Nick Carter

The Vulcan Disaster

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

Chapter One

They were still calling it Saigon that day. They wouldn’t for long. Within thirty hours the town would have not only new rulers but a new name — Ho Chi Minh City — and it’d be full of a lot of new things: new troops, new prisoners, new faces directing traffic. And, most noticeable of all, lots of new pairs of black pajamas. The women of the city had started sewing them when we started moving out. One might call the outfit their trousseau. Only they weren’t getting married. They were getting raped. It was still Saigon, after all, and it was a hellhole. I couldn’t wait to get out of it.

Business comes first in my racket, though, and I couldn’t leave until it was done. The wise thing to do, then, was to ignore the Cong guns banging away down the road, the scattered bursts of M-16 fire in the streets, the sounds of panic below the hotel window. Four divisions of enemy troops were reported only eighteen miles down Highway 1. I’d even seen freelance photographers and wire-service stringers bumming a ride to the Embassy, and they were usually the last rats to desert the ship. But me? I had a job to do, and that was that.

So let the weapons carriers, loaded down with anxious people, go chugging past the window, their shocks clunking audibly at every pothole. Let the refugees file past the hotel door, dragging their miserable belongings, running the gauntlet of teen-aged troops who roamed the streets, armed and leaderless, sticking up Americans and affluent-looking Vietnamese for cigarettes. They didn’t concern me. Only one man in Saigon concerned me.

So, legs crossed, back to the wall, I sat in the big plush chair in Walter Corbin’s apartment, three floors up in the Hotel Grand-Bretagne, and watched the girl across the room from me slowly taking off all of her clothes.

You could, if you liked, blame the commotion outside for the fact that neither of us was giving his undivided attention to what he was doing. But each of us had a better reason. I had one eye on the door, for one thing. And she had one eye on the cocked Luger sitting lightly at the ready in my right hand.

Those were, after all, the principal actors in the little scenario I’d sketched out for myself; only one of the participants was missing. The gun’s name was Wilhelmina; the girl’s, she’d said, was Helene. The 9mm bullet in the chamber was nameless, but its intended recipient was not. His name was Walter Corbin, and I was going to kill him the moment he stepped through the door.

The girl? Hardly more than furniture, I kept telling myself. Corbin’s girl. She called herself Helene Van Khanh, but the dossier had called her Phuong. She preferred the French style, she’d told me. But that was before the Cong had showed signs of winning. Now, I was sure, she was having second thoughts. She’d stand a lot better chance of staying alive if she forgot all about the fancy manners and fancier tastes she’d picked up at the Lycée Marie Curie and dug down into the hope chest for a nice pair of those anonymous-looking, soon to be ubiquitous, black drawers. Unless, of course, Walter could manage to sneak her out of the country before everything collapsed.

And that wouldn’t be too easy. To do that he’d have to kill me. And I take a lot of killing.

The girl was looking at me now, her full lips curving in a smile that told me she was more than a little turned on by what she was doing. She’d folded her smart French jacket and put it neatly on the bedside table. That left a lot of her visible in the smashing cut-to-fit cocktail dress with a top that was breathtakingly brief, showing off softly rounded shoulders and upper arms and letting me have a look at a lot of all-over tan. The breasts beneath the thin cloth were large and there was nothing but that clinging bodice, with its refreshing lack of interior framework between her and me. And she was feeding it to me a little at a time.

She sat lightly on the bed and took a deep breath that showed me even more of her. “Why don’t you relax, Mr. Carter?” she said.

“I am relaxed,” I said, looking her sharply in the eye. But I knew, and she knew, that I wasn’t. Not since the moment she’d said my name. The dossier had strongly implied she wouldn’t know anything about me at all except the fact — which my actions would make quite obvious — that I was somebody who meant Walter Corbin no good. “So go ahead and do your number on me,” I drawled. “I’ll probably like it. But when you’re finished I’ll still kill him anyway.”

I would, too, I thought, watching her slip off the delicate, expensive Italian pumps and stretch long, exquisitely formed legs. She wasn’t wearing stockings; the off-white polish on her toenails gleamed like pearls against that beautifully tanned skin. “Do you ever dress Vietnamese?” I said, changing hands on the gun. “You’d look nice in an ao dai.” Or out of one, I thought, giving the legs the once-over. When I looked up I caught her eyes on me, mocking, confident.

She stood and reached for the zipper at her side.

I cocked an ear at the door. Was that a sound in the hall?

The eyes, dark and liquid, were still on me with their searching, insolent gaze. A slender and delicate hand held the dress to her bosom as the other slowly tugged at the full-length zipper. I saw a flash of warm naked skin at her thigh. And she felt the air on her body. Her eyes were slightly out of focus; she was beginning to breathe hard. Her small pink tongue darted across her already moist lips. That left hand, polished nails glowing, held the dress to her breasts; it was all that held it to her bare flesh.

She took a deep breath and stepped out of it, letting the soft folds fall about her feet, holding the classic pose, one foot flat, the other raised on the toes. And it was time for me to take a deep breath.

I was getting a quick and comprehensive look at the kind of body you don’t see every day. Deeply, goldenly tanned in every part, with soft, dark-nippled breasts that jutted pertly up at me; with generous hips flaring below a tiny waist; with long legs as smooth as ivory, slim and shapely; with, at the point where they came together, a flash of curling, sensual black...

Then I heard the sound she’d heard. The light whistle at the end of the hall. The footsteps, coming closer, closer.

I got up in a hell of a hurry, the pistol ready in my hand. And when I dived for her, sex was the last thing on my mind. The free hand that might, under more promising circumstances, have come to caress, went for her mouth. I had perhaps a second to shut her up. And I was a second too late.

“Walter!” she screamed. “Walter, run! I...” And then I had her down on the bed, pinned with the gun hand, the other shoving a pillow into her face.

But he’d heard. And now the footsteps were twice as loud, and they were going down the hall away from me at one hell of a clip.

“Jesus,” I muttered. And then I said a couple of other things. I took the pillow from her face just long enough to show her the disgusted expression on my kisser. Then I laid Wilhelmina alongside her temple with a practiced swing that landed in just the right place with just the right amount of force. She went out like a light.

Fine, I thought. At least I can do one thing right, I was across the room and out the door before I could get another peek at that golden body. I reminded myself to say goodbye sometime.

The hall was empty in one direction. In the other, all I could see was a tallish man, grey-haired and with a military rigidity to his stance, standing before the elevator. He had a black patch over the eye that faced away from me, and as he turned my way I saw that he was missing his left arm.

“Did somebody go by here?” I said. I’d stashed Wilhelmina, but I still must have looked as if I meant business; the one good eye widened slightly, the brow lifted.

“Why... why, yes,” the man said. The accent was one I couldn’t place. “Through there.” He pointed to the exit door, the one that led to the stairwell. “But I...”

“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t stop for conversation. I made for that door as fast as I could. I couldn’t afford to blow this one; I’d most likely never get another shot at him. Within hours — this was evident from every glance I’d taken out the window — the Cong troops, battle-hardened regulars, flushed with victory, would be rolling into town, and Corbin would disappear into that forest of soldiers like a bug into the woodwork.

He’d be taking with him a roll of microfilm I wouldn’t have traded for half of Saigon once I found out what was on it. That roll of film had already cost two men’s lives, and would, I reflected, cost me my skin if I let it fall into the hands of the victorious Cong.

I was keeping quiet as I poked my head through the door. But inside me something whistled, long and low, as I thought of the repercussions back on Dupont Circle in Washington. My boss, David Hawk — Director and Operations Chief of AXE, the U.S. agency for special espionage — didn’t waste Killmaster hits. Getting me into Saigon, at a time when all available copters were needed for getting Americans out, had cost the government a small fortune. Worse, it’d cost Hawk telephone calls to people he didn’t like, clearing the path for me.

So, when I stuck my head through the door, as cautiously as I could and still be in one hell of a hurry, I shivered. And fear of Walter Corbin was hardly the reason.

Corbin was a lot bigger than the dossier had led me to believe. When he jumped, over two hundred pounds slammed into me. His savage rush would have done justice to a pro linebacker. He nearly tore my head off.

His heavy shoulder hit me amidships, knocking me off balance through the door, over the edge of the narrow staircase, end over end down the first flight of stairs that stretched out below me. It was all I could do to get one hand free and grab hold of his collar, just above the knot on his tie, and hang on for dear life. If I was going down that flight of stairs, I thought, he was damn well going with me.

I hit painfully on one shoulder, five steps down, and rolled. Instinct alone saved me; I should have had a broken neck. Instead, I tucked my head in and concentrated on letting Walter Corbin tumble over me headfirst, hoping he’d try kissing the far wall of the narrow well with all that weight behind him.

I went over once, twice, and flattened out on the third roll, back to the stairs, hands beneath me to cushion my fall. And I watched Corbin come out of the tight ball he’d become, carom off the wall, and come at me with a ferocious yell, as cool as if nothing had happened.

He led with a left that went past my head like a bullet. I could feel the brute strength in it even as he missed me. There was iron in that arm. And, I reflected, it wouldn’t do to close with him just yet. I feinted with a left of my own and then gave him a straight right to the Adam’s apple. Then I backed up to the edge of the next flight, giving myself a little room to maneuver.

It wasn’t enough. Corbin was made out of solid steel! A look of cold rage on his heavy features, he looked up and then took another swing at me. I sidestepped and chopped him on the kidney. It was a good heavy blow, with lots of weight behind it. I was damn near behind him by the time the blow landed and I’d followed through. That kind of punch ought to make a man walk with a cane and pass blood for a week.

Instead, it barely bent him over. The breath came out of his flared nostrils, harsh and phlegmy. He gave me a look that showed me he was in pain, all right, but swung a roundhouse right just as I was reaching for Wilhelmina, tucked away under one arm.

He was fast for a big man. Too fast. The gun went spinning over my shoulder, down the flight of stairs. And a left that Rocky Marciano would have been proud of caught me right over the heart.

I’ve never been hit harder and for a moment he had me. The strength suddenly went out of my legs as the wind went out of me. I crumpled, down... down... and over the edge, down the next flight. And this time I didn’t have the presence of mind to tuck and roll. There was a sharp blow at the back of my head, and the last thing I saw was Corbin, leaning over, preparing to jump down on me, to land with both feet and two hundred pounds of weight...

And then something shook me awake.

A concrete stairwell is an acoustic horror. It carries the lows, shoots down the highs. You wouldn’t want to hear what a big French MAB P15 pistol chambered for the 9mm parabellum cartridge, sounds like in there. I heard it, and I don’t want to hear the likes of it again... unless I find myself in similar circumstances again. I was sensitive to loud noises for a week afterward. The P15 has the largest magazine of any handgun in the world — fifteen rounds — and I heard all fifteen of them go off up the staircase from me, from behind Corbin’s unprotected back. I thought it’d never stop firing.

Just take my word for it; you wouldn’t want to see what it does to a man when all fifteen rounds hit him above the groin.

Walter Corbin simply came apart. The first round, I figured out later, may well have been enough to kill him; it hit dead center, in the small of his back, and destroyed enough vital organs to do the job. But Corbin was a big man, big enough to take some time to fall. And as his body slowly crumpled above me, I saw the next eight shots rip through him, carrying bone and guts with them. Three went through his belt and simply opened him up like somebody gutting a fish. Another ripped through the spinal column at the back of his neck; the head swung high, and the neck opened wide, spewing red. Then came another volley of blasts, and Corbin’s head was smashed in like a rotten pumpkin. The face simply disappeared. The parabellum makes a hell of a hole when it comes out in front, poured into a man’s back at short range like that.

At the fifteenth round the sound quit. The marksman above me had been counting, the same as I’d been; he hadn’t even pulled the trigger that sixteenth time to get an answering click. He’d simply stopped shooting.

And then the body slid heavily down to my feet. It splashed. In spite of myself, I drew back a little. And then I looked back up again.

The man with the one arm and the black eyepatch stood, cool and collected, at the landing above. The thin lips were pursed in an expression of distaste; the gun was held high, pointed at the ceiling, the way a military marksman holds a pistol on the range when he’s awaiting firing orders. The one eye looked down at me.

“He would have killed you,” the deep voice said in that same unidentifiable accent. Then, eye still on me, he tucked the gun under the stump of that left arm and deftly extracted the long magazine. He put it in his pocket and quickly reloaded from someplace inside that neatly cut business jacket “You are,” he said, “in my debt I think.”

“Yeah,” I said, letting the breath out at last. “I’ll remember that.” I started to get up, feeling full of aches and pains, wondering dimly why a guy who was saving your life would continue plugging fifteen bullets into a man already dead. “I...” But when I looked up again he was gone.

It took me a few minutes to get myself together. And only when I was more or less sure that nothing was broken did I undertake the. unpleasant task of searching Walter Corbin’s body for the missing microfilm, for the little roll of plastic that had cost two — no, three — lives and had brought me halfway around the world to a city under siege and within hours of utter collapse, a city I had, perhaps, no more than an hour left to get away from.

I got my hands nice and dirty taking Corbin’s pockets apart, checking body cavities, even dismantling his shoes, before I was completely satisfied.

The microfilm was gone.

Chapter Two

I stood up slowly, feeling every ache and pain and savoring it at my leisure. My head was killing me; my chest felt like somebody had dropped an anvil on it from the roof of the Grand-Bretagne. My back was full of a variety of exquisite little cricks and twitches. Even my hands hurt; slugging Walter Corbin — pardon me, the late Walter Corbin — had been a little like picking a fistfight with, oh, Mont Blanc or something.

But the real pain was knowing that little reel was gone. Because if it wasn’t on Walter Corbin, I didn’t have the slightest idea in the world where it was.

It had been an unusual assignment. I’d come in, fresh from a job, ready to have David Hawk rake me over the coals for not having done it exactly as planned, only to have him look up, scowl, and hand me a plane ticket in an envelope, muttering something through one of those evil cigars of his.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I didn’t catch that, sir.”

“Saigon,” he said. “I thought we’d have a little more time, but it looks like the city won’t last long now. You have—” He glanced down at his watch, then reversed his wrist to look at the calendar on the band. “Damn it, you don’t have any time at all. You’d better get moving.”

“But...” I said. I looked down at him; when he looked up at me there was more than annoyance in his eyes. He was under severe pressure today. “Okay. I go to Saigon. What do I do there?”

“Man named Walter Corbin. The tickets are for the Coast There’ll be a San Francisco contact waiting for you who can let you have a look at the file on Corbin between planes... or at least as much of the file as you’ll need. That won’t be much. All you have to do is identify him, eliminate him, and bring back what he’s carrying.”

