved over rock and crevice, foliage, tree trunks and branches, and saw nothing that could possibly be a man on silent watch. Insects scurried through the leaves and the distant shouts still rang out, yet there was no sound of a human presence nearby. Nevertheless he sensed that there was such a presence. And at the same time he did not feel that curious prickling at the back of the neck that was the sign of his danger-instinct at work. This was normal. Probably Paolo the Terrible was waiting in the cave as promised and would emerge on signal.

Nick whistled softly. It was a bird call of the islands, not the radio chirruping call but a long, melodious sound that rose and fell like the voice of a wild bird in flight. He waited for a moment and then mouthed the second part of the call, a tricky little variation straight out of Jean Pierre’s intimate knowledge of Haitian wildlife. Then he listened.

The first call came back to him from the recesses of the rock crevice. Then the second, muffled by foliage and rock but unmistakably right. Nick tensed as leaves rustled and a thin dark shape blocked the opening in the rock and stood there silently. He could see little but a blob of extra darkness and something that looked vaguely like a cowboy hat or maybe a sort of sombrero and a suggestion of booted and trousered legs.

“Not too late for those who seek their friends,” Nick whispered back.

“It is late for honest travelers,” a low voice whispered in soft Spanish.

“Who is it that you seek?”

“Paolo.”

“Ah. You have found the one you look for, if you have the axe.”

So far so good. He had the axe, all right, a tiny tattoo on his inner elbow, though Paolo knew nothing of that.

“It will be at your disposal,” he murmured into the night, and the code exchange was ended. All the right things had been said and now it only remained to follow Paolo through the crevice into the cave. Yet a growing sense of unease made him hesitate. There was something odd here. And the idea of going into a dark cave with a stranger was not one that appealed to him. Especially If there were other strangers inside with some dark plans of their own.

He glanced about him, listening intently. The only sounds were far away. If there were watchers near they were silent ones indeed.

The dark shape stepped aside from the entrance to the cave.

“Enter, then,” the low voice said.

Nick took a slow step forward and silently slid Wilhelmina from her holster into his hand.

“Turn, please,” he said softly. “You go first into the cave.”

He heard a low snort. “You are afraid?” the low voice asked.

“I am cautious,” he answered. “Move, please. I do not wish to stand out here and talk all night.” The aching fingers of his left hand reached for the pen-shaped tube in his upper pocket.

There was an Irritated intake of breath, and then, reluctantly, “As you say.”

“Your back toward me, now.”

“But naturally, cautious one.”

The figure turned and disappeared into the crevice.

Nick followed quickly, in one swift and silent bound. He stood sideways in the opening, Wilhelmina poised for action, and flicked the switch on the tiny flashlight tube. Brilliant light flashed around the small hideout.

“Turn that off, you fool!” the voice hissed.

He turned it off and ducked inside, surprised and angry. The cave was empty of people but for himself and the one with the whispering voice. That was as it should be. But the one he had seen in the sharp beam of light was not at all what he had expected.

The tiniest of glowing lights appeared in the other’s hand. There was a movement at the entrance and he saw a curtain of shrubbery and a dark cloth being drawn across the entrance. The one who answered to the name of Paolo reached for something on a rocky ledge and suddenly the small cave was filled with a soft glow.

“Do you want to give everything away?” Nick’s companion said furiously. “Already you people have made enough noise to wake the dead! Did you think you would be pounced upon by bandits when you came in here?”

“I thought many things,” Nick said slowly, “but you, friend Paolo, are the last thing I expected.” He took one step forward and let his gaze travel deliberately down from the ranchero-type hat, over the loose army jacket, over the dirt-stained slacks covering the well-formed legs, and over the battered riding boots. Then he let his eyes travel upward again to scrutinize such shape as he could distinguish beneath the concealing jacket. He took his time; it was an insolent survey, but his anger made him do it. At last he stared into the face, with its hard mouth and cold-slate-colored eyes. And its peaches-and-cream complexion, marred only by the small scar on the lower left cheek.

The eyes stared back at him, flickering over his bearded face and his bloodied clothes.

Nick sighed and sat down abruptly on an outcropping of rock.

The girl gave a short laugh and swept the ranchero hat from her head. Her hair tumbled out from beneath it. It was long and honey-blonde.

“Well?” she demanded. “Have you seen all you wanted to see?”

“Not enough,” he said harshly. “Are you really a woman, or haven’t you made up your mind?”

Her eyes spat fire. “I suppose you expect me to tramp through the mountains in high heels and an evening gown?” She flung the hat away from her as if it were Nick’s head, and glared at him. “Spare me the insults, if you please, and let us get down to business. First we must get your men together— though God alone knows how you plan to do it after all the disturbance you’ve created. What was that all about, may I ask?” She was looking again at the blood on his shirt. “You are hurt, I see. Was there an accident, or were you seen?”

“How nice of you to inquire,” said Nick, putting Wilhelmina on the rock beside him and sliding the back-pack off his weary shoulders. “Who do you think might have seen me?”

“Haitian patrol, of course,” she said impatiently. “No one else comes up here, at least not at night. There is a voodoo superstition about the place. That is why I chose it.”

“No one else?” Nick stared at her. “And it was impossible, was it, for anyone to follow you here?”

“Of course no one followed me,” she snapped, but her cold eyes were worried. “What are you talking about?”

“About someone who was not a Haitian guard and who might even be a friend of yours, for all I know.” Nick watched her carefully while he spoke. “A big man, a little taller than myself and heavier, and dressed in the same sort of fatigues.

Bearded, Latin features, so far as T could see, and a mouthful of broken teeth.” Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “And he called me a Yankee pig,” Nick went on. “I don’t mind being called names, but how would he know? I am not wearing my capitalistic, Wall Street clothes tonight, as you may have noticed.”

“Indeed T have noticed,” she said quietly, and her cool gaze swept once again over his darkened, bearded face and his bloodied fatigues. “Where was this man?”

“He was waiting for me at the top of the cliff,” said Nick, “trying his best to kick me into space. I had to kill him, of course. There was no time to exchange pleasantries.” His tone sharpened suddenly. “Who was he? You recognized the description, didn’t you?”

She shook her head slowly. “It is hot an unusual one. Many men these days wear what you are wearing, and many of them have beards and broken teeth. It is quite true that he sounds like a man I know, but I cannot be sure unless I were to see him. And that I suppose is quite impossible?”

“Quite impossible,” Nick agreed. “Perhaps you are just as glad”

“Why should I be?” The slight softening of her features gave way instantly to the tight-mouthed hardness that seemed to be her normal expression. “We asked for help, and if you intend to give it there should be a mutual trust. I will not name a name I am unsure of. When we get to Santo Domingo I will ask about this man. If he is alive, then he is not the one, yes? But if he has disappeared, then I will tell you about him.”

He almost admired her for the moment. She was being so fair and square, so old-school-tie. And perhaps she was even being honest.

“All right,” he said quietly. “Next question. Who are you? You are obviously not Paolo, whom I was led to believe that I would meet. Somebody lied. Was it you?”

“There was no lie!” she flared. “It is no fault of mine if there was a misunderstanding!”

“What misunderstanding?” He almost spat the words at her. “Who and where is Paolo? And who are you?”

She seemed to shrink away from him. Then she drew her chin up defiantly and spat words back at him.

“There is no Paolo. There never was and no one ever said there was. I sent the messages that brought you here. And I did not lie. The name is Paula. Paula! If there was a mistake in the transcription it was none of my doing! Besides, what difference does it make?”

“And what about The Terrible Ones?” he said icily. “You are not going to tell me that a band of freedom fighters chose a woman to do a man’s errand?”

She laughed at him, but there was no humor in her laughter.

“What men? There are few men left to do the errands of a man. I chose myself. Why should I not? I am their leader.”

He stared at her. It seemed to be getting to be a habit with him. But the tiny doubt that had been kindled by the first sound of the whispered voice was growing into a fire of suspicion.

“I see. You are their leader. And what is the male strength of your company? You may as well tell me now; I’ll find out soon enough — if I decide to stay. And, as you said, there should be a mutual trust.” He waited.

She looked at him defiantly. “You know now, do you not? We have no men. The Terrible Ones are women. All of them.”

“And aptly named,” he said, and thoughtfully scratched his chest. The little switch that connected him with Jean Pierre flicked to the Off position. When he knew more, he’d tell, but Papa Hawk was not going to get a blow-by-blow account of his dealings with this hard-eyed woman.

Nick peeled off his bloodied shirt. The sewn-in radio came off with it.

“Well, I’ve had a hard day’s night,” he said. “I don’t know what entertainment you’ve planned for the rest of it, but I’m going to get some sleep. You can keep watch if you think its necessary.”

“But what about the rest?” she said, and he was glad to see that she was looking puzzled. “Surely you will need to make contact with your men?”

“Surprise, surprise,” he said amiably, making a pillow of his shirt and pack and sliding Wilhelmina underneath the bundle. “I’ve had one; now here’s one for you. There are no other men. I am all you’re going to get. Goodnight, Paolo baby, and please turn off the light.”

“You’re what?” She started toward him, her slim body galvanized by fury. “I ask for help, and I get—?”

“Be quiet!” he hissed. His hackles were crawling and he reached for the Luger as he bounded to his feet.

Her mouth opened angrily and he clamped a hand over it.

“I said be quiet!” He cocked his ears and listened. He felt her slight movement and saw that she understood. At least she was quick on the trigger, this bitch of a girl.

There were movements outside. Not loud, not yet close, but coming closer. Twigs crackled and leaves rustled.

“So no one ever comes this way,” he whispered bitterly. “Your friends?”

She shook her head emphatically behind his restraining hand.

“Then keep your mouth shut and turn out the light.”

He released her and watched her swift movement toward the glow on the rocky shelf.

Moves well, he thought to himself, and then the light went out. He crept toward the entrance of the cave and fingered Wilhelmina.

The sounds were soft but distinct. They became careful footfalls, and there were many of them. And they were right outside.

Voodoo on the Rocks

Nick stiffened. There was another sound that was somehow infinitely more menacing than the footfalls of men. It was a heavy, eager panting that swelled into a low growl. A soft voice whispered a command in barely audible Creole. The growling stopped, but the bushes at the outer mouth of the cave began to rustle and snap as though clawed by some giant animal.

The girl sucked in her breath. Nick felt her lips lightly touch his ear. They felt much softer than they looked.

“Haitian dog patrol,” she whispered almost soundlessly. “Usually six men and one dog. If they take us we are finished.”

Nick nodded grimly in the darkness. He knew about the mad dictator’s secret police and the devilish tortures they had devised for their boss’s viewing pleasure. Yet even if he could shoot his way through six armed men, the idea did not appeal to him. It was not only the knowledge that the shots would bring others running that made him hesitate. It was also that he recoiled from gunning down six men who were not necessarily his enemies but soldiers on guard duty. Maybe he could outtalk them, bargain with them…. He dismissed the idea. It was too much of a long shot. His mind worked busily.

The snuffling grew louder and more eager. Nick’s nerve ends tingled unpleasantly.

“I also have a gun,” the girl whispered. “We can shoot them one by one as they come in after the dog. There is only space for one at a time—”

“Hush,” Nick breathed at her. Christ! she was coldblooded, although she might be right. Except that the patrol was hardly likely to stay around to be picked off one by one. Return fire, one to race for help, and they would have had it. End of Mission Treasure. “Too noisy. Last resort.”

“Do you have a first resort?” She sounded scornful and bitter.

He drew her face toward him and turned her head so that her ear brushed against his mouth. There was a lingering touch of perfume on the tiny lobe, and her hair was silky-soft.

“What is the local superstition?” he murmured. “Something we can use?”

She made an impatient little clicking sound and then said softly, “Oh. It is djuba, fear of dead souls returning to snatch the lives of others. But—”

“Ah!” It was one he knew something about, and he felt a glimmer of hope. Anything was worth trying.

The makeshift blackout curtain of dark cloth and shrubbery billowed inward near their feet. The snuffling became a snarl. Nick drew the girl away in a swift and silent movement and felt a pounding in her chest that was oddly pleasing to him. He sensed rather than saw the curtain dropping back into place at a quiet command. Then there was a whispered consultation outside. He could not hear the words but he could guess what was being said.

“I suppose you plan to let them come in here and then you’ll frighten them to death?” the girl whispered, a little too loudly.

“Quiet!” he hissed urgently. “Get as far back into the cave as you can — climb onto a ledge if you can find one. Then keep your mouth shut and your gun still until I fire the first shot. Understand?”

He felt her head nodding against his lips and on impulse he took a quick nibble of soft ear. He grinned to himself at her little intake of breath and pushed her firmly toward the back of the cave.

The snarling started again and something heavy threshed about in the bushes outside. Nick glided swiftly to his makeshift pillow and reached blindly into the pack, cursing quietly at the thing that jabbed at his probing hand. He pulled it out, still sticky as it was, and slipped the knuckle rings over his fingers. Then he padded toward the narrow entrance and squinted through the darkness for the thing that snarled and snuffled near his feet.

He wondered if the dog was on a leash or whether they would let it bound in to chew the living hell out of whatever they thought was inside. Or if they would start yelling at him to surrender and then start pitching in stink bombs or something worse to smoke him out. But he did not plan to wait for their next move.

His lungs filled with the dank air of the cave and his throat worked strangely. AXE’s Department of Special Effects and Editing taught many things to those with the capacity to learn, and Carter was their most accomplished pupil. That was why he was Killmaster, and that was why he was here.

A chilling sound came bubbling up from his larynx, the sound of a soul in the distant reaches of hell, the babble of a creature driven mad by the tortures of the damned. He let it rise slowly and inexorably, listening to the horrors of his own unrecognizable voice with a sort of awe and dimly seeing the thick snout and spatulate paw of a huge hound scrabbling through the covering of the crevice. He edged back against the side wall of the cave, away from the hole but still within reach of it, raised his killing hand in readiness. His voice rose into a babbling howl of tormented laughter.

If I were a dog I would bristle, he thought to himself, and produced a keening note that was terrible to hear. The dog snarled and backed away. Nick raised his voice another notch. It came out in a high-pitched sobbing whine to make the hackles crawl, and the dog’s voice joined his in a duet that would have sounded fearsome in purgatory itself.

Nick paused for breath. The dog changed key and went into a solo of shrill, yelping snarls like those of a terrified wolf at bay. Voices, men’s voices, whispered urgently, and now he could detect the fear in the sharp hissing. He could even distinguish some of the words, delivered in the excited island patois.

“That I tell you, man, he djuba!”

“What, no djuba! Send in dog again, for sound no kill!”

“You mad, fella? That sound, he kill. I go.”

“You stay! So, dog no go in, we use smoke bomb instead.”

No, you don’t fella, Nick said silently, and he began to whistle. It was an unmelodic but imperative call, pitched so high that only the most acute of human ears could hear it at all, but he knew that the dog could hear. The snarling outside broke into a series of hesitant yaps and then became a little whimper. Shrubbery rustled again. Nick whistled on seductively.

“See dog?” he heard. “He go in now, no fear!”

The dog’s massive head and shoulders thrust their way in and the great nose snuffled near Nick’s feet. He backed away slowly, letting the dog come in after him. It was growling again, now, and the small gleam of torchlight that filtered through the opening showed a great spiked collar around its neck with a loosely held leash attached to it.

Nick stopped whistling and leapt backwards to land in a crouch facing the animal. The dog snarled viciously and flung itself at him, its jaws open to show rows of huge bared teeth.

Nick howled again and struck out savagely with the clawed hand that had already ripped out a man’s belly. Dogs were not his favorite victims, but if there was to be a sacrifice it had better be the dog. Hot breath fanned his face and two thick front legs slammed against his shoulders. Nick went down, cursing to himself, his steel claws raking the empty air above his head. The damned beast was enormous but it was fast, and in the treacherous darkness Nick had miscalculated his thrust. A wet muzzle thrust itself into his face and jaws snapped at his throat. He flung himself sideways and raked the claws across the slavering muzzle as hard as he could. The dog screamed and he slashed again at the side of the head, feeling the claws ripping deep through coat and skin and flesh.

The animal made an indescribable sound of agony and twisted itself around to double back the way it had come. Nick let it go. He heard the girl gasping behind him but he had no time for her now except to hiss—”Don’t move!” and then he made the bubbling wail come welling up through his throat. There were shouts outside and some thudding noises as though bodies had fallen from the impact of the dog’s wild onrush, but he had to go on with his act until he was sure he had routed them. He stalked slowly toward the opening in the rock where the bushes still quivered and rustled, and as he walked he made the sound come up gradually as though it were reaching out toward them. Then he halted at the entrance and forced a weird, whinnying dirge from his throat. If they knew their djuba well, they’d know what was supposed to happen next.

Nick stopped briefly and gathered breath. There were wailing cries from outside that were almost as blood-curdling as his own. A voice screamed out: “Oh, de dog, de dog! Look at him head! Ain’t no human fella made them marks!” Running footsteps thudded away into the night.

“So nobody said you hired to fight only human fella! You come back here….” The footsteps faded out and so did the voice. Its owner was still outside, Nick judged, but not happy in his work.

“I throw grenade!” someone else called bravely, from something of a distance.

“No you not throw anything! Grenade not kill djuba, you makeprayer sign instead!”

Nick laughed. It was an almost human sounding laugh, but not quite, and it started as a chuckle and rose into a cackle of fiendish, unholy glee, like the cry of a hyena in league with the devil. Yelps and snarls retreated into the distance, and then more running feet followed the first in sudden little bursts of frantic energy. High-pitched yowls of fright went with them. The pain-maddened dog still cried out its agony somewhere in the night.

Nick paused again and braced himself for one more chorus.

The djuba was said to mourn its own death, moan a mock lament for its victim, cackle with triumph, and then cry out again with the bubbling, questing sound that meant it was ready for more evil sport. Well, the dog wasn’t dead, it seemed, so the djuba was justified in having one more howl.

He gave it his all. When the last tremulous wail died away he stopped and listened intently. Not a sound. Not even the distant howl of a lacerated dog. With infinite care he moved out into the darkness. There was nothing in his line of vision;, nothing stirred.

The deep sigh behind him startled him until he remembered the girl. She stirred behind him and he heard the faint susurration of cloth against rock.

“Not yet,” he murmured. “Got to be sure first. But as long as you’re up, bring me my shirt.” For some reason he had lapsed into English, but he was scarcely aware of it until she came up silently beside him and said, “Here’s your damned shirt.” He peered at her in surprise as he maneuvered the sleeve past the claw.

“What’s the matter?”

“The matter!” She made some sort of sound that might have been a stifled curse. “What are you, some kind of animal?”

He buttoned up briskly and stared at her dim form. No doubt she would have found him more human if he had killed the lot of them.

“Yeah, I’m a St. Bernard on rescue duty,” he growled softly. “Now shut up and keep still until I tell you you can move.”

She may have had some whispered comment to make but he did not wait to hear it. He lay flat on his belly and slowly wormed his way out through the crevice, more like a sinuous reptile than a shaggy dog, hugging the ground-shadows until he was well out in the open. Then he stopped and tuned all his senses in to the smells and sights and sounds of the surrounding night. For moments he lay there, ready with gun and claw for anything that might happen. But nothing happened, and very instinct told him that there was no immediate danger. He waited for another couple of minutes, cocking his ears and peering about in all directions, then rose silently and stepped back into the cave with a reassuring chirrup of sound.

Once inside he flicked on his pencil flashlight and swung it around the hollow space. If at all possible they must remove all traces of human occupancy. The girl watched him.

“You don’t think you’ve chased them away for good, do you?” she said.

“No, I don’t. We’re leaving here. Get that cloth thing away from the entrance, and anything else you happen to have lying around.” He picked up his pack and her hat as he talked and, flashed the small light over the floor. It was hard soil and rock, and he could see no sign of prints. On a natural shelf in the cave he found a rucksack, a small battery lamp, and an even smaller flashlight. He put the last two into the rucksack and joined the girl at the entrance. She had the cloth down and she was rolling it up in a swift, fluid motion.

“You have any ideas about where we should go from here?” he murmured.

She nodded, and he realized suddenly that he could see her face. Outside the first light of the false dawn was beginning to rim the sky. They would have to get away from here in a hurry.

“We’ll go where I was going to take you later anyway,” she said. “Later, when we’d discussed how to move your men and made our plans.” Her voice sounded harsh and bitter, but completely unafraid. “There’s a village called Bambara where I have friends. They will give us shelter, if we get there. Also they have information for us, and there is something that I meant to show you after we had talked about it. That is one reason why I asked you to meet me here in Haiti.”

He was glad there was a reason. So far it was a mystery to him. “We’ll still talk about it,” he said evenly. “You’ve got plenty to explain. But let’s get away from this place first. I’ll take that.” He reached for the blackout cloth and took it from her to thrust it into his pack. The remaining piton-claws were stashed inside.

Nick raised his own clawed hand to show the girl.

“Do you want one?” he offered. “It may be more useful than your gun.”

She recoiled from him and almost spat her answer.

“No thank you!”

“All right, all right,” he said mildly. “Don’t shout. Here’s your hat.” He crammed it unceremoniously over her head. “Tell me where we’re heading so I can go first.”

“You can follow me,” she said crisply, and was out of the cave door in one swift, noiseless movement.

Nick fumed beneath his breath and followed, slinging both packs over his shoulders and padding out after her like a shadow.

She kept close to the cover of thick trees and bushes and glided on silently like some lithe and graceful cat. There was no hesitancy in her movements but Nick could see she was alert to all the pre-dawn sighs and sounds. Their route led downhill and through the outskirts of the grove of trees he’d traveled through before, then branched off to follow a singing stream that wandered erratically between thick clumps of flowering shrubs whose strong, sweet scent was almost sickening.

The noise of the brook was bothering Nick. Its splashy chuckle deadened the sound of their progress, true, but it would do the same for anyone else. He looked uneasily about him. His neck was prickling again. The dim light, fading again into the darkness before dawn, showed nothing but brook and tall trees and thick, unmoving foliage. But he was sure there was something. He slowed and looked over his shoulder. And he heard the low growl that rippled into a snarl and then became a chilling howl. It was not behind him. It was in front, and so was she…

He was already running when he heard her startled gasp and saw her slender body falling beneath the onslaught of the huge animal shape. His long legs carried him forward in swift leaps and bounds as she rolled over and hunched her shoulder against the snapping jaws. Still running, he swung his right foot forward in one mighty football kick that landed heavily against the beast’s rib cage and booted the snarling thing free of her body. There was a sound of tearing cloth but he could not stop to see the damage. He leapt over her sprawled figure and met the animal virtually in mid-flight. This time he would not miss— He brought the claws down brutally against the creature’s face and raked them over the eyes, digging in as deeply and viciously as he could. The dog screamed terribly and dropped. Nick kicked again so that its underside, its muscles jerking spasmodically, was vulnerable to his final thrust. He slashed the body from spiked collar to lower abdomen with all his strength and then stepped back, fighting down nausea and ready to strike again if the enormous mastiff still showed signs of life. That it had lasted this long was incredible. And appalling.

But it twitched convulsively and died before his eyes.

He breathed deeply and turned away, noting the small pool formed by the stones in the brook, realizing that the dog had come here to lick its wounds and die. He should never have let it out of the cave and in agony. But he had.

He turned toward the girl. She was on her feet and shaking visibly, and there was horror stamped across her face. Nick reached for her with his clawless left hand and gently took her arm.

“Did he hurt you?” he asked softly.

She shivered. “No,” she whispered. “He only — he only—”

She stopped, shuddering. Nick pulled her around so that he could see her shoulder. The jacket was ripped and there was a deep scratch on her upper back, but it was relatively minor.

“How horrible,” she murmured. “Horrible.”

Nick gave up his inspection of her back and swung her round to look her in the eyes. She was staring past him at the dog. It seemed to him that there was no fear in her, only pity and revulsion. “Why does it have to be like this?” she whispered.

It was no time to remind her that she’d been all for shooting down the whole patrol. Nick touched her cheek softly.

“Honey,” he murmured, “I hate it, too. But his name isn’t Paolo, and we have a job to do. Do we still keep following the stream?”

She shook her head. “We cross it soon and make a westward turn.”

“Good. Are we likely to run into any more patrols?”

Again the shake of the head. “No. We have passed the point where we should meet them.”

Nick nodded and turned away from her. With some difficulty he picked up the great, bloody shape of the dog and lugged it to the brook. He dropped it into the swiftly flowing waters beyond the quiet pool and went back to the girl.

“Let’s go,” he said. “And this time, let’s walk together.”

She nodded.

They walked on, listening for sounds of pursuit that never came.

It was an hour before they reached the little village of Bambara. The first cock crowed as they tapped on a window, and a pink glow tinged the mountaintop.

A door opened and they went in. Exclamations, greetings, offers of food which they declined, and then they were together in a barn smelling of sweet straw.

Nick reached for her almost reflexively. It was good to hold a woman in one’s arms after a long day.

She pushed him away roughly and crawled into the farthest corner of the straw.

“Stop that! If you were the posse of men I asked for I’d sleep with every one of them if I thought it would do any good. But you’re not, so leave me alone.”

“All right, Paolo,” he said drowsily. “It was only a thought.”

“The name is Paula”

“Prove it some time,” he murmured, and drifted into sleep.