“Which will be...” I began. Hawk rushed on in that gruff cigar-smoker’s voice.

“Roll of microfilm. Saigon’s falling. The only thing worse than having Corbin deliver the film to the people we suspect him of working for is for the Cong to intercept him and beat you to the reel.” He snorted. “Hell, Corbin’s quite capable of selling out the people he works for and making his own deal with the Cong.”

At least he’d told me something. Corbin was a double agent, and an independent, a man you had to deal with on a one-on-one basis. He wasn’t one of your dedicated agent types and he wasn’t one of your hire-’em-by-the-hour flunkies, either. Moderately big cheese. I wondered if I knew him, perhaps under some other name. “What’s on the film?”

He gave me another annoyed scowl. “Just get him. Bring it back. Don’t let it get away.” I rolled my eyes to heaven and sighed. Okay, it was going to be one of those days.

And here I was. Corbin was dead. The reel was gone. The Cong were right outside of town. I didn’t have a lead in the world. And, not knowing what information I was looking for, I was in one hell of a bind.

A little dizziness made me lean against the wall of the stairwell. Think, Carter, think. I straighted up. The girl. Grab the girl, Carter, before she gets away. She ought to be just coming out from under that little slug on the brows you gave her. It’ll take her a minute to get some clothes on, and then she’ll be hightailing it for the boulevards and you’ll never see her again. And God help you if she decides to change clothes and go native.

Ignoring the aches and pains, I made for the upper landing as fast as I could go and was doing forty by the time I hit the door to the stairway. Nevertheless, this time I stopped and took my time about opening that door and looking both ways before pounding down the hall. Once bitten, twice shy.

Look left. Now look right. And... but there she went, out the door and away from me. My hand automatically went to Wilhelmina, but I had a quick insight into how much lovely Phuong would be able to tell me with a 9mm slug in her back, and decided instead to put a dent in the Olympic 50-meter record.

She looked back, saw me, and broke into a run, very agile in those floppy rubber slides she wore now. Her legs were nice and loose in the black pajamas, and I didn’t nail her until she was on about the two-yard line, an ace away from the door of the other airshaft. Then my flying tackle brought her down in a heap.

She was the same sort of wildcat as before. There are a few things brute strength is good for and I got her under control the best way I could.

“W-Walter,” she said. “Is he...?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But somebody else got him, not me, and somebody else has what he was carrying. I want to know what you know that would help me find it.”

“No,” she said. “Please, Mr. Carter, let me go. I... I know nothing. I can’t help you. And if... if they find me...”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. I was kneeling on top of her. Straddling her waist, holding her hands — with those razor-sharp little nails — down with both of my own. “I’ll let you go in time... if you give me a hand.”

“B-but...” She tried struggling a little more. Then, when this didn’t seem to be working, she closed her eyes and tried to make herself cry. That didn’t work either. For one thing, she was too afraid to be able to work up much in the way of any other emotion.

“Goddamit,” I said, “I don’t have much time. You don’t have much time either. You’d better tell me.” Tell you what, Carter? I was thinking. When you don’t even know what questions to ask? “Where was Corbin going after he came to the room for you?”

“I... I don’t know,” she said. I looked her hard in the eye. I couldn’t tell if she was lying or not.

“I’ll let that pass,” I said. “For now, anyhow. Where was he coming from?”

That got a slightly different response. Her eyes flicked up — up, at the ceiling — and then went back to my face. “I... I don’t...”

“The hell you don’t,” I said. “Come on, goddamit.” She struggled again; I subdued her again. “He was somewhere up top, wasn’t he? Here in this hotel? What room?”

“You... you’re hurting me.”

“Damn right I am. And you haven’t seen anything yet. If you don’t...”

“Oh, stop!” she pleaded. “Room... room four-seventeen.”

“Okay,” I said. “So far so good. It’d better be the right answer, too, because you’re going there with me.”

“N-no...”

“Right you are, you’re going with me. And you’re going in the door first. And if anybody has an itchy trigger finger in there...”

“No, please, Mr. Carter. The information... I’m giving you is... is correct. He... Walter had an appointment there... with a man named Meyer, I think. A man who claimed to be an import-export merchant, but... well, Walter laughed at the cover identity...”

“Meyer, huh?” I said. “Go on. What was he going to do there?”

“He was... going to discuss a price for the merchandise... the material you are looking for. It was Meyer, I think, who alerted Walter about your being in Saigon...”

Meyer, I didn’t know anything about any Meyer. He wouldn’t have used his own name, though. “Go on.”

“Walter... was thinking of the various ways he could make money with the... the material, in a hurry. He was thinking of getting out of his present...” She stifled a sudden sob. “Of... of his business. He and I... we were going to Hong Kong, where Meyer had offered him... ah, some, work, in his business...”

Oh, great, I thought. Mr. Meyer, import-export man from! Hong Kong. That was a little like Mr. Johnson, coal dealer from Newcastle. Everybody in Hong Kong who can speak good English is in the import-export business. “Go on,” I said with a deep sigh. My ribs were hurting like hell.

“This would... have meant betraying the people for whom he was working,” she said. Her voice had a panicky edge on it; she had gotten the message that I wasn’t going to let her go until she’d spilled her guts, and she was in something of a hurry to get away. She wanted to say it all fast and disappear into the mess in Saigon. “He said it was very dangerous. It was... it was quite an important package, he said, and he’d be a marked man after he’d... ah, changed sides.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I understand. But Meyer. Who’s he with? Did he say?”

“He... he wouldn’t tell me. He thought the less I knew about these matters, the better. I...”

“Okay,” I said. I sat back lightly on her pelvis and held both her hands in mine. “You and I are going up there. If you’ve been telling me the truth, you can go. If you’re lying, you’re in trouble. If you haven’t been telling me the truth, I’ll tie your hands behind your back, write ‘Collaborator’ on your forehead in ballpoint pen and release you in the middle of town. You’d better pray you’ve been...”

“No,” she said. “I’m not lying. I... come. I’ll show you.” I looked her in the eye, then got up, still holding her wrist, and helped her to her feet. “Come,” she said, looking at me, a strange, different look in her dark eyes. It was... it was fear and something else...

The fourth floor — we would have called it the fifth, Stateside style — was one flight up. Four-seventeen was halfway down the hall. It was almost completely quiet in the all but deserted hotel, but it was getting louder outside. There was still sporadic gunfire, only more of it. And there was the dull roar of heavier weapons far down the road. Out of habit, I tiptoed to the door. She didn’t have to. She’d lost her slippers in the scuffle, and her bare soles made no sound on the rug.

I put my ear to the door. Not a sound. I let go of her hand, stood back, drew Wilhelmina, and took a deep breath. Then, my weight back on one foot, I lashed out with the other at the lock. The door shook, but held.

“Mr. Carter,” she whispered. “Mr. Carter, the room’s on fire.” Her tiny hand pointed at the crack under the door. Little tendrils of acrid-smelling smoke were curling up from under the thick barrier that kept us out of the room. I reared back and kicked again. The door gave this time, and smoke rushed out. Coughing, I stepped back. Then I reached inside my jacket for the little gas mask that I use sometimes in connection with my little friend Pierre — the tiny, deadly gas bomb strapped now inside my upper thigh. I had it on in a moment, and motioned the girl aside.

The mask kept out enough of the smoke to let me breathe a little, but it was hard to see anything. I could make out that it was a two-room unit, probably not a regular suite, but a pair of connecting rooms that had been rented together and unlocked for the occasion.

The flames were apparently in the other room. This one was mainly full of smoke. And the fire wasn’t a quick one; the suddenly open door had apparently done very little to fan it. It had a stuffy smell, as if something slow and difficult to ignite was smoldering away. I moved through the first room, my eyes scanning it through the thick smoke.

There was a couch and a desk. The desk was covered with scattered papers — scattered in haste, it appeared, and some of them dumped unceremoniously on the floor. I made for these in a hurry and they turned out, for the most part, to be business correspondence. The letterhead jumped out and hit me in the eye:

HERMANN MEYER

Import-Export

68-72 Nathan Road

Kowloon, Hongkong

K.P.O. Box 4567 Hongkong

Cable Address “MEYEX”

Okay, I thought, so far so good. I grabbed a page of it at random. It was covered with penciled notes, scrawled at great speed in an almost unreadable Germanic hand, and there were columns of meaningless figures at the bottom. I stashed it in my pocket for future reference, then shuffled through the rest of the junk on the floor for a bit before deciding that there was nothing much there that looked useful; it’d been picked over pretty well already.

The couch — there was an open briefcase down there beside it; I dipped inside, found nothing much there but a few things rattling around in the bottom. I upended it and dumped the contents on the floor. There wasn’t much there to pick through, either. The only thing more personal than folded handkerchiefs and socks was a single photo of an elderly German type, the stuffy burgher sort of man, with a dazzling, dyed-blonde girl on his arm. She was sporting a full-length mink, if I knew my furs, and I gave her a quick second look. She was something special: the kind born for expensive furs. They set off, and nicly too, those wide cheekbones and almond eyes and that full-lipped wide mouth. The gorgeous smile was for the camera, not for her escort in the picture; nevertheless, when I flipped the picture, the handwriting on the back — in pale green ink — said “To Hermann with love, Tatiana.” I stuck this in a pocket too; maybe it would help me identify Meyer if I ever caught up with him.

But then I got up — slowly, still full of aches and pains — and went into the other room. And there was Meyer, all-right, stretched out on the floor in a puddle of red. He wouldn’t be doing any running from me or anyone else, ever again. There were patches of dark red blood, fresh and wet, in several very vulnerable places on his body, and you could see that he was very, very dead. He’d been playing in some very tough, very sanguinary company, it seemed.

I looked away for a moment, turning my eyes to the corner, where black clouds were billowing out of a slowly burning pile of clothes somebody had yanked out of the closet and dumped on the floor for fuel. No, for primer. They’d been soaked in something, and I couldn’t recognize the smell. The idea had been to start a fire that would burn up the evidence, all right — but one that would go so slowly at first that the killers would be able to get away undetected in the half-deserted hotel.

My eyes went back to the body, scanning the area immediately around it as well. There wasn’t much doubt how Hermann Meyer had died. His throat had been cut, very nearly from ear to ear, with what appeared to be two deft, practiced slashes of a very sharp knife — a razor, perhaps. The area around his head and shoulders was stained through with his own red blood, easily visible even through the smoke.

There was another wound just below his waist. I could see blood on his shirttails, which had been pulled out from his pants. I squatted down beside him, reaching inside his bloodstained jacket to search for his wallet. It was gone, of course; the killers would have wanted to look through it at their leisure. I wiped my hand on a sleeve of his mutilated coat, in one of the few dry spots. And once again my eyes went to the blood stains on his shirt and on the front of his trousers.

I opened his clothing, exposed his abdomen, and gasped. There, etched deeply in the skin above his groin — and the bloody job looked as if it had been done by a rusty nail — was a six-pointed star. The Star of David.

Chapter Three

Someone was calling me outside.

I looked up from the body of the later Herr Meyer and let my glance run quickly around the room. The fire was beginning to spread slowly along the rug toward me, I started to get up; then the pain in my ribs hit me again, and I let myself have a second’s rest before trying again.

This time I made it and I shook my head to clear it, feeling a little dizzy. Maybe the smoke was beginning to get to me; the best of gas masks only get part of the fumes, and mine was strictly emergency stuff. I pushed the door aside and went out into the other room. It wasn’t much better there.

“Mr. Carter! Mr. Carter, are you there?”

I looked at the hall door and there she was, her hand over her nose and mouth, blinking through the smoke at me, coughing a little as she called. And all of a sudden the big bold brassy Mata Hari mask fell away completely. She didn’t like the Dragon Lady bit any more. She was frightened, and was feeling like a defenseless little kid again.

“Okay,” I said, making for the door, trying not to jar the ribs too much. “Get back in the hall.” She saw me, looked up, dropped the hand that covered mouth and nose, and backed away out of sight. I gave the apartment one more glance and went out, Wilhelmina ready in one hand.

I closed the door behind me. The smoke wasn’t so thick out here. I peeled off the gas mask and stuffed it in a pocket. Even in the windowless hall you could hear the sporadic small-arms fire outside now. A lot of last-minute bills were being paid, I supposed, before the Cong and the North took over and canceled all accounts.

Helene — no, make that Phuong for good now; she’d be Vietnamese to the marrow from here on — was standing leaning back against the wall, looking at me. Her hands were behind her, spread against the wallpaper. There was stark terror in her eyes.

“What the devil are you doing here?” I said. “You should have split the minute I got out of sight. Now how are you going to run that gauntlet downstairs? How are you going to disappear into the crowd?”

“I...” She swallowed hard, and when she recovered, her face was the face of a teen-ager, vulnerable and full of unanswerable questions. “Oh, Mr. Carter, take me with you. Please. I couldn’t... couldn’t pass for the sort of person I should have to pass for, out in the city. Look at my hands. I... they will look for calluses, for signs of physical labor. Can I show them these? Can I...?” But a sob broke into her words. The eyes were large and plaintive, the voice broken and totally empty of self-confidence. She didn’t even sound as if she believed I’d listen to her.

“Jesus,” I said. I leaned against the wall myself, looking at her. There wasn’t much left of the poised, self-reliant beauty who’d done that little striptease act for me to divert my attention (and, I remembered now, to give Walter Corbin time to escape — or to kill me). She looked about thirteen. The small-boned hands and feet that poked out of the black pajamas were like a child’s.

There was another burst of fire again outside. Closer this time. M-16 fire. The dregs of the ARVN were still down there in the streets, and I’d have a hell of a time getting past them by myself, particularly with the built-in gimp those busted ribs had given me. Trying to make it with a girl beside me — and one who’d be instantly pegged as a pro-American (or pro-European) collaborator would be... well, I thought, it might take a little doing.

I could hear voices in the east stairwell. Boots were pounding. They’d spotted what was left of Corbin. A door opened and slammed one flight down. I looked down the hall in the opposite direction. There was another door marked EXIT past Meyer’s room. I sighed. Then I nodded to her. “Come along,” I said.

I went down the first flight on tiptoe. She was still barefoot and I could hardly tell whether she was behind me or not. As we passed the second-story door I paused and listened for a moment to the loud voices. Nobody seemed to be coming our way. There were two guys in the hall, and they were arguing about something. “Hey,” I said to her in a soft whisper, close to her ear, “What are they saying?”

“Oh,” she said. “I... one of them... one of them wants to set the place on fire. The other... he is saying they should search the rooms first... ah, to see if anyone left any valuables behind...”

Great, I thought. In a matter of hours they’d have a hell of a time finding a fence for stolen goods. Everything would belong to Uncle Ho’s boys all of a sudden, and heaven help anybody who had other ideas about the redistribution of wealth. “Come on,” I said and she grabbed my hand in that eager little kid’s grip of hers. I shook her loose, slipping her a reassuring wink; I’d need both hands if any trouble turned up...

Saigon wasn’t a place I knew well — not the way I knew Washington, or Amsterdam, or Rome, or Tel Aviv. This was a quarter I’d never spent much time in before. But I didn’t need to know much: only the way to the Embassy. And that way cut across the grid of streets in an irregular pattern.

“Where are we going, Mr. Carter?” she said. The voice was small, but it was firm again.

“The Embassy,” I said. “If it hasn’t been burned down by t our loyal allies yet. Why? What do you...”

“This way,” she said. “There are a couple of places where we can cut through buildings and save ourselves a block or so along the way. I...” But then she stopped. Her eyes were full of fear again. They focused on something past my right shoulder. I whirled. There was a kid in an ARVN jacket pointing an M-16 at me. My hand twitched once; I wanted to reach for Wilhelmina, but the kid’s face was dark and earnest and his eyes were full of icy glints. He said something I couldn’t make out. His finger was nervously flexing and unflexing on that damned hair trigger.

The girl said something. Loud.

His eyes widened; he turned to aim as she raced across the street. The gunsight went to his eye. His right hand tightened on the grip...

I shot him down without a qualm. The slug caught him in the temple; if he felt anything at all it wasn’t for long. He fell like a rag doll. “Phuong!” I shouted. But she’d stopped, hand over her mouth again, watching me, holding out her hand. We set out down the street again, my ribs hurting like hell no matter how gently I moved. I started to chew her out once when she jerked my arm hard and pulled me suddenly into an alley; then the weapons carrier went past, full of hard-faced teen-agers armed to the teeth and looking for fun, and I gave her hand a grateful squeeze.

The alley, it appeared, was part of her short cut. We set out down it at something like a drunkard’s jog. I kept Wilhelmina out; it was, by now, highly unlikely that anyone we ran into would have our best interests at heart. I didn’t want to answer any questions for anybody. I just wanted to get the hell out of there, in virtually any direction but due north.

The cobbles underfoot were slick and greasy. I tripped and fell full-length, and the pain took my breath away. She helped me up — to my knees, anyhow — and was trying to get me to rise when I spotted it: a big black Rolls-Royce, bearing down on us from the other end of the block.

“Mr. Carter!” she said. “Get up, please!” She pulled harder at my arm. Shooting pains went through my chest I tried to rise, watching the black car gain speed and bear down on me. I was in the middle of the alley. He could hardly miss me. I got up to one knee, gasping; then the knee buckled and I fell forward, landing on my hands. Wilhelmina went flying into a puddle. My head was dizzy; someone was pulling at me, and it hurt worse every time they did it; someone called my name, in a loud clear high-pitched voice. Then I heard a screeching sound and that was it.

I awoke in pitch darkness. I was lying on some sort of improvised mattress on a hard uneven surface. A metal surface, one that shook and vibrated beneath me. A truck? A train? No. An airplane with twin engines — props at that. The floor underneath was — I felt with one hand — metal mesh over metal girders or something. A DC-3. I’d felt that feeling before, a few times, going back a few years. The old bird was still the workhorse of the world’s airlines, and for a lot of good reasons.

I tried to sit up and then remembered what had happened to me. I lay back again, catching my breath, and let it all run through my head again, right up to the car and the alley. Well, I hadn’t been run over, or even hit. And somebody — the people in the car, perhaps? Phuong? — had picked me up and loaded me in this plane going wherever on earth I had no way of knowing.

I shook my head. I hoped it wasn’t north, but even as I entertained the thought I knew that that was the direction we were heading. Hanoi? Haiphong? Who could tell? And don’t ask me how I knew; I just knew.

“Damn it,” I mumbled, and tried to sit up again. It hurt, but not as badly as before. Someone had bandaged me up a bit, and fairly expertly, too. And unless I was totally insensitive to that sort of thing, they’d shot me full of painkiller. I couldn’t feel the painkiller; I could just feel the lack of pain. And I’d had ribs busted before. I knew how bad I ought to be feeling just then.

I took inventory of my personal effects. Wilhelmina was gone. Pierre, my little gas bomb, was still in place, as was Hugo, the pencil-thin stiletto stashed in a chamois case up my sleeve. Good enough, I thought. I’m not going to be helpless when someone comes in. Maybe I could take one or two of them with me.

I was looking aft when the door opened behind me — a quick flash of light, then darkness, only with the distinct feeling that now I wasn’t alone. I eased Hugo into my hand and slipped soundlessly to one side, away from the more or less central position in which I’d been left I couldn’t hear a thing because of the steady roar of those engines. I poised, knife in hand, ready to lunge.

“Mr. Carter,” a voice said.

“Phuong?”

“Yes. Oh, here... I was worried about you...” She slipped down beside me; took one of my hands in hers; felt the knife; shuddered. Then she pressed my hand again.

“Phuong,” I said. “What happened? Where are we going?”

“Oh,” she said. “The car... when it stopped, a man got out. A... a man I had known once. A man high in the government of the... of what we called the Republic of Viet Nam.” Both her hands closed on mine. She crept forward on her knees and nestled her head on my shoulder. I sat down, holding her with one hand, the knife still at the ready in the other. She swallowed hard and went on. “I... we don’t have much time, Mr. Carter. I will leave you no more illusions. I... I had been this man’s mistress. I had... I had left him for Walter. He was still... very much taken with me, I think. I... I am afraid I made him promises — anything, anything — if he would help me... help us... escape. I said you were an important State Department employee... a man who could ease his way once he had... made his way out of the Saigon area and had established his base of operations elsewhere. He...”

“Base of operations?” I said. “I don’t understand. And how am I going to help him?”

“He is going... somewhere... oh, I might as well tell you. He is going north to Hong Kong. There he will arrange for transfer of credit and set himself up. Then, once he is secure in Hong Kong, the next stop is, of course, the United States. Only there can he continue in the line of work he has chosen for himself. Only there can be...”

“Line of work?” I said.

“Oh, God,” she said. I could feel her sigh in despair. “He was one of the largest dealers in Long Pot heroin in the Republic. But no matter. Mr. Carter... Nick... I...” She burrowed her little face into my shoulder again. Patting her cheek with my free hand I could feel her face, wet with tears.

“Go on,” I said. “His name?”

I could feel her fingers dig into my arm again. She didn’t answer at first. Then her voice quivering, she named a name.

I whistled. A man high in the government, she’d said. Well, that hadn’t been any overstatement.

I thought of something. “Hey,” I said. “You said you’d made this guy some promises. What promises?”

Her fingers dug into my arm, harder. She tried to speak once, dissolved into a sob, and tried again. “I... I would... simply be... available.” She sighed, long and deep. “He will need... means... of persuading people in high places, first in Hong Kong, then in the United States if he gets there... means of persuading them that they should do whatever it is that he needs at any given time. He will... he will have need of girls like me...” She stopped there, though, and hung on to me like a barnacle.

This was getting complicated. And I had the feeling that those complications, if I responded to them, would only lead me farther and farther away from whatever goal it was that I was supposed to be pursuing.

One thing I did know. Whatever it was that had caused David Hawk to send me halfway around the world, it wasn’t the heroin traffic. It wasn’t that Hawk, and AXE, weren’t concerned about it. It was just that that wasn’t usually our slice of the pie.

But in the meantime, what was I to do about Phuong? Obviously the main thing, once we’d landed, would be to give her associates the slip. That was okay. I could make my way home from Hong Kong easily enough and perhaps look into the affairs of Mr. Meyer, the import-export man from Nathan Road in Kowloon, while the trail was still relatively warm. Perhaps I’d be able to pick up some sort of lead on the guys who had killed him.

Of course, I’d have to dump her and leave her to whatever sort of bargain she’d made with her old flame. And what bothered me was the fact that whatever bargain she’d made, it had probably saved my life. The gentleman in question wasn’t known for his generosity of spirit, or for his weak stomach. Before he’d moved from military to government status, he’d had a hand in a couple of massacres in the mountains. He wouldn’t have hesitated a moment over putting a bullet in me, passed out in the street. And could I just drop her back into his nasty operation and forget her?

My arm must have tightened around her just then. Just a reaction to what I was thinking. But at my touch she melted into my arms; her hands went around my body, pulled me to her. Then they went to my face and guided it to hers. I felt soft, hungry lips on mine, again and again. The little hands forced me down, pushing gently at my chest just above the bandage. Her hands were busy about her body in the dark and when I reached for her as she knelt there above me, I felt only skin — soft, velvety, exquisitely smooth skin. The beautiful body she’d shown me before, almost in contempt of me, she now wanted me to feel, there in the dark, with the roar of the great engines blotting out everything but the sound of her hoarse breathing, just above my face. Her hands guided mine up that slim, flat little belly of hers, to the delicious softly rounded breasts, tipped with rock-hard little nipples, fully aroused now. She guided my hands across these, pressed them to her hard, then moved my palms up to her neck. She shuddered in some private ecstasy of her own; then she climbed over me and slipped me — ready and willing — inside. Instantly another great shudder went through her body; her back arched; she ground her pelvis into mine; her body convulsed once more; she rode me pressing my not unwilling hands to her body all the while, moaning helplessly. And somehow, busted ribs and all. I found myself getting into the spirit of things. I took over the reins myself. She moaned again in that strange hoarse voice of hers; her body shook uncontrollably.

Outside the wind howled. The big engines roared and spat fire. Far behind us was a world in the last phases of a war decisively lost after thirty years’ bloodshed. I hadn’t any idea what lay ahead, and in the meantime, the present was wonderful.

Chapter Four

“How many of them are there up there?” I asked.

The door had swung open slightly; perhaps she hadn’t slammed it shut hard enough. There was a crack of light coming in from the compartment forward. I was sitting up, faying to struggle to my feet; she sat before me, buttoning up the black blouse. The dim light outlined her face for me, showing off those delicate bones, that almost European nose.

“My... employer,” she said. “The pilot. One other. A sort of bodyguard. Mr. Carter, do you think...?” The fine-boned face turned to me. “But no, no, I couldn’t ask you...”

I let her lead pass for now. “I take it this is an unscheduled flight?” I’d worked the knife back up into its chamois case inside my sleeve. I reached for my wallet and found it still there, much to my surprise, in my coat pocket. Good. They’d have accepted the ID inside, which identified me as Peter Cowles, a staff assistant to the senior senator from a state not far from Washington. That would have jibed nicely with the story she’d given them about me. The senator in question was one of the more loud-mouthed supporters of the war in Vietnam. He’d have been approachable, perhaps through his obliging, and grateful, staff assistant.

“Unscheduled?” she replied. “I... I’m sure it is. He... they had to bribe a lot of people to get permission to take off. Why?”

“Unscheduled takeoff means unscheduled landing,” I said getting to my knees. She gave me a hand up, but even with the help it wasn’t fun standing all the way up. “They’ll have to radio ahead to Hong Kong and try to get an okay on coming in. The terminal at Kai Tak will try to fit them in somewhere — particularly when they find out who he is. Anyhow, the negotiations should keep them busy coming in. And from the sudden change in our altitude I’d say that wasn’t a long way off.”

“What are you... what do you think you will do?” she said. One tiny hand stole into mine.

“Give them the shake,” I said. “Fold my tents and steal silently away. Did you think I’d be setting up in business with the bastard in Cameron Road somewhere? And you are coming, of course. Right?”

“I... oh, no, Mr. Carter.” The hand in mine was moist and shaky. “I... I’ve thought about it. I... I gave my promise. I must...”

“You don’t want to work for a shark like that, do you? Particularly knowing his plans for you?” I felt her hand; no, she didn’t. What was bringing this on? “Hey,” I said, “what’s the matter?”

“Oh, Mr. Carter, you don’t understand. I... I have enemies now. Enemies who knew I was with Walter. Now... now there’ll be no protection from them. None at all. Unless... unless I go with him. No one would dare...”

“The hell they wouldn’t,” I said in a flat voice. “This isn’t going to be Saigon. The big cheese isn’t going to be so big once we’ve landed. There’s the British government to get around, you know. There’s...”

“Mr. Carter.” Both hands gripped mine. “Walter always said that in Hong Kong the power resides in the Jockey Club, Jardine-Matheson, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, and Her Majesty’s Government, in that order. He... he has on deposit over one million pounds sterling in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. He is transporting an almost equal sum in the present flight. One can buy quite a bit of protection with that kind of money.”

I whistled; the sound almost wasn’t there under the still-deafening roar of the big engines. “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Suit yourself. But do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Get up front just before we touch down... and keep the three of them distracted. I’m going to ditch this thing while we’re still on the runway.”

“No! No, you’ll be killed...”

“I don’t think so. Anyhow, I’m not sticking around. If you can keep everybody busy during that last couple of minutes, I’ll just crack that door over there and ease out. I ought to be able to hit and roll and do okay for myself if they’re on a remote enough airstrip and I think with the usual congestion at Kai Tak, and with everybody knowing how easy it is to land a DC-3 on anything from a skateboard to a cow patty, we’ll probably get shunted to something nice and rustic. I’ll take my chances.”

“Goodness.” Both the little hands held mine hard. “Mr. Carter. I suppose... I suppose it wouldn’t do much good to wish that things had gone differently, would it?”

“How?” I said. I stood and checked the side door. “You mean if Walter had killed me back at the Grand-Bretagne? It...”

Her head melted into my shoulder again. I could feel those soft breasts pressing against me, all aroused again under the thin cloth. “Oh, no. No. If only... years before Walter came along... before he came along...” Then she straightened herself up, reached up to kiss me on the chin, and squeezed my arm hard in one little fist. “But no. What is past is past. One must live with the present...” The words trailed off. We were coming down fast, then choking down; the flaps were down; I held her hard for a moment, then she pulled free. “I... I have business up front,” she said. “No, it’s ‘forward,’ isn’t it? Well, never mind. Goodbye, Mr... ah... goodbye, Nick. I will... never forget you...” She rose on tiptoe to kiss me again; then she slipped through the open door and pulled it tight behind her. I looked after her in the dark for a moment; then I sighed and worked the door open. When I did, a blast of cold, foggy air hit me and, just for a moment, I had second thoughts about taking a nosedive out onto that dark ground from a moving ship, even if — as I’d suspected — we’d come down on a landing strip that antedated the invention of the bulldozer; then I bit hard on that imaginary bullet again and stuck my head out of the door once more. When the roar of the engines dropped and the plane slowed to taxi around a 90-degree turn I slipped out; rolled; and narrowly missed getting run over by that pesky third wheel...