Chinese Puzzle

Dr. Tsing-fu Shu shivered in spite of himself. He felt nothing, but contempt for native superstition, and yet the low throbbing of the drums made his flesh creep. Usually they did not begin until nightfall on Saturday, but today they had started before noon. He wondered why. Not with much interest, but he wondered. He was annoyed by their effect on him, and he was annoyed by his own complete lack of progress. Two full weeks in this stone labyrinth and his work crew had found nothing. It was most unfortunate that he had to operate with so few men and that they had to be so very cautious. But the Citadelle was one of the wonders of the world, and its very prominence as a tourist mecca presented great advantages. Inspiration alone would suggest it as the hiding place of either materials or men. Then, too, it was deserted at night, so that while great care must be exercised during the daylight hours there was no need for excessive caution at night.

He turned down a passage he had not explored before and played the bright beam of his flashlight along the walls. From somewhere beyond them he could hear the careful scraping sounds of his own men at work, searching the underground storehouses and dungeons for— He was not even quite sure what he and they were supposed to look for. Maybe it would be in packing cases left openly among the old garrison supplies, or maybe it would be in brass-bound trunks in some secret place.

Tsing-fu Shu probed the walls with his narrow fingertips, and cursed. He had nothing to go on but one slender clue, and it wasn’t enough. The scraping, scratching noises of his work crew trying to find some hidden compartment in the thick stone walls sounded aimless, futile. Fortunately they could not be heard by the tourists who even now were tramping and gawking overhead, oohing and ahing at the spectacular view from the battlements. Strange, he thought, how the pulsation of the drums made itself felt even through the massive walls.

The stone was slippery beneath his searching fingers, but it was as solid as mountain rock. It did not swing inward at his touch, as he daily — and nightly — prayed it would, nor were there any rings to pull or bolts to slide back and reveal a hidden chamber. He went on with his search, slowly and meticulously, letting his prying fingers wander over every flaw in the smoothness and investigating each protuberance and crack.

Time wore on. The drums still pulsed and Tsing-fu Shu still searched. But now the monotonous rhythm was beginning to pound at his nerves. He began to think of the sound as coming from a great, bloody heart beating within the Walls, for he had read Poe as a student in the States, and it was becoming unbearable. His irritation and frustration rose. Two weeks of nothing! The fat one in Peking would be most displeased.

He turned a corner into another corridor and cursed again, this time out loud. He was back again in a part of the dungeons he had searched only the day before, and he had not even realized where his steps were leading him. A thousand curses on this devil’s labyrinth.

It was enough for this day, he decided. He had workmen for this sort of thing; let them work. His job was to use his brains, to get more information — somehow, from somewhere.

Dr. Tsing-fu Shu, sub-chief of a very specialized branch of Chinese Intelligence, walked briskly toward a light glowing at the far end of the passage. It opened into a cavernous room piled high with ancient boxes. His men were at work among them, forcing open the crates and rummaging busily through them. Another man was emerging from what was apparently a hole in the floor.

Ah! A trapdoor! Tsing-fu’s flagging interest flickered back to life and he strode toward the trap. His man climbed up and lowered the door with a savage crash.

“Restrain yourself,” Tsing-fu reproved him. “I have said repeatedly that there must be no unnecessary noise.”

“Bah! Those peasants up there will think they are hearing ghosts!” the man said contemptuously, and spat.

“Nevertheless you will obey my orders whatever they may be,” said Tsing-fu Shu, and his voice was an icicle. “If you will not be quiet, as I ask, then you will be quietened. Do you understand?”

He stared at the other man with slits of eyes whose heavy lids reminded his enemies of a hooded snake. The fellow lowered his gaze.

“I understand, sir,” he said humbly.

“Good!” The Doctor recovered something of his spirit. He liked to see fear in a man, and he saw it now. “The trapdoor was a disappointment, I assume?”

The man nodded. “It is nothing but a cistern. Disused for many years.”

“How many?” Tsing-fu asked sharply. “Five? Ten? More?” It was important to know, for the cache was said to have been hidden in 1958 or perhaps 1959.

“More. Fifty years, a hundred. It is hard to say. But it is certain that no one has so much as been down there in at least a dozen years.” The man’s smooth, yellow-tinted face crinkled with distaste and his big hands brushed at his tunic. “The place is a nest of cobwebs and ratholes, but even the spiders and rats have long since left. It is foul down there, and it is dead. And there is no hiding place. Sir.”

Tsing-fu nodded with satisfaction. The news was not pleasing to him but he knew he could trust Mao-Pei’s report. The man was a surly devil but he was expert at his task. And he was pleased that the fellow had remembered to call him, Sir. Tsing-fu was not the sort of sub-chief who enjoyed having his subordinates call him Comrade. Even his Work Group Captain.

“I would have thought so,” he said. “I am sure that what we seek will be in a more subtle hiding place. When you and your men have finished with these boxes here — and I am sure you will find nothing in them — then you will start on the floors and walls of the east wing. Tonight we will go back to the cannon galleries and finish with them.”

He left the work group then and went down yet another passage to the large room he had converted into a temporary office for himself. His mind picked at his problem as he walked. There were other dungeons in this vast building besides the ones he and his men were searching, but they were open to tourists during the day and heavily bolted at night. That had also been the case at the time the treasure was hidden. And the men who had hidden the cache would surely have chosen a place that they could easily return to without interruption. Therefore…

Tom Kee was waiting for him in the makeshift office that had once been occupied by the keeper of the store house. He folded his newspaper as Tsing-fu entered and rose to his feet in a stretching, catlike movement.

“Ah” Tsing-fu greeted him. “You are back. You have arranged for more supplies!? Good. You did not perhaps discover the reason for that incessant drumming I hear even down here?”

Tom Kee’s lean face twisted into a sneering smile. “I did, sir. Those misbegotten blacks down there are drumming to drive away the spirit of a djuba that appeared last night. There is a story about it in the paper that may interest you.”

“So?” Tsing-fu took the proffered newspaper. “But you must not talk about them in that way, Tom Kee. Misbegotten blacks! Tch! We are all people of color, you must remember that. We are all friends.” He smiled gently and glanced at the headlines. “Think of them as our black brothers,” he added, “our allies against the world of Whites.”

“Oh, I always do,” Tom Kee said, and grinned. His grin was no more pleasant than his smile.

Dr. Tsing-fu read the newspaper account with growing interest. It was an incredible tale of the supernatural and of bravery far beyond the call of duty. An unspeakable monster, it seemed, had risen apparently from the sea and fought a hideous battle upon the cliff top of Cap St. Michel. In the darkness it had been impossible for Dog Patrol Squad Number Nine to examine the area with any great thoroughness, but while they were making their preliminary investigation the duty dog gave signs of detecting a scent. It then led Squad Nine toward a small mountain cave.

“On arrival at the cave,” the story said, “the dog began to bristle as if in some strange presence. The patrolmen, ever mindful of their own safety, urged the dog to enter the cave. The noble beast attempted to do so. At that very moment the hideous cry of the djuba was heard and the dog ran from the cave as if pursued by demons. A moment later it was lured back again by unknown means and shortly afterwards the unearthly cries began once more. The guard dog screamed as if attacked by fiends. It emerged from the cave at great speed, yelping bitterly, and the men of the patrol group could see dreadful slash wounds upon its body that could only have been inflicted by some frightful beast. They then made every effort to enter the cave but were repelled by some inexplicable force. The dog, it was thought at the time, ran away. In spite of heroic attempts to make entry, and the use of all possible means to smoke out the presence within the cave…”

Tsing-fu Shu read on to the end, his lips curling with contempt as he read of the men’s departure from the scene and the “exceptional bravery” with which they had returned in the morning light. They had flushed out the cave with gas-bombs, incantations and smoke, but they had found nothing — not the slightest trace of occupancy, human or inhuman. Later in the morning the body of the dog turned up many miles away downstream, clawed practically to ribbons. Clearly all this was the work of some supernatural agency. Thus, the drums, to guard against a recurrence of the horror.

There was one final item in the STOP PRESS column. It said:

“The body of a bearded man in army fatigues was found by fishermen this morning near the rocks of Cap St. Michel. It was half-submerged and had been severely battered, but it was obvious at once that the main cause of death was the slash wound or wounds in the abdomen. The nature of the weapon is undetermined, but according to accounts of Patrol Squad Number Nine the wounds are similar to those found upon the dog. The victim has not yet been identified.”

Tsing-fu’s eyes narrowed. “So, Tom Kee. Mysterious howls in the night — a decoy, quite possibly — and today we find the body of a bearded man in army fatigues. But Haitian army men are seldom bearded, is that not so? Have you perhaps heard more of this than is in the paper?”

“I have Doctor. That is why I thought you might be interested in that account.” Tom Kee snapped his knuckles reflectively. “It is said in town that the body was that of a Fidelista. A big man, well-built with rotten teeth.”

“That sounds like Alonzo,” Tsing-fu said almost conversationally.

Tom Kee nodded. “That is what I thought. I can assure you that I was even more than usually careful not to be seen coming back here today. I also tried to find out if other Fidelistas have been seen. But I am told that, right now, they are all across the border in the Dominican Republic.” He smiled faintly and snapped another knuckle.

“Not all” Tsing-fu hissed. “What was he doing here? This is treachery of some kind, you can count upon it! Why did he not tell us he was coming? These people are supposed to be working with us, not against us. They must keep us informed as to their movements.” The smaller, catlike man shrugged his narrow shoulders. “We do not tell them,” he murmured. “That is not the point! When the time is ripe, we tell them what is needed. They work for us, not we for them.” Tsing-fu checked his angry stride. “But what is even more important is — who killed him? And why?”

Tom Kee smiled his crooked smile. “The djuba—” he began, and stopped. Tsing-fu was in no jesting mood today.

“The djuba!” Tsing-fu snarled. “That is good enough for primitive fools, but not for us. He was killed by some human agency, that is obvious. Obviously, also, we did not do it ourselves. Neither did the Haitians — they would have taken him in for questioning by the secret police. So who does that leave, do you suppose?”

The small man shrugged again. “It was Alonzo himself who told us about The Terrible Ones. Perhaps they are more terrible than we thought.”

Tsing-fu eyed him thoughtfully. “Perhaps they are,” he said softly, the sudden brushfire of his anger again under control. “Yes. You might be right. There may be much more to this than we know. I must take sterner measures. Later we will’ discuss more fully what we shall do about the Cubans. In the meantime you will go back into town and make further inquiries. When you are sure that this man was indeed Alonzo, or at least some other Fidelista, get in touch with their headquarters and tell them that their man is dead. You will assume that they sent him for a purpose and that he was unfortunately waylaid. Be sympathetic, be subtle, use no threats — but find out why they sent him. And come back after nightfall. We will be using the metal detector again and you must be here.”

Tom Kee nodded and took his leave. This was no time to argue about the long and dreary climb up and down the steep trail to the Citadelle. Tsing-fu’s vicious bursts of rage were well known to all who worked for him. He made his way to the tunnel pointed out to Tsing-fu two weeks before by a Haitian guide, who had died very soon afterwards of apparently natural causes, and came out in a palm grove outside the Castle grounds. He took the horse that was tethered there and began the long way down the hill.

Tsing-fu was striding down yet another passage in the maze beneath the Citadelle. His skin tingled pleasantly with anticipation. He had been patient with the prisoner for far too long. He walked past the storerooms with quickening step, jabbing his flashlight beam down the corridor toward the cells. The one he had chosen for the prisoner was perfect for interrogations. Unlike some of the others it had not even the smallest of barred windows, and it had an anteroom where Shang could sleep — or whatever it was that the creature did whenever he was alone — until he was needed.

He entered the anteroom and a vast shape stirred in the corner.

“Shang?” he murmured.

“Master.”

“You have obeyed my orders?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Good. Your patience will be rewarded. Very soon. Perhaps within the hour.”

There was a low growl of satisfaction in the darkness.

“You will wait here until I call,” Tsing-fu ordered, and smiled to himself as he slid back the heavy bolt of the inner, cell. He was going to enjoy this.

He stepped into the pitch blackness of the tiny room and swung his flashlight beam over the stone cot and its occupant. Still there, of course. There was no way out. The lantern was hanging, untouched, from its peg high up on the wall, though he lit it only when he chose. Even that had only been in the bare cell for the past few days, after he had made sure the prisoner was too weak to reach for it. Tsing-fu lit it now and looked down at the girl with something like admiration. She stared back at him defiantly, her eyes bright and feverish in her gaunt face. Hunger, thirst, and almost perpetual darkness had done nothing to make her talk. Drugs to keep her awake, drugs to make her babble, drugs to sicken her and turn her body inside out — all these had done everything expected of them except make her tell the truth. Some of her finger-nails were gone and there were cigarette burns upon her body. But he had soon seen that they were having no effect on her. Oh, sometimes she had screamed and spat out words at him, but every word had been a lie.

And he no longer had time to check her lies out one by one.

“Good afternoon, Evita,” he said pleasantly. “Did you know that it was afternoon?”

“How could I know?” she whispered. Her voice was dry and hoarse.

He smiled.

“Perhaps you are thirsty?”

She turned her face to the wall.

“No, no, no,” Tsing-fu said gently. “Soon you will have water. We have had enough of this, I think. Today something has happened which somewhat changes things. An acquaintance of yours has given us much useful information. You recall Alonzo?”

He saw the flickering of her eyelids and the slight twitch of a facial muscle.

“No,” she whispered.

“What a pity. Still, I think he might be persuaded to help you. It is now only a matter of your confirming his story.”

“What story?”

“Ah! But that would make it far too easy for you, would it not?” It would make it a lot easier for himself, he thought grimly, if he had the faintest idea what Alonzo’s story might have been. He reached for a pack of slim cigarillos and began to play with it. “No, you will tell me your story once more, and then we will discuss the little discrepancies. This time I must warn you that the consequences will be very terrible if I do not hear the truth. Tell me what I want, and you are free. But lie again, and I will know, for as I say I need no more than confirmation. And then…” His smile was very sweet and full of sympathy. “And then you will face something that even you, my dear, will be quite unable to bear. Now begin, please.”

She lay where she was and spoke in a husky voice that was totally without expression.

“My name is Evita Messina. I am born and bred in Santo Domingo. My husband was a political enemy of Trujillo and he died in prison. Afterwards they came and took—”

“Yes, yes, I know all that is true,” Tsing-fu said with gentle patience. “We are agreed that there is, somewhere, a hidden cache of precious stones and gold somewhere on the island. And both of us know that many people would like to get their hands on it. But we have not found it yet, have we? No, Trujillo hid it well. Yes! All that is agreed. Tell me again about Padilla and yourself.”

The woman sighed. “I met him casually and discovered quite by accident that he had been a member of Trujillo’s special staff. He was drunk and bragging a little. He said something about having one of the keys to the treasure trove. I was determined to find out more. And so… I… played upon him… and we…”

“Became lovers. Yes.” Tsing-fu’s lips were wet. He had heard the tapes of Herman Padilla’s sexual excursions with Evita Messina and enjoyed them enormously. The cries, the sighs, the creaking of the bed, the little sounds of pain, the slap of flesh against flesh, had given him pleasure amounting to ecstasy. A thousand curses upon the fools who had broken in too soon, during that last night!

“And in the course of your love-making,” he said thickly, through a mouthful of saliva, “what did you find out about this so-called key?”

“I told you,” she said lifelessly. “It is not a real key but a sort of clue. Padilla said there were several such clues. It was Trujillo’s idea of a game. To each of several men he gave only one part of the puzzle. Padilla was one of them. Only Trujillo himself knew all of them. Or so Padilla said.”

“And Padilla’s clue?”

“You know that also. Only an unconnected phrase— ‘the Castle of the Blacks.’ I always thought he knew more. But I was unable to find out. We were interrupted, as you may recall.” She said it bitterly.

He recalled, all right. The two listeners manning the tape machine had pounced upon the lovers in their unguarded state; quite certain that they could capture both alive and extort the full truth from them. They had been wrong. Won Lung had been obliged to stop Padilla’s flight with a bullet in the back. And the girl insisted she knew nothing more than they had overheard.

For the hundredth time Tsing-fu mulled the phrase over in his mind. “The Castle of the Blacks.” Was it code? Was it anagram? He thought not. It had to be a place. And of all places, this vast Citadelle, built by King Henri Christophe of Haiti to defend his black kingdom against French attack, fitted the name — the clue — to perfection. True, it was not in the Dominican Republic… but it was not very far away. And to hide part of his stolen millions in the very midst of his hated enemies, the Haitians, would have been a typically cunning, Trujillo-like move. Yet where in all this vast complex of stonework could the treasure lie? And who could hold the other clues? Padilla must have known.

“He told you something else,” Tsing-fu said sharply.

“No!”

“Of course he did. Do not forget that I now have information from Alonzo.”

“Then use it,” she spat at him, with a return of her old life. “If he knows so much, make use of him!”

“Ah! So you do know him, then?”

“No, I do not.” She sank back again upon the hard stone cot, exhausted. “It was you who used his name, not I.”

“But he mentioned yours,” Tsing-fu said, watching her. It was not true, of course. In the early days of their “cooperation” Alonzo had warned him about a band of Dominican outlaws called The Terrible Ones who were also after the Trujillo Treasure, but that was all Alonzo had ever told him. “He mentioned yours,” Tsing-fu repeated. “This is your last chance to make things easy for yourself. Now tell me in your own words— What is your connection with The Terrible Ones?”

“I know nothing about them.” Her voice was toneless again.

“Oh, yes, you do. It is for them that you seek this treasure, is it not?”

“It is for myself!”

“Why?” The word lashed out at her.

“I told you! Because Trujillo took everything we had and killed my husband I want it! I want it for myself!”

“You lie! You will tell me about The Terrible Ones before I leave this room today!”

Her face turned to the wall. “I do not know them,” she said lifelessly.

Dr. Tsing-fu sighed. “What a pity,” he said. But his pulse was racing. It had been a long time since he had last satisfied his own peculiar passions. “Perhaps my assistant will be able to jog your memory,” he murmured pleasantly.

He turned his head toward the door and called out. “Shang!”

The door swung inward.

“Yes, Master.”

“Come in,” Tsing-fu said genially. “Look at her. And you, my little Evita, look at my friend Shang. He has been longing to come in here to make your acquaintance. It is only with the utmost patience that he has been able to restrain himself, for which he is now about to be rewarded. Go closer to her, Shang. And look at him, woman!”

A huge figure shambled into the lantern light and lumbered toward the cot. Tsing-fu watched the girl’s head turn and enjoyed her little involuntary gasp.

“Shang may not look like a man,” he said conversationally, “but he has a man’s desires. I must warn you, though, that he is a trifle unconventional in his approach. I have even heard it said that he is brutal. We will see. He is free to do whatever he pleases with you. Touch her, Shang. See how she likes it.”

The girl shrank back against the wall and whimpered. For the first time she clearly saw the creature who had guarded her cell door, and her whole being churned with terror and revulsion.

Shang was a gorilla without hair, a human gorilla with the enormous body of a sumo wrestler and the fang-like teeth of some vast carnivorous animal. He towered over her, growling, saliva dripping from his open mouth, sweat gleaming like oil over his bare upper body. Fat blended with muscle and muscle with fat, and both bulged and flexed together as he reached out one massive arm and ripped her thin blouse down to her waist. A hand the size of a bunch of bananas clamped down over Evita’s breasts.

“Ah, no!” she moaned.

“Ah, yes!” said Tsing-fu, trembling deliciously in anticipation of the sexual bout. “Unless you wish to change your mind and tell me what I ask?”

“I know nothing,” she gasped. “Get him away from me. Oh, God!”

“God helps those who help themselves,” Tsing-fu murmured sanctimoniously. “You will speak?”

“No!”

Shang growled and ripped again.

“That’s right, Shang,” Tsing-fu approved. He leaned back comfortably against the wall that offered him the best view and lit a cigarillo with shaking fingers. Ah, this was worth waiting for! To watch, to hear, was so much more stimulating than the clumsy crudity of the act.

“You are sure you would not rather talk?” he suggested, almost hoping now that she would not — yet.

“I know nothing!” she screamed. “Nothing!”

“So. Well, then. Gently at first, my Shang. We may need to save her for a repeat performance.”

He caught his breath with sheer delight as Shang rumbled in his throat and mounted the cot. The girl was kicking wildly. Good! Good!

Shang’s monstrous body enveloped the slim, weak figure on the cot.

Open House at the Castle

“You are now standing at a height of 3140 feet,” the voice of the guide sing-songed, “on the ramparts of King Henri Christophe’s defense against the French invaders. Two hundred thousand men who had been slaves dragged the iron, the stone, the cannon up the trail to build this edifice. Twenty thousand of them died. The stone floor of this citadel — the only castle garrison ever built by black men — lies at 3000 feet above sea level. The dungeons of course are at a lower depth, and the walls are 140 feet high. At the base they measure twelve feet thick and even here on the parapet where we stand, looking out over the Atlantic, their thickness is six feet. One hundred and forty feet below us lie the storehouses, the sleeping quarters, and the ammunition rooms — enough to supply a force of 15,000 men….”

The sun was low over the sea. It was the last tour of the afternoon.

Nick stared out over the parapet. He and the girl stood slightly apart from the rest of the group, and both had changed their costumes of the night before. She wore tourist slacks and a brightly colored blouse that fitted her to perfection, and he wore a casual, elderly man’s suit borrowed for him by Paula’s friend Jacques LeClerq. His dark skin of the night before was now the mottled pink of a man accustomed to good living and his beard was grizzled and trim. He could have been an aging Latin-American touring Haiti with his niece. But he wasn’t. He was Killmaster, on an impossible mission.

“All right, let’s go over this once more,” he said quietly. In the background the guide’s voice sang on. “I don’t like it at all, but it seems to be the only thing to do so I guess we’ll have to do it.”

She turned to him in a lithe, quick movement, graceful as a cat and completely feminine in every curve and gesture.

“I don’t like it either. It was stupid to send one man! I told you in the beginning—”

“Yes, you did. Once or twice too often,” Nick said tightly. “Should I send for a company of Marines and storm the battlements?”

She clicked impatiently and turned away to gaze down into the thick mahogany grove far below beyond the outer western wall.

“And don’t stare down there as though you’re looking for something,” Nick said sharply. “You might just get someone interested. Now. You can trust Jacques to have the horses there?”

“Of course I can trust Jacques! Didn’t he give us shelter, clothes, the map?”

“Don’t bite. I’m with you, not against you. And you’re sure the guide won’t count heads as we leave?”

Paula shook her head. Her honey-colored hair swung gently in the breeze.

She’s beautiful, in her hard way, Nick thought reluctantly.

“They never bother to count,” she said. “Least of all on the last trip of the day. Jacques said so, and he knows them.”

Yes. The ever-helping Jacques, thought Nick. But he had to trust the man. Jacques and his wife Marie had been friends of Paula’s for many years. It was Jacques who had sent the message to Paula that Chinese strangers had been seen near Cap Haitien, and Jacques who had spied and seen them burrowing through the bushes near the Citadelle for several dark nights in a row, dragging odd-shaped boxes with them. Jacques would bear closer inquiry when he had time.

“Okay, if Jacques says so. Now I want this clearly understood. You will stay with the horses. You are not coming with me.”

“Let’s understand it my way,” she said coldly. “I’ve seen you in action only once — against a dog. Until I know what you’re worth I’m giving the orders. You are not I am coming with you.”

The guide’s voice sang out briskly. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, we will take the staircase to the lower cannon gallery. You will follow me, please, and quickly if you do not mind, for it is getting late.”

There was a flurry of sound and the party drifted away from the battlement. Nick watched the last man go downstairs out of sight, waited for a minute, and then turned to Paula.

“Paula, use your head,” he said softly. “You’ll only be in the way. It’s going to be hard enough groping around in the dark alone; it’s going to be impossible if I have to drag you with me. Do you want to force me to put you out of action?” He glanced around swiftly to make sure they were alone. They were. “It’s easy enough. Like this!”

His hands shot out in a lightning move. One caught both of hers and pinned them together at the wrists. The other went to her throat and found the sensitive pressure point. And squeezed.

He let go just as suddenly: “See how easy?”

She touched her throat and swallowed. “I see. You have made your point. But as you say you will be alone in there. You may need help. Like this!”

Her hands shot out in a move that matched his own for speed. With a swift, skillful jerk she had him off his feet and over her shoulder. He slammed against the parapet wall and bounded back like a ball, landing lightly beside her as she turned to view her handiwork.

“Shame on you for treating an old man like that,” he said reproachfully. “What if I’d gone over the parapet?”

“I would have waved goodbye,” she answered crisply. “But you land well, I’m glad to see.”

Nick stared at her. “You’re a hard case, aren’t you? Okay, you’ve made your point, too. But I think I’m kind of sorry for you. Come on, let’s go.”

He slapped her derriere briskly and propelled her toward the stone staircase. His pride was ruffled. But he was thinking that she might be useful, after all.

* * *

“Shang! You devil’s bastard! Did I not tell you that we might need her yet?” Tsing-fu Shu’s tall body quivered with rage. It had all been too quick, much too quick! “You pig, you will be punished for this!”

The hairless man-ape turned to him. Shang’s face was a study in animal bewilderment.

“I did nothing. Master. I touched her only, and she fought me. You saw — you must have seen. I did nothing to her, Master.”

Tsing-fu pulled furiously at his cigarillo and strode over to the silent figure on its bed of stone. He reached for the thin shoulders and shook them angrily. The girl’s body was limp and unresisting; she was like a rag doll with half the stuffing gone. Her head flopped back and forth as though her neck had snapped.

He felt for her pulse. It was faint, but it was beating.