I got up with no new broken bones — but I looked like hell and felt worse. This wasn’t Kai Tak; it was up north somewhere, and there’d been a predawn rain so I was covered with mud. That put a crimp in all my brave plans to get working as soon as I got to town, trying to find out what was going on. After taking a nosedive in that sticky goop I’d have to dump virtually everything I owned into the cleaners before I did much of anything. And, on second thought and sober reflection, I decided that would work out just fine; I could use forty winks. I was so damned tired, I thought, that I might even be able to get off to sleep despite the dull ache in the ribs.

As luck would have it the second car I flagged stopped for me, and it turned out to be a licensed cabbie, coming back from dumping a fare way up in the New Territories halfway to Canton. My stolid Oriental chauffeur didn’t so much as bother to waste a glance on me as I settled back on the leather seats, croaked “Peninsula Hotel,” and passed out cold. I slept soundly; I had some favors piled up at the Pen’s front desk, and folks would take care of me there...

It worked even better than I’d expected. Matter of fact, somebody not only hauled me out of the cab, booked me, and lugged me up to an elegant third-floor room, but undressed me, put me in a big double bed, and sent every stitch I’d been wearing out to be cleaned. When I woke up, everything was hanging, impeccably cleaned and pressed, on the door.

I sat up quickly — and then wished I hadn’t. It was a relief to see the harnesses of my three lethal little friends Hugo, Wilhelmina (empty, I saw) and Pierre laid neatly on the bedside table. I took note of another fact: someone had changed the bandage on my ribs.

The Pen thought of everything.

It was already late afternoon. I was famished, but it was too early for Peking Duck at the Princess Garden and too late for lunch anywhere, and without a day’s notice there was no sense in looking forward to beggars’ chicken at the Tien Hong Lau. I sent out for coffee and settled down to the telephone.

I placed the call, put the phone down, and began the wait. The coffee came; I got a cup and a half down before I finished dressing, thinking all the while about what had happened, and, worse, about how I’d go about explaining it all to David Hawk. I could imagine it all pretty easily, but nothing I could imagine was very reassuring.

Yes, sir, you see, Corbin got himself shot by this one-eyed, one-armed guy after he’d wiped the floor up with me. But, in the meantime, somebody had picked him clean. And I went to the last guy who could have seen him alive, and he was dead too. And then I’d explain, nice and cleverly, how I came to be alive and breathing and sitting up on a big bed in a posh hotel in Kowloon without that little roll of film Hawk wanted.

Maybe after that he’d explain what I was in the Far East for, and what was on the film, and who we were chasing this time. Maybe.

I poured another cup of coffee and the phone rang. I put the coffee down and picked up the receiver. It wasn’t Hawk and it wasn’t Washington. It was one of the staff downstairs at the switchboard. “Mr. Carter?”

“Yes?”

“This is most unusual. May I please have that number again?”

I gave it to him. “Why?”

“Well, sir... I thought I might have got it wrong. But that was the number I’d asked for all right.”

“What’s the matter?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any such number.”

“You mean it’s been disconnected? Or that it’s, uh, ‘no longer in service,’ as they say?”

“No, sir. There doesn’t seem to be any such exchange in the District. Neither there nor in the Maryland or Virginia suburbs served by the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company.”

“No such exchange? But... but I’ve called the number a hundred times. I’ve talked on that line. I...”

“I was sure you knew your business, sir. That’s why it all seems so extraordinary. Shall I make an inquiry?”

I thought about that. “Uh... no, thanks. I’ll send a cable later, perhaps. Can I dial outside directly for a local call?”

“No, sir. You may call for me. Operator Two.”

“Thanks.” I hung up. Then I sat there on the bed, thinking. The wire was Hawk’s semi-covert line. He’d answer... oh, this month is was “Westinghouse. Repair Department.” Then you could say anything you pleased to him on it, so long as it sounded like a repairman calling in, or perhaps a salesman or parts jobber. You’d be surprised at how much of your message you could get across if you both knew in advance more or less what you’d be talking about on that line. Of course there’d always be the other direct line. You could say anything you chose on that one. But you couldn’t call on that one from anywhere outside the continental United States. It was on a very special scrambler, and only the Bell System was equipped to handle it.

I called downstairs again and gave Operator Two a number. “It should take another couple of minutes to get through again, right? Okay. I’ll be making one brief local call in the meantime. I’ll keep the wire open after that. Okay?”

“Splendid, sir. May I have the local number?”

I had the Hong Kong book open and had a finger on it. I gave it to him. I didn’t have long to wait this time.

“Hermann Meyer,” the voice said. “Import-Export.”

I sat up fast. It’d been just a wild idea, and I hadn’t expected to find anyone home. “Uh... Mr. Meyer, please.” There was a pause at the other end. The accent had been British public school, but the speaker definitely had English for a second language, not a first “Who shall I say is calling, please?”

“Mr. Cowles. He’ll remember me, I’m sure,” I lied. “We met last year in San Francisco, on the ferry to Oakland.”

There was another pause, then another voice came on: “Ah, Mr. Cowles. Hermann Meyer. What can I do for you, please?”

I blundered onward: “I... well, sir, I remembered the fine time we had in San Francisco, and how you said to look you up the next time business brought me to Hong Kong...”

“Certainly, certainly. Where are you staying? I can have a car sent over for you.”

No thanks, I thought. “I’m staying at the Gloucester, on the Island, but I’ll be out for the rest of the day. I was wondering if we might get together tomorrow sometime.”

“Splendid. I’ll send my chauffeur in the morning. No, I won’t take no for an answer. We’ll have a holiday of it. I’ll show you the town, as you might say.”

“Fine. I’ll look forward to that.”

“Splendid, Mr. Cowles. Shall we say ten? Time for elevenses, perhaps, at my place?”

“Okay. Fine.”

“See you then.” He hung up.

I looked at the wall.

Well, first off, there wasn’t any Hermann Meyer. Hermann Meyer was dead many miles to the south in Saigon. And if he’d been alive he’d have spoken with a German accent, not with this old-school-tie British accent with something oddly out of place in the middle of it. Then, too, there wasn’t any Mr. Cowles for anyone to remember, and he hadn’t met anybody named Hermann Meyer — neither the real one nor the phony one — on any ferry from Frisco to Oakland last year, because the ferry had been discontinued fifteen years before. Interesting, I thought. I’d have to pay Mr. Meyer a call, but not at any morning tea at his place. Any call I’d pay on him in the near future would be done in the wee hours, with a jimmy in one hand and Hugo up one sleeve. Damn, I thought suddenly; I’d have to see about digging up a replacement for Wilhelmina...

The phone rang again.

I picked it up. “Carter here.”

“Mr. Carter?” It was Operator Two again, and his voice registered perplexity once again in that subdued British way of his. “I... this seems not to be our day, sir.”

“Why?”

“Well, sir, the second number is an answering service number, sir, as you said. But the name of the client seems to have changed.”

“The client? You mean the reference for the service?”

“Yes, sir. It seems no longer to be Westinghouse Repair Department, as you thought. And this is odd. It’s still a refrigerator repair service, it appears. But the name of the company has changed.”

“Changed to what?”

“Maytag. Shall I keep trying, sir?”

“No,” I said. “Thank you. That’ll be all.” I hung up, and my hand was shaking. There wasn’t any mistaking what had happened.

AXE had had its cover blown. Hawk had flown the coop and he’d covered his tracks. The message he’d left me — in German — was as clear as if he’d left it in English.

Maytag — with the original German pronunciation was the international distress signal, and Hawk had chosen this way of tipping all the AXE agents off whenever they called in for progress reports, and further instructions. I whistled, long and low, and the words formed silently on my lips:

Mayday! Mayday!

Chapter Five

Okay, Carter, I told myself, it’s time to get your stuff together.

The first impulse was to grab the phone again and book a flight back to D.C. as fast as I could manage it. This didn’t stand up under sober reflection, though. I did have unfinished business, and if I came home empty-handed, and without having given it the old college try, it wouldn’t matter if Hawk had been evicted, desk and typewriter and all, right into the middle of Connecticut Avenue. When I pulled up he’d still be sitting there behind the desk, munching on one of those phosgene cigars of his, and the minute I came within earshot he’d start letting me have it.

And he’d be so right.

The work, right now, seemed to be here, whatever it turned out to be. I could always drop in at the Embassy and slip a discreet query back to the States in the diplomatic bag. Or something like that.

In the meantime, there was the matter of Hermann Meyer — two of him, in fact: one of them dead, one of them alive. And there was a better than even chance that the killing of the one back in Saigon had something to do with the roll of film I’d been sent out to get. After all, Phuong had told me that Meyer’s apartment was to have been Corbin’s last stop on the way to her place. Corbin could very well have slipped the film to Meyer before coming downstairs. And the people who killed him could very well have taken it from him then.

They could, as a matter of fact, still have it. It could be sitting up at Meyer’s office right now, in the tender care of the men who’d killed him. I had no illusions, after all, about who had answered the phone. The only other people with a good reason to answer for Meyer and lie to the callers would be the Hong Kong cops. And those hadn’t been Hong Kong cops. The accent had been all wrong. What remains of the British Empire still operates by the old rules and the wrong, unfashionable accent can still keep you out of the good civil service jobs anywhere. And, considering the average wage in Hong Kong, you’d have to call the detective squad a fairly cushy civil-service appointment. I wouldn’t be strolling into Meyer’s office during business hours with a smile on my face, and I wouldn’t be visiting at any time, night or day, without some nice lethal iron under my arm.

And, most decisively of all, I wouldn’t be keeping that date for eleven o’clock tea.

Having made up my mind, the smart thing to do was to see about getting a replacement for Wilhelmina. Thinking about it made me furious at myself for having lost the old girl — 9mm Lugers with all the original parts intact are hard to find on short notice.

My call didn’t take long to be answered “Fredericks here.”

“Fred? Nick Carter. I’m here minus an old friend. Wouldn’t happen to have any spare hardware around, would you?”

“Nice special this week, sir, on 16-inch naval guns. With every purchase you get a French 75, no obligation whatsoever.”

Fred and I had a couple of jobs together years back. He was a funny guy, a wit, sometimes rather ridiculous, but there when you needed him.

“Capital, dear fellow,” I said, “but getting one of them into my shoulder holster is sure to be bad for my bursitis.”

“Quite, sir. One 9mm Luger coming up. Pen?”

“Room three-oh-five.”

“Bully.”

“Smashing.”

“Toodle-oo?”

“Rather.”

He rang off. The British sense of humor either is, or isn’t, vastly underrated but say something nasty about Fred, and you’d have me to answer to.

Downstairs in the coffee shop I checked out the papers, trying to get some perspective on the past days’ events by reading the same stories, one right after the other, in the British-oriented South China Morning Post and the pro-American Hongkong Standard. After a half hour of global crisis I was happy to switch over to the funnies: the Standard is big on American comics.

When I returned to my room there was a quite serviceable-looking Luger sitting on the bed with a big red ribbon around it and two spare clips sitting beside it. The card just said “73’s” — radio-shack jabber for “Love and Kisses.” I picked up the rod and hefted it. It was nice, but it wasn’t mine. I shoved it into the shoulder holster; it fit like a fist in the eye, as the expression goes. Good old Fred: he didn’t mess around.

There just doesn’t seem to be a thing you can do for busted ribs. You can truss the person up and ask him not to go to gymnastics class, perhaps, and you can give him a little medication now and then and a lot of encouragement. But the fact remains that even your common garden-variety green stick fracture has a lot going against it. Every time you breathe deeply, you’re moving bone surfaces which ought to be fixed firmly in place, and you’re putting off your chances of having the fractures knit just a little bit longer.

Keeping this in mind, I decided to keep the athletics of the planned break-in down to the bare minimum. If possible, I’d dig into my rich assortment of keys — the ones my understanding tailor sews into my coat at the right places, and which make my suits hang so well — and simply pick the lock.

That’s what I was telling myself all the way up Nathan Road on my way to case the joint. I’d just stroll past the door and take a look at it, and then perhaps I’d stroll back around the rear fire escape and see what could be seen from there, and then when night fell, perhaps, I’d...

I was still thinking about all this, and not about much else, when, coming up the stairs, I just missed bumping into the phony Hermann Meyer face to face.

It wasn’t the only surprise the afternoon had in store for me.

The main staircase at 68–72 Nathan Road led up a narrow well, with every landing walled off by frosted glass, the kind they rarely put in office buildings any more. The frosting is translucent and borders on the transparent; if somebody’s standing next to the glass on the opposite side, you can make out how big he is, and what color suit he’s wearing, but you can’t see any facial details.

Not that I needed them. Even with the nondescript, every-day-Continental-tourist suit he had on I knew who he was even before I reached the landing. The door was slightly open; he held it that way with one hand on the handle, and he was talking to someone I couldn’t see, and the voice would have given him away all by itself. It had an odd quality about it which I’d be hard put to describe: a nasal thing, and a certain lack of depth. I could even recognize it speaking German:

“...Est is etwas besonderes. Ja, meinherr, ich glaube, ich glaube. Also... morgen um neun Uhr? Ja? sehr gut, sehr gut. Wiedersehen...”

The accent wasn’t that of a native speaker of German. It was being used as a sort of business lingua franca, and by an expert and practiced polyglot. But it was very definitely a second language.

The hand tightened on the door, prepared to swing it wide. I scurried up a few more steps, stopping above his landing at a blind spot, hoping for a few more words. But that apparently, was all; his guest was shooed out into the stairwell below me, and “Meyer” shut the glass door behind him. Curious, I stuck my head out into the stairwell again, hoping for a glimpse of his caller.

Then I looked again.

Then, while he was still on the stairs, I scuttled up to the next floor, burst through the glass door, and ran to the window that overlooked the street. If it was who I thought...

And damned if it wasn’t. The more I thought about the matter, the more I was coming to think I’d fallen into a streak of good luck, not bad, back in Saigon. I didn’t know just what it was that I’d stumbled into, but it was getting more interesting with every hour.

The visitor who’d been to see Meyer picked up his bodyguard (how could I have missed him? I must have walked right past him) at the door and walked halfway down the block. As he did, a big grey Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud moved smoothly up beside the pair of them and let them in.

The bodyguard was a thick-set, round-faced Oriental who gave the instant impression of great physical strength. I’d never seen him before.