“Get out, Shang,” he grated. “Get back to your place.”

Tsing-fu heard the low growl behind him as he reached into his pocket for the small case with the vials and hypodermic. His flesh crawled. He knew the brute strength of his pet monster and respected it. He knew Shang’s rages, too, far more violent than his own, and had seen the beast in action with his crushing holds and deadly karate blows. Shang was practically his own creation… but one never knew when a half-tamed beast would turn.

He made his voice gentle as he filled the needle.

“You will have your chance, my Shang,” he said. “It will be later, that is all. Now go.”

He heard Shang’s padding footsteps retreat while he sought the vein and found it.

She would be good for at least another round, this girl. And next time he would be more careful.

* * *

None of the tourists noticed Nick and Paula hanging back from the rest of the group and stealing into the grove. Jacques had been right; there was no way of reaching the heavily barred inner recesses of the castle from within, so they would have to re-enter from outside. But at least they had a good idea of the general layout, which matched the old pictures and the chart.

The horses were waiting in the grove, as Jacques had promised. In the deep shade offered by the mahogany trees Nick changed quickly into his dark green fatigues of the night before and dusted the gray powder from his beard. The thin evening air carried back to him the sounds of the tour party clattering homeward down the trail a half mile or so away. It was a long descent and the last rays of the sun would be dying by the time they reached Milot at the bottom of the slope.

Paula was still changing behind the cover of a low-hanging branch.

There was time to kill before it got dark enough to go to work; too much time for a man of Nick’s impatience. And Paula, withdrawn and angry by turns, was not the sort of woman to help him while away the twilight hours in the manner of his choice.

Nick sighed. It was a pity about her. So cold, so uncommunicative about herself, so beautiful in her lean and catlike way, so unapproachable.…

He padded quietly to the edge of the mahogany grove and looked about him, visualizing the old chart shown to him by Jacques and fitting the scene to the pictures he had seen. The Citadelle loomed above him, vast and impregnable. To his left, beyond the edge of the mahogany stand, lay a grove of palms. To his right, pomegranates, and beyond them the trail leading into town. Almost directly ahead of him, between him and the tall iron-studded outer walls, was a mound of rock topped by thick bush. He stood and listened for a moment, still and silent as a mahogany trunk, watching for anything that might betray another presence. Then he moved, slowly and stealthily like a panther on the prowl.

It took him some minutes to find the opening of the conduit and clear it of the overgrowth, but he was pleased with what he saw when he had uncovered it. They would have to crawl, but unless there was fallen masonry or some other blockage within there would be room enough for anyone moving at a crouch.

Nick glided back to the shelter of the mahoganies and sat down on a fallen log. Through the trees he glimpsed the vague outlines of the horses and the woman, standing motionless and waiting.

He chirruped twice into the tiny microphones beneath his shirt and heard the answering chirp.

“AXE J-20,” a small voice whispered from his armpit. “Where are you, N?”

“Outside La Citadelle,” Nick murmured. “With the woman, Paula.”

He heard a tiny chuckle. “But naturally,” said Jean Pierre. “Carter lands as usual with his bottom in the butter. So The Terrible Ones are all women, yes? Hawk is livid! I believe he thinks you planned it just that way. But how do you progress?”

“In a strange and devious way,” Nick muttered, keeping his eyes peeled for any movement in or near the woods. “Shut up and listen, and spare me your sly cracks. I met the woman, as you heard. I still don’t know anything about the Cuban character but I think Paula’s holding out on me. Anyway, we had a little incident with a Haitian Dog Patrol and left the cave in something of a hurry. She took me to a village called Bambara where she has friends, name of Jacques and Marie LeCIerq. Check them, if you can. We spent the night with them and most of the day. Seems that Jacques is a local rebel leader — plans an uprising against Papa Doc Duvalier some day. Nothing to do with this mission, except that he keeps in contact with Paula and exchanges information.”

“So? Why should he?” Jean Pierre’s thin voice inquired.

“Because he and Tonio Martelo, Paula’s late husband, were lifelong friends. Because they’re both rebels, in their own way. And because Jacques doesn’t like the Chinese any more than we do — or so he says.”

“Chinese? They are there, then?”

“He says so. Claims they had an ammunition cache up in the mountains, says he and a couple of friends have been watching them for weeks. Small group, perhaps six men, apparently doing nothing but guarding the supplies. He also says he’s seen them on small-scale guerilla-type maneuvers, as if training for something. Or else staying in training so they can train others.”

“Operation Blast, you reckon?”

“Maybe. Jacques and Paula think so.” Nick stopped for a moment to listen. Crickets and birds chirped back at him and a horse neighed softly from where Paula waited. That was all right; the sound of a horse was common enough around here. Nothing else stirred. But the shadows were lengthening and it would soon be time to move.

“He says the Chinks moved about two weeks ago,” he went on softly. “Started tunneling their way into the Citadelle and carting in all their supplies. Did it all at night, so Jacques and friends couldn’t see as much as they would’ve liked. But their impression was that three or four new-comers had joined the original group and the whole lot of them were moving into, the Citadelle, ammunition and all. At the same time Paula the Terrible discovered that one of her own gang of female avengers had turned up missing — and a couple of familiar Chinese faces had vanished from Santo Domingo. So she got worried.”

He told the rest of the story briefly, how he and Paula and the LeClerqs had sat around the rough-hewn kitchen table in the village of Bambara going over past events and making plans.

Jacques’ stubby dark finger had traced a path over the chart in the tattered old book.

“It is not impossible to get into the Citadelle,” he said. “Here, you see, are several conduits that used to take water from the mountain stream into the castle. They have been dry now for many years, but as you see they are quite broad. The tunnel used by the Chinese is not marked here, but that does not surprise me. Old King Christophe would have wanted a secret escape route. One of the conduits would be better for your purposes, I think. They cannot guard them all. Still, it will not be easy. But you understand that I can only help you with arrangements; I cannot myself go with you.” His liquid brown eyes had gazed at Nick appealingly. “My own freedom of movement must not suffer for this business of the treasure.”

“It is not only the treasure,” Paula had said sharply. “We must find out what has happened to Evita. Obviously she found out something from Padilla and they got onto her somehow. If she is there—”

“Paula, Paula.” Jacques shook his head sadly. “They killed Padilla; why not her?”

“No!” Paula struck the tabletop so that the coffee cups rattled. Marie clucked quietly in the background. “They would only kill her after she had talked, and she would not talk!”

“But perhaps they already knew all they needed from Padilla….”

The conversation had become a storm, and then finally settled down into a more reasoned discussion of how to broach the Citadelle. But at least Nick had learned a few basic facts. The Terrible Ones was an outfit consisting of women whose loved ones had been killed for political reasons by the former dictator Trujillo. Paula Martelo was their leader. Together they were trying to locate a cache of treasure that Trujillo had intended to ship to Europe but had never gotten a chance to. It was still hidden somewhere on the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The Chinese had learned of its presence and were trying to locate if for their own purposes, something to do with a project called Operation Blast. There were certain clues to the location of the treasure and Evita Messina had found a Dominican who knew one of them. Now the Chinese were in Haiti and Evita was missing. Immediate mission: verify the presence of the Chinese, and find Evita.

“So that’s the story,” Nick finished quietly. “It’s almost dark now. We’ll be going in soon. What about your end— Hawk hear anything more about Operation Blast?”

“Nothing. No more than that first rumor. Your Paula’s been our only confirmation to date that such an operation exists. She say anything more about it?”

“Not yet.” Nick frowned in the gathering gloom. “She’s holding back, for some reason. But I’ll get it out of her.”

There was a quiet chuckle. “I’ll bet you will, mon ami. Where the women are concerned—”

“That’s enough out of you, bud. I’m on my way. Greetings to Hawk.”

He signed off briskly and made one more rapid survey of the immediate terrain. Darkness now; still silence; still no moon. Nick padded back to Paula and the horses, almost invisible between the trees. He whistled softly and she came to him at once.

“Did you find it?” she asked him almost soundlessly.

“Yes. It’s going to be as black as a hole in hell, but try to keep track of where we’re going. Just in case we have to get out in a hurry. This way.” He touched her arm lightly and led her through the trees toward the mound and the outer opening of the conduit.

“Breathe while you have the chance,” he muttered, and slithered in on his belly. She came in close behind him with the stealth of a jungle cat.

The air was thin and stale with age but it was breathable. Nick paused and groped around. The duct was a good three feet in diameter and the floor was dead moss and rough stone. It wasn’t ideal for an innocent evening’s stroll, but it was fine for a couple of prowlers in the night.

He reckoned they had about a hundred feet to go according to the building plan in Jacque’s old book. Nick quickened his pace and moved on in the stifling darkness, hearing the girl’s soft movements following along behind him.

* * *

Slap!

Tsing-fu Shu’s lean hand drew back and struck again, this time against her other cheek.

“So you did not like my Shang, eh?” Slap! “But I see you are almost ready now for another meeting. Good!” He slapped again and watched her eyes flutter open. “Unless you would prefer to talk to me instead?”

Evita cringed away from him, eyes wide with fear and horror.

“Not… that… animal….” she whispered. “Talk. But… water….”

Her words sounded like the rustling of dry leaves through her parched lips. Tsing-fu could barely make them out, but he could see the swollen tongue working feverishly.

“A little talk first,” he said persuasively. “Then your reward. Tell me who you are working for. That will be a good beginning.”

Her mouth worked and a tiny sound came out.

Tsing-fu leaned closer.

“What?”

“Fi-fidelistas… and the sound trailed off into a strangled croak.

“What!” Tsing-fu shook her furiously. “Who? Who?”

Her mouth worked earnestly but the sounds that came out were not words. It was obvious even to Tsing-fu that she was incapable of speech.

“Shang! Shang!” he bellowed. Evita shrank away and shuddered.

There was a low growl from the anteroom. “Master?”

“Bring water!”

Evita sighed and closed her eyes.

“Your reward,” Tsing-fu told her pleasantly. “Then the full story, yes?”

She nodded, eyes still closed.

Dr. Tsing-fu prepared another needle while he waited. This time he was going to have the true story. Of course she was still going to try to lie. But he, in his turn, still had the Shang treatment in reserve. And he was not going to cheat himself of that.

* * *

Nick flicked the pencil flashlight on for long enough to see that they were in a stone cellar thick with cobwebs and dead leaves. A broken wooden bucket lay beneath a broken rope beside a flight of steps leading to a trapdoor. It was bolted from within. But the hinges were loose and rusty with age. He doused the light and put his Lock picker’s Special to work.

“I hear something up there,” Paula whispered. “Hammering. Digging.”

“So do I,” Nick murmured back. “Not near us, though. But if we walk into a roomful of people—”

“I know,” she said. “You told me. Hurry, please!”

“Hurry!” Nick muttered. “Two weeks they’ve been here, and now I have to hurry.”

He could almost see her lips tighten in the darkness.

“I only heard about this when Jacque’s message—”

“I know,” he said. “You told me. And cut out the female gabbing, if you don’t mind.”

Her silence was almost loud. Nick grinned to himself and went on working.

The ancient hinges parted from their moorings.

* * *

Tom Kee cantered up the slope on his spavined mount. It was a slow canter, more like a determined plod, but it was getting him there. He had news for Tsing-fu Shu. The Cuban Comrades had not sent Alonzo into Haiti. How could they? They had not even known that Tsing-fu and his men were there. Alonzo must have done it on his own, they said. They had no idea who might have killed him.

Tom Kee’s Oriental mind chewed things over carefully. He had believed their story; the Cubans had not sent Alonzo and they were genuinely puzzled. So — why had he come, and who had killed him? Tom Kee whacked his mount to hasten it. There was a long ride ahead, and something told him that there was a need to hurry.

“Sit up, you! Sit up!” Tsing-fu could hear the hysterical rage in his own voice but he did not care. He dashed the mugful of water into her face and shook her head from side to side but the eyelids did not open nor was there the slightest moan. She had done it again! He cursed wildly in all the languages he knew and slammed his fist against her head. For one moment, one moment only, he had turned his eyes away to take the water mug from Shang, and in that moment she had dashed her head against the wall and now she lay as silent as the grave. Now, by God, he would tie her down, and next time…!

He threw the mug down on the floor and screamed for rope. For a while she could rest, trussed like a chicken, and then he would be back. He watched Shang tie her up and then he left. Oh, yes, he would be back.

* * *

The trapdoor was a loose covering over the hole and they were in a stone room listening to distant thuds. Total darkness pressed down upon them like a coffin lid. Nick let several minutes pass while he sent his senses out like tentacles into the blackness and looked at his mental picture of the map. Then he touched Paula’s arm and moved down a corridor toward the sound.

* * *

Tom Kee whipped his tired horse. The feeling of urgency was growing in him. His every instinct told him that there was danger in the air.

He forced the clumsy beast to hurry.

Shang’s Second Chance

At the end of a tunnel of darkness there was a muted glow of light. Nick groped towards it, ghostlike in his dark fatigues and the special boots that Editing called “creepers.” Paula followed him like a shadow in sneakers.

Under any other circumstances Nick would have avoided the light like the trap it might turn out to be. But his main purpose was to verify the presence of the Chinese and see what they were up to, so the only sense was to head for where the action was. Also, there was the girl Evita. If she was here and if she was still alive the chances were that she would be somewhere near the center of their activities rather than tucked away in some distant part of the Citadelle.

So he padded on toward the light and the sound, expecting momentarily to run headlong into trouble.

It started even sooner than he had expected.

A sudden pool of brightness splashed upon the stone floor yards ahead and angled sharply toward him, as if a man with a flashlight had turned a corner from one passage into this. Nick could hear the dull clunk of heavy feet approaching as the pool of light advanced.

He brushed Paula back with one hand and spread out his arms along the wall in the faint hope of finding a doorway. There wasn’t one within reach; not even a niche. That left him with only one thing to do. Attack.

He went on walking toward the flashlight’s beam, one hand raised to shade his eyes and face against its light and the other hand half-clenched at his side in readiness for Hugo. He peered at the shadowy shape beyond the light and made himself grunt with irritation. A startled exclamation echoed him and the flashlight’s ray played over his body.

“Lower that light, you fool!” he hissed in Chinese, hoping he’d picked the right language to hiss in. “And the noise back there with the digging! It would waken the dead.” As he spoke he let Hugo trickle down his sleeve, and he kept moving, with his eyes still shaded from the light, until he was within inches of the other. “Where is your commanding officer? I have a message of importance.”

“Commanding off—?”

Nick struck. His right hand swung sideways and down against the throat with the Chinese voice-box. Hugo, razor-edged and icepick slender, sliced through the voice and cut it in mid-syllable, then moved on easily as if through butter and slashed the jugular. Nick grabbed the falling flashlight and struck again at the gargling sound of death in the man’s throat, thrusting Hugo’s slim length clean through the neck and out again. The body toppled in slow motion; he caught, its weight and eased it to the floor.

He listened for a moment, hearing nothing but Paula’s faint breathing and the sounds of hammering and digging from beyond the passage walls. No disturbance. But now he would have to find some place to put the body. He swung the beam of the flashlight down the hall and saw a recess several feet ahead. Wordlessly, he handed the light to Paula and heaved the limp form over his shoulders. They would have to take a chance on the light for a moment, and another chance that there was no one in that dark recess in the wall.

She held the beam down low, away from Nick and his burden, and played the light upon the opening. It led into an empty room whose rotting shelves had been ripped from the walls and piled on the floor, as if someone had been trying to wrest a secret from them. Nick dragged his burden into a corner and let it drop with a soft thud.

“Turn the light on his face,” he whispered. “One quick look, then douse it.”

She swung the beam over the body and let it linger on the head. Blood encircled the neck like a crimson hangman’s noose and the features were horribly contorted. But even in its death agony the face was unmistakably Chinese. So was the work uniform with the small, faded insignia sewn into the fabric. Nick’s face was grim as Paula flicked the switch and left them in darkness with the corpse. He knew the tiny badge for what it was, the symbol of a highly specialized company of Chinese scavengers and infiltrators whose main task was to strip a country of its spoils and prepare the way for the propagandists and military tacticians. It usually meant, as it had meant in Tibet, that the Chinese were planning to move in for a takeover, either openly or behind the scenes with a puppet fronting for them. But here, right under the noses of the OAS and Uncle Sam?

Nick frowned and padded back into the passage. Paula the Silent glided along behind him. Again they headed for the light.

It was almost too easy. The passage branched off to left and right. To the left was darkness, to the right, the light. It streamed through an open doorway and close to the door was a low, barred window. Nick ducked to peer through it. Four men, all Chinese, were methodically tearing apart a huge stone room. Propped against one of the walls was a device he recognized as a metal detector. No one was using it at the moment; it had a waiting look about it as though its operator might be temporarily absent. Where? he wondered. But he had seen enough to confirm Paula’s story of a Chinese hunt for treasure and some underlying motive much bigger than a simple lust for loot.

Now for the girl. Once again he pinpointed their position on his mental map. The passageway to the right must lead directly to the section of the dungeons open to the tourists. They would hardly keep her there. To the left, then. He prodded Paula and they glided into the dark left corridor.

Tsing-fu sat down on a folding chair in the room he called his office. He had eaten well from his little private supply and he was feeling very much better. Things had not gone well for the last few days, but now he was convinced that he would get something more out of the girl and perhaps even out of his balky confederates, the Fidelistas. The Fidelistas…. He pondered. Had the girl been lying again when she had croaked out the name? Or could they be playing a double game with him? His thin mouth tightened at the thought.

He glanced at his Peking-made watch. He would give her another hour to think her thoughts and then he would tear her apart… her mind first, then her body. Shang was waiting for her.

* * *

Shang was waiting. He was asleep, but his animal senses lay close to his thick surface and he would awaken at the doctor’s footfall. A lantern glowed beside his huge recumbent form. Even he sometimes wanted light in his cage. Shang growled in his sleep, dreaming animal dreams of passions to be satisfied and beings who kept on saying to him No! Not yet, Shang, not yet. Shang, you devil’s bastard! Wait! He was waiting, even as he slept. But he would not wait much longer.

* * *

“Paula. This is hopeless,” Nick whispered to the blob of darkness beside him. “We can’t wander around this maze all night. I’ll have to find someway to flush them out and then come back—”

“No, please! Please let us keep looking.” For the first time she sounded like a woman, pleading. “If we leave and they find that man’s body, what do you think they’ll do to her? We must keep looking!”

Nick was silent. She had a point, about the body. But he also knew that their luck could not hold out for ever. They had flattened themselves against the walls countless numbers of times as men tramped past them down a cross-corridor, and they had pussy-footed into endless dark cellars to risk the flashlight and a challenge. It was a fool’s errand. His brain urged him to stop this nonsense and get out.

“All right, one more college try,” he said. “Thataway. I don’t think we’ve been down there. I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.” They padded down yet another of the corridors. Nick put his brain to work on reconstructing the map. He hadn’t an idea in hell where they were. No, wait — they’d done that bit before. He recognized the curve and the rough stone. Now they were entering unexplored territory. But at least he knew where they were in relation to the conduit.

The passage branched again. Nick groaned to himself and Paula sighed beside him.

“You take one and I the other,” she whispered.

“No! We stay together. I don’t want to have to hunt for you as well. Shall we try for straight ahead?”

She was silent for a moment. Then she said: “You’re right. It’s useless. We need more help. I told you—”

“Oh, for Chrissake, cut that out,” Nick said wearily. “Let’s get out of here and…” He stopped. His senses tingled and his body went taut. Paula stiffened beside him.

“What is it?”

“Listen!”

They both listened.

The sound came again. It was a long, low, snuffling snore. A growl. Silence. And again a snore.

“We’ll take a look,” Nick said softly, and glided straight ahead. Paula’s breath quickened as she followed him.

Behind them, at the end of the branch-off passage, Tsing-fu contemplated the smoke of his cigarillo and planned his forthcoming session with Evita.

And outside under the moonless sky Tom Kee’s weary horse toiled toward the end of the trail.

Shang stirred in his anteroom. He was not yet quite awake, but he had heard a footfall. He mumbled in his sleep.

Nick followed the curve of the passage in the direction of the sound and pulled up short. A soft light spilled from a room with a half-open door, and beyond that door someone was snuffling in his sleep. And also beyond the door… there was another door. He could see it from where he stood, a solid, closed door with a bolt across it. His pulse quickened. None of the other doors had been bolted shut. And none of the other doors had been guarded by a snoring man.

He glanced at Paula in the overflow of light. She was staring at the bolted door and her lips were parted. There was nothing of hardness in her face right now; only a kind of Oh God, Please, God, look that suddenly made him like her a whole lot more. He raised a restraining hand and slipped Wilhelmina from the special holster, a Wilhelmina made long and clumsy by the silencer he so seldom used.

Nick sidled into the cell-like room and all hell broke loose.

He had no sooner seen the incredibly mountainous form and raised the Luger when the vast shape rose with fantastic speed and leapt at him from the shadows. His head slammed back against a wall and Wilhelmina flew from his hands. An enormous bare foot slammed against his throat as he sprawled back against the death-cold stone and saw lights dancing where he vaguely knew there were none. Beyond the splintering lights and the red haze he saw Paula aiming her own tiny gun at the huge blubber ball, and then he saw the creature turn and swat the pistol from her hand. Nick gulped air and shook his head. The creature had its arms around her and was squeezing her with monstrous enjoyment, crushing her slim body against his own rolls of fat and muscle and grunting with hideous delight. Nick scrabbled groggily to his feet and slid Hugo from his sheath. He pounded at the fat back, thrusting Hugo in front of him like a tiny bayonet and driving it deep into a roll of flesh. The huge man-monster released one thick arm from Paula and slammed a piledriver of a hand into Nick’s face. Nick ducked and groped for Hugo, still quivering in the big man’s body, and raked the stiletto down sharply so that it tore a deep gash in the fat behind.

The monster turned on him in a lightning move and thrust out a hand formed into an axe-blade. It glanced off Nick’s shoulder blade as he sidestepped, but Nick knew it for what it was — a karate blow designed for instant killing. He spun on the balls of his feet and shot out his right leg in a savage kick that caught the fat one under the chin and stopped him for the length of one deep breath. Hugo dropped from his bed of fat and clattered to the floor. Nick lunged for it.

“Ah, no!” A tree trunk of a leg kicked him aside. He caught the kicking foot and jerked it savagely. It swung him through the air and flung him back against the wall. But this time he was ready for the fall. He rolled back on his hips and snapped both feet up and forward into the great bulk looming over him. The creature staggered backwards but stayed on its feet.

“Ah, no,” it said again. “You not do that to me. I am Shang! You not do that to Shang.”

“How do you do, Shang,” Nick said cordially, and sprang at him with a hand outstretched like a wedge of steel. It sank into Shang’s throat and came back at him like a boomerang.

Godalmighty! Nick thought, reeling back. The fat swine knows every trick of karate, and a couple more besides.

Shang was coming at him again. No — he was pausing. A great hand scooped Paula off the floor where she was reaching for a gun and flung her sideways. She landed in a crumpled heap. Nick leapt again, driving a vicious blow at the temple and another into the fat gut. Shang grunted and slapped his great palm against Nick’s head. Nick went down heavily, rolled over once, and came up panting. Shang was standing over him, thick arms outstretched, just waiting.

* * *

Tsing-fu frowned. He had given explicit orders that the men were not to talk while they were working, but now he heard their voices. Did he? He listened carefully. No. Nothing. Still, it was time to check on them and see what they were doing. And it was high time that Tom Kee returned. He stamped out his cigarillo and reached for his flashlight.

* * *

Nick rolled again and bounded to his feet. Shang grinned like an ape and swung a huge paw at him. Nick dodged and felt the half-blow smashing past his ribs. He backed away and unleashed a kick that landed full against its tender target between the trunklike legs. Another man would have doubled up and screamed. Shang yelped and fell into a crouch, fat arms reaching out to bearhug Nick around the knees. He caught one of them only; the other crumpled up underneath his chin and rocked him backwards like a bobbing balloon.

Shang laughed low in his throat. “You are insect,” he growled softly.

Nick felt like one. He stung again with a chest stab that sank into a cushion of fat and made the giant laugh again.

“Ho, see! I use club on you,” he rumbled. He reached down swiftly and grasped Paula by the ankles. She was less than half-conscious and her feeble squirm meant nothing to him; he swung her a couple of times like a baseball bat, picked up momentum, and struck at Nick with her helpless body — a Neanderthal using a woman as a club. He let go at impact and chuckled to himself.

Nick absorbed most of the weight and impetus with his outstretched arms, cushioning the impact for both of them. But he could not keep his balance and he went down beneath her, cursing quietly. The hairless ape came at him crabwise as he rolled free, swinging out a great leg in a side kick that could have scrambled Nick’s brain like raw egg if it landed. It didn’t land. Nick twisted away and saw the giant’s foot come down awkwardly, slightly off-balance, and he struck out viciously with his own legs. One foot slammed hard against one padded shin; the other snaked around behind the other thick leg and gave a mighty jerk. The man-monster went down with a grunting thud and tried to rise. Nick bulldozed a kick at the groin and leapfrogged up, swinging a booted foot even as he leapt. This time the blow sledge-hammered against the side of the thick skull and Shang’s head jerked like a punching bag.

It was cat and mouse no longer. Shang wasn’t playing any more and the slashing kick had barely dazed him. But it had helped. Shang clawed widely upward with one hammy hand and missed his target by inches. Nick backed away as Shang started to rise, and he leapt again as high as he could and then down with all his weight upon the bulging belly. He heard the ribs cracking and he jumped again, grinding his feet deep into the fat and the ribs and the guts. Breath wheezed and grunted out of the blubbery form beneath him.

Not very cricket, Nick told himself, and slammed down again with all his weight. His heels ground down in a pulverizing motion, churning savagely into the breastplate, into the heart, into the thickly muscled abdomen. Shang’s flailing arms brushed past his legs and plucked at them uselessly.

There was a hideous squelching, scrunching sound. Shang lay very still.

Nick bounced off his human trampoline. Paula, he saw from the corner of his eye, was on her feet and moving groggily toward the barred inner door. He looked down at the horrible mess he had made of the monstrous man and felt nauseated. Shang was very dead, and he had died painfully. Nick scooped up Hugo and the fallen guns and followed Paula into the dark cell. She flicked the flashlight’s beam into the corner.

A woman lay huddled on a stone bed, trussed with cord, eyes wide with terror in a gaunt face with oddly swollen lips.

Paula ran to her crooning like a mother who had found a long-lost child.

“Evita, Evita! It’s Paula! Don’t be afraid. We’ll get you out of here.”

“Paula! Oh, Paula….” It was a cracked whisper that became a sob.

Nick let them croon together for a moment while he glanced around the cell and listened for other sounds. There was no way out but the way they had come and no sound of anyone approaching. Yet. He reached into an inner hip pocket and padded toward the women.

“Here,” he said, uncorking the flask. “Drink, and we’ll go.”‘ Paula took it from him and held it to Evita’s parched lips.

Her eyes were still startled but she drank obediently. Nick slashed at the cords that bound her and felt for her pulse. She was in bad shape. But she would make it if they hurried. He saw the burns and the other marks of torture and swore to himself that he would get her out of here no matter what.

“Know your way back, Paula?” he whispered.

She looked at him and slowly shook her head.

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure. Do you?”

He nodded. “I think so. I’ll carry her. You stick close behind and be on guard. Evita?” He touched the girl gently. “Just hold on to me. That’s all you have to do.”

“Tired“ she whispered. “May not make it. Tell you first… Paula, listen. Listen! Padilla’s clue… The Castle of the Blacks. But he also said… it’s not far from Domingo. Chinese wrong. It’s not in Haiti. Understand? Not in Haiti. And he also said…” She gave a little sigh and fell back limp.

A Brightness in the Night

Paula groaned with anguish. “She’s gone!” she whispered.

“She’s not.” Nick bent swiftly and cradled Evita in his arms as though she were a child. “Passed out, and just as well. Kill that lantern out there and follow me like a leech. Don’t lose me — but if anything happens, it’s two lefts and a right, another left and a right, and run like hell. If there’s trouble, don’t wait for me. I won’t wait for you. Understand? Let’s go.”

He carried his slight burden into the anteroom, stepped over the trunklike legs of the mangled Shang, and waited briefly in the doorway while Paula doused the light. Then he padded swiftly into the corridor, probing the darkness with the eyes of his mind and keeping close to the wall. The back of his neck bristled with warnings but he had no choice of action. It was go and keep going, and that was all, until something stopped them.

* * *

Dr. Tsing-fu Shu stood in the darkness at the corner of the corridor leading to his office. He had heard something; he was sure of it. And the men were not responsible. They were working with their usual impassive silence, hammering and digging, but not talking.

Shang? Impossible. Nevertheless…

hen there was that word “Fidelistas.” It kept whispering in his mind, and echo of the girl’s cracked voice. Fidelistas…?

Now, right now, he would get the truth from her.

His thoughts were full of Fidelistas as he snapped on his flashlight and jabbed its beam into the cross-corridor ahead, the one leading to her cell. He gasped involuntarily.

Crossing the broad beam of light and disappearing into the shadows beyond was a tall, bearded man in Castro-like fatigues — carrying the girl!

A cry of outrage and alarm rose in his throat as he sprang forward and grasped the gun he so seldom had to use.

* * *

Light blazed across Nick’s face. He shifted the girl’s weight to one side and half-turned on the balls of his feet to kick out sideways at the figure behind the light. His foot connected with the hidden shin and at the same time he heard a plop! of sound and the light went out. The shriek of rage curved downward to the floor and then there was another splat of sound and a crumpling thud. Paula was busy with that little silencer, he thought with grim satisfaction, and paused to prod the dark shape with his foot. It lay still.

“C’mon!” he whispered urgently, and padded on.

Paula hesitated for a moment and then followed him.

The digging sounds had stopped. Someone was shouting. from a corridor nearby. Nick made a swift left turn, ran on, made another.

“Paula?” he hissed.

“Coming!”

He turned right. There were running footsteps after him, and they weren’t only Paula’s. They were close — too close. He made the next left and they faded, all but Paula’s. The girl was getting heavy. Nick shifted his grip and made the last right turn. The footfalls were loud again and another voice was shouting.

He ran full-tilt into the stone corner of a doorway. The girl moaned and Nick cursed. Paula brushed past him and he could hear her moving the loose trapdoor they had opened an hour or two before.

“Lower her to me!” she breathed. “Lower her— I’ll get her down the ladder.”

The trap was wide open and the girl was halfway down when the two men burst into the cellar. Nick ducked into the hole and lunged for Wilhelmina. A light shone full into his face and blinded him but he trained the Luger to the right of the reflector and above it and fired three shots in succession. Bullets slapped the stone around him and one skimmed past his ear. Wilhelmina’s answering volley splintered the bobbing flashlight and kicked the flashlight’s owner in the chest. The second man held fire. Behind him, Nick could hear Paula easing the tortured girl down the narrow ladder. A shot tore through his sleeve and he fired back at the little tongue of flame and then again and again at where he thought the head and chest must be. Something dropped heavily and he waited for a moment. Footsteps thundered dully in the passages beyond. But there was silence in the room with him. He slid quickly down the ladder and pulled the trapdoor shut above his head.

He flicked his pencil flashlight on for just long enough to see Paula struggling in the low-ceilinged passage with the girl’s dead-weight.

“I’ll take her,” he breathed. “Get going and get those nags unhitched. But fast!” He clutched Evita’s limp form as gently as he could and draped it over his crouched back. Then he crawled — crawled as fast as a man could crawl on a floor of dried moss and worn stones, with a low ceiling over his head and a half-dead woman weighing him down. In front of him he could hear Paula scrabbling over the rough floor and heading for the conduit exit. And behind him there was a blessed silence.

* * *

Tsing-fu staggered to his feet and clasped his aching head. His hand came away sticky with blood. His dazed mind could not at once grasp what had happened but he knew that it was catastrophic. He opened his mouth to scream but no sound came. His hands groped about on the floor beside him and found a broken flashlight. Then a gun. He clawed at it, found a trigger, and fired. The sound rocketed against the walls. Then he sank back into unconsciousness. But before the curtain dropped over his mind he heard someone running toward him, and a voice shouting in Chinese. Hurry, you swine! he thought vaguely, and blacked into a nightmare of escaping Fidelistas.

* * *

Tom Kee dismounted in the palm grove and hastened toward the tunnel entrance. And stopped. Something was stirring in the mahogany stand. He froze where he stood, hearing leaves rustling in the windless night and the soft stomping of horses that should not have been there, and he turned toward the tall trees on his cat-burglar’s feet. For a moment he forgot all about the urgency of his message to Tsing-fu, and the doctor’s need for his help with the metal-detector. All he could think of was that there was movement in the mahogany grove, dangerously close to the castle. He flitted through the trees and pulled up short to stare into the gloom.

Two figures were helping a third one onto a horse. One of them mounted the same horse and held the limp figure in a close embrace. Then the other mounted the second horse, and the two horses started moving quietly through the trees toward the trail downhill.

There was no moon, but there was some starlight. And as the two horses moved through a narrow clearing toward the path Tom Kee caught a glimpse of the girl Evita. He also saw the two riders before the branches hid them, and though he did not recognize them he knew they were not Tsing-fu’s people.

Hooves clip-clopped lightly on the trail and picked up speed. He turned and raced back to his own mount and led it to the path. Then he followed, first at a careful distance because there were few other riders about and then more closely as he began to meet pedestrians and peasant carts further down the slope. Once in a while he held back and drew off to the side of the road so that the sound of his hoofbeats would not be so constant that the riders ahead would notice him. He thought he saw one of them turn occasionally to glance back over his shoulder, but they went on riding at a steady pace. Now they were galloping. Tom Kee slouched low on his horse with his head bent down, as he had seen the peasants do, and he began to gallop too.

“Got a spare bed, Jacques?” Nick tramped in with his burden and Paula quickly closed the kitchen door behind them.

“You found her!” Jacques’ eyes gleamed with pleasure in his dark face. “But mon Dieu! She has been most terribly treated! Bring her in here at once. Marie!”

His pretty young wife appeared in the doorway and took in the situation at a glance. “The bed is ready,” she said crisply. “Bring her this way, please. Paula, you help me undress her and we will see what she needs first. Jacques, you light the stove. Monsieur, put her down right here. So. Now leave, please.”

Nick left the girl on clean sheets and soft pillows, grinned at Paula, and went back to Jacques.

“Soup? Coffee? Drink?” Jacques offered.

“All, thank you, but a little later,” Nick said, and his eyes were worried. “We were followed here, Jacques. One man on horseback, who rode on by as we stopped here. How secure are we — and you?”

Jacques shrugged cheerfully. “Against one man, invincible. It was not Haitian officer, I suppose?”

Nick shook his head. “Chinese, I’m also sure. I tried to shake him off, but it was impossible with the girl. And Paula and I will be leaving some time before the dawn. I hope he tries to follow us again and I hope I’ll get him next time. But if not, you better watch out for reprisals. And get the girl moved out of here as soon as you can so her presence doesn’t compromise you.”

The Creole smiled and jerked his thumb at a bolted inner door. “That is full of arms and ammunition. I am surrounded by friends who will run to my aid at the slightest sign of trouble — so long as they do not have to deal with the Tontons Macoute, the secret police. There are double locks and heavy shutters. All are closed now, as you see, and all have curtains across them. So we cannot even be heard, much less attacked. And while the house itself is but of wood and mud, it is of a wood and mud most solid. No, my friend. We have no need to worry.”

“Still, I think I’ll take a look around outside,” said Nick. “Turn the light off for a moment, will you?”

Jacques nodded and clicked the kitchen switch. Nick eased open the door and stepped outside. He glided stealthily around the house and stared into the shadows. There was no hiding place for any man within at least a hundred yards, the boundary of the nearest neighbor’s garden, except for the barn and the horses’ stalls. He investigated, and found nobody. Drums still pounded far away and faint sounds drifted down the village street, sounds of people chattering and laughing. But there wasn’t a sign of a horse or a listening man.

Nick went back into the house and took the refreshments Jacques offered him. Paula joined him a few minutes later and reported that Evita was resting comfortably.

“She has eaten a little and she is drowsy,” she told Nick. “But she wants to talk to us before she sleeps. And she thanks you.” It seemed to Nick that Paula’s tone was a whole lot friendlier now, and he was glad of it.

“She has you to thank, not me,” he said, sipping Jacques’ cognac appreciatively. “You Terrible Ones are a bunch of gutsy girls, judging by what I’ve seen. Think she can talk to us now?”

Paula nodded. “It must be now, because I think that we must leave soon. Marie will let us have five minutes, no more.” She gave him a ghost of a smile that twitched the corners of her lips and showed the trace of a dimple in one cheek. “Even though you are, she says, worth a whole squad of Marines.”

“Aw, shucks!” Nick said kiddingly, and shuffled his feet. “Okay, let’s go listen fast so Evita can rest.” He rose and followed Paula into the little room Marie had made into a bedroom for Evita. Jacques made a quick check of the door and window locks and went in after them.

It was almost midnight. All was quiet in the village.

* * *

The night was cool and Tom Kee was getting stiff. But the sounds coming through his earphones kept him glued to his post. From the side wall of a house more than two hundred yards away but almost directly opposite from the LeClerqs he could hear every word that was being said. His horse was tethered to a tree in a little parklike grove nearby and he himself was plastered in the shadows of the darkened house. The little telescope-like transistorized device in his hands was aimed directly at a window in the place that he was watching. It was one of the tricks of his trade, and he used it well. He chuckled grimly and adjusted a small dial. The voices were coming to him loud and clear. The girl’s voice was cracked and whispering but every word was audible.

* * *

“.… It made no sense to me,” she whispered, “but that is what he said. His clue was — The Castle of the Blacks. He told me when we… when we…” she turned her head away from them and closed her eyes. “He told me when we were in bed together, only minutes before the men broke in and fell upon us. He tried to get away through a window but they shot him in the back. Then they must have hit me, I suppose, because… because the next thing I knew I was in some sort of house, and I had my clothes on. There was a smell of food — a lot of food, as if there were a restaurant below. And then this man…” She sighed heavily. Marie gave her a sip of rum-laced tea and glared at the others reprovingly.

“Only the essentials, Evita,” Nick said quickly. “Did you know him? Did he give anything away? Did you tell him anything?”

Evita pushed the cup away and nodded. “I knew him. Paula, he was the one we joked about, and called him Fu Manchu. The owner of the Chinese Dragon in Santo Domingo. The one we always thought was following the same leads we were, looking for the treasure.”

“Tsing-fu Shu,” said Paula softly. “I thought it might be he, there in the dark.”

“And… and there was a creature.” Evita shuddered and sucked in her breath. “But that was later. He kept at me and kept at me and tried to find out if there was anything else I knew. I told him I knew nothing. Then he talked to another man I could not see… and they decided that the Castle of the Blacks must be the Citadelle. And then he stuck a needle into me and — and I woke up in that cell. With that monster guarding the door.”

“This Padilla,” said Nick. “You said he told you something else. What was it?”

“That was when we first met,” Evita whispered. “Before we went to his apartment. I made him tell me something before… I agreed to go. And he said it was under all our noses, if we only knew where to look. He didn’t know where, or he would have been there himself. But he knew it was within a morning’s drive of Santo Domingo. And Trujillo had laughed when he told him. He said — he said with a joke it would be on La Trinitaria. And he repeated this several times, Padilla said. There was something very funny to him about La Trinitaria.”

“La Trinitaria!” Paula’s face had suddenly gone white and pinched. “That is the name of the resistance group that all our men belonged to! What kind of joke can that be, when all the men are dead?”

“Paula, I think he did not even understand himself, Padilla. But I believe it was not just a joke. I think it may mean something for us. I do not know what.” Evita heaved a tired sigh and licked her lips. “Enough, now!” Marie said sharply. “She must rest.” “One more thing,” Evita breathed. “This Chinaman, Tsing-fu…. He kept saying something about Alonzo, that he had seen Alonzo. He said Alonzo had given him information. About us. I think he did not know much, but he kept saying something about Alonzo. And there was something about the way he talked that made me think he was working some way with the Fidelistas and that he had come to doubt them.” Nick shot a glance at Paula. “My Cuban?” he murmured. Her face was even whiter now. “Yes. We thought he was a friend of ours. Of one of us, especially. We must get back at once. Marie? You will look after Evita?”

“But yes, of course, of course! Now finish your talking somewhere else.”

She chased them briskly out of the room and settled them in the kitchen with a pot of coffee.

“The boat is always there,” said Jacques, when Marie had left them. “In an abandoned boatshed in Toury. Paula knows. Henri Duclos will take you there and back. The arrangement is that he is there at two o’clock each morning, so he will be there quite soon. You have a little time to rest, though, if you wish.”

Nick shook his head. “The sooner we leave here the better for everyone. We can walk there in an hour, wouldn’t you say?” Jacques nodded. “Then we can leave the horses here,” said Nick, glancing at his watch. “It will be quieter that way. All right with you, Paula?”

“Yes.” She rose abruptly from the table. “I think we are ahead now, and we must stay ahead.”

“Jacques.” Nick’s voice was quiet but compelling. “Take care. I still think we were followed. And if they don’t get me and Paula they may come after you. Don’t let them reach you.”

Jacques clapped him on the shoulder. “I won’t, my friend,” he said quietly.

* * *

Tom Kee was in a quandary. It was vital that he get word to Tsing-fu Shu, but it was equally vital that these people be stopped. All of them. Not only the two who were heading for the boatshed at Toury, but also those remaining. They knew far too much. He was still wondering what to do when his earphones picked up the last goodbyes and the sound of the back door opening. The door closed quietly and a bolt slid into place. Then he heard nothing. But he vaguely saw two indistinct figures dart across the open space between the houses opposite and disappear into the shadows.

Should he No, he decided. By the time he got his message to Tsing-fu it would be too late. He must act, himself, and quickly. From within the house came the small sounds of people preparing for bed. He grinned to himself in the darkness as he removed his earphones. There were two or three aces up his sleeve that would send his stock soaring in Peking if he played them right. First, he knew the way to Toury without having to be led. Second, the man and the woman were walking, and that gave him time. And finally, he had certain equipment in his saddlebag that he had always known would be useful to him some day.

He stole quietly to his saddlebag and took out what he needed, checked it in the darkness with his expert fingers, then waited in silence for a full ten minutes before making his next move. Then he mounted his horse and guided it toward the house of the LeClerqs at a slow and almost noiseless walk. There was a faint light glowing through a heavily curtained window, and it made an excellent target.

Tom Kee raised his right arm and aimed a device that looked much like a flare pistol. It acted like one, too, but its flame was contained in a miniature rocket and its head was deadly. He squeezed the trigger and rammed a second projectile into the barrel. The first landed on the thick thatch of the roof and dug in like a bullet before shattering and spewing out tongues of white-hot flame. The second soared straight toward the window. He watched it blast its way in while he slammed a third one after it, and then another at the thatched eaves over the front door. The blazing thermite compound streamed and spread into rivers of fire, clawing voraciously into the heart of the thing it was attacking. A series of small explosions ripped through the silence as the flame bit into Jacques LeClerqs’ useless store of ammunition, the little armory that was supposed to have kept them safe from all attack. It only added, now, to the holocaust.

Tom Kee lowered his grenade-thrower and gathered the reins of his startled horse. He felt a warm glow of triumph and satisfaction. His little toys were blindingly effective. Within seconds that house of mud and wood and thatch was an inferno, a blaze of unbearable heat and searing flame. It was like napalm on sun-dried timber, like a giant flame-thrower on a gasoline dump. A sheet of fire draped the walls from one end to the other.

No one came screaming out of the house. After the very first moment, no one screamed at all. The flames ate hungrily into the thatch and woodwork and clawed in savagely, looking for more.

Tom Kee nudged his prancing horse into a trot and then into a gallop. The sky was red behind him.

He could still make Toury well ahead of the others and lie in wait for them. There could not be many abandoned boatsheds in that tiny fishing village.

And So We Say Farewell

The ancient Ford took the curve like a racer at Le Mans.

“How much further?” Nick shouted above the sound of his own speed.

“About thirty seconds worth, at the rate you’re going,” Paula yelled back. “I don’t understand you at all. First you want to walk because it’s quieter and then you steal a car from some wretched dirt farmer with five banana trees and a mortgage on his shack. Slow up, will you? You’ll go right past the village! There’s Toury, down the slope to the right.”

Nick slowed and looked at the tiny cluster of houses huddled together near the waterline. He drove on for several hundred yards and swerved sharply into the rough driveway of a small coffee plantation. He glanced at his watch in the dashboard light before tugging loose the wires he’d crossed several minutes before when he’d helped himself to the parked car. Twelve forty-five. Not bad. Twenty minutes to take a quick and silent walk, hijack an antique buggy, and park two minutes’ walk away from a boatdock in Toury.

“We weren’t followed when we left,” he said. “But I know we were followed earlier. Doesn’t make sense. Why weren’t we followed again when we left LeClerqs? Because somebody already knew where we were going?”

“That’s impossible,” Paula said coolly. “Who could know? And don’t tell me Marie and Jacques.”

“I won’t. Show me to the boatshed and we’ll wait and see who comes. Unless of course we’ve been beaten to the punch.”

He slid out of the car, closed the door lightly, and waited for Paula to join him. She was not the sort of woman who liked to have doors held open for her.

She led him down the hillside past the back doors of the sleeping village to a sagging boardwalk at the water’s edge. From the center of it a dilapidated dock jutted out into the sea, and to either side of the dock’s landward end there were several sheds in various stages of disrepair. Each of the sheds had two doors, one leading into its rear from the boardwalk and another, almost the width of the shed itself, opening into the sea. Some of the sheds were open and empty. One or two of them were too ramshackle for use.

Paula led him behind the sheds and past the outjutting dock to the far end of the boardwalk. Boards creaked beneath their feet. Wilhelmina waited in Nick’s hand, ready to meet company. The shed at the farthest end of the walk leaned crazily sideways into the softly lapping water. They made their way toward it. Both its doors were closed. Paula stopped at the rear door and raised a key to the lock.

Nick placed a hand lightly on her arm. “Wait.” He took a quick look at the shed beside it. It was open to the night and in reasonably good condition. And it stood between their shed and whoever else might come along the boardwalk.

“In here,” he whispered. “Into the corner, away from the door. Ah!” His groping hands found what they sought. “Get under this tarpaulin and stay there until Duclos gets here.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort!” she hissed angrily. “We can wait in Henri’s shed—”

“You will keep your mouth shut for once and do as you’re told,” Nick grated, and his voice carried icy authority. “Get under there and keep quiet.” He shook the tarpaulin out in case of lurking rats, and thrust her under it. A muffled voice said “Damn you to hell!” and then the canvas subsided.

Nick peered out of the shed and padded along the boardwalk to the locked one where their boat should be waiting. He moved around it carefully, feeling rather than seeing the loose boards and the gaping holes of decay. The lock was a laugh, he thought. Anyone who wanted to could force his way in there inside of three minutes. He found a slanting gap almost a foot high and several inches wide. With the caution that had kept him alive through a good many years of hunting and being hunted he jabbed the nose of his pencil flash in through the gap, crouched down low, and flicked on the switch. He saw the tiny beam cut into the thick blackness inside. But there was no reaction from within. He was about to take a look inside when he heard the soft clipclop of a horse’s hooves on the road above the village. The sound stopped almost at once. It could be a villager. But he doubted it.

There were low reeds growing alongside the inside edge of the ancient boardwalk. Nick groped his way into them and found himself ankle-deep in slush but pretty well hidden.

Minutes passed. Then the boardwalk creaked. If it was the boatman, Henri Duclos, he was more than an hour early.

And Henri would not need to jab a flashlight on and off to inspect every beat-up boatshed.

The light swung into the shed where Paula lay hidden beneath the tarpaulin. It seemed to linger there. Nick stiffened, hoping to God that the intruder hadn’t spotted the sole of a shoe or a lock of hair protruding from under the canvas.

He hadn’t. He left the second last shed, and his light swung to the last shed in the line. The beam focused briefly on the door and then went out. The man glided toward the door and started fumbling with the lock with something that didn’t sound like a key.

Nick’s finger itched on Wilhelmina’s trigger. But the inky blackness made accurate shooting impossible, even at close range, and right now he would rather question than kill. Also he preferred to see a fellow’s face before he shot him.

He rose from the reeds in a slight rustle of sound and leapt at the shadowy back with one arm swinging into a Commando hook around the neck and Wilhelmina ready to jab into the ribs. But the man’s hearing must have been as acute as Nick’s own for he was turning even as Nick leapt and he squirmed like an eel when the muscular arm clamped around his throat. He slammed the flashlight against Nick’s head and kicked out with one sharp-toed foot. Both blows were light and glancing and would have meant nothing if the two men had been on solid ground, but they were not — the planking lurched beneath their combined weight and threw them both off-balance. Nick tightened his grip involuntarily and stepped back onto a board that tilted beneath his feet. Rotting wood suddenly splintered underneath him and he felt his right leg drop abruptly between the shattered planks and into an abyss of cold water. The other man, still in his grip, sprawled out heavily on top of him; Nick’s elbow struck the boardwalk and Wilhemina went flying. The flashlight clattered to a stop and cast a sidelight on their tangled forms.

Tom Kee twisted savagely and half-freed himself, sliding one hand inside his jacket as he tried to rise. Nick saw his slit-eyed face and his quick movement at the same time. He tightened his pressure on the throat with one hand and snaked the other out to clamp a vise-like, screwing grip around the Chinaman’s thin wrist. Tom Kee squealed shrilly.

“Fidelista traitor!” he panted, and tried to wrench away. Nick was in no mood to bandy compliments. His thigh was jammed tightly between the rotting boards and his weight was distributed in an uncomfortably awkward way. He held onto Tom Kee with all the strength that he could muster and screwed the arm around until the shoulder bent toward him. Then he jerked viciously. Something snapped with a sound like a pistol shot. The Chinaman screamed and chopped wildly at Nick’s temple. Nick rocked sideways and felt his fingers loose at the other man’s throat. Tom Kee clawed at them with desperate strength and tore himself away. He leapt to his feet and slammed a kick into Nick’s face. Nick ducked, caught a glancing blow on the side of his head, and dimly saw the Chinaman’s good hand reach again into its owner’s jacket.

Nick clawed at the planking and heaved himself upward. The sharp splinters of the boardwalk dug through his trouser leg and raked into his flesh like the prongs of an animal trap. Tom Kee’s arm reached out toward him, pointing. Nick wrenched himself free as a tiny tongue of flame spat in the darkness and bit into his arm. He leapt sideways and then dived forward, arms outstretched and reaching for the gunhand. There was another zap! of sound and he had Tom Kee by the arm and over his head before he felt the sting. The Chinaman slammed down headfirst onto the boardwalk and Nick went after him. He landed heavily with his knee in the other man’s back and his arm jerking under his chin. There was another crack, even sharper this time, and Tom Kee lay crumpled in the stillness of death. Nick got up and heaved a sigh. So much for the question-and-answer game. He knew the fellow was Chinese, but that was all he knew.