The guy he’d been guarding was also somebody I’d never seen before — but there was no mistaking that erect military bearing, that spiky little mustache, that very un-Oriental bullet head atop that spindly Indo-Chinese frame. I’d seen him on television enough to recognize him in a moment. I also owed him for a plane ride, and he owed me a 9mm Luger automatic of great sentimental value. He was little Phuong’s “protector,” and I would have given a lot just then to know what he was doing in that building, talking with people he had no business knowing — or did he? I promised myself, right then, to come up with a lot of the answers before I left town.

“Meyer” finally left at a quarter after five. I took as few chances as possible, waiting to see him appear in the street below and then set out at a brisk pace down Nathan Road before I slipped down and opened that frosted door. Even then I took a leisurely stroll down the hall and back, satisfying myself that nobody had remained behind in the adjoining offices, before I zeroed in on the door of the late Mr. Meyer.

As it turned out, it didn’t take a key. It was one of those locks that account for most of the rip-offs in America. I forced it with a credit card, stuck through the jamb and maneuvered up behind the bolt — one of those diagonal-cross-section things. I took one look to the right and left of me, and then slipped inside.

The light in there was dim. I picked my pocket flash out and ran it around the room. There wouldn’t be much left out in the open, I was sure. I sat down first at a secretary’s desk, then at what appeared to be Meyer’s, and rifled the both of them before coming to the conclusion that somebody had done a remarkably efficient job of cleaning up before me. Then I got up and headed for the file cabinet in the corner.

Okay. There you have me, frozen forever in a nice candid shot: both hands on the filing cabinet, the drawer half open and a legal-size file halfway out and open for my inspection. Only my head is turned back toward the door behind me, and there’s a stupid, and justifiably annoyed, expression on my face as all the lights go on and “Mr. Meyer” — I’d have known him in the densest crowd by now — steps through the door with a big, nasty-looking .357 Webley in one hand and gives me this microscopic smile:

“Oh,” he says. “Cheerio. It’ll be Mr... ah... Cowles, I think? A few hours early for our appointment? Splendid. Hands high, please. Atop the cabinet. There. Splendid. Yes. Yes, I’ll take that, please: nasty thing. German. None too accurate either, I’ll wager. Well, Mr. Cowles, I’m in luck. I’d so looked forward to showing you the Island, and here it appears I’ll be able to do so a day early. Now I won’t take no for an answer. You will be my guest. There’s a good fellow. My chauffeur’s just downstairs, waiting to take us to the ferry...”

Chapter Six

Rudyard Kipling once wrote of the Orient that the dawn comes up like thunder there. Well, I’ve watched the sun rise all over the Far East and actually, it’s the other way around. It’s the moon that comes up like thunder in Hong Kong, particularly down by the tip of the Kowloon Peninsula, in the elegant shopping area that radiates out from Nathan Road. One minute it’s afternoon, the next it’s night, and when the lights of the city start winking on, one by one, you can sometimes get to wondering what you ever needed sunlight for. As long as you stay on the main arteries, that is.

I could see it all out the window as “Meyer” got on the phone again, the gun still in his hand. He spoke in rapid idiomatic French to a flunky on the other end, then in German to the flunky’s boss — and I had a good guess who that might be. I was just thinking about the best way to jump him and go for his gun when the other guy came in. He took over with the gun-waving then, pulling a big deadly .44 Magnum out of his belt and waving me over to a chair in the middle of the room.

I sighed, settled down, favoring the ribs, and gave the two of them the once-over.

The guy on the phone was medium-sized, running perhaps ten pounds lighter than my own 180 pounds, and built with an athlete’s big chest and good wind. The face was vaguely Mediterranean: French-Algerian, perhaps? Greek-Egyptian? The polyglot communities of the urban Levant are so genetically mixed that the generalizations don’t come easy. The eyes, strangely, were blue: icy blue. The face didn’t run to strong expressions either way. There was a tiny scar under one eye; otherwise the face, like the hands, was well kept and well preserved. I can’t describe his ears for you because nobody’s ever worked up a precise lingo for describing them — but I could draw them, with ninety percent accuracy, and I could pick him out of a lineup on ears alone. People in my racket don’t make IDs on faces. Anyone can change a face. Things like ears, though, or the bone structure of hands are the best giveaways. Ask any cop.

The other bird was bigger and tougher and might have been the first man’s brother. The eyes were just as blue, the hair just as straight and brown — but the shoulders were a full inch or so wider, and the upper arms filled his coat sleeves all the way out, and I hoped that I would never have to tackle him. One bear hug from those knotted arms on my already busted ribs would make a sound like a garbage truck running over a Tinkertoy set, and it wouldn’t make me feel very good either. No: sock him and run... or, perhaps, give Hugo some exercise...

He finally hung up. Something fishy was going on, he’d been saying, and he wanted to get to the bottom of it all. I sighed.

“Well,” he said, holstering the Webley inside his jacket — tailored, I noticed now, to hold the big gun — and turning to me. “Time for our... ah, travelogue, Mr. Cowles. You will be so kind?” He motioned me up.

I got up with a groan. The chest didn’t hurt until I moved, but then it didn’t much matter what direction. “Fine. Where are we going?”

“Wanchai first, I think. We have an appointment there — ah, yes, I see you were following the telephone conversation — at somewhere between six and six-thirty. Someone who claims he knows you. I’m sure the two of you will have... well, something or other to talk about.”

“I’m sure we will,” I said. I kept my eyes on his face, trying to find some sort of national — perhaps ethnic — handle to grab him by. “That’s funny,” I said at last, pausing at the door and looking back at him again.

“Yes?”

“I was going to say, That’s funny; you don’t look Jewish.”

I watched his face for a reaction. And I got one, all right. Nothing fancy. A momentary twitch of one eyebrow. The mouth didn’t move at all. But I knew I had him pegged. I think that the only people in the world who don’t understand Jewish humor are the Israelis, who find it boring and irrelevant.

That wasn’t the main thing I’d noticed, though. The thing that had tipped me had jumped out and called for my attention when I was making my little ear-and-hand inspection and trying to draw mental pictures of the two that I’d be able to reproduce later when I had pencil, paper, and half an hour to spare.

The tattoo wasn’t a big one, and it was in a place where it was easy to hide; the webbing between thumb and forefinger, where merely half-closing the hand would cover it altogether. But it showed — on both of them — when they pointed guns at me, and I’d remembered it.

It was a tiny, but quite distinct, Star of David.

The big one drove; the other — “Meyer” — sat in the back of the black Jag with me, the Webley once again pointed at my ribs. The route was one of the more scenic ones, around the tip of the peninsula to Canton Road and up past the Kowloon wharves and godowns and the big Ocean Terminal to the Jordan Road car ferry. On the way, we passed the old railroad terminal, where a man, if he had the dough, the time, the visas, and the brass, could book passage all the way to Europe via the Kowloon-Canton Railway, the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and connecting lines. The view of the Island was gorgeous as usual, even from a few feet above sea level.

I was beginning to dislike this business of playing things according to the other guy’s scenario. This way, he’d wind up finding out pretty much what he wanted to know about me — and, unless I changed tacks, I wouldn’t be finding out anything about him at all. I checked my watch, nice and ostentatiously. “Hey,” I said. “The ferry’s behind schedule. You’re going to be late for your appointment with the General.”

He looked at his own wrist, frowned, and said, “That’s odd. I wonder what...” Then it dawned on him, and he did a delayed take and turned those icy eyes on me, the cold glare in them visible in the boat lights out the window. “What General?” he said. His mouth was an expressionless slit. He had the kind of face where no-expression-at-all is a bad expression and means trouble coming up — lots of it.

“Why, the one who just flew out of Saigon with another nice big deposit for his bank account at the Hongkong and Shanghai,” I said. “The one you met with this afternoon in the office of the late Mr. Meyer. Surely you know the guy: he’s little, and he has this funny bullet head and little Clark Gable mustache. He runs around in a chauffeured Rolls Silver Cloud, and he sells Long Pot heroin, and he dabbles in a few other business ventures—” here I took a breath and started really winging it — “one of which is about to end in the conclusion of a satisfactory agreement between your... associates... and his organization.”

It sure sounded nice coming out that way, I had to admit to myself. I also had to admit that I hardly had the foggiest notion of what I was talking about.

He studied me silently as the other guy drove the car onto the ferry. When we stopped, the boat was rocking gently under us; the straits were feeling the evening tide. “Most interesting,” he said. “You speak, for instance, of me as though I were dead.”

“No,” I said. “I speak of Meyer as though he were dead. Somebody — and I do wish we could drop the guessing games — bumped him off in Saigon. And left an interesting calling card. Precisely why you’re impersonating him remains to be seen. Does the General know about the impersonation? Or are you playing games with him the way you’re playing games with me? Because if you’re crossing him and he finds out about it, I wouldn’t want to be you. Remember the tiger cages? That was what the little guy and his friends used to use for trustees. You wouldn’t want to see what they did to the real hardcases.”

“More and more interesting,” he said. “Well, all in good time. You will learn a little more about me, I will learn a little more about you. And then, perhaps, we will conclude our little tour.”

“Yeah,” I said. “With a little walk off a pier down Aberdeen way. I hear the fish are hungry around here. That’s why there aren’t any seagulls in Hong Kong. The fish don’t leave anything for them to eat.” I was just volleying, keeping the ball in the air. One thing I knew, and that was that before he bumped me off he wanted to find out what the General knew about me. That was okay with me; I wanted to know what the General knew about me too. After she’d made her little decision, back in the plane, I wasn’t sure which side Phuong was on. Her own, most likely. I didn’t envy her that insecure life of hers.

I sighed, thinking about that. If you got to thinking of it that way, you had to admit that the one guy she hadn’t seen fit to trust — well, for more than a couple of blocks’ flight through Saigon, anyhow — was me. It didn’t exactly make me feel like the Rock of Gibraltar. I sighed again and sat back in the big leather seat, enjoying the view.

These guys traveled first class. Whatever else they may have been, they were professionals — although at what trade remained to be seen. This wasn’t any maiden trip out onto the thoroughly risky waters of international dirty deeds of whatever kind. No. These boys had been everywhere and done everything in their racket twice and had been bored both times. Everything was going so smoothly, as a matter of fact, that I was tempted — just once — to stick my head out the car window and screech like a hoot-owl, just to see what they’d do. I would have bet they’d had a contingency plan to cover that, too. What’s more, I would have bet they’d already used it at least once.

The real thing that stopped me from doing that — or anything comparably far-out — was mainly curiosity. I wanted to find out everything I could about this can of worms I’d opened by mistake back in Saigon. I had a feeling I’d blundered into something very, very big — and something that was only partly related to the mission I’d been sent out on.

Whatever that was.

Moreover, I was still hanging tenaciously to the proposition that had kept me alive all these years, despite odds that were guaranteed to short out your pocket calculator: that I could do all those other things and still come out alive, regardless of who they sent in there against me. And when you come down to it, maybe one of the prerequisites for the job is the ability to hold an opinion like that, regardless of the odds, and make it come true.

That was one of the things that tended to tell me these two guys were in pretty much the same racket as I was. They knew that and they were using it. They knew I wouldn’t holler until we’d had our little confrontation, and they were so confident of this that “Meyer” even put away the Webley and relaxed back against the seat as the ferry pulled into the slip with a series of frontal and lateral bumps and the driver started the engine of the Jag again.

At that point, I almost jumped him. But he knew I wouldn’t. He laced his fingers over one knee and looked at me with an expression I’d have called wooden in anyone else, but which passed, in his limited vocabulary of expressions, for a mocking smile. “Patience, Mr. Cowles,” he said in that peculiar accent of his. He really was a most amazing linguist. I get by around the world, but I have to work at it. This guy probably picked up languages the way you’d catch a cold. The accent had been serviceable in the three languages I’d heard him speak so far — and I hadn’t heard him speak Hebrew yet. “Patience,” he said again. “We’re almost there.”

The car ferry drops you off on Hong Kong Island in the middle of the old Wanchai quarter, the part the maps call Victoria Central District. You’re at the foot of Connaught Road Central; you turn past the fire brigade’s HQ, you wind through a few narrow streets where the doubledecker trams don’t go, where the only signs not in Chinese are the odd Gulf Oil signs, where it gets harder and harder with every passing block to get a straight answer out of anybody unless your Cantonese is fluent and your currency available for dispensation. It’s not far off the main track, but it’s a different world. Kowloon is full of gaudy massage parlors and bars and whorehouses of one kind or another, but they’re strictly tourist stuff. The Oriental businessman in Hong Kong for a weekend heads for the Island, where the action is just as rough (and sometimes twice as kinky) and much more discreet. Fredericks told me you could still hire an old-fashioned Shanghai flowerboat down by Causeway Bay, with a modest curtain between you and the pilot, and dally your way past all the floating teahouses and musicians’ rafts to your decadent heart’s content. Moonlight on the Bay, the soft chunk of paddles, the sibilant lap of the waves on the side of your sampan... well, Fred was a romantic, under that oaken British exterior.

Unfortunately, Wanchai can also be a tough part of town particularly if you’re not among friends. And I wasn’t. It wasn’t any scented sampan we were heading for; the Jag pulled into a big, drab warehouse on one of the more poorly lit side-streets.

I’d been hoping for a breather, but I was disappointed. The big Silver Cloud was there inside the double door, waiting for us. The heavy-set Oriental I’d seen before saw us through, then moved to shut the big doors behind us. This left the warehouse in the dim light cast by a single overhead bulb hanging above, and slightly to one side of, the Rolls. Our driver pulled the Jag smoothly up to a point just outside the circle of light the bulb cast on the concrete floor.

“Splendid,” my seatmate said. “Mr. Cowles? End of the line, I think. You’ll get out now, there’s a good fellow.”

I eased my way out, loosening Hugo in his scabbard as I did. Any ideas I might have had of bolting just then were forestalled when the driver, gun in hand, stepped up just in time to hand me out.

I was standing there, blinking in the half-light, when the Oriental silently moved forward to open the door of the Rolls. The passenger, still in shadow, hesitated; then he climbed slowly out, just as I became aware of “Meyer” coming up behind me.

It was time, I decided, for a little brass. After all, nothing else I’d tried had worked half as well so far. I waited and let him take my face in; I watched the eyes narrow in recognition, the mouth purse slightly, the hands tense up on the swagger stick he carried even in mufti.

“Hello, General,” I said. “You’re absolutely right. I’m not Cowles. There isn’t any Cowles.”

“Go on,” he said. I heard an angry intake of breath behind me, and the Webley dug hard into my kidney.