“Are you all right?” He started at the voice. For a moment he had forgotten all about Paula. Then he was glad of her voice in the darkness. “Yes. Grab that light and let’s have a quick look at him.” She shone the light down onto the prone form as Nick turned the body over.

“He’s one of them,” she said quietly. “I’ve seen him in Santo Domingo with Tsing-fu.”

But there was nothing on his body to tell them anything more about him.

Nick dragged Tom Kee to the edge of the boardwalk and thrust him between the rotten planks and the sighing reeds. Then he walked back to the borrowed boathouse with Paula by his side.

“I wanted to help you,” Paula said as they sat down together on the tarpaulin. “But I could see so little in the dark and I was afraid of hitting you.”

“ ‘Afraid’ is not the word for you, Paula,” Nick said quietly. “You did the right thing. Except,” he added, “that you were supposed to stay under the tarpaulin.”

She laughed softly. “Now you know that was impossible for me!” Her hand rested lightly on his arm and he tingled at her touch. “You are hurt,” she said gently. “Please let us go to the boat before Henri comes. I know there are medical supplies on board.”

“They’ll keep,” said Nick. “I’d rather stay where we are and keep an eye out for more visitors.”

She was silent for a moment. Nick stared out onto the boardwalk and wondered again about her friends Marie and Jacques. Jacques had known they were going to the castle, Jacques had known that they were coming here… He wondered if they could really trust Henri Duclos.

“Do you know,” said Paula, “that you have not even told me your name?”

He stared at her in the darkness. It was true. Jacques had not even wanted to know — it was safer that way, he had said— and the occasion had never seemed to have arisen with Paula. He had a cover name, of course, and papers to go with it. But he was sure of Paula now, if of nothing else.

“My friends call me Nick,” he said.

“Nick. I like that.” Her hand brushed lightly over his bearded cheek. “I wonder what you really look like.” She drew her hand away.

“Ugly as hell,” Nick said cheerfully. “Chinless and covered with warts.”

She laughed again. It was a pleasant sound; not a girlish giggle but a woman’s laugh. “And your body — that is a facade too, I suppose?”

“Ah, no,” said Nick, suddenly very conscious of his body and its proximity to hers. “No, it’s all solid me — except for the padded shoulders and the built-up shoes.”

“I did not like you at first,” she said abruptly.

“That was my impression,” Nick murmured.

“You see, I had expected—”

“I know, Paula.” Nick chuckled. “A posse of men. You told me once or twice. But look at it our way. Time and time again the United States has sent squads of men into a country to help, and time and time again half the world has turned on us and snarled about American intervention. Lately certain groups have begun to capitalize on this, sending up fake howls for help and then screaming to the world that Uncle Sam has done it again. We know for a fact that we’ve fallen for a couple of deliberate traps, It’s only a propaganda gambit, but it pays off for them in hatred for us every time. So, no posse. No Marines. Least of all into Santo Domingo, where they’re already spitting at us. We’re getting a little tired of spit. That’s why you’ve had to settle for one man rather than a squad.”

“I should have understood that. I am sorry.” She paused and then said, “But I am glad that you are the one man. It was wrong of me to be — so ungrateful. Would you like me to tell you now about Alonzo?”

“That would be nice,” Nick said drily, and checked the radium dial of his Cuban Army watch. One fifteen. It was still as black as a coalpit outside and as silent as the grave.

“He is a member of a special force of Cubans who have a camp in the hills west of Santo Domingo. I know it is hard for you Americans to understand this, but many of us in the Dominican Republic cannot think of them as enemies. They are propagandists, infiltrators, advisers — call them what you will. Of course they are Communists. But they bring with them a kind of revolutionary spirit that our country needs, a hope that some day we will have a leader who is neither fool nor Fascist. We do not work with them, but neither do we obstruct them and they do not interfere with us. Or so I thought. At any rate, one or two of them have become our friends. Alonzo Escobar was very taken with little Luz, one of my Terrible Ones. He has been seeing much of her.”

“And did she know where you were going when you left Santo Domingo?”

“Yes.” Paula gave a little sigh. “Whenever any one of us goes anywhere we always tell three others. It is a rule, and it has often helped us out of trouble. This time, it seems, it made trouble for us. It is obvious that she must have told him where you were to land. I wonder if he also expected a platoon.

But she’s the only one who could have told him and I can’t think why she did. He is not such a catch as a man. I hope she has not gone over to the Fidelistas.”

“I hope not,” Nick said thoughtfully. “I suppose it would be understandable if she did.” But his thoughts were quite different from his words. He had seen one badly tortured girl already and he had an unpleasant feeling that somewhere there might be another, name of Luz.

“What are you thinking?” Paula asked a little sharply.

“To tell you the truth,” he lied, “I was wondering how come you’re so blond and leggy and almost English looking. Oh, I approve, of course. But I can’t help wondering.”

“Oh. I am almost English. Only my father was one-half part Spanish. He died a long, long time ago….”

She was telling him, suddenly, about life under Trujillo and about her husband, Tonio Martelo, who had died six years ago of a bullet in the head for being a member of a political organization opposed to the dictator. He had been more than a member, he had been its leader. He had called his group La Trinitaria, after the independence fighters of an earlier century. But every last man of his group had either died in prison or been shot after a farcical trial, and every one of their families had been stripped of all possessions while Trujillo bragged about the stolen millions he had waiting for him in the banks of Switzerland. And because he was a braggart he let slip something about a cache of gold and precious stones that he had not yet sent away. One hundred million dollars worth. One hundred million dollars in golden ornaments and coins, in precious stones and semi-precious gems, in rubies, sapphires, emeralds, black pearls… all stolen. Some had been stripped off the widows of his victims, and it was said that these gave him his greatest pleasure.

With his death the rumors spread like wildfire, until there was so much fantasy in them that the truth seemed altogether lost. Years passed, and the story of the treasure lay dormant. But the wives of the victims had not forgotten. Under Paula’s leadership they had formed a group dedicated to the righting of old wrongs — and the finding of the treasure. And they had been extremely interested when a new story had found its way to them through the underground, the story of a Chinese treasure hunt and of various clues leading to the cache. There was also the suggestion of a special Chinese use for the easily negotiable gold and jewels in a project of their own called Operation Blast. No one knew what Blast could be.

“Hold it a minute!” Nick whispered suddenly. He was enthralled with Paula’s story but he was still tuned in to the world outside. And he had heard the distant sound of running feet. It was still too early for Duclos.

The boardwalk thumped and creaked and the footsteps slowed to a fast walk. Someone came toward them, whistling breathily and pausing between notes to pant with exertion. A light flashed on and off three times.

“It is Henri!” Paula breathed, springing to her feet.

“Careful!” Nick was beside her at the door.

Her light flashed three times into a dark face whose eyes blinked in the glare.

“Paula! Thank God you are here early! Who — who is that with you?” A hand flashed to a shoulder holster.

“It’s all right, Henri. He is a friend.” Paula went to him with her long, quick strides. “What is the matter — is someone after you?”

“No, no!” he gasped, still fighting for breath to speak. “I do not think so, anyway. But there has been a terrible tragedy, terrible!”

“What is it?” she rapped.

“Jacques.” Henri drew his hand across his twitching face and swallowed noisily. “Jacques, Marie, the whole house up in flames! It burnt in minutes, only minutes, right to the ground. Police, everybody crowding around, nobody could do anything. The heat unbearable, white flames eating into everything, everything all gone!”

“No!” Paula cried. It was a cry of agony and disbelief.

“Yes, yes, I am so sorry. God knows I am sorry. Incendiaries, they say. Deliberate arson, horrible.”

“Evita too,” Paula whispered. Nick grasped her shoulders and felt her trembling violently. “Oh, God. Burnt alive!”

“Evita! I do not know Evita,” Henri said hurriedly. “But they died in seconds, seconds only. It was deliberate, for sure. Someone heard explosions, and a horse leaving the village, and looked out. There was no horse any more, but the house was one big sheet of flame. Catastrophe! We cannot leave tonight, Paula. Tontons Macoute are everywhere, questioning. Anybody missing, dreadful trouble. Tomorrow instead, maybe not even then. Also, now they think that djuba thing was murder, and they are hunting for a man. Everybody must be accounted for, or else the family — you know what they do to family of a missing man.”

Paula nodded slowly. “But we can’t go back there,” she said quietly. “We have to leave.”

“No, no, we cannot go. You will have to hide!”

“We have to go, Henri,” Nick said firmly. “And we will go. But you don’t need to. I’ll pay what you want for the boat, but I’m going to take it out of here tonight.”

Henri stared at him. “Paula is my friend,” he said finally. “There is no payment for the boat. Leave it in the cove at San Jorge where Paula will show you. If I can collect it, I will. If not—” he shrugged.

“Thanks, Henri,” said Nick. “Show me the boat.”

* * *

Ten minutes later they were out in the bay. It was a small boat with a tiny motor and a lateen sail; nothing much to look at, but it would take them where they were going. On board there were medical supplies, fishing gear, rough fishermen’s clothes, a little food.

A mild breeze edged them seaward. Nick could see the lights of other small boats dotting the sea. Paula sat in the stern and stared at nothing.

“We are early, there is no need to hurry,” she said tonelessly. “If they are searching for us they will not find us out here. But we must wait to go into San Jorge with the rest of the fishing boats or we might be stopped when we get there. Drop the net and fish if you like. We have time. Also it will look better.”

Nick spread the net and calculated how much time they had. Plenty, he decided. They could drift for a couple of hours before heading directly for San Jorge. Both of them could use the rest. A slight foggy drizzle was oozing down upon them, and he lowered the lateen sail over the spar so it could serve as a shelter. Then he found the sea anchor and pitched it overboard so that they would not drift too far out to sea. Paula did not even notice as he opened the medicine chest and applied rough plasters to the two bullet scrapes inflicted by Tom Kee.

When he finished he looked at her in the dim light of their inboard lamp. Her face was expressionless but her cheeks were wet. It was not from the rain, he knew.

“Paula.”

No answer.

“Paula. Get under the sail. I know what you’re thinking— but don’t. We have all the more reason now to take hold of ourselves and get on with the job.” He knew it must have sounded inane, but there were times when even he ran out of the right things to say. “Come here.”

He reached for her gently and drew her beneath the canvas shelter. Then he cupped her face between his hands and kissed her tenderly.

And suddenly she was in his arms.

In the Darkness Before Dawn

He held her while she sobbed silently against his chest, and he went on holding her when the sobbing had subsided. She clung to him as if she would drown without his strength to save her.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she gasped. “It is most… unwomanly of me.”

“It is very womanly of you,” he said firmly, and softly stroked her hair. The firm breasts, surprisingly full and ripe beneath the coarse, loose shirt, pressed against his chest and her fingers squeezed into his back. His breathing accelerated suddenly in spite of all his years of Yoga training.

“Paula….” he whispered. He touched her lips again with his and let them linger longingly, and when she did not pull away he drew her even closer and kissed her with growing heat. Her mouth opened slightly and she responded with an urgency that sent his pulses racing. Her hands moved to the back of his neck and held it with a sort of desperation so that their mouths crushed together hotly and he could scarcely have turned his head even if he had wanted to. His hand slid down her side and down her thigh, and still she did not protest. The kiss burned even brighter.

At last she turned her head aside.

“You don’t have to do that,” she breathed. “I don’t want sympathy.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m not offering it to you. Is that what you think this is?”

He kissed her again, this time almost savagely, and cupped her breast in his hand. It swelled beneath the cloth and he caressed it while his tongue met hers. She kissed back hungrily and her tense body gradually relaxed. They were breathless when they drew apart.

When she spoke she sounded almost formal.

“I have not thought of love since Tonio died,” she said. “I have not wanted any man to touch me.” She began to unbutton her rough shirt. “Did you hear me? I said Move.”

“I heard you,” said Nick, and a little pulse beat in his temple. And not only in his temple. He touched the smooth skin beneath her breasts as her shirt slid off. She caught his hand and held it against her.

“I knew you thought me hard,” she whispered. “Do you still think so?”

“No,” he murmured, sliding his arms around her and unfastening a tiny catch. “Soft, beautifully soft. Are you like that all over?”

“Why should I tell you? Is it so difficult for you to find out?”

It was not so difficult. He found that out as he helped her finish her undressing, and as she helped him finish his. Her skin was petal-soft all over, and beneath it lay a splendid form that was taut where it should be taut and yielding where it should be yielding. Nick made a blanket of their clothes and together they lay upon it, touching each other eagerly as they lay down and drawing close even before their heads touched the skimpy pillow. Their mouths met again in a long explosive kiss and then they were exploring each other with their movements and their hands. Nick felt her thighs tremble beside him as he kissed her perfect nipples and made them rise into tiny peaks. He made his hands glide slowly over her body, although the passion was already so strong in him that he knew she must know it also. She touched him lightly where he ached the most, and he sighed with pleasure. He caressed her marvelous flat belly, covering it with kisses, and moved down. Her legs parted a little as he felt her warmth and softness, felt her eagerness. His probe was gentle, loving, though his kisses were becoming bites of urgency.

“Oh, my darling!” she gasped suddenly. “Not too soon, not too soon! Hold me for a little while.”

He stopped instantly and held her so close that she was almost part of him. Soon she would be part of him, but not until she wanted it. She moved her thighs slowly against his and kissed him with such gentle longing that his desire for her became something more than lust for a lithe body. It had been a little more than that ever since he’d caught the faint breath of her perfume and felt the softness of her lips back there in the cave, but now it was growing into something that he seldom permitted himself to feel. Nick Carter, Killmaster for AXE, was close to something like real love.

Nick caressed her very gently, Paula relaxed like a cat, but like a cat she was ready to respond to every touch, and like a cat she nibbled at the one caressing her. Her hips were undulating slightly, stimulating him, and her fingers clutched at him with all their supple strength. She was no Oriental houri, no pseudo-sophisticated college girl, no succubus to drain the life from him and leave him empty and unsatisfied. She was hungry for love, and so was he, and they matched each other as though they had been born to come together. Nick measured her against him as they lay together and found nothing wanting. For the first time he could fully appreciate the splendors that had been concealed by her workmanlike clothes. His body and his hands discovered what his eyes had never seen — a shape that was perfection, a feminine body at its magnificent best, a streamlined lovely thing that was vibrant with energy and yet wonderfully controlled. And there was a strength about her that excited him enormously, a pliant sort of strength that challenged and yet begged to be subdued.

The boat rocked gently as they rolled together in their mounting need. Nick slid her under him and sank lightly down upon her, into her, and then the little boat rocked in a rhythm that had nothing to do with wind or sea.

“I’ve needed you,” Paula whispered. “Needed you so much. Oh, love me… love me.”

“I’ve wanted you,” he murmured, tasting the sweetness of her breasts and feeling her vibrate beneath him. “Wondered if you’d ever want me, too. Wanted you in the cave, in the bushes, in the dungeon, everywhere. Wanted you in the hay, to roll with you, like this.” He demonstrated, and she moaned with pleasure at the grinding motion. “Want you now… more than ever.”

Their mouths melted together as their bodies flexed and arched in the exquisite acrobatics of love. She gave him back everything he gave, teasing his body and tempting it, swiveling slowly and provocatively as though relaxed beyond the need to stir him further, and then pulsating suddenly with galvanic movements that made Nick catch his breath and groan with ecstasy. Each moment seemed as though it must surely be the last, yet each moment led to another even more impassioned. Every movement of hers was a charge of electricity that sapped and strengthened him at once, forcing him to fight for control and yet give her even more of himself. Sensations crowded one on top of each other in a sort of symphony of sensuality. Two magnificent bodies clashed and parted, clashed again and entwined about the other. She was passionate and urgent, but she knew the subtleties and nuances and she was savoring every one of them. Nick plunged deep into the wonders of her, lost in the painful pleasure of prolonging each play of his body so that both of them could enjoy it to the full. But a storm of passion was building inside him and he arched to let it burst.

His tongue probed deep between her parted lips and his body writhed with desperate need.

He groaned suddenly and heard her moan with him. Her legs caught at his and held them close and her hips arched to trap his body with hers. Muscles tightened and played against each other until the friction burst into a liquid flame. Thighs trembled violently and then convulsed as the storm within Nick broke and became part of her. The boat rocked violently and a tongue of spray splashed into the shelter, but the fire did not go out. It blazed for long, incredible moments of complete ecstasy as the man and woman sighed together and lay there, rocking, like a single being. Blinding exhilaration held them together in a thick mist that blotted out everything but their mutual sensation. Slowly, very slowly, it began to clear.

Nick lay back and held her lightly in his arms. Her heart was still beating like a triphammer, and so was his, and her giving had been complete. But there was nothing flaccid about her relaxed body. Nick kissed her tenderly and raised her head so that a stray beam of light from the inboard lamp played across her face. Paula’s eyes were bright but calm and there was a smile upon her lips. There was a new beauty about her and a look of fulfilment that had nothing to do with satiation.

“You’re beautiful, Paula,” Nick said softly. “Very, very beautiful… in every way.” He pushed a lock of honey-colored hair back from her forehead and brushed his lips against her eyes. And then her cheeks. And then her mouth. And then again her breasts, now soft and round. He felt invigorated and refreshed.

“You lied to me,” she murmured.

“I did what?” Nick looked up, startled.

“You lied. No padded shoulders, no built-up shoes. It’s all you, all you. And all… all magnificent.” She smiled again and drew his mouth against hers.

It was a long, slow gentle kiss that only ended when they lay back upon the rumpled clothes and entwined themselves together. They rested in each others’ arms for a little while, and their next kiss was not gentle. It was passionate, explosive, demanding of more kisses and much more than kisses. Paula’s fingertips trailed over Nick’s body, lingering over the patches of plaster and making tender little stroking movements that were like soft words of compassion.

Soon the rhythmic clisthenics began again. The sorrow that had helped to begin it all was blotted out for long, delirious moments of love between two people who both knew how to satisfy and enjoy.

“Ah, it is even better now…” Paula murmured, and whispered things that stoked the hot coals of Nick’s desire. He kissed the secret places and marveled at the sweetness and resilience of her body. So cool, she had seemed, so detached in her feline composure. But beneath the coolness there was an astonishing animal vitality and zest that brought an answering exuberance from him. She made him feel expansive and robust — ten feet tall with a mighty strength to match. He wanted above all, to bring her to heights of explosive passion such as she had never known before, and he played upon her with all his considerable skill to give her the ultimate in physical sensation.

Her long legs encircled him and her breasts melted against his chest. Somehow she was different from all the many other women he had known, and he tried to pin the difference down as he pinned her down beneath him against the rough deck of the tossing boat. The sea smell and the damp mist enveloped them as they wrestled in the sensual holds of love, mingling with the warm, sweet scent of her fresh body.

She belonged to the outdoors; she was as natural and unaffected as the wind and sea around them. And she was a loner, like himself, used to making her own tough decisions and acting upon them. He, at least had AXE in the center of his world. She only had herself to call the shots of her own life. In a way she was made for it, with her feminine-tough body and her self-reliance, and yet no woman so lithe and lovely should have to live with loneliness. She was different from the others because she was so much like himself, and yet all woman underneath the mask.

But now the mask was stripped away and she was wild and free. Together they made rapturous, uninhibited love and whispered meaningless words that blurred into moans of exquisite pleasure. Under Nick’s touch her body bloomed and became a paradise for him, one into which he sank voluptuously through a velvet passage. Their bodies fused, blazed, shuddered violently, and consumed each other. Paula tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Her lips parted and a little moan escaped them. Even her sudden, galvanic lurch against him had a grace of movement that enhanced the moment of explosion. Nick’s mind swirled in a red haze as he gave himself up completely to their joint desire. She was on the peak now, high upon the peak of passion to which he had brought her with his thrusting body. Molten lava flowed between them. Suddenly they fell through space together, clutching each other and gasping with release.

This time, when it was over, they were limp and spent. Both sighed with contentment and lay back to rest. Side by side they lay, holding each other but not talking, and when at last they did talk it was of things that had nothing to do with why they were there. They were there, and for a while that was enough.

Salt spray licked at their bodies and reminded them that the night outside was cool. It also reminded Nick that there were other things to do beside make love.

“We’ve run out of time,” he said regretfully, and kissed her once more before he rose and began to pull his clothes on. Paula gave a startled exclamation.

“I had forgotten!” she said, full of self-reproach. “How could I forget?”

“Easily, I hope,” he murmured. “But don’t forget tonight.”

She flashed him a quick and radiant smile. “Never. Just one more…”

They kissed again, and then he helped her dress.

They pulled themselves together hastily and raised the sail. Even with the auxiliary motor it would be a race to join the fishing boats entering San Jorge with their night’s catch.

They came in last, laughing together over the few fish they had somehow managed to draw into the net. But their landing was accepted without question, and that was all that counted for the moment.

Paula led him to a battered jeep parked in a side street of the fishing town, and as the sun cast its long morning shadows over the hills-they started on the long drive to the city of Santo Domingo.

Nick drove at breakneck speed while Paula navigated. Again they shared a growing sense of urgency but now it was for something other than sexual satisfaction. The wait for dawn had given them each other, but it had also taken precious time.

“This girl Luz,” Nick said abruptly. “How much could she tell if she were questioned?”

Paula’s mouth set suddenly into its old hard line.

“She could say that there are a hundred women in the city who call themselves The Terrible Ones, that a hard core of nine — of whom she is one — have a hideout in the city. That we are looking for the Trujillo treasure, and that Evita was working on Padilla for a clue. That there are other men with similar clues. That the Americans were sending help.” She shot him a quick glance. “It seems that she had mentioned that already.”

“Under duress, do you think?” Nick said quietly.

Paula stared at him. “I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “She has always had a high opinion of Castro’s Cubans and a low one of Americans. I think she might easily have said something to Alonzo without being forced to. But only about your arrival, nothing more. Nothing about The Terrible Ones. And nothing at all to anyone else.”

“I would think that Alonzo’s comrades would be wondering where he is,” said Nick. “Do they know that he’d been seeing her?”

Paula sucked in her breath. “I have been thinking about that. But the Cubans are not enemies of ours!”

“Did they know?” Nick insisted.

“Yes. They knew.” Twin lines of worry pinched her brows together. “But they wouldn’t know where to find her. Unless— they would recognize her, of Course. And all of us are out most of the day, tracking down leads. She might have been seen.”

Nick let it go at that. There was no use belaboring what might have happened to Luz if she had been caught. He changed the subject.

“Do you have any idea what the Castle of the Blacks might be?”

She shook her head. “I, too, would have guessed La Citadelle. I cannot think of any place near Santo Domingo that would fit the name. But at least we do know that it is somewhere near the city.”

“That’s not all we know,” said Nick. “We have another clue. ‘La Trinitaria.’ Because I’m sure that was meant to be a clue.”

“It was a cheap Trujillo joke,” Paula said angrily. “Typical of him, to mock the freedom fighters. Of course it would have to be a joke to him, to steal all their possessions and know that dead men could never find them.”

“No, it must be more than that. A joke, maybe, but a joke with meaning. Padilla thought so, remember?”

She nodded expressionlessly. Nick knew that she was thinking of Evita and what had turned to be her deathbed scene.

“You must have known there would be risks involved when you undertook this hunt,” he said obliquely. “The best thing you could do would be to drop this whole thing and disband altogether.”

“I will not do any such thing until—” she began hotly, and Nick cut in swiftly.

“Until you’ve found it and shared the wealth,” he finished for her. “I know. I’d feel that way myself. But about ‘La Trinitaria.’ Was there any place that they met regularly, any place that had any particular significance for them that Trujillo might have found out about?”

“They might have had and he might have found out, but they did not tell their wives about it,” she said bitterly.

“But do you think they did have?” he persisted.

“I think they must have, but I have no idea where it might have been. I tell you, they didn’t tell us anything!”

“Very wise,” he commented, shooting past a heavy truck on the upgrade and swooping down the other side of the hill. “But kind of a nuisance for us. Still, it couldn’t have been far from Domingo, could it?”

She looked at him with a faint glint of hope. “No, it couldn’t.”

“Okay, whether they had such a place or not, we still have three things to go on: Castle of the Blacks, something to do with La Trinitaria that’s a little more than a joke, and a place not far from Santo Domingo. Things could be worse. On the other side of the coin, I think we can be pretty certain that the Cubans aren’t going to help us any more than the Chinese.” He concentrated on the road for a moment and eased the brake down smoothly. “There’s a crossroads coming up— where do I turn?”

She told him and they made a rocketing left along the coastal road to the capital.

They talked a little more and then fell into silence.

Nick looked at Paula suddenly and grinned. For the past few minutes he had been conscious of her appraising look.

“Looking under my beard to see if I have a chin?” he teased.

She reddened slightly. “No. I know already that you have. I was wondering if I had proved to you that I really am a woman.”

“You proved it,” he said fervently. “Oh, how you proved it, Paolo baby!”

* * *

The sun was casting late-afternoon shadows as they left the jeep and glided through the back streets of Santo Domingo. Broken windows and bullet pocks gave evidence of recent street fighting and troopers were on guard at various points, but Paula knew her way around them and picked out their route unerringly.

They walked for almost half an hour before she touched his arm and pointed across a deserted street. “There,” she said. “We have taken the roundabout route, but it is safer this way. That is the place — our headquarters.”

He looked, and saw nothing but ruins. The whole block seemed to be tumbledown and abandoned. What she had pointed at was a pair of apparently uninhabitable wrecks. One was a very old ruin overgrown with vines and foliage and the other, its immediate neighbor, was a big sagging house whose scars dated back perhaps to Trujillo times. Loose bricks lay in front of it on the broken sidewalk, its front steps were gone, its garden was a jungle. Doors and windows were boarded up and it exuded an air of utter desolation.

“Which one?” Nick asked, puzzled.

“Both. Come, follow me.”

She flashed a watchful look down the street and stepped quickly into the tangle of fallen masonry and vines. He followed her under an overhang of foliage and through a gap between two crumbling piles of timeworn stone. The gap became a passage with a wall on one side and a curtain of old brick and foliage on the other. A suggestion of a ravaged roof hung overhead. Paula stepped over a fallen column, apparently the remnant of a collapsed portico, and into an area that looked like some long-abandoned living room with a ceiling of leaves and sky. Then they were in another passage, this one short and dank and dark, still with its roof intact. At the end of it was a blank stone wall.

“This part of it is our own work,” Paula said softly. “The roof here, which we have concealed from the outside with vines, and the door. Do you see the door?”

“No, I don’t,” he admitted.

“Good. You will, when it opens.”

So far as he could see she had done nothing to open it, but as he watched a small panel slid back and a white blob of a face stared out at them.

“Automatic warning signal,” Paula said. “We stepped on it.”

All very ingenious, Nick told himself. Marvelous what automation could do. Among other things, it left plenty of room for human error. His hand clamped over Wilhelmina’s butt.

Paula was talking to the face behind the opening.

“Open,” she said. “All is well. He is a friend.”

“Enter, then. All here is well.”

The heavy stone door swung inward. Paula hurried in and drew Nick after her.

“Luz!” she said happily, as the small dark-haired girl in the foyer swung the great door shut behind them. “You are safe, then?”

“Of course.” The girl slid a vast bolt across the door and turned to face them. Nick thought she looked unhealthily pale, and there were beads of perspiration on her upper lip. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“We’ll talk about that a little later,” Paula said. She was looking rather oddly at the girl, Nick thought. “It is Alva’s turn for duty, is it not? Why are you at the door?”

“She was very late coming in,” said Luz, looking at the floor, “and very tired. So I said I would take her first two hours.”

“Oh.” Paula was still staring at her. “Are you sure that all is well?”

“Yes, yes!” Luz said.

But she was shaking her head from side to side and her eyes were wide with fear.

The Inquiring Cubans

Carter moved fast, but he wasn’t fast enough. He was taut with readiness at Luz’s signal, but it was one thing to be ready and another to cover all the dark corners of an unfamiliar place. He spun toward a movement in the shadows and fired rapidly into a stone wall. The stone wall seemed to fire back at him with enviable accuracy, because there was a tiny spurt of flame from it and Wilhelmina flew away from him with a loud complaining clank. He was ducking and groping for Hugo when the swooshing sound sang toward his ear and exploded against his skull.

Nick dropped to his knees in a blaze of light that was all inside his head. The moments stretched out as he struggled to rise, and he heard a sudden groan of pain from Paula and a low cluck-cluck of human sound.

“Ah, shaking the head was naughty, my little Luz,” a pleasant baritone voice said in Spanish. “Alonzo would not approve, I know. Tch!” Then something cannoned into Nick’s gut like a battering ram and doubled him into a groaning, puking heap. He clawed out with his hands and found a trousered leg which he tugged with all his might. There was a loud curse and a heavy masculine body sprawled on top of him.

“Tch, careless, Ernesto,” the pleasant voice clucked, and again there was that swoosh and the explosion in Nick’s head. But this time the coruscating lights inside his cranium blurred into one agonizing sheet of pain and then went out altogether.

He heard a man groaning and it took him a while to realize it was himself.

Nick kept his eyes closed and peered out from beneath the shutter of his lashes. He was in a room of almost sybaritic splendor compared with anything he had seen since leaving Washington. There were rugs, chairs, drapes, pictures, book-shelves; and there were three men whose forms were still a little blurred but who were rapidly becoming clearer. They all looked very much like himself, except that they had their fatigues on and he was in his underwear. And they were sitting comfortably in chairs, while he way lying on the floor with cord around his wrists and ankles.

There was a soft chuckle and the pleasant voice spoke gently.

“You can open your eyes, amigo. You have rested long enough.”

Nick opened them and shook the mists away. He was throbbing painfully in half a dozen places but nothing seemed to be broken. Except — he grunted suddenly as he tried to sit — maybe a rib or two. His eyes slowly swiveled around the room as he tested the cords that bound him. It was pleasantly feminine rather than luxurious, but it was spoiled by the three bearded men who were sprawled in the best of chairs.

“Where are the women?” Nick demanded.

The man in the middle, he of the pleasant baritone, laughed.

“What a time to think of women,” he said with mock reproach. “But you must not worry about them. They are… taken care of.”

“What do you mean, taken care of?” Nick made himself look outraged and alarmed. He was both, but not as much as he seemed. What he needed was time to clear his head and size things up.

“Oh, nothing terrible,” the man said easily. “A tap on the head for each, binding and gagging, things like that.” His smile widened. “It was not at all unpleasant, I assure you. All those lovely women!”

Nick’s eyes flicked around the room. Furniture. Rugs. No windows. One heavy door. Locked? Probably. No key in it, though.,

“All?” he asked vaguely, as though still stunned.

“But of course. It would have been most imprudent not to have immoblized them all.” He laughed. “Eight silent women, all together in one room! Is that not miraculous? And they are silent, I assure you.” His merry face suddenly became serious. “Of course, the little Luz does not feel too well. We followed her, as you must realize, when she came looking for a missing comrade of ours. And then the lovely Alva at the door was somewhat difficult about letting us come in, so I’m afraid we were forced to be a little rough with her. She will get better, probably. No doubt she will make a fine addition to our camp up in the hills.” He gave his merry little laugh again and groped in his pocket for a long Churchillian cigar. “Of course Luz did not take too kindly to our questioning, so there again we had to be persuasive. I am sure she had even more to tell us, but… um… our questioning of the lovely ladies led me to believe that we did not have too much time before company arrived. And here you are. How very nice. Welcome amigo.” He chuckled hugely and applied a match to his cigar.

“Enough of that, Hector,” one of the others growled. “Let me go back to headquarters and tell them where we are. Question the fellow — don’t tell him your life story!”

The man called Hector puffed succulently on his cigar.

“All in good time, Felix,” he said genially. “The more background we can give our friend, the more intelligently he can answer us. For instance, we must make sure he understands what we are likely to do to all his lady friends if he does not cooperate. To his leading lady in particular. What was her name again? Ah, yes. Paula. Delightful name. A wildcat, too. Delicious.”

“Paula,” Nick breathed, loathing the man. “What have you done to her?” He took a deep breath, as if fearing the worst, but it was a Yoga-trained breath exercise that sparked his lethargic system back to life.

“Oh, nothing much,” said Hector. “She is a little bruised, and now she sleeps. The rest will do her good.” He chuckled. “Eight women for our camp in the hills, if they all live. And Paula of the long and lovely legs will surely be the most… ah… popular. A fate worse than death, you think? Ah, no. You would not think so if you can begin to imagine the death we will prepare for them.” His bearded face suddenly hardened into an ugly mask. “So start imagining, my friend, and tell us why the Americans sent you here. And don’t try to continue with that fiction that you are a fellow Cuban. We know better than that. Ernesto here found certain tools in the supply room, so well-equipped by the ladies of the house, and he will use them on you if you do not sing the tune we want to hear. And if you are so fortunate as to faint, then remember before you slide into forgetfulness that there are eight women for us to play with before you all die.” He smiled benignly and looked across at Ernesto.

Ernesto, brawny and pig-eyed, was toying with his tools. They were simple — a hammer and a handful of sharp nails. Nick pictured them beneath the quicks of his fingertips and did not like the thought. Ernesto put his playthings on an inlaid coffee table and in doing so moved a low bowl to reveal Wilhelmina and Hugo. But Pierre wasn’t there.

Nick’s heart missed a beat and he cursed himself for his stupidity, for his dullwittedness. And at the same time he felt a surge of almost overwhelming relief. He remembered what he had done with Pierre, and he remembered when he had done it. It was when they had stopped for a five-minute break in the long drive and he had strolled off to commune with nature — or so he’d said to Paula. He shifted his legs experimentally. Yes, Pierre was there.

“You can forget your threats,” he said harshly. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, and more than you want. And I’ll start with this. I was not sent by the Americans—”

“Oh, no, my friend,” said Hector. “That is not the way you start. Not by lying. You tell us exactly why you are here, what you have found out, and where the rest of your people are. Because we know that you are the advance man of an entire force. Now please talk nicely, or Ernesto will get itchy fingers.”

“Stop that silly babbling,” Nick said roughly. “Listen if you want to, and go fry in hell if you don’t. The Americans refused to send anyone. Why? Because they thought it was a fool’s errand, and maybe they were right. And how do I know? Because it’s my business to know things like that. That’s what the Chicoms pay me for. And they’re not too damned happy with you right now. Want to know why your pal Alonzo didn’t come back? Because they caught him spying.” His mind raced ahead of his words, remembering what Evita had said about Tsing-fu doubting the Fidelistas, putting together the little he had learned, padding it with a lot that he had guessed. He let it all pour out with a sort of sullen arrogance, as of a man who knows his own bosses are more powerful than the men who have entrapped him. “And you know what they did to him, of course, don’t you?” he went on. “Maybe now you can do a little imagining. And don’t think you’ll gain anything by killing me in return. I’m useful to them and that’s a whole lot more than you are. You’ve made enough trouble already by sending your snoop after them.”

Hector fixed him with a piercing, beetle-browed look.

“Are you trying to tell me,” he demanded, “that you are a mercenary in the pay of the Chinese? Do you think I am a fool, to believe that kind of cock-and-bull story?”

“You’re a fool if you don’t. You’d better believe it, or you’ll end up ripped to pieces like Alonzo Escobar.” Nick caught his stomach suddenly and groaned. “Goddamn, which of your donkeys kicked me in the gut?. I’ll screw his nuts off him, myself! Now what the hell was the idea of sending a spy after Tsing-fu?”

“We did not send him,” Hector said through his teeth, “and we are the ones who are asking you the questions.”

“Maybe you are,” said Nick, trying to sound like a gambler with a whole sleeveful of aces, “but you’d better give with some answers or you’ll find your comrades getting even less comradely. Why did you send—?”

“We did not send him! He rushed off to them without our knowledge, I tell you. The only thing he said was that the girl Luz had given him a lead. He didn’t think it was much, but he was going to follow it up. Now of course we know from her what she told him — that a force of Americans was to land at Cap St. Michel on the 13th at one a.m.” Hector glared bale-fully at Nick. His two companions looked bored; Ernesto kept glancing hopefully at the nails. “Now be good enough to explain how the girl had such specific information when, as you say, the Americans refused to send anyone at all. And how you happened to turn up at this very opportune time.”

Nick sighed tiredly and shifted his position on the floor, taking the opportunity to flex his muscles against the cords at his wrists and ankles. It seemed to him that his hands now had slightly freer play than before. He went on maneuvering them imperceptibly as he spoke.

“How stupid can you get?” he said. “Can’t you see that the girl fell for planted information? It was the same with the girl Paula. I had instructions to find out about The Terrible Ones, so naturally I made use of their approach to the Americans. Too bad your Alonzo decided to horn in. Too bad that he decided to follow Tsing-fu back to the Castle. And you’d better work pretty hard to convince them that you didn’t send him, because right now they don’t believe you. They don’t like being spied upon, and they don’t like the kind of cooperation you’re giving them. Tsing-fu’s very much concerned that you Cubans are going to endanger their Operation Blast if you go on like this. So if you know what’s good for you you’ll get this rope off me—”

“Their Operation Blast?” Hector rose from his chair and shook his fist. “Theirs! It was Fidel’s idea from the start and they were the ones who promised to help us. We got them here, we helped them organize their ammunition caches, we told him about the treasure that would finance it. They came in here as advisers and now they’re trying to run the whole show — just as if they were Americans! And then they go off to Haiti without even telling us. First thing we know about it is when they radio us to say that Escobar is dead. And they talk about cooperation? They talk about endangering Blast? I tell you, we would have been far better off to go on hunting the treasure for yourselves!”

“You!” Nick laughed, but he was cheering silently inside.

The man was a bonanza of information. “You don’t even have any of the treasure clues, do you? Do you? Or have you been holding them back?”

“Holding back!” Hector spat the words through his teeth. “Madre de Dios, if we had the clues we would have the treasure and the hell with the Chinese and their lies. Even Operation Blast, we can handle without them.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Nick said easily. “Things have changed. I don’t think Blast is any longer what you think it is.”

“Ah, is that so? What is it, then?” Hector glowered at him.

“You let me loose and I’ll tell you. You tell me your version, I’ll tell you mine. Then we can have a good laugh together.”

Hector stood absolutely still, staring down at him.

“So, laugh together, is it?” he said finally. “I am to let you loose while we chat about Blast, and I tell you all I know about it. Oh, no, my friend. It strikes me — belatedly, I must admit, but it does strike me — that you have been worming information out of me even while you lie there. Yes, and lie is the word! Now there will be no more lies, do you understand?” His advance toward Nick was slow and menacing. “Ernesto is ready with his treatment, and so am I with mine. Felix in the meantime can go and start enjoying himself with the girls unless you let us have the truth immediately. Tell me first — what was that you were saying about a castle?”

“What castle?” Nick said innocently, cursing himself for having overstepped the line too soon, and giving another twist to the cords at his wrist.

“Yes, exactly—what castle?” Hector roared, and slammed a brutal kick into Nick’s abdomen.

Nick grunted with pain and doubled up, clutching his gut with his bound hands and hiding their movement with his body. It would look a bit queer to be seen playing with himself at a time like this, he reflected as his probing fingers slid under his shorts and detached Pierre from his temporary hiding place, but to be thought peculiar was the least of his worries.

“Sit up, you!” Again the kick, but this time it was a lighter blow to prod him up.

Nick spat out a curse and sat up, still clutching at his gut. Pierre lay nestled in his hands. If he could just stall for long enough to find out about Operation Blast—

“Ernesto! Come here with the nails. You, you lying swine, stretch out your hands.”

Hell! No time to stall. Pierre would have to do his bit at once. Nick moaned and surreptitiously slid his fingers around the little pellet. Hector reached down and made a savage grab for Nick’s fumbling hands. Nick tore them from Hector’s grasp, balled them into one iron-hard double fist that still enclosed Pierre, and struck viciously upward at the Cuban’s windpipe. Hector lurched backward with an oddly high-pitched yelp and Nick scrambled to his feet. Ernesto was coming at him with the hammer poised to strike.

Nick leapt sideways and ducked the flying blow. His fingers twisted at the gas pellet’s smooth surface and a tiny mechanism clicked. He took one deep breath as Felix slammed his way between the other two and kicked his feet out from under him, and as he fell he gave one more twist to the tiny capsule and threw it straight at Hector.

It bounced off the dull green-gray fatigues and clattered to the floor.

"Ho, what is that?” roared Hector. “Felix, pick it up. Ernesto, bring more cord. We’ll truss this fellow like the pig he is!” He threw himself at Nick and caught him in a bearhug that clamped his arms tight against his body and almost squeezed the breath from him. Nick held grimly onto the life source in his lungs. He knew he could last for up to four minutes without inhaling, but the bearhug made it difficult.

“There is no more cord,” said Ernesto. “I will have to go back to the supply room.”

“Go then, and hurry!” Hector snarled.

Nick’s heart sank. If Ernesto left now he, at least, would be safe, maybe even well enough to help the others.

“Pah, this is nothing but a little metal,” said Felix holding Pierre up and sniffing at him.

One down for sure, thought Nick.

“Hurry, I said!”

“I cannot find the key. You must have it in your pocket.”

“Bah! Everything is always left for me to do.” Hector released Nick momentarily and fumbled in his pocket. “Here—”

A look of vast surprise crossed Hector’s face. “It is — very close in here.” He rocked back on his haunches and stared at his two men. They stood swaying like trees that had been axed but had yet to fall. The silent tableau lasted for seconds that seemed like aeons to Nick. He rolled away from Hector and saw the man make a clumsy move toward him. The move was useless; Hector gasped suddenly and clawed his throat. Felix gave a strangled cry and sprawled on top of him.

Nick bounced to his feet and hopped awkwardly toward the table where Hugo and Wilhelmina lay. Two minutes left, he thought. Maybe a little more. His lungs already felt uncomfortably full. Ernesto stared at him, astonished, and reached slow-motion for his shoulder holster. Then his knees melted and he dropped.

Pierre had done his job.

Nick bounded clumsily to a stop, like the winner of a sack race, and grasped his stiletto by its slender haft. Awkwardly, he brought the blade between his wrists and worked it back and forth in a series of swift, sawing jerks. The long seconds passed. Then a thick strand parted and Nick wrenched mightily. His body begged for breath; but his hands, at least were free. He bent swiftly and slashed at the cords binding his feet.

Less than a minute to go — much less. He was slow after the physical abuse of the last two days and his staying power wasn’t up to par, and he began to doubt whether he could make it. The hell with this! he told himself. Just get the key and go!

The cords parted suddenly. He kicked them aside and dived for Hector’s body. The key — God, where was the Key? He was almost gasping when he found it, and he could not afford to gasp. The gas was thick and heavy in the air.

He grabbed the key and ran toward the door. His clothes! He glanced frantically around, saw them, grabbed them, saw his back pack, scooped it up, suddenly remembered Wilhelmina, ran back for her, and then realized through the red, bursting haze in his head that he was acting like a maniac. He fought for control and made himself put the key into the lock with all the care of a drunk who knows his wife is waiting up for him, and to his enormous relief it clicked back easily. He tore the door open, flung himself out, and slammed it shut behind him.

An explosive rush of sound burst from his lungs as he caromed against a wall and staggered back, rubber-legged and dazed. Red haze still swam before his eyes as he drew in huge gulps of air and peered shortsightedly around him. His vision cleared a little and he saw that he was in a dimly lit passage, so dimly lit that he could see a crack of light coming from beneath the door. A crack of light! He forced his frantic breathing to slow down, and he quickly knelt to stuff his shirt and trousers into the gap to entrap Pierre’s seeping fumes. Then he rose, trotted unsteadily to the end of the passage and the head of a stairway, and really breathed.

The Chinese Dragon was closed for the night, but it was not quite empty, nor was it quite unguarded. A pencil flashlight probed into its dark corners, and a jeep stood parked in the back alley outside; its driver armed and alert.

Nick prowled quietly through the shabby rooms above the restaurant and headed for the snuffling sound of a sleeping man. Of the three tiny rooms only one was occupied, and the first two held nothing of interest. If there was anything to be found it had to be in there with the sleeper. He flitted shadowlike toward the half-open door of the third room and paused outside.

It was now almost three hours since he had heard the muffled thumping noise in the house of The Terrible Ones and forced open a door to find Paula hopping mad and on the point of freeing herself. Together they had released the rest of the women, all of whom were simmering with anger and almost totally without fear, and then they had held a conference with Luz as its star performer. When she had told her story Nick took over and spelled out his plans for the disposal of Alonzo’s lifeless comrades.

Now he stood at an open doorway on the upper floor of Tsing-fu’s Chinese restaurant, listening. There was no change in the heavy breathing, and a sweet, smoky smell hung in the air. An opium sleep, thought Nick. Maybe the dreamer would dream on and live through this nighttime visit.

Nick stepped across the threshold, and three things happened almost simultaneously. An alarm bell rang, the room was suddenly flooded with brilliant light, and a half-dressed Chinese started up from a low camp-bed with a cry of surprise. Nick’s hand moved like lightning and came up with Wilhelmina.

“Get your hands above your head and show me where that thing turns off or I’ll blow your brains out,” he rapped in quick Chinese. “Move!”

The man swore and rose slowly. The alarm kept up a steady whine.

“Faster. And just show me — I’ll do it.”

The man plodded to a wall beside a file cabinet and bent down.

“No tricks,” Nick growled. “Just show me, I said.”

The fellow shuffled back and pointed to a switch on the wall.

“Step aside!”

He stepped aside and watched sideways as Nick approached, watched very carefully as Nick trained the silenced Luger on him and toed the wall. The switch clicked upward.

The alarm whined to a stop and the brilliant light cut out abruptly.

There was a sudden snarling movement in the inky darkness and Nick pivoted swiftly and fired point-blank at the movement twice in rapid succession. Once would have done it. The man dropped instantaneously with a thud that made the floor tremble.

Nick flicked the light on him and grimaced at the sight. Two close-up bites from Wilhelmina’s hungry mouth were enough to nearly blow a man apart.

He knew he ought to leave, but he also knew he must see what was in that cabinet. According to the beam of his flash light it was the only thing in the room worth guarding with an alarm.

Interesting about the alarm, he thought as he tinkered with his lockpick. Loud enough to wake a heavy sleeper, but not loud enough to attract attention from outside. Instinct rather than anything else had made him want to kill the sound at once.

He rifled through the file drawers rapidly. Restaurant mail, mostly. Some letters in Chinese, which he pocketed. An official looking letter in Spanish. Menus. Ledgers. Bills.

And a narrow cardboard tube containing a map.

He searched the rest of the room rapidly and found nothing else. Then he padded quietly downstairs, took another fast look around the restaurant and kitchen, and went out into the alley whistling softly.

Paula got down from the driver’s seat.

“You took your time,” she murmured. “Everything all right?”

“Fine. Here, dump these on the seat, and then go watch at the end of the alley.”

“Right.” She moved off obediently.

Nick got to work. He dragged the bodies one by one through the back door and propped them in the restaurant, neatly at a table as though they had fallen asleep after a heavy dinner. His artistic arrangement of Hector was not quite finished when he heard a sharp, almost frantic, whistle from the alley and the sound of a car rounding a corner nearby. He dropped Hector and ran.

Paula was back in the driver’s seat with the jeep motor running.

“Hurry, hurry,” she whispered. He closed the back door quickly and leapt in beside her. She gunned the motor and roared into the cross street.

“What the hell?” said Nick, as she made a swerving turn and then another.

“That car,” she breathed. “I don’t think he saw me but I saw him — bandaged head and all, leaning forward talking to his driver. Tsing-fu is back in town.”

The Terrible Ones

Nick sat at the head of the great dining table and looked appreciatively at his companions. Isabella, Teresa, Alva, Luz, Paula, Lucia, Inez, Juanita… Ah, women, women. How he loved them! His smile widened as he gazed at them. He had bathed, shaved, slept, exercised, eaten, and now he was feasting his eyes on eight lovely ladies. Heaven, that’s what it was. He sighed with pleasure. One or two were a little mature for him, and Luz and Alva were still looking pale and strained, but without exception they had made themselves look their best for him.

“Senor Carter, you are, what you say, drooling,” Lucia said severely. She was a strikingly handsome woman of middle years who acted as the housemother Sergeant Major of The Terrible Ones. “And may I ask what you were doing in your room this morning with Juanita that made her giggle so much? She was only supposed to be taking you a cup of coffee.”

“Why, Lucia honey,” Nick said reproachfully. “That’s all she did. And all I was doing was my Yoga exercises.”

Juanita giggled again. She was a little dark girl with a quick laugh and a low boiling point. “You should have seen him, Lucia. Have you ever seen a man standing on his head and sucking in his stomach?”

“At the same time? Certainly I have not,” Lucia said firmly.

“May I ask, Senor Carter, what it is that you have on the table before you?”

Nick nodded. “I’ll get to it in a while. It shouldn’t cause you any immediate concern, but I think you’ll be interested. First I think we ought to fill you in a little more completely on what happened in Haiti. Paula?”

She told the story rapidly and succinctly, in a manner that Hawk himself would have admired. None of the women interrupted. Expressions flitted across their faces and at certain points in the recital they gave little moans of horror, but they listened as intently as any crew of AXEmen at a briefing. Nick’s admiration for them grew steadily. These women deserved to have the treasure; of all people they would use it wisely.

There was a brief silence when Paula finished. Eyes stared down at the tabletop and hands were clenched with anger.

Nick cut in quickly before reaction set in. “Luz, let’s have your story once again so we can put the pieces together. What’s most important is the clue, whatever you know about Alonzo, whatever he knew about you.”

Luz nodded slowly. “All he ever knew about me were small, personal things, and that I belonged to a group of patriots called The Terrible Ones. Somehow he must have heard a rumor that we were after the treasure, because he kept talking about it in sly little ways.” She looked beseechingly at Paula. “Truly, I told him nothing else. Not then. But I did not think he was such a bad man, only someone like us in a way, and there seemed no harm in sometimes meeting him in town. He was a man, to talk to—”

“Yes, I know,” said Paula gently. “I know just how it is.”

“And when you met him the day Paula left for Haiti,” Nick prompted, “what did he say?”