“But that’s okay,” I said. “Welcome to the tea party. We’re all phonies here. I’m a phony. Probably you’re a phony; I’ll lay a hundred bucks you’re not registered here under your real name and your bank account says James Bond.”

“Shut up,” the voice behind me said. The gun dug harder into my back.

“Let him talk,” the quiet voice of the little man said.

“Thank you,” I said. “Anyhow, the biggest phony of all is ‘Meyer’ here.” My hand went to my pocket, but that didn’t alter the position of the gun in my back. They’d searched me, hadn’t they? “He isn’t Meyer, you know. Meyer’s dead, back in Saigon. These birds killed him and cleaned out his desk. Now they’re here impersonating...”

The gun barrel went up, then down. I ducked, just in time. It caught me a nice hard one on the neck — a wallop that would have brained me if I’d stood still. Then I came out of the half-crouch, pulled my hand out bearing Pierre and, giving “Meyer” a shove, heaved Pierre into the air, aiming at that naked light-bulb. Then I dived for the shadows as two shots rang out in the echoing warehouse. I missed the bulb; one of the wild shots “Meyer” got off must have hit it by mistake. The light went out. I hit and rolled. Pierre went off, nearly silently as usual, and there was a lot of coughing and cursing going on between the cars. The .44 Magnum squeezed a round off in my approximate direction, sounding for a moment like one of those French 75’s Fred had been talking about. I rose to hands and knees, puffing, and struggled up, into a bent-over shuffle, heading for what I fervently hoped would turn out to be a far wall. My shoes made just enough sound to tell me by their echo that I still had quite a way to go.

Then their voices stopped me dead.

“Meyer”: Let him go. That’s a blank wall. Spread out and we’ve got him...

The General: No, no, never mind. I will fetch him myself...

“Meyer”: But...

The General (raising his voice): Mr. Cowles. (Sotto voce again.) Bring the girl. (Louder again.) Mr. Cowles, we have the girl. I’m sure you wouldn’t want us to hurt the girl, now, would you?

Phuong’s voice: No! No, Nick! Stay away! They’ll kill you! They... No! Please! Don’t...

Her voice broke; faltered; then rose in a shrill scream of unbearable pain.

Chapter Seven

“Mr. Cowles?” the General said again. “Mr. Cowles? Or is it perhaps Mr. Carter?”

I didn’t answer. The only allies I had in that room were silence and the almost total darkness. I circled quietly to my right. If I could pick off the big Oriental first...

“Carter?” said “Meyer”. “Who is this Carter?”

“Shimon,” his partner said. “Let’s go. Let’s...”

“One might as well ask,” the General’s calm voice was saying, “who is this Meyer? Well, we shall get to that later. Meanwhile, the man you have brought here — the man about whom you telephoned — I had been curious to meet him again. It appears the girl has, under pressure, been quite talkative, within her limitations. It appears he is an American agent named Nick Carter. For some reason I seem to have heard of the name somewhere, I can’t think why. Alas, my dossiers are long since burned. He...”

“Shimon, I don’t like this.”

“One moment, Zvy... it seems there is more here than meets the eye. American agent? Carter? How did he...”

Phuong was silent now; I could hear nothing of her at all.

I could hear something else, though: the Oriental was near, and it appeared he’d been well trained. I almost didn’t pick up the tiny scuffing sound of his slippers — soft kung fu shoes, all but soundless on the concrete. I slipped Hugo into my fist, underhand, and moved forward more slowly in a crouch. The ribs ached like hell from that dive and roll.

The General was saying: “Carter, it appears, blundered into the middle of your operation — and mine as well, it seems. More yours than mine so far, though. It seems you are not Meyer: the girl was telling the truth. No matter.”

“But I... I assure you...”

“No matter, I say.” The tone was decisive, final. “The point is that Carter was seeking the item the agent Corbin — the girl’s lover — had just sold to Meyer. It now appears that you, or members of your organization — no, I think you yourself, on second thought — killed Meyer and took the item. This Carter seems to have learned; how, I could not say. At any rate, it has led him to us here...”

“Shimon, please...”

“No; now quiet, please. You say — but how much does he know?”

“Not much,” the General said quietly. “Not much, I think. But enough. Which is of course too much. Here; if you will not turn on your car lights I will be forced to go back and turn on mine...”

“No... no. Zvy? Please? He has the advantage of us in the dark, I think. Confound it, will you, please...”

That meant I had a matter of seconds to get back behind the two cars, out of range of the lights. In the dark I’d do okay, most likely; in the light I’d be just another target. I widened the arc in which I was moving — and ran right into him.

He had something cold and sharp in one hand — something as long and as deadly as Hugo, but with more bulk. I had immediate occasion to find out about the sharp edge. It caught in my sleeve and slashed it all the way to the elbow before withdrawing.

What saved me was his silence. If he’d been trained in karate he’d likely have bellowed at me. That would have gotten the lights turned our way and somebody could have picked me off nice and easy.

I felt the blade — whatever it was — swish past my face. I didn’t bother ducking; by the time I could do so, it had already gone by. Besides, I’m a born counterpuncher. I lunged forward with Hugo and felt him land hard on bone in the middle of the man’s chest. I’d kept him fairly loose in my fist; the wallop didn’t jar my wrist. I gave with the blow and then slashed downward, slicing through the stomach muscles to a point I supposed must be just above the navel.

I could hear his quick intake of breath. It was the only sound he made.

Swiftly, I shoved Hugo upward again, under the ribs. That razor-sharp blade went right into the tough heart muscle; it was like shoving a butcher knife into a slab of raw beef kidney. His body sort of melted down before me. Still with that ghastly silence, making no sound to mark his death, except the silvery ping of his hand weapon, tinkling on the concrete at my feet.

I stooped over, favoring my ribs and picked it up. It was some sort of trident affair, with a handle for grasping, and it’d come in at about fourteen inches and maybe a pound and a half. The blade was flat and as sharp as Hugo’s. I stuck it in my belt and bent over the dead man. Luck: he was packing iron, a short-barrel .38 — poor on accuracy, but I wouldn’t be doing any test-match shooting. I had to get close enough to do something about Phuong, and I made up my mind that I wasn’t leaving there until I’d settled that little matter.

Suddenly the Jag’s lights went on. Almost immediately afterward, the Rolls followed suit. I was very glad I’d backed away behind them. The lights were pointing off where I’d started, when I’d first given them the slip. I moved back, back into the darkness...

The Jag’s engine roared to life. I could hear “Meyer” talking: “Stay by the car. Zvy and I will circle in the Jaguar. Our lights will pick him out. Stay down. He may...”

“Stop” the General said. Zvy, at the wheel, braked. The lights lay full on the dead body of the Oriental, sprawled in a dark puddle; he’d shed a surprising amount of blood from those surface wounds before the heart stopped pumping. “That’s Tamura. I...” The General stepped into view. It was his first mistake, and very nearly his last. I took a nice crouched-over two-handed bead on him with the .38 and shot him twice in the body.

I saw both bullets hit; he was close enough to his own car lights for that. The first slug caught him in the shoulder and spun him all the way around; that shoulder joint would never be much good for anything again. He was tough, though, and stayed on his feet long enough for me to gut-shoot him. My second shot blew him to his knees; from there he crumpled slowly to the ground.

“Zvy!” the bogus Mr. Meyer said. “Now!”

The Jag made for me as I ran, bent over, holding my ribs, for the big Rolls. He’d have gotten me, too, if it hadn’t been for the oil slick he hit in the middle of the big warehouse. It spun his wheels; he hit a skid. By the time Zvy had regained control I’d dived into place behind the big fender of the Silver Cloud. As they went past, I pumped two shots into their side windows. I didn’t think I’d hit anyone.

There was a small sound beside me. The General, in mortal pain, was trying to say something. I bent over... and let Shimon have time to get the big doors open and let the Jag out of the warehouse. They sped away, tires screeching.

“I... oh, my God... I...” the General was saying. I looked at the car. There was no sign of life there. Phuong? I hesitated; then I got my head closer to the dying man’s lips.

“Carter, I... I’m sorry about... the girl... her heart...”

“She’s dead?” I said. A black rage ran through me; I mastered it only barely in time. “General,” I said again. “What was your business with those guys? What was it you were going to sell them?”

“I... it was arms. Hijacked... shipload... arms. Didn’t get to Vietnam... arranged transfer...” I could see his face clearly in the dim light by the side of the car.

“What arms?” I said. “American arms? For Vietnam? What? Where are they now?”

“Look... trunk... Carter,” he said. Big beads of sweat were coming out on his forehead. “I... Oh, God...”

“Trunk. The trunk of the car? Okay. But who are these guys? What are they doing here? What...?”

But he was off in his own world by now. I bent over closer. The General spoke English for politics and German for business, at least when he thought he was talking to Hermann Meyer. He was an old-fashioned Westernized Vietnamese right down the line, though, and he spoke French to God. What I was hearing, ever fainter with every word, was a last confession.

I got up and went over to the car. Phuong lay across the back seat, her face bearing a new, peaceful look I’d never seen on it before. I stood for a moment trying to sort out my thoughts; then I turned back to the General. His face was still now, but it wasn’t peaceful. I bent down again, and rifled his pockets. Wallet; ID; credit cards; pocket pieces. I shoved all of it in my coat pocket and checked his own shoulder holster, wondering why he hadn’t pulled his gun and then I stopped wondering or giving a damn. I was too glad to see Wilhelmina back again. I shoved her in her own holster and went back to the car.

I went through all the pockets and compartments, pocketing absolutely everything that could possibly be of any interest. Then I pulled out the keys — they were still in the ignition — and went back and checked the trunk. Even if I hadn’t known what I was looking for I think I’d have recognized the crate. Nevertheless, in the interest of thoroughness, I grabbed a tire iron and jimmied it open.

It was full of brand-new never-fired M-14s, packed in gooey cosmoline.

I stood up and thought about things for a moment, chewing my lip, cursing my aching ribs. Then I dragged both bodies back to the car and dumped them on the floor in back, at Phuong’s silver-slippered feet. I looked at her again, not without a certain pang, but it wasn’t any time for sentimentality. And she wasn’t the schoolkid on her way to the prom that she appeared to be in her pretty new outfit and expensive hairdo. She was a grown girl who’d gotten in over her head, playing with a bunch of desperate thugs. And she’d made herself a bad bargain...

No use. I couldn’t get it out of my head that she had probably saved my life, back in that alley in Saigon, with her phony story about my helping to fix the General’s return to the United States.

That’s the trouble with debts. You never do get to pay them back. Not really...

I drove the Rolls slowly out the door, looking both ways. There wasn’t much traffic in the area and I slipped down the side street to where it met Queens Road Central. This time I really looked both ways. If I ran into a cop here I’d have some explaining to do. After all, I hadn’t even reported in at Customs, entering the colony.

Satisfied for the moment, I turned the car out onto the main drag, still doing perhaps fifteen. I choked it down even further and put it on the hand throttle. Then I set the wheel straight ahead, opened the door, and slipped out into the street, slamming the door behind me. The car putt-putted slowly down the wide road, headed smack-dab for the Government Offices. I watched it go for a moment, wondering if it’d have been nicer to wrap a red ribbon around it before letting it go...

And that was that. I made it to the Star Ferry just in time to miss the boat, so I wandered over to the Queen’s Pier and worked up a deal to share a wallah-wallah over to Kowloon with a bunch of camera-bearing Japanese tourists. I walked back to the Pen.

When I finally sat down in my own room, I almost cut my leg open. I’d forgotten about that lethal instrument the Oriental had pulled on me back in the warehouse. I pulled it out of my belt as I sat down, giving it a long hard look. I’d never seen anything quite like it before.

Then I got out of my ruined coat, called downstairs, and had a man pick it up and take it to the hotel tailor. Another call brought a bottle of thirty-dollar, hundred-proof scotch and a couple of glasses.

I had two highly salutary, pain-killing snorts. Then, taking as deep a sigh as the ribs allowed, I placed another local call, asked for an extension almost nobody below Cabinet level knew about, and waited.

“Typewriter repair,” the nasal voice on the other end said.

“The hell it is,” I said. “You wouldn’t know an IBM from an ICBM on the best day of your life. Hello, Basil, this is Nick Carter. I’m in town for a couple of days and I thought I’d call in and make everything okay between me and the Department.”

“Oh,” Basil Morse said. “What have you done now?”

“Me? Well, let’s see. In no particular order, I... ah... came in sort of sub rosa. Got myself shanghaied in the middle of some sort of assignment back in Saigon. I...”

“Oh, God. Don’t tell me about it.”

“I won’t. None of your business anyhow. May even be none of my business now, for all I know. I’m not quite sure about my employment status. I...”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“You wouldn’t tell me more.”

“Later, perhaps. Right now you’re frozen in service, frozen in grade, frozen in your retirement-pay level. There is some popular support for finishing the job...”

“Now, now.” Close as Basil ever comes to a joke... “but wherever you go we find bodies — always have. You’re a problem, Nicholas. You were telling me, though. Keeping in mind that this line isn’t secure.”

“Okay. I came here on one job and seem to have stumbled on another. About an hour ago — no, make that two — I bumped off a certain South Vietnamese ex-general who seems to have been moving his heroin business to Hong Kong. I left him in his car, moving slowly but purposefully down Queens Road, over in Victoria.”

“Ah, yes. We just got a call from our man in the police station. The car ran into a police vehicle at the foot of Ice House Street, causing something of a flap. We might have known it was you. Go on.”

“The rest... well, you’d better come over here. I went through his pockets. I have all his junk spread out on the bed right now. I have a few other leads, too. Maybe you’ll want to have a look at it and tell me just what sort of mess I’ve wandered into.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I were to bring a whole shipload of hijacked American guns, virgin stuff still stinking of cosmoline, into the Colony, now, where would I hide it?”

“Say that again.”

I did, with flourishes.

“That explains... there was something our informant couldn’t talk about. Yes, yes. That’d be... Look, Carter. Don’t you move so much as a muscle. I’ll be there three minutes ago. Don’t do anything to attract attention. Just sit tight. Don’t let anyone in.”

I started to say something, but he’d already hung up.

Chapter Eight

So I waited.

Basil Morse wasn’t exactly my type of guy: a little too much Eastern private school and Ivy League accent and most of the attitudes that come with that kind of upbringing. But I was determined to give Basil the time of day when he arrived, no matter how mad he made me. I’d even offer him a drink, if he’d take it. I’d put up with his patronizing attitude — after all, he probably couldn’t help it — and I’d try not to needle him. Well, not too much, anyhow. There are things I can’t help, either.