“He was excited,” said Luz. “He’d found out something and he kept hinting that it had to do with the treasure. Well, I had to know what it was — I told you last night how I tried to get it out of him. But he wasn’t giving anything away for nothing. So — I offered him a trade.” She looked steadily at Nick. “I never did think much of Paula’s idea of getting help from the Americans. So I told him about you. Said that our leader was meeting the American leader, told him the time and place. And he was furious. Said he’d just discovered his first clue and he wasn’t going to share it with anyone, not even his Cuban comrades, and he was damned if he was going to have any Americans horning in. Then he didn’t even want to give me the clue. But I… worked on him. Made all sorts of promises about how eagerly I’d look for his return and what we would do together. Said I’d go on working for my group and trying to collect other clues which he and I would share. Together we would seek the treasure, find it, and live happily ever afterwards. He seemed to believe me.” Her tone was dry. “I can imagine now how much use he would have had for me afterwards, if we really had worked together and found it. But I am positive that he told neither his fellow Cubans nor the Chinese where he was going or what he was trying to do.”

Nick nodded. “I think it’s pretty clear and he’d decided to go into business for himself. What about his clue?”

She wrinkled her nose and looked thoughtful. “I’ve thought and thought about it and I still can’t make head or tail out of it. But it does seem to fit, doesn’t it, with the other clues? ‘Trujillo es mi Pastor.’ El Benefactor Trujillo always used to love that line — that whole psalm, in fact ‘Trujillo es mi Pastor’! Do you know the rest of it? Everybody does, because he didn’t change it much: Trujillo is my Shepherd, I shall not want. And so on. The ego of the man! Oh, yes, he loved that psalm.”

“It makes a dandy clue,” said Nick. “Whatever it means.” He remembered reading about this little piece of blasphemy, how one of Trujillo’s sycophantic supporters had rewritten the psalm into a paean of praise for his dictator boss. Now its opening line had turned up as a clue. “Green pastures,” Nick said slowly, recalling the words. “Still waters. Paths of righteousness? That could hardly apply. But how about the valley of the shadow of death, and the house of the Lord? It does seem to fit with at least one of the other clues, La Trinitaria — The Trinity.”

“But that is shocking!” Lucia burst out indignantly. “Sacrilege!”

“That would scarcely have worried the Great Man,” the thin girl called Inez said bitterly. “I’m almost beginning to see why he thought it was all so funny. But I can’t see what the ‘Castle of the Blacks’ has to do with any of this.”

“Neither can I,” Nick admitted. “But maybe some research will cast some light on it. Anybody want to volunteer?”

“I will,” said Teresa the quiet one. “I have worked in libraries.”

“Good. Next — can any of you think of anyone who might know where, if anywhere, La Trinitaria used to hold their meetings?”

There was a general shaking of heads.

“We can ask among the others,” Paula said. “There’s still ninety-one of us you haven’t met. Maybe one of them can come up with something. We can also, all of us, go carefully through whatever papers our husbands may have left. I know we all have, but we weren’t looking for anything in particular.”

“Reminiscing,” Teresa said softly. “Looking at pictures and reading through old letters. And Manuel used to have a diary, I remember, but he burned it just before they came for him.”

“There must be other diaries,” a tall, willowy girl said intensely. Nick gazed at her approvingly. This was Isabella, of the flashing green eyes and mane of red-gold hair. “Not all of them had a chance to burn such things as diaries and documents. Somewhere there must be at least a scrap of paper with, say, coded notes on it.”

“Yes, but the police went through everything at the time,” Juanita objected. She had long since stopped her giggling. “They even tore apart our books.”

“I know, but something may have been overlooked. It wouldn’t be an obvious document — even Manuel’s diary was probably in code.”

“It’s worth a try,” said Paula. “Isabella, you take charge of that angle. Get onto every Resistance widow in the city and have them go through every single thing their husbands left. That wasn’t taken from them, that is. Pick half a dozen of them to help you spread the word and guide the search. It shouldn’t be hard; most of them have been screaming for something to do.” She looked at Nick and gave him a faint smile. “We’re talking about the Associate Terrible Ones, the not so very active members who still have homes and something left of their families. They’re quite good at gathering information— and spreading rumors, if you want them to.”

“I do,” said Nick. “I want them to keep their eyes peeled for any sign of Cuban or Chinese activity and report back to you at once. And I want them, in the subtlest way possible, to fill the city with rumors about separate camps of Cubans and Chinese skulking in the hills. And then, if they can possibly manage it without calling attention to themselves, I’d like some of them to plant the idea that the Cubans intend to sell out the Chinese, and others that the Chinese are using the Cubans as scapegoats. It won’t be easy, but it can be done. But it must be done in such a way that they don’t get hordes of Chinese and Cubans down on their own necks. You might try—”

“I might try putting Lucia in charge,” said Paula. “I can guarantee she’ll get results.”

Lucia smiled grimly. “And no repercussions either. It is easier than you think, Senor, to get women to spread the wildest rumors and then emerge all lily-white with innocence themselves.”

Nick grinned. “I’ll bet you’re the one who can do it, too. That leaves my share in this. While you’re about your business I’ll be looking — looking for a place not far from Santo Domingo that fits all the clues, so far as we can interpret them to date. There may be other clues, and we’ll also have to look for them. Are there any other ex-Trujillo-ites around, people like Padilla, that we can go to work on?”

“Quite a few, very likely,” Paula said wryly, “but they tend to be shy about their past. Known Trujillo supporters dived for cover when he died, and most of the others are very secretive about their politics. Nobody wants to admit having had anything to do with him. It’s only occasionally, when there’s a right-wing coup or maybe a party where too much liquor’s flowing, that one of them slips up and shows himself. We’ve had great difficulty in tracking any of them down.”

“Well, let’s go ahead with what we have,” said Nick. “And if we find we’re stymied we can dream up another piece of gossip for the rumor circuit — a reward for information or a share in the loot, or something of the sort. But in the meantime we’ve got enough to work on. One last thing, and we’ll get started.” He slid a roll of paper from the cardboard tube and spread it flat upon the table. It was a map of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the one he had found in the upstairs room of the Chinese Dragon.

“Weill AH this talk, and all the time he has a treasure map,” Lucia said, giving it her penetrating stare.

“That’s not what it is,” said Nick, smoothing it out. “It’s probably even more important. I’d say it’s the blueprint for Operation Blast. Take a look and tell me what you think.”

Eight well-formed bodies crowded around him, and eight attractive faces gazed down at the map. The perfume they had dabbed behind their ears especially for Nick’s benefit enveloped him in a soft cloud of sweet femininity. Delectable! he thought, and inhaled luxuriantly. He felt like a sultan in his harem. Except that a sultan wouldn’t have been putting business before pleasure.

“But so many markings!” Paula said, surprised. “I thought that Blast would be something to do with a bomb project, perhaps a missile site. But why should there be so many? Look, six around Haiti and Santo Domingo. And one on Cuba. Even one on Puerto Rico. Are you sure this is for Operation Blast?”

Nick nodded. “I have the advantage of you. There was a letter from Fidel himself to our pal Tsing-fu. It didn’t give away nearly as much as I could have wished, but it did whine about the need for capital and it did mention the eight initial installations to be provided for Operation Blast. And it said that his base, the one in Cuba near Guantanamo here—” his finger jabbed the map, “—is ready. It didn’t say for what, but look where it is in relation to the others.” They looked as he traced his finger around the island coasts.

“See? It’s right opposite a corresponding base on Haiti. Between the two of them they would control the Windward Passage, not to mention the help they’d get from the other two down here. And look at the one on the easternmost point of Santo Domingo. Between that and its counterpart on Puerto Rico, the Mona Passage could be completely closed to U.S. ships. Even without the one on Puerto Rico they could manage, with the help of these back-up bases to the north and south.”

“But they can’t build bases on our soil!” Isabella said hotly, and her mane of red hair flicked against Nick’s face.

“Not yet, they can’t,” said Nick. “But they can when they take over, as I’m quite sure they mean to do. Haiti’s ripe for the picking; Domingo’s not so far behind. I think the base on Puerto Rico is a pipe dream, but even a Red can dream.”

“I don’t understand,” Luz said bluntly. “You mean this has nothing to do with bombs or test explosions or even ICBMS?”

“Ballistic missiles, yes, but short-range. And who needs bombs when you can cut the whole of South America off from the U.S. with a few short-range missiles, land-based planes and coastal batteries? Look, take over these islands, and you’ve got a fortified landbridge right across the Caribbean. U.S. ships couldn’t get through these passages without being blasted out of the water by nothing more sophisticated than shore-fire and a couple of antiquated planes. And that’s Blast. I think. But takeovers don’t just happen — they’re permitted, sometimes even encouraged. That’s one reason you have to get those tongues wagging loud and fast. The more that’s known about what’s going on, the better. And don’t let anyone kid himself that the Commies of either camp are out to help anyone but themselves.” He rolled up the map and plugged it back into the tube. “They’ll liberate you right into hell, and if there’s anything Trujillo forgot to do to torture you, they’ll make up for it.”

“And what does all this have to do with the treasure?” Lucia asked. “It’s not that I’m not suitably appalled by all you say, but why should they be indulging in a treasure hunt—our treasure hunt — when they have such elaborate plans to keep them busy?”

Nick pushed back his chair. “They have more elaborate plans than they have capital to spare. You can do a lot with a hundred million dollars of someone else’s money.” He rose and grinned cheerfully around the table. “I thank you all for your attention, and for being — all of you — so beautiful.”

“It’s so nice to have a man around the house,” Alva said dreamily.

“Yes, isn’t it?” Paula agreed. “It would have been even nicer if we’d had a whole platoon.”

He had a two-day growth of stubble on his face, ill-fitting, ill-matched clothes upon his back, and he tramped about the Dominican countryside looking like a peasant farmer hunting for a missing steer. Neither OAS troops nor the local populace gave him more than a passing glance.

But hidden in the farmer’s shapeless clothes were a Luger, a stiletto, and a replacement for Pierre, along with a few other devices appropiate less to a farmer than a man called Killmaster.

Nick tramped into his third valley of the day, thinking hard. Maybe he was looking too far afield, or not far enough. Maybe he was taking the words of the Twenty-third Psalm too literally, and it was only the first phrase he should be concentrating on. ‘Trujillo es mi pastor’ ‘Pastor.’ Shepherd.

Herdsman. A farm? There was the late dictator’s own farm, Fundacion, at San Cristobal, only eighteen miles from Domingo. He supposed he’d better take a look at it, but it seemed unlikely that it hadn’t already been searched to its foundation. Some other farm? Or was ‘pastor’ supposed to be interpreted as clergyman, or parish priest? Church… cathedral… mission house… but Castle? Monastery? Teresa had given him a list. He had shuffled into each one of them with a hard luck story and emerged none the wiser.

‘Green pastures,’ he thought again. ‘Still waters.’ He had seen plenty of both, but not together. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be together. Or maybe he was barking up the wrong tree entirely.

He tramped on determinedly. There was a little farming community in the valley below him, and the spire of a small church showed above the trees. It was to be his last stop of the day before heading back to meet Paula and the jeep, and he hoped fervently that it would pay off in some way. Even a pot shot from the rear as he asked his subtly probing questions would be a welcome sign that he was getting warm.

There were no shots; there was nothing. The little church was dated 1963 and its young pastor told Nick proudly that he and his parishioners had cleared the virgin ground themselves.

Nick drank the proffered glass of water, thanked him and turned away.

Another wasted day.

* * *

Dr. Tsing-fu cursed inside himself. Everywhere he went there was some damned Cuban hanging on his heels. He had been so careful with the business of disposing of those mysterious bodies, yet somehow something had leaked out. In any event, there had been a police investigation of his premises — fortunately after he and Mao-Pei had finished their gruesome task — and people on the streets were eyeing him oddly. He had closed the Chinese Dragon, “for repairs,” he told whoever asked him, and was devoting himself to business affairs until re-opening day.

He did not, of course, tell them that his business affairs consisted of tracking down ex-Trujillo supporters and going to work on them with bribery and blackmail. He was also prepared to torture and kill if that would help, and he rather thought it would. In fact, he had already killed one man who had threatened to complain to the authorities about his blackmail threat.

“Mao-Pei.” He leaned over and touched his driver on the shoulder. “Stop at the library. I wish to look at old newspaper files.”

Mao-Pei grunted, and then suddenly remembered his manners.

“Yes, sir,” he said smartly.

Tsing-fu leaned back and peered over his shoulder. Damn! The motorcycle was still following them.

He glowered and took out a cigarillo. The wildest stories were going around town, and he knew there was no truth to half of them. But he was damned sure that it was true that the Cubans were out to bitch up his carefully laid plans. Everything pointed to it, especially this never-ending tailing. Yet he could not understand how the rumors had started, who had dumped the Cuban bodies on him, who had taken the blueprint for Operation Blast. Not the Cubans, surely. They had their own copy. There was a third party in this thing somewhere.

The Terrible Ones. Who in the name of all the Chinese devils were they?

Whoever they were he would beat them at their game. He had lost a few men, including that abominably stupid bodyguard-cook, but he still had a squad of men who were trained in search and interrogation techniques. They were deployed all over town at this very moment, and he had no doubt that there were screams of agony coming out of several throats. If there was the slightest chance that they knew someone who knew someone who knew something, then they were grist for his torture mill.

He smiled grimly and puffed his cigarillo. When the hunt was over there’d be some changes made in Operation Blast.

Damn those Cubans and their pockmarked, treacherous hides! He was getting on very well in spite of them.

His evil mood switched suddenly to chuckling optimism. He was getting on well. His inquiries were yielding fruit. Success was in his grasp.

On the Treasure Trail

“Maybe we’d have done better to follow Tsing-fu ourselves,” Nick growled.

It was conference time in the shuttered house and his spirits were low. Tsing-fu had been seen here, there, and everywhere, and then he had suddenly disappeared. It seemed that the whispering campaign had been so successful that the OAS authorities had been concerned enough to investigate. They had rounded up a number of Cubans, but the Chinese had flown the coop.

“Impossible,” Lucia said firmly. “We always kept our eyes open for him, of course, but with the Cubans always after him we would have made a veritable procession if we had tried it too. It was a good idea of yours to stir up trouble between them, but it had a lashback.”

“Backlash,” Nick corrected gloomily. “I wonder what he found out in the library?”

“You would do better to wonder what Teresa found out,” said Lucia, “and the rest of us.”

“I do wonder,” Nick said, gazing at her. It struck him that there was an air of suppressed excitement about her — about all the women — that he hadn’t noticed before. “What did you all find out?”

Even Paula was looking a little smug, he thought.

“You first, Teresa,” she said briskly.

Teresa was all business. “Late this afternoon I found a reference in an obscure monograph,” she said, “to a group of Benedictine monks living in a quiet valley — unnamed, unfortunately. Apparently they took some sort of vow of secrecy many years ago and seldom show themselves. But it is known that they wear black from head to foot, black cowls with slits for eyes and rough black robes reaching to their feet. It is also said that their monastery is castle-like in its appearance, although again there is no first-hand description of it. I realize this doesn’t help us much. But what you may find interesting is that they are known as the Black Cowls. Or, more shortly, as the Blacks.”

“The Blacks!” Nick slammed the flat of his hand onto the tabletop. His eyes gleamed with interest. “But you have no idea where their monastery might be?”

Teresa shook her head. “The reference only says that it is ‘somewhere near Santo Domingo.’ Obviously it is a very secluded valley, or we would have heard of it before. And you would surely have found it. But now at least we have some basis for further inquiry. There must be people in the countryside who have heard of the black-cowled monks, possibly even seen them.”

Nick nodded. “How about people right here in town? Scholars, perhaps. Theologians. Museum curator, local priests, even the bishop. At least we know now that we’re looking for a monastery. Don’t we? Yes, I guess we do. For a while there I was beginning to think we ought to be looking for a speciality restaurant run by three fellows named Black who used to be part of Trujiilo’s flock. But monks! It figures, ties in with everything. Now all we have to do is find that valley.”

“It must be quite a place, that valley,” Paula said thoughtfully, “to have a castle tucked away so neatly that no one seems to have heard of it. It isn’t easy to hide a castle, or even a monastery. You really think we’re on the right track?”

“We have to be,” Nick said firmly. “Now we know the place exists, right? And we know that these monks were a secretive lot, so somehow they must have found a way to conceal their castle or monastery or whatever it is. We just have to keep plugging away with the questions and the search. Anybody have anything else to contribute?”

“Yes,” said Paula. “Isabella?”

Isabella pushed a little pile of papers across the table toward Nick.

“Take a look,” she said. “We can’t make head or tail of it, but there’s some kind of pattern there. We’ve been through ninety-one homes and in six of them we found — well, you’ll see what we found. But some of the same words and symbols appear on each of them.”

Nick reached for the little pile and sorted through it. A diary, with several pages marked. A laundry list with scribblings on the back. A pocket calendar with notations against several of the dates. A sheet of lined paper covered with a list of words that seemed to have no meaning. A loose leaf from a notebook with some of the same words and numbers next to them. The flyleaf of a book, covered with a scrawl of letters and symbols.

“Meeting places,” he said slowly. “With dates and times attached, I’ll bet. But coded.”

“Right,” said Paula. “How are you at breaking codes?”

“Not bad,” Nick said cheerfully. “Not bad at all.” He spread the papers out in front of him and got to work.

* * *

Killmaster was an expert in breaking codes. Dr. Tsing-fu Shu of Chinese Intelligence was an expert in breaking people. He had not done very well with Evita Messina but now he was making up for it. He missed Tom Kee, and he missed Shang, but he had other helpers. One of them was presently engaged in emasculating a man called Garcia-Galindez, and another was stifling the screams of agony.

“You see how useless it is to lie,” Tsing-fu said placidly, tapping his cigarillo ashes on Garcia’s rug. “We know who you are. A good friend of yours told us where to find you. He was also good enough to inform us that you had one of the clues. Tch, he is not very well these days, poor fellow. It took him too long to tell us.” He smiled pleasantly. “But he did tell us in the end. And you will also tell us what we want to know. Tighten the wires. Chin You. Do not be gentle with him.”

Chin You did as he was told. Tsing-fu listened to the muffled screams and gazed around the comfortable apartment. Yes, indeed, he thought, this was a comfortable place. He might as well stay here until his mission was completed.

He was rather pleased with himself. One small item in a yellowish newspaper had led him to a man who had held a minor post in the late Trujillo’s government. That man had been persuaded to tell him of other men, now living quietly under assumed names, who in their turn had been persuaded to yield up useful little nuggets of information. Garcia-Gallindez, he was positive, was the last link in his chain of clues. Tsing-fu watched his victim writhe.

“Remove the gag, Fong,” he said easily. “I think our friend is trying to tell us something.”

Garcia-Galindez took a deep, wheezing breath and began to talk.

Tsing-fu listened. His brow furrowed into a scowl. This clue was as obscure as the rest of them.

“What does that mean?” he screamed, his sudden rage turning his pale face scarlet. “Where is the place? Where is it?”

* * *

“The Valley of the Shadow!” Nick roared triumphantly. “That’s it! It’s got to be. It won’t be one of the restaurants, or the airport, or the railroad station or the barber shop, or any of those places. The Valley of the Shadow is the only place that fits. But where is it? It isn’t on the map.”

Luz crinkled her forehead. “I’ve lived here all my life,” she said, “And I’ve never heard of it. They made up the name, perhaps?”

“They didn’t make up the other names,” said Nick. “They’re all places in around Santo Domingo. Why should they invent one name? Unless— wait a minute. Unless it’s a description, not a name.” He traced his forefinger over the map of Santo Domingo and the outlying countryside. “There are several here that don’t have names. And I know they’re sizable valleys because I’ve been through half of them.”

“Of course they don’t all have proper names,” Lucia said. “They are too small to matter. But the people who live in or near them give them names that are more like, as you say, descriptions. For instance, there is one called the Valley of the Cows, because of one little dairy farmer who uses its slopes for grazing his herd. And then there is the Valley of the Pomegranates, because—”

“I get the point,” said Nick. “But what about the Valley of the Shadow?”

“There is a place that more or less fits that name,” Paula said slowly. “It’s not so much a valley as a deep ravine, and I’ve never heard it called anything at all. In fact, I’ve never seen it. But Tonio mentioned it to me once as we passed nearby on the road to—” She stopped suddenly and caught her breath. “Tonio mentioned it to me! My husband. He said that he knew it from his hiking days, that it was a strange and gloomy place that was in shadow all day long except at noon. There was overhanging rock nearly all the way around, he said. And I remember laughing and asking him when he had ever been a hiker, because that was the first I’d heard of it. And then he changed the subject. I wondered why, and then forgot it. But I should think it would have made a perfect meeting place for a group of agile men. Which they all were.”

“Now she tells us!” Nick exclaimed. “After all these days of poking about, and you’ve had the secret all the time.”

“It was years ago,” Paula said a little stiffly. “And how could I possibly connect it with the treasure hunt— And we don’t know yet that it has anything to do with it.”

“Paula, it has to,” Isabella said intensely. “It’s all too coincidental otherwise. How many sUch valleys can there be? Think of the clues — they all match now.”

“Yes, but he didn’t say anything about there being a castle or a monastery of any sort down there,” Paula objected. “And it sounds like an impossible place for any sort of building.”

“Not impossible,” said Nick. “Just difficult. You said yourself it isn’t easy to hide a castle. And what better place for a bunch of monks who’ve taken a vow of secrecy?” He pushed back his chair. “Paula, you’re going to take me there.”

“One moment,” Alva said softly. “It is our hunt, if you remember. This time we should all go.”

“Honey, I think we’re liable to be a bit conspicuous,” Nick said reasonably. “Let me scout it first and if it looks promising we’ll all go in together. Let’s go, Paula.”

“Just a minute,” she said firmly. “Alva’s right. It is our hunt. And if you’re so sure it is the place, we will all go together.”

“Now, look—” Nick began, and stopped suddenly as he found himself surrounded by eight vibrant women with fire in their eyes. They were gorgeous, they were sexy, they were appealing, they were determined, and they outnumbered him. The worst of it was that without Paula he could not find the place. And she was against him, too. He caught her eye and scowled.

The bitch was smiling at him.

“You do want to come with us, don’t you?” she said invitingly.

He gave up. They were too much for him.

* * *

Dr. Tsing-fu danced a crazy little jig of delight. “That’s all we need, that’s all we need!” he crowed exultantly. “Mao-Pei, you can find the place?”

Mao-Pei stood in the doorway of Garcia’s living room, his sullen face alight. He nodded.

“I can find the place. He gives good directions, the stupid pig”

“Then let us go,” trilled Tsing-fu Shu. “Chin You, kill the fool!”

Garcia-Galindez had figuratively spilled his guts. Now he did so literally. Chin You knew how to kill to please his master.

Tsing-fu sighed happily. It was a pity not to prolong the joyous moment, but he had other things to do.

* * *

The crescent moon cast its sickly light upon the mountain slope. Nick glanced back and dimly saw them following him, eight shapeless forms that he knew belonged to eight lean and leggy, lovely women. The nearest one was close behind him.

“Have them spread out along the rim, Paula,” Nick said quietly. “And don’t let any of them make a move until I give the signal. You’re sure this is the place?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Didn’t I spend half the night looking for landmarks?”

“Yes, you did, slowpoke.” Nick patted her cheek and grinned at her in the darkness. “Now deploy your troops and keep them quiet until dawn. It won’t be long now. If anybody hears anything—”

“They’re to give a whistle,” she finished for him, and turned away to head for her second-in-command.

“Wait.” Nick touched her lightly on the arm. “When you’ve talked to them, come back to me. I’ll be up there.” He gestured up toward the rim of the ravine.

“All right,” Paula said softly, and glided off.

Nick climbed the last few yards of the steep slope and stared down into absolute darkness. The faint moonlight showed outjutting rock and thickly foliaged treetops, and that was all. He could well imagine the shadows that must envelop this place even at high noon.

The soil beneath his feet was covered with soft moss and rotting leaves. To his right, the great umbrella-like leaves of some luxuriant tropical plant bent low to form an excellent hiding place. Nick crouched beneath it and looked back to see Paula spreading out her squad of women. One by one they were taking up positions to either side of him and disappearing into cover. They were all armed, all disciplined, all silent as guerillas in a jungle. It was a funny way to pay a visit to a bunch of innocent monks, supposing there were any monks about, but by the time Nick and his unlikely troop had gone through all the clues again and considered the opposition it had seemed to be the only way.

He sniffed the fresh night air. And frowned. It was not quite so fresh as it should be. Smoke. So? Even monks built fires. He sniffed again. Cordite? Phosphorus? It was both, he was almost sure, and there was a smell of burnt wood as well. For a moment he was tempted to toss his own flare into the valley below to see what its bright light would reveal. But that would be the end of stealth, so he decided not to. Yet the smell in the air convinced him that he and Paula’s Terrible Ones were not the first arrivals.

He heard her soft whistle from nearby and he whistled back.

Paula appeared beside him.‘

“You’ve found yourself a nice, secluded spot,” she murmured.

Nick reached for her swiftly and pulled her down to the soft moss.

“I had to be alone with you for just one moment,” he whispered. “The ladies are all dolls and I love them dearly, but they do get in the way.” He brushed his lips over her face and kissed her tenderly. She cupped his head between her hands and stroked his hair.

“It has been difficult,” she breathed. “I wanted so much to come into your room, but…” She chuckled softly. “I think they all did. It would have been unfair of me.”

“Oh, I wanted you,” he murmured, and his arms encircled her. “When this is over we’ll find a place to be alone together— a boat, a barn, right here, anywhere. Whatever happens tonight, promise me we’ll have that time.”

“My darling, my darling, I promise you.” Their arms tightened about each other and their lips met in a flaming kiss. Nick’s pulses raced as he felt her so close to him, felt the soft warmth of her breasts press longingly against him. His tongue probed passionately and his body filled with sudden heat. Paula trembled violently against him and gave herself up completely to his kiss. He ground his body against hers, wishing savagely that he could rip the clothes off both of them right then and there and sink himself deep into the warmth of her. Paula gasped and clung to him, her fingers digging into his back and her tongue searching desperately as if with her mouth she could give him all the love that was stirring so hotly in her body.

Just as suddenly they drew apart, panting for breath and fighting down their rising desire.

“Oh, Paula,” Nick muttered, pulling himself together with an effort. “Let’s get this thing done with so we can do what really matters.”

She touched his hand lightly and moved away from him.

“It will be soon,” she promised. “I know it will be soon. But I must leave you now, or it will be — too soon.”

He laughed softly, wanting her still but knowing this was not the time.

“I’m going down there now,” he said. “I know we agreed to wait for morning light but I have a suspicion that someone’s beaten us to it.”

Paula drew in her breath sharply. “But how will you see where you are going?”

“For the first part of the trip I don’t need to see,” he said grimly, pulling on his climbing claws. “This can’t be any worse than Cap St. Michel. And wait for my signal, understand?”

“I’ll wait. But please take care. I love you.”

She kissed him once more, quickly, and was gone.

Nick felt his way toward the edge and lowered himself gingerly. It seemed to him that he was always climbing when he would much rather be doing something else. But at least this was a little easier than the Haitian climb.

Minutes later he was on the floor of the narrow valley pulling off his claws and peering into the pre dawn gloom. There was no sign of anything remotely like a castle. There was no sign of anything at all.

A frog croaked hoarsely nearby; the croaking ended in a tiny splash.

Still waters! Nick’s heartbeat quickened. ‘Still waters’ in the Valley of the Shadow… of Death? The smell of smoke hung heavy in the air, a reminder that death was probably quite near.

Nick raised his night-seeing telescope and held it to his eye. Through its circle of eerie green light, visible to him alone, he could see the sharp outlines of the valley walls. He swung the finder slowly over rocks and trees. Stopped suddenly, swung it back and re-focused. A stone wall sprang clearly into view.

It was the wall of something very much like a medieval stronghold, built under overhanging rock and blending imperceptibly into the natural rock face. A clump of thick bush almost, but not quite, hid a doorway… and the heavy, iron-studded door was hanging limply on its hinges, a great hole blasted through it. Leaning against the clump of bushes was a Chinese soldier with a carbine dangling from his shoulder, an odd way for a man to stand.

He was not standing. He was sprawled back against the bushes, and he was dead.

So they had a little difficulty getting in, Nick thought grimly. But they’d made it. Some of them. He wondered just how many.

He panned the scope from one side of the valley to the other, looking for a sign of life. There was none, but for a little ripple on the surface of the quiet pool at the far side of the valley, and a narrow stone stairway hacked out of the crude rock by the hand of man. At the foot of it there were two almost-human figures, but they were deader than the stone itself. Nick stared at them through the glass and felt slightly revolted. Their heads had been blown off. Grenades, it looked like. It was impossible to make out for certain what they had been before being smeared across the valley floor, but their mutilated bodies were wearing what looked like Cuban Army fatigues.

And that was all the telescope could tell him, except that flares had been used to light the way into and across the valley and that there was nothing to stop him walking straight in through the open door.

He padded silently across the soft damp grass, past the dead Chinese soldier with the big hole in his chest, and into a tunnellike hall. In the absolute darkness his foot kicked against something soft and bulky. Nick flicked on his flashlight. The body of a big-bellied monk lay at his feet, its black cowl sticky with blood from the bullet hole in the man’s head. A second monk lay sprawled several feet away, his cowl ripped away from his face and a look of outrage in his dead and staring eyes. An ancient blunderbuss lay on the floor beside him. And there was something else.

A Chinese in bloodied olive drabs was slowly raising himself from the floor and the gun in his wavering hand was pointing at Nick’s chest.

Wilhelmina spoke once with a muted thunk of sound. The man sighed softly and dropped like a weighted sack.

Nick picked his way between the bodies down the passage toward another sound, a distant one that suddenly pierced the stillness and rose into a shriek. He turned a corner into another passage, this one lit by the flickering light of a single candle in a holder on the wall, and stepped over another dead monk. The shriek became a frenzied string of recognizable words. He listened as he padded on, disgusted by the carnage around him and chilled by the madness in the shrieking voice.

“Every one of you will die!” he heard. “One after the other, and then you, last of all, but slowly — slowly, slowly, horribly! Tell me where it is, you son of Satan!”

Nick stepped over yet another body and stopped outside an open door. What he saw beyond it was a scene from hell.

Everything that Loves Must Die

“It is you who are the son of Satan,” the deep voice said quietly. The black robe was torn, the face was bared of its black cowl and streaked with blood, but the big man’s expression was calm. “What was left here once by evil men will be given up only when the people of my country come to claim it.”

He stood in a room that only hours before must have been a peaceful, simple chapel, facing a tall Chinese who had made it into a charnel house. The rough stone floor was strewn with the dead and dying, Chinese in drab fatigues and monks in their black robes. On each of several wooden pews was a living monk, each with his robe torn down to the waist, and each with his hands stretched above his head and tied to a wooden armrest. A sullen-faced Chinese stood over one of them, a curved knife in his hand; a machine-gunner stood in the pulpit with his weapon trained upon the supine men; a third figure in olive drabs stood several paces from Tsing-fu Shu and the only monk left standing. He, like Tsing-fu himself, was armed with a snub-nosed gun, and he also carried a carbine.

Nick clamped himself against the wall outside the door and craned his head toward the horror beyond, noting each position, every weapon, every detail of the scene.

Machine-gun, carbine, two pistols, one knife and possibly another gun in a hidden holster, and one belt-load of grenades. And four men to use them.

Versus one Luger, one stiletto, and one gas pellet that made no distinctions between friend and foe. Plus one squad of women too far away to help and whose presence anyway could only be an added complication.

The madman was still screaming at the tall, calm monk.

“Do you know what it is to die with a knife grinding into your belly?” he shrieked. “Do you think that these robed fools of yours will enjoy it?”

“Kill me, if you must kill,” the monk said calmly. “I pray that you will spare the rest of my poor brothers, for they know nothing.”

“You pray!” Tsing-fu howled with something like laughter.

“Yes, pray to me, you fool, and see if that will save them. Show me where that cache is hidden, or watch your ‘poor brothers’ swim in their own blood.”

“They are not afraid to die, and neither am I. It is better that there should be an end to this.”

“An end, yes.” Tsing-fu’s face twisted into a hideous mask of sadistic malice. “You will beg for the end, each one of you in turn. It is not yet the end. Mao-Pei!”

The man with the knife and the grenade belt looked up and grunted.

“Begin carving, if you please.”

The machine-gunner first, Nick decided swiftly, or there would be a spray of death across this room that would truly be the end for all but Tsing-fu and his men. Nick flicked his eyes away from the machine-gunner for a second and saw Mao-Pei bring his knife down against the bare chest of the nearest supine monk and begin a slow slice into the flesh and down toward the belly.

“He will be slowly disembowelled,” Tsing-fu said pleasantly.

The knife described a curving, agonizing path through the supine man’s gut.

Nick raised Wilhelmina and sighted carefully. The machine-gunner in the pulpit was watching the grim proceedings with such ghoulish fascination that he had taken his finger from the trigger and was resting the big gun lightly on the lectern. But Nick’s trigger-finger was already squeezing, and Wilhelmina’s elongated nose was pointing steadily at the inviting little scene between the gunner’s eyes. Wilhelmina spat once with her dull, thunking sound and sent her lethal message straight home in a blast that splashed blood and brains against the pulpit wall. She was already homing in on her next target as the machine gun clattered to the chapel floor and the gunner folded out of sight.

Next — the knifer with the grenades, the fellow who was carefully carving up the monk who could no longer contain his pain in silence.

There was a split second of confusion as heads swung toward the pulpit and the knifer froze. Nick grabbed the opportunity and moved forward rapidly in a low running crouch that had him ducking behind a pew in that same second, with the Luger stabbing toward the profile of the sullen-faced man with the knife. Wilhelmina spat once, twice; skimmed the back of the thick head with her first kiss and sliced away the top of it with her next. Nick was running again by the time the body dropped. Bullets sang past his head and Tsing-fu was screaming something incomprehensible.

Two down and two to go. The carbine next — but he no longer had the advantage of surprise and there was little cover. Tsing-fu was near the altar; he ducked behind the only statue in the chapel, probably a figure of its patron saint, and fired as he screamed. But the fellow with the carbine was in the clear. Unfortunately he was busy spilling the contents of his pistol in Nick’s direction, and his aim was getting better all the time.

Nick dropped down low behind a fallen monk’s body and squeezed off one shot that missed by inches. His human shield jerked with the impact of the answering fire; he sent one more fast shot toward the altar, heard it spit uselessly into either the statue or the wall, and he threw himself sideways underneath a pew. Both guns were trained inexorably upon him now. The last shot had singed him with its closeness, and Brother Whatsisname, still calm and proud and unafraid, had somehow gotten in his line of fire. Nick slithered quickly down a row of seats, briefly hidden by a clutter of wooden slats and bodies, and bobbed up yards away from his previous position with Wilhelmina poised for action. Tsing-fu Shu — he assumed that was who the fellow was — was still pumping shots from behind the statue, and Brother Whatsisname was still in line— no, he wasn’t…!

One of the guns had suddenly stopped firing, and the big, quiet-voiced monk was wrestling with the carabineer for possession of the carbine. For a fleeting second the man’s pistol waved silently in the air, and then it swung toward the Brother’s ribs for a close, but-blasting shot that never came. The big monk leapt away with astonishing agility — and he wrenched the carbine with him as he sprang. The other man turned on him with a snarl of animal rage and stuck the pistol almost in his face. Nick snapped off one shot at Tsing-fu’s cautiously emerging figure and fired again literally without stopping to think. Wilhelmina seemed to find her target automatically. The pistol flew from the man’s hand and skidded on the floor. The Chinese stood there for a moment, looking astonished, and then the great butt-end of the carbine landed against his head in a bone-crushing blow. Brother Whatsisname stepped back, satisfied with his killer-blow, and spun the rifle around in his hands so that its nose pointed at Tsing-fu’s covering statue.

“Attababy, Brother!” Nick shouted exultantly. “You cover his rear and I’ll get him from the front. And you’d better give up, you behind the statue. You’re the last one left.”

There was a second of absolute silence. Tsing-fu was out of sight behind the statue of the saint. Nick crawled rapidly toward him on his hands and knees, Wilhelmina ready. From the corner of his eye he saw the big monk quietly stalking the statue from the other side.

Then he heard a dull little click and a howl of rage. Tsing-fu leapt out from behind the statue, tossing aside his empty gun, and with a movement too swift for a gun to follow he was at the foot of the pulpit scooping up the fallen machine-gun.

“We all die, then!” he screamed, dancing a little jig of maniacal fury. “See the brothers on the benches, trussed like pigeons — see how they will die!” He whirled about and made a crouching leap for the pulpit stairway, landing with his body half-turned toward the pews and the machine-gun swinging toward the helpless figures of those few who still lived.

The big monk’s borrowed carbine roared and bit a great chunk out of the pulpit but left Tsing-fu unharmed.

“You first!” Tsing-fu screamed, and swung the gun toward the monk.

Nick dropped to one knee and fired.

Wilhelmina’s last bullet struck Tsing-fu full in the chest and rocked him backwards.

“Get the hell out of his way. Brother!” Nick shouted, and made a flying jump toward the pulpit stairs with one thought in mind — to wrench the murderous machine-gun from Tsing-fu’s hands before it sprayed death throughout the room.

He was a split-second late. Tsing-fu lurched convulsively in his dying agony and his finger tightened on the trigger. Streams of hot lead spat from the pulpit and bit chunks from the statue that had been Tsing-fu’s refuge. The big monk now crouched behind it bellowed angrily and dropped down low so that the rain of death slammed high above his head. Nick halted abruptly on the bottom step. Tsing-fu was crumpling slowly, the gun still cradled under one arm and its hot barrel spewing high, wild shots through the pulpit wall and chewing it to shreds. He was making no attempt to aim, no attempt to rise one last time and turn his fire into the room. He was looking at the statue with a strange, unreadable expression on his face. There was no need, now, to wrench the gun from him.

Nick turned to follow the gaze of those dying eyes.

The head of the statue was gone. Its body was chipped in a dozen places; one arm was off, and there was a great hole in the torso. Something was pouring out of it. The whole thing was tottering and crumbling. And then it fell. Nick caught his breath and felt a shiver running down his spine.

The shattered saint split down the middle and disgorged a stream of glittering objects. Brilliant stones cascaded from the plaster wounds — red ones gleaming with fire, green ones blazing like cats’ eyes in the night, ice-white ones throwing off sparks of suddenly released light. They clinked and clanked onto the floor, mingling with the gold pieces and the pendants, the rings, the chains, the plaster, and the blood.

Tsing-fu screamed once more. His face was twisted into something inhuman as he stared agonizedly at the wealth he had been searching for. The scream was a maniac’s babble that rose to a shriek of insane, sobbing laughter, and then stopped forever. He slumped where he was and lay still in his own blood. The gun went on coughing out its aimless hail of bullets, and then chattered into silence.

Nick made sure that he was dead before checking to see what had become of the big monk. But there was no doubt that he was dead, along with all those who wore the olive drabs and many of those in the torn robes of the Blacks.

He heard a long explosive sigh and turned to see the big monk gazing at his Brothers, at his charnel-house of a chapel, with a look of indescribable pain on his face.

“Forgive me for having come too late.” Nick said quietly. “I would give anything to have avoided this.” He slipped Hugo down his sleeve and started cutting the bound monks loose with swift, decisive strokes. “But you fight well, Brother,” he added. “You and all your Brothers.”

The monk stared at him. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Another treasure-hunter,” Nick said flatly. “And your name, Brother?”

“Francisco. Father. I am abbot here.” The pain deepened on the big man’s face. “Are you telling me that I have had your help only because you want that bloodstained dross for yourself? Because — I cannot let you have it either, my friend, even if I must fight you to the death. For you are not my countryman; it does not belong to you.”

Nick looked up from his task.

“Tell me one thing — did the members of the Trinitaria meet in this place?”

The abbot nodded. “They did. And only to such men will I release this treasure. Those who hid it have gone, I understand, but they were evil too and I would not have given it back to them. I myself moved it from the place they put it and hid it in the statue so that it would be safe for people who will make good use of it. I do not know if you are good or bad, but it must go only to my countrymen. It was stolen from them:’

“How about the wives of the Trinitaria?” Nick asked quietly. “Would you give it to them?”

Father Francisco looked at him with dawning hope. “I would gladly give it to them. To them, rather than to anyone.”

“I will get them, then,” said Nick. “You will need their help in — cleaning up.”

Five able-bodied monks with robes torn to their waists, one seriously wounded, one with blood seeping from his belly, and one disheveled abbot stared at him, astonished.

“I do not understand,” the abbot said.

“You will soon,” Nick promised. “And trust me, will you? Your people are my friends.”

A few minutes later he was out on the valley floor at the foot of the stone steps, emitting a piercing whistle that meant Approach — With Care. The answering whistle came as he looked about him in the early morning light. The dead Cubans were nearby. For the first time he noticed that one of them still held a badly damaged walkie-talkie. And with a sudden chill he wondered how much talking there had been before the fellow had had his head blown off.

Paula appeared on the upper rim of the ravine. He waved her over to the steps. She vanished for a moment and then reappeared directly above him, climbing cautiously at first and then with rapid steps. By the time the others appeared behind her she was running to him.

* * *

The sun was high when at last they left the Castle of the Blacks, Nick and five of the women. Lucia had kept Inez and Juanita with her to help the abbot and his men with their grim task of cleaning up the shambles of death and ruin that was Tsing-fu’s legacy.

One by one they climbed the crude stone steps. First Nick, eyes and ears alert and Wilhelmina ready, two Chinese grenades in his pocket. Next Paula, with a Colt .45. Then three of the women, each carrying crudely woven flour sacks tied firmly at the necks and each clutching a revolver. Finally Luz, with the Chinese carbine. One after the other they reached the top and gathered in a silent group beneath the trees, waiting for Nick’s cue.

Nick held them back with a wave of the hand while he scouted ahead, eyes trying to pierce the thick foliage for anything that should not have been there. Tree trunks… bushes… low-hanging leaves… Nothing new seemed to have been added. Yet his skin prickled with its familiar warning signal. The hillside was far from being an impenetrable jungle; beyond the grove in which his partners waited there were clearings broken by scattered growth and humps of lichen-covered rock, no challenge at all for anyone who didn’t mind a little exercise. But it was perfect cover for an ambush party.

And supposing the Cuban with the radio had managed to send a message… what better way to find a treasure than to lie in wait for those who had found it first? Maybe they were expecting to pounce upon Tsing-fu to grab it, but obviously they wouldn’t care who had it as long as they could get it.

Nick went back to his waiting women.

“You three with the sacks,” he whispered. “Get them out of sight behind the bushes and stay here with them no matter what happens until I whistle for you.” He saw Alva opening her rosebud mouth to object and his face hardened into a look familiar to those who knew him as Killmaster. “We’ve been through all this before and these are orders. You women chose to leave the place instead of waiting it out; now you do as I tell you. Get busy and keep quiet.”

Alva stared at him in surprise and backed away with her sack. Two others followed mutely.

“Paula, Luz,” said Nick. “Remember what I told you. Stay behind me and use cover all you can.”

They nodded silently. Luz took a step aside and quickly checked the carbine. Nick’s eyes lingered on Paula’s face.

“Perhaps there’ll be nothing to it,” he said softly. “But don’t take chances, please.” He took her hand and squeezed it lightly, and then turned away.

They followed silently, several paces back. He wished to hell they didn’t have to be there, but if there was an ambush it would take more than himself, one man, to draw their fire. They would scarcely give away their own positions for the sake of just one scout. So he and Luz and Paula were to be the bait. Or maybe they would be flies in the spider’s trap.

He was out of the trees now and crossing a clearing at a low running crouch, scanning the hillside as he ran. Behind him came Paula and Luz, zig-zagging as they had been told to do, their feet scrunching lightly on the fallen leaves.

So far, no sign of company, and the cover was getting sparser by the minute. It was beginning to look as though they had made it — away, home and free, with only one last whistle to bring them the treasure that had killed so many people.

He was almost at the far end of another clearing when the first fusillade burst through the trees on either side of him. There was a shriek from behind him and the carbine roared. Nick raced for a clump of bush and pulled a grenade from his pocket. As he turned he saw Luz clutch her throat and fall, and Paula diving for the shelter of a tree-trunk with her gun spitting little bursts of fire. He pulled the pin, counted and threw. It soared through the air and burst explosively into a low ridge of bush that suddenly became a small inferno of flaming brush and flying, shapeless things. Two men, dressed in the familiar Cuban fatigues, burst out of the burning bushes with rifles clamped to their shoulders. Nick picked off one of them with Wilhelmina before the fellow dodged behind a tree; the other dived behind a rock and spat his fire toward Paula. Nick could hear her returning fire as he pulled the other grenade from his pocket and drew out the pin. The crossfire from the second group was zinging across the clearing, searching for him, almost finding him. Bullets slammed above his head, tearing off bark and leaves and scattering their debris upon him as he pulled back his arm and threw. For one awful moment he thought his Chinese pineapple was going to blast its way straight through Paula’s head, but she dropped in the last split fraction of a second and pumped a stream of shots across the clearing. The grenade flew past her and landed with a spitting roar.

Smoke haze swirled over the hillside and the smell of burning bodies filled the air. Heat seared Nick’s face and he ducked rapidly as hot lead twanged past him on all sides. Something struck him in the shoulder and numbed his arm; he. switched Wilhelmina to his left hand and pumped her bullets rapid-fire toward a bearded figure with a submachine gun. The fellow dropped, spraying bullets into the trees.

Paula was still firing. One nest of gunners was silent. But there was another, still active though the growth around it blazed, and now the blast of its machine gun was ripping Nick’s cover. Wilhelmina was like a popgun against the deadly stream of lead. Nick thrust her back into her holster and made a flying leap for the Cuban’s discarded machine-gun. He was running even as he scooped it up, crouching and dodging toward a boulder in the clearing. His leg buckled beneath him as something struck it with a bite like a steel-clawed hammer, but he made cover and flung himself full-length behind the rock, already firing at the gun emplacement.

He stopped only when he was out of ammunition. And then he realized that no one was firing back. For long moments he waited, and still there was no sound. At last he rose unsteadily, blood pouring down his leg and shoulder and Wilhelmina wavering in his left hand, and gazed across the clearing. Nothing moved. He chirped enquiringly. And to his overwhelming relief there was an answering chirp that told him Paula was alive.

But he knew this might not be the end of it, and he also knew that the two of them could not hold out alone against any further attack. So he drew breath and gave the piercing signal that meant Approach — Be Ready for Attack.

And then he heard a yell. Paula.

“Behind you, behind you!” she was screaming.

He pivoted painfully with Wilhelmina jabbing the air.

Two grimy, bloodstained men had risen from the bushes and were coming at him with murder in their eyes and machetes slicing the air like scythes. He fired once, missed; fired again and saw one of them drop with a yell, and then the other was upon him. Wilhelmina clicked emptily and he flung her at the fellow’s face. It gained him nothing but a second to pull Hugo from his sleeve, and Hugo was an icepick against the swinging machete.

He jabbed and dodged, cursing out loud at his helplessness, knowing that he didn’t have a hope in hell with his one useless arm, one useless leg. All he could do was duck and jab, try to get the fellow off-balance, try to twist that swinging machete from his grasp. He did not even see the other one half-rise and start to slither painfully toward him with machete raised, nor the third man who stalked out from the trees with the revolver pointing at him, nor the girl who slid silently from the cover with her automatic wavering between three deadly targets.

But he heard the shots. So did the Cuban who was slashing wildly at him with the finely honed machete, and for one heaven-sent second the man turned his head and shot a glance toward the sound of fire. Nick lowered his head like a bull and charged. His full weight caught the Cuban in the stomach and threw him backwards, and then Hugo struck into his neck again and again and again. The machete dropped from the limp fingers and Nick caught it up for one final thrust. And then he rose, the last shot still echoing in his ears. There was a taste of blood in his mouth, the sound of blood in his ears, a vision of blood clouding his eyes, but he heard the light footfalls coming closer from the grove near the rim of the ravine and he saw Paula slumping to the ground, her gun still smoking. She was clutching her chest, and there was blood all over her hand and all over her torn shirt. Only then did he see the man who must have shot her, the man who lay there dead with a revolver in his hand, and the other Cuban with the machete who was closer to him than he had thought.

He stumbled toward Paula and caught her in his arms. For all he knew there might still be a dozen living Cubans around, but he no longer cared. Because Paula was dying.

Nick held her close and prayed inside himself. “Paula, Paula,” he whispered. “Oh, Paula, why…? Why didn’t you save yourself instead of me?”

“I wanted you,” she said, from very far away. “Wanted you to live, wanted to give you something.” She drew a deep choking breath and gazed into his eyes. “Give you life, and all my love,” she said clearly.

“Please live,” he said, not knowing what he said. “Please live, and let me love you.” There was a gentle pressure on his arms and her lips touched his.

He rocked her in his arms and kissed her.

For a short moment she was kissing him.

And then she died.

There were no more shots. Three women looked on silently with tears upon their cheeks. He hadn’t seen them come; he didn’t want to see them. It was over.

* * *

“And it was over, then, I take it?” Hawk said quietly. There was a look in his ice-blue eyes that few men had ever seen. It might have been compassion.

Nick nodded. “That was it. Bodies to be buried, arrangements made to take care of that damned treasure, little details of that sort. But we’d about run out of Cubans and Chinese, so there was no one left to fight. There was a street riot in Santo Domingo when we got back so we weren’t even noticed.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. It was a hospital chair in a hospital room and the atmosphere depressed him. “It was a slaughter, the whole thing,” he added, staring out of the window at a blue sky many miles away from the Dominican Republic and thinking of the trail of death he’d left behind him. “I’m not sure that it was worth it.”

“Operation Blast died too,” Hawk said, eyeing the blue smoke of his cigar. “That may not mean much to you at this point, but it means a lot to us. They had a good scheme there, and I think some day they’ll try it again. I hope you’re going to be ready for them.”

“Yes, I hope so.” Nick said lifelessly.

Hawk rose to his scrawny length and looked down at him.

“You don’t,” he said. “But you will be ready. And remember one thing, Carter. They asked for help, and you gave them what they wanted. I’ll see you in Washington next week.”

He left as abruptly as he had come.

Nick unclenched his fist and looked at the ruby ring in his hand. Lucia had found it at the bottom of one of the flour sacks when the remnants of The Terrible Ones had come together for one final meeting.

“Take it,” she had said. “It was Paula’s. Think of her.”

He thought of her.

The End

Content

Nick Carter
The Terrible Ones

Pride Goes Before a Fall

Take Me to Your Leader

Voodoo on the Rocks

Chinese Puzzle

Open House at the Castle

Shang’s Second Chance

A Brightness in the Night

And So We Say Farewell

In the Darkness Before Dawn

The Inquiring Cubans

The Terrible Ones

On the Treasure Trail

Everything that Loves Must Die