He wasn’t quite as good as his word. It took him thirty-two minutes to get there, and he must have really poured on the steam. Imperturbable Basil Morse, a splendid physical specimen who put in an hour of handball every morning and an hour of tennis every evening and hadn’t gained an ounce in years, was actually puffing when he came in the door, and there were beads of sweat dripping down that long patrician nose.

“Hello, Basil,” I said. “Sit down. Scotch?”

“Where’s the material?” he said. “Oh, I see.” He headed for the bed, all business. He sat down and started picking through the General’s papers. Then he spotted the funny Oriental weapon on the bedside table. “Where did you get this?” he said. He didn’t touch it.

“Took it off his bodyguard after I’d slit his gullet. What the hell is it? I’ve never seen one before.”

“It’s a weapon of Okinawan origin called the sai. You don’t see much of them down here. Sort of replacement-species version of the Chinese butterfly knife, and I suppose it’s making a comeback the same way. You’d better hope you don’t run into one of those. This was mainly developed as a self-defense weapon at a period when the Okinawan warlords prohibited the ownership of swords or spears. You could also use it as a kind of small plow. Most of the weapons used in Okinawan karate were made to look like harmless farm implements. The kama, for instance, was shaped like a sickle. You can imagine how it was used.”

He picked it up. “This is a little more lethal than most. It’s the fashion to blunt the point these days, and to do away with the sharp blade. This is the weapon of a grand master of the art. They won’t even sell you one for practice unless you’re a brown belt.” He looked up at me, a bland noncommittal look in his eyes. “Oh, by the way. Tamura — the man you killed carrying this thing — was fifth dan black belt. He was also a renegade in the art, a professional assassin. My compliments.” He wasn’t saying it in any complimentary fashion. That was Basil. But I could read a new respect behind his words. He knew better than to sell me short, either.

He looked back at the pile on the bed now. “Damn,” he said at last. “This isn’t much of a haul. Of course we’re going through his rooms and well be having a look at that H. and S. bank account, too. There may be some leads there. Not much here, though.”

“Hey,” I said, pouring myself another stiff one and sitting down carefully. “Maybe you might tell me what this is all about?” He stared at me, the corners of his mouth turned delicately downward. “All right,” I said. “I understand. Your turf. Me first.” I gave it to him in capsule form, not leaving out very much. There were a couple of little facts I did withhold, matters of unfinished business I wanted to deal with before I left Hong Kong. At the end I said, “That’s it. I’m still in the dark on most of it. I know a few whats and whens and no whys and wherefores at all. Your turn.”

He rolled the General’s effects up in an oilskin pouch and stuffed it in his coat pocket. As he did, something dropped out of the pile and fluttered to the floor. I didn’t call it to his attention. “Well,” he said. “It is something rather big — the part we know about, anyhow. You see, the South Vietnamese Government claims that President Nixon sold them out, that he’d promised a shipload of arms and then failed to deliver at a crucial time in the last days of the defense of Saigon.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I heard about that.”

“Well, the official version we give out on that is that the vessel never left port — that it was held up by an order from Congress. This will have been what you read in the papers. Well, we know better than to believe what we read in the papers. The vessel went to sea, but it never got to Saigon. Until just now we didn’t have the faintest clue as to what happened to it. Now it appears the matter was fixed as far back as the Port of San Francisco. On the basis of what you’ve been telling me, the ship’s registry and papers must have been changed en route, and the ship itself diverted to a new destination, all at the behest of our friend the General. We’d guessed some of this, but had no evidence to support what was only a wild theory until now. Now we know the port to which it was diverted was very likely Hong Kong, and we know that the cargo has been unloaded and the ship sent on its merry way. Obviously the case of rifles came from the shipment. Precisely which warehouse contains it now, in a city full of warehouses, is the problematic matter of the moment.”

“It wasn’t the warehouse they took me to,” I said. “It was empty.” I thought about that over a sip of scotch. “Besides, the General wouldn’t meet them at the site. He’d pick neutral ground for making the deal. He was just bringing samples. He’d be afraid of being ripped off.”

“Precisely,” Basil said and stood up. His shoe rested on the vagrant piece of paper. I hoped, somehow, that it wouldn’t stick to his sole. “Another factor: who are these mysterious Israelis? Frankly, we have no idea. They seem to be some sort of link between your original mission — whatever it was — and the matter of the ship.”

“Hey,” I said, sitting up. “That reminds me. What do you know about AXE? What the hell’s happening back there? Where’s Hawk?”

“Mum’s the word on most of it,” he said. His face was cold and distant-looking. “All I know is that all agents are on frozen status as of now. You’re to report in to... ah, to ‘us,’ as it were” — his fingers made quotation marks around the word — “and, ah, make yourselves available as you are needed.”

I scowled up at him. “And do you need me? I gather I’m not really wanted back in Washington right now? Do I detect that delicate little wisp of a nuance? Ah, good. If I’m not wanted in D.C., I want to see what I can find out about this business. The Israelis are still at large, for one thing.”

He chewed on his overhanging upper lip. “Mmmm... yes, perhaps. Perhaps...”

“There’s not much I can do about the General’s end of this matter that you guys can’t do better in the clear. But, working under cover, I might be able to find out something about this other group. I think I’ll muck about in that area and see what turns up.”

“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, I think that might be best after all, in spite of everything.” Thanks, I thought. Thanks loads. “One does hate a lot of wild cards in the deck. These new factors make things a little messier than one might wish. We don’t know, for instance, that the Israelis don’t have a lead on the new wherabouts of the shipment. We can assume that, but we don’t know for sure. You could find out for us?” Just like that, moving me about like a damned pawn. Well, I’d fool the hell out of him.

That was that, though: he’d dismissed me, and was heading for the door. The one afterthought he allowed me was to turn and remind me to call in daily.

I scowled. “Oh, by the way,” I said. “If you’re going anywhere over water, you might drop this in.” I handed him a not very neat, fairly heavy package wrapped in a hanky. “And it wouldn’t do to go waving it about on the way there.”

He gave me a cold glare. “What’s this? I...”

“The murder weapon,” I said. “The one I shot the General with.”

After he’d gone I finished my scotch and sat there thinking for a few minutes. My reverie was interrupted by the hotel boy’s arrival with my mended coat; I tipped him a dollar, U.S. — somehow I’d never gotten around to changing money yet — and let him out again. As I turned back to the room I spotted the little piece of paper Basil had missed. Cursing the bad ribs, I bent down and picked it up.

When you carry a letter around in your pocket for a long time, folded in three the way letters are, the paper tends to fray along the fold, then, as time wears on, to break off. This was the bottom third of a very short letter. Basil presumably had the top of it, and that part would tell him what the letter said. It wouldn’t — or could, once I thought about it; the expensive deckle-edged stock might be monogrammed or even embossed at the top — tell him who the writer was. Basil Morse had his half, I had mine. I wished I could see his half right now. Mine told me damn little:

...l’honneur, mon general, de visiter chez moi.

Bien sincierement,

KOMAPOB

That was all. And “Komapob?” No. The signature had to be in Russian, even if the letter had been in French. Even now, if a Russian studies a foreign language and it’s not English, it’s likely to be French — tradition. “Komaroff,” then. But who was Komaroff? The name didn’t ring any bells at all. Perhaps — just perhaps — the General had been playing a little game with the Russians. Selling the arms to the highest bidder, toying with the notion of dumping the arms shipment on the Soviets so they could, in turn, “loan” the lot to one of their ever more strange bedfellows around the world for a revolution, or a palace coup.

And if he had been, who would Komaroff — apparently his contact in the matter — be? I gave the mental file a quick check, then a slower one. At neither time did I come up with any reference to anybody named Komaroff, at any level I knew about — and that would be pretty high level. KGB, the Party hierarchy, the whole list of “diplomatic” phonies operating out of the embassies and consulates — everywhere in my mental file that I looked, I drew the same blank.

I poured myself another painkiller and settled back into the seat, favoring the rib cage. Russians, Russians... my mind started free-associating all by itself. Who did I know in the Far East that was Russian? Who would the General know? Who would...

Who would Meyer know?

Of course.

I dug out my wallet and pulled out the homey little photo the late Mr. Meyer had been so fond of. And there she was: gorgeously dressed in a platinum wig and a flawless full-length mink coat, her wide-set, almond-shaped eyes looking up at the photographer through long lashes in a pose so sexy, so seductive, that... well, it made me begin to think interesting thoughts. Erotic thoughts. I blinked, came to, and gave her the once-over again, this time for purely informational purposes, trying to fix the face so that I’d be sure to recognize it.

The mouth was a trifle too wide and a little too full-lipped for absolute perfection, whatever that is. The cheeks had a Tartar broadness that seems to be out of style in some quarters. Not in mine. For my dough she was a lot of woman.

To Hermann with love, the delicate writing on the back of the picture had said. Tatiana...

Okay, so I had a face and a name. There are enough White Russians — daughters, granddaughters, and even great-granddaughters of the original Civil War exiles — left in the Far East for the name to be less of a novelty than it might be in Dubuque. But girls with that name and that face?

I got on the phone again.

“Fredericks here.”

“It’s Hong Kong’s favorite import.”

“What can I do for you, Nick?”

“I need some dope on a broad. The girl is White Russian, and she’s got a blonde wig on in this photo I have. The eyes are set nice and wide and they have this lozenge shape about them, with a little tilt at the corners. Maybe some Oriental blood. On her it looks terrific. The cheekbones are wide — Slavic influence — and the mouth is nice and full...”

“And her name is Tatiana?”

“How’d you... oh, yeah. I sort of thought she’d be hard to hide in a town like this.”

“Oh, she does precious little hiding, chum. Rather the other way round. What do you want with her?”

“Well, I want to see her...”

“Few things could possibly be more easily arranged. Go on.”

“And I want to talk with her...”

“And so do we all. Even myself, in my modest way.” Straight-faced stuff. Hah. Fred wasn’t the most successful plover in the British foreign service, perhaps — just the best below Cabinet rank or so. “That’s not so easily arranged. To put it bluntly, old man, His Excellency himself has been attempting to get into the lady’s boudoir for the better part of a year, with deplorable results, I might add. And the object of this... conversation?”

“Work, not play. She may have information that I need.”

“Oh, Nick! You can get information from the bloody museum, chum. Have you no sense of the proprieties? Have you no sense of masculine honor? Have you no...”

“Where do I find her?”

“Oh, let’s see. It’s after nine. Give a call down to the Baghdad, in Kowloon. Nice little walk from where you are. You’d be just in time to catch the last show, I think, if you can get reservations. Pity I can’t make it: His Excellency has entree, and we could sort of sneak in on the old boy’s coattails. Better cash in a few war bonds, Nick. It’s steep there.”

“She’s in a floor show? In a night club?”

“Just call the number, Nicholas.” Fred’s voice sounded I tired and disgusted.

Chapter Nine

It must have been an off night. There was one table left unreserved when I called in. The haughty maitre d’ accepted a bill that a large Hong Kong family could live on for a month. In short, the seat I ended up with was not the one he’d had in mind for me, and some other poor devil wound up sitting behind a column.

That must have been the only bad seat in the house, though. The Baghdad was one of those rather large night clubs that managed, in spite of its size, to maintain an intimate sort of atmosphere. Don’t ask me how they do it; if I knew I’d chuck my present racket and go to work putting architects out of business. The old Show Boat, back in Washington, used to be that kind of joint back in the early sixties. It didn’t matter how many people they packed in there, Charlie Byrd was still sitting right there in your lap playing funky-butt guitar, and the fact made the club world-famous. There’s got to be a secret to it somehow.

I’d started off on scotch that evening saw no reason to change my poison. The maitre d’ and I were good friends by now, though, and he was gracious enough to do me a little favor after my drink had been delivered. He slipped an envelope to the star of the show before she went on. A large bill wrapped around the envelope helped. Then I settled back into the most comfortable position my ribs would allow me and looked around at the crowd.

It was a money sort of place. So much so that I found myself wondering why it was operating in Hong Kong, where the night life runs on the stuffy side as Far Eastern places go. It’d have fit nicely in a weirdo town like Macao, where high-priced mistresses of executives can drop six-figure sums — and that’s in American dollars — at the gaming tables without causing even a minor stir. You can name your own example of extreme conduct and Vegas is the minor leagues beside it But Hong Kong?

Anyhow, the place was, as Fredericks used to put it, Port Out, Starboard Home: Posh. Lush. Expertly art-directed in every detail, with even the lighting — the one place where your average club begins to look cheesy between shows — totally controlled. Soft spots of color here and there. A feeling of space between the tables even when you knew that the place was packed. A feeling of hush when you knew the place was loud. And, from the look of the crowd — old British power, new Chinese money, and lots and lots of both — it was paying off nicely.

I was just thinking of another scotch when I saw her.

She was standing in front of my table, dressed in a floor-length cape that hid absolutely everything but that face. I’d have known her in a moment. The face was not something you’d forget easily, even if it’d changed expressions from the somewhat theatrical smile on the face in the picture to the chill immobility of the delicate mask before me. No, I’ve got that wrong. The face was cold. The eyes were brown, long-lashed, and almond-shaped, and they weren’t cold at all. They were puzzled, vulnerable, hurt...

“Mr. Carter?” The voice was low and musical.

“Yes,” I said. I got up. She stopped me along the way with one lovely tanned hand, sat me back down again gently. There was electricity in that touch. “I...”

“No,” she said. “Please. I have to go on in a moment. The picture. Where did you get it?” Looking down, I could see her two hands now, peeping out of the robe. They held the envelope in which I’d stuffed the photo of her and Meyer and my message: Please. I have to see you about this. Nick Carter.

“Can we talk afterwards?” I said.

“Now.” There was an agitation in those slim fingers that her face failed to betray. “I... I have to know.”

“Ah,” I said. “I think you know the news I have for you. You know it from the fact that I’m here, with the picture. You do, don’t you?” I looked hard into those eyes. They filmed over for a second, then she regained control.

“Y-yes,” she said. “I think I do. Hermann would not have parted with that picture while he was alive.”

“We understand each other,” I said. “I have to talk to you. You may be in grave danger.”

“Yes,” she said. The hands were white-knuckled under their tan. “I... Mr. Carter, I am thinking Can I trust him? Can I...” The eyes bored into mine again. “I mean... you may be one of them...”

“If I am I’m in worse trouble than you seem to be. I killed two of them this evening. That is, if we’re talking about the same people.” Thank God for the funny acoustics, I was thinking. It wouldn’t do to broadcast this conversation. “What’s the matter?” I went on. I touched the back of one of her hands and got that same electric shock again. “Are they after you, too? Have they found out about you, too?”

“I... Mr. Carter, I’m being followed. Someone was behind my cab, all the way here. I’m frightened.”

“Let me do something about that, please.”

“I... oh, if only...” Her hand gripped mine inside the dark sleeve. “Please. Can I trust you?”

I gripped her hand. She’d changed the position of her hand, though, and my grip came down on her in a funny sort of way. It was a kind of variant of the so-called “soul” handshake American blacks borrowed from the Africans. I don’t know why I did it. I hadn’t done that in years.

To my surprise her eyes widened; her mouth opened; her left hand flew to the cape over her heart, pressing it down against her, nicely outlining for me a majestically rounded pair of soft breasts beneath the dark cloth.

And she returned my funny handshake.

And she smiled. And the smile was so much worth waiting for that I wondered what I had done to trigger it. And the soft voice said, “Good, good — now I know. Mr. Carter. Please come to my dressing room immediately after the performance. Please. And thank you, thank you so much.”

She pulled away. I tried to rise again; but she pushed me back gently with that lovely hand. The hand brushed softly against my cheek as she bent low to whisper to me: “Enjoy the show...”

And then she was gone.

The show began by stages. It gave me plenty of time to be confused... and to wonder what the devil she’d meant. “Now I know.” Know what? And from a silly in-joke handshake?

The music came up little by little. And little by little, quiet as the music was, the low murmur of the audience quieted down to let it through. Somehow, the attention of the crowd came, despite all the odds, to focus itself on the strange and unique ambience of the place. Relax and enjoy it, I told myself. I stopped thinking and settled into it.

It was a recording. Of whom I had no idea. And the lights slowly went down, so slowly somebody must have rigged up a mechanical dimmer: no human hand could turn a handle that slowly, that gradually. Dim light... dimmer... a ghostly dusk... darkness...

The bass note went into a crescendo. Not slowly. Quickly. It became deafening. You could barely hear the other sound above it. It approached the pain threshold; throbbed... and then went silent.

It echoed in my head. I’d thought I was relaxed, enjoying things. Now I found my hand gripping the edge of the table like a vise. And, ribs or no, I sat up nice and straight, like everyone else in the place.

The next sound was a single, long, wavering line of music by a single finger picking it out on a synthesizer keyboard. Only in addition to the sound it made there was the bright, cold, laserlike beam of blue light, cutting across the stage. A second line joined it; the Moog had multiple manuals, then. This time a beam of reddish light cut across the stage from another angle, pulsing as the music pulsed, following the vagrant line of the tune its maker played. A third — blinding white, with an icy and compassionless tune to match — joined the two, again from a new angle. I wondered where the lights were coming from...

Then came the real blast of percussion.

The Moog synthesizer can do nearly every sound in the orchestra — except the vibrato of the string section. It can also duplicate anything the rock and roll band can do. And when the lightning-like flashes of pure white light started socking through the rapier-like thrusts of the three colored lights, the decibel count of the synthesizer’s pedal keyboard jacked the odds up, up, and out of sight. The manuals rose to meet it. The room pulsed with an unholy loudness of sound. And the space on the little stage pulsed with it — red, white, blue, and blinding flashes of white. The darkness in between was as violent as the flashes of light had been.

Into this maelstrom of light stepped Tatiana.

She was nude as Eve. More so: her long-limbed, flawless body was totally hairless. The wig was gone; all that remained was a tight cap of short hair, trimmed to just below the ears in a kind of cloche cut. It called attention to the piquant lovliness of her face, as the stark nudity called attention to the unblemished perfection of her golden-tanned body.

Her dance — if you could call it that — was as still and quiet as the music was loud and visceral. Her movements were as measured as the flashes and stabs of light were jagged and unsettling. The effect was to make her naked body as impersonal and sexless as a baby’s — and as compulsively and grossly sexual as that of an animal in heat.

Details? Her body was perfect, that’s all I could say. One only notices a woman’s good points when she has bad ones to compare them with. When she’s perfect, nothing sticks out. The whole woman becomes the part you look at and hunger for. And I hungered. My throat was dry; I was having trouble swallowing. I sat, leaned forward, watching the slow and infinitely sensuous posturing of that bare and beautiful form as it lent its alien silence and peacefulness to the wild abandon of the lights and music to produce a third effect that took off at right angles to the other two.

Then sudden silence. Complete. Deafening.

And sudden darkness. So unwelcome that the former light seemed to hang in the air afterward, unwilling to be extinguished, the way the echoes of the music continued to sound in the total silence.

The lights came up slowly on an empty stage. I shook my head — I wasn’t the only one there doing so — and looked at my watch. When I did, I got a shock: the show had run for thirty minutes. Where had the time gone?

I’d ordered another scotch which had been held up by the club’s rules: no drinks served during the show. I got it now and watched my hand as I drank. It didn’t shake, but I wouldn’t have felt bad if it had. The maitre d’ came in view; I motioned him over.

“You had heard,” I said, “that Mlle. Tatiana had been followed on the way to work today.”

“Yes,” he said. His face was sober and expressionless. “I thought it best to put a guard on her dressing room. He will be expecting you, as the lady will be expecting you. I have, ah, attended to things.”

“Fine,” I said. I can tell when I’m being hustled for a tip. I shook hands with him, planting a bill in his palm in the process. Then I drained the scotch and followed his pointing finger backstage.

The bodyguard was Chinese, and he looked formidable: thick and stocky, with forearms the size of legs of lamb. He knew my face, though, and gave me a microscopic Oriental bow as he stepped aside. I knocked once. The voice, still low and lovely, said, “Come in.”

She was in the black robe again, buttoned up to the neck; as she sat on the low chair before her dressing mirror, only her slim hands and bare feet were visible. Her smile was friendly and appreciative.

“I did what you said,” I croaked out of a suddenly dry throat. “I enjoyed the show.” Brilliant repartee.

“I’m glad,” she said simply, motioning me to sit down. “One does what one has to, to stay alive. Which is, well, why I asked you to come back afterward, Mr. Carter.” The smile looked a little weary. “I make quite a good living here, but I have nothing saved. I have responsibilities. It could all go smash, you understand. I will try to explain as I go along.”

“You mean about the shadow? The guy who was following you?”

“Ah, Mr. Carter. It is not one man. It is several. At first I thought it was one of the Oriental youth gangs. But they are mature men, Mr. Carter. And terrifyingly armed. I...”

“Pardon me,” I said. “Did you say Oriental?”

“Why, yes. Should I have said otherwise?”

“No, no. I just thought... but no. Go on. You tell me.”

“The same men were after Hermann, before he took that last trip to Saigon. I knew something dreadful would happen to him. I knew it. I begged him to get out of the business. I asked him to...”

“Whoa, please. What business? Just for the record. I have to know if your information is the same as mine.”

“You know. Arms. Smuggling arms.”

“Smuggling?”

“Oh, perhaps that’s not the proper word. Hermann was more or less on the up and up. Hermann made, let us say, legitimate deals on arms, buying cheap here and selling dear there and the smuggling was all done here, on the way to Hermann, and there, on the way away from Hermann.”

“But something was going wrong.”

“Yes. There are always people who resent the middle man, and his taking his cut. And I think perhaps it may have been one of these who began having him followed here in Hong Kong as early as a couple of weeks ago.”

“The Orientals?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I don’t think it was Orientals who killed him. I found his body only moments afterward. All the evidence I found points to his having been killed by Middle Easterners.”

Her band went to that gorgeous throat. “Mid... oh, God. Them.”

“Them? You know something about this?”

“Yes. He’d had some disturbing calls...”

“If I’m to help, perhaps I should know. You and Meyer were—”

“Lovers? Ah, Mr. Carter. If dear Hermann had wanted that — if he had been capable of that — I would have given him what he wanted gladly. But he had lost a daughter my age, in the war, and sometimes what a man needs most dearly is not sex, but...”

“I understand. I was being indelicate, I’m afraid.”

“No, no. I understand the need. And I appreciate your trying to help me. You are so kind. I can’t say how much I appreciate this. Really.”

“I had to know. It would tell me, among other things, how much I could expect you to know of his affairs.”

“That may have been rather a lot or it may have been table-scraps of negligible importance. I have no way of knowing. I think Hermann may have been caught, as the Spaniards say, between the hammer and the anvil. He may have, how do you say it...”

“Got in over his head?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s what I think, too. I think he had the idea of competing with some people it doesn’t pay to compete with, and in the course of playing both ends against the middle...”

“Yes,” she said. The tone was hollow, full of memories.

“Look,” I said, “I’ll take you home. Where do you live?”

“Oh, would you? Please? Because I think — no, I know — they’re still out there. And I’ve been so frightened...”

“Out there?” I stood up. There was a window beside her dressing table; I went over to it and pulled the curtains open a crack. The street below was full of cars. “Which car are they in?”

But I didn’t have to ask. Before she told me I knew. It was a black Mercedes, anonymous-looking and powerful — and packed full of tough Oriental faces. Resting. Waiting.

Chapter Ten

“Maybe,” I said, closing the drapes, “I’d better find out where it is I’m taking you.”

She stepped behind a screen; I could see only her face as she changed. She didn’t answer at first; her eyes were on my face.

“Oh, by the way,” I said. “If you have flat shoes here — and some slacks — those might be best.”

“Yes,” she said. I waited. I don’t know what I expected her to say — some cushy address three quarters of the way up Victoria Peak, perhaps, with a grand panoramic view of the Bay — but whatever it was, it wasn’t anything like what she said next. “Yaumati,” she said. “I live in the Typhoon Shelter. On a boat. But I have to stop somewhere first. In the Temple Street Market.”

“But it’ll surely be closed now.”

“Yes. But my friend will still be open. For me.” She must have read the disappointment on my face. Friend? “For you, too. Oh, yes. I’m sure of it.”

“You know,” I said, checking Wilhelmina in her holster, and the spare clips for her in my pocket “I was expecting something quite different. From a Tanka dwelling, I mean.”

“Yes. Well, Mr. Carter, many men boast of enjoying my... my favors, as they say, who have never spent so much as an hour alone with me. I remain my own person. No one, mind you, no one has ever been to my home before. No one who left this place with me, I mean. I...” She sighed. “I live a very private life. I have my own interests. This pays the bills. And they are considerable. You will see.”

“But Hermann Meyer—”

“Dear Hermann took me places. He would meet me at very public locations — the bar of the Peninsula Hotel, or one of the parks — and he would take me places. If I would have consented to have any man see me home, it might have been Hermann. But now...” She did not go on. Her hands went to her throat now, buttoning up something chaste and high-necked. She stepped forth in a simple cheongsam, as svelte and sexy as the Dragon Lady — and as unapproachable to the uninvited as Mme. Onassis. Her smile was warm and welcoming, though. “Now, Mr. Carter, I am convinced at last that I may be in great danger. I am glad to accept your offer of help. I trust you. It is as simple as that.”

And, as simple as that, she stepped up and kissed me.

Very straightforwardly. Without any frills. Without any faked passion. It was more like the kind of kiss — quick, matter-of-fact, and pointed — that a wife gives her man when she tells him to bring home some candles and incense and she’ll have some steaks on the fire and a bottle of something sexy chilling in the fridge. It was brief and incredibly stimulating. It told me that she was taking for granted the fact that we’d be lovers before morning.

“Okay,” I said. “Do you have your own wheels?”

“No, I...”

“Okay.” I picked up the phone and called a cab. The dispatcher was peeved at getting a fare to the area north of Jordan Road; obviously he wanted some nice little short fares Inside Tsim Sha Tsui — the kind that gobble up the sightseer’s dough on the strength of that first-mile bite. We were waiting at the front door when the cab pulled up. I loaded her in in a hurry and we pulled off down the street. As we did, the black Mercedes pulled away from the curb behind us and kept the pace with us; unhurriedly, too. Why force any issues until we were ready to get out?

Our path cut down to Salisbury Road on the waterfront and turned up Canton Road, past the Ocean Terminal. The Mercedes stayed with us, neither gaining nor falling behind.

“Can you run in a cheongsam? The necessity may present itself.”

Her hand went to my arm: electricity again. What the devil was it about her? “I had that in mind, Mr. Carter. I was a prizewinning athlete in my teens.” And where was that? I was thinking. “They won’t try anything until we are well inside the market, I believe. It is poorly patrolled at night. The address we are going to is three blocks above Jordan Road. Once there, I think we will be relatively safe.”

I wasn’t so sure. Maybe she knew something I didn’t, but those toughs behind us looked like people who meant business. The cab turned at Jordan Road; I told him to pull up at Shanghai Street. “But you said Temple Street,” the driver said.

I slipped him a bill: too much. “We’re going shopping for a porcelain tea service,” I said. “Now could you do me a favor and flip around right here? And tie up that black Mercedes just long enough to delay letting them park?”

“I...”

“There’s another bill in it.” I flashed it.

“Okay.” He picked them up in the rear-view mirror, just turning into Jordan Road. He did a speed turn in the street and began to drive like a drunken idiot down the middle of the road, weaving crazily.

I didn’t think it’d pay to wait and watch. “Come on,” I said, grabbing her hand. We ducked up Shanghai Street, double-timing, and didn’t slow down until we’d reached the first cross street; then we cut over to Temple and the deserted bazaar.

We stopped there, out of any view they could have of us. “Now what?” I said. “You said three blocks down.”

“Yes,” she said. “You see? Far up the street? A dim light on the left-hand side?”

“Yeah. Come on.”

That should have been enough lead for us. By all rights, the problems they’d run into with our enterprising cabbie should have stalled them just enough to let us fake them out, switching streets like that. Maybe it wasn’t our night. I was just about to congratulate myself on getting home free when Tatiana gripped my arm, hard, and pointed up ahead. “Mr. Carter! They’ve cut us off!”

So they had. And as I whirled and looked behind us, there were the rest of them. The car had dumped three of them at the first alley then pulled up ahead of us where the rest had hopped out. We were surrounded.

Worse, they were armed — and grotesquely so.

Matter of fact, I’d never seen such a weird assortment of weapons. Of the three ahead of me, one bore a sharp-pointed spear, around six feet long, another a razor-edged three-foot machete, the third a six-foot trident with a spread of perhaps two feet. As I rotated my head around, I could see the other group was identically outfitted.

“Hey,” I said in a low voice. “Tatiana. Back against the wall, out of the line of fire.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m not going to play fair, for one thing.” The three up ahead were farther away; I decided to deal with the closest first. I turned back toward Jordan Road, pulled Wilhelmina, and squeezed off three shots rapid-fire.

Two of them went home: the first caught the guy with the trident in the middle of the chest and blew him back three or four steps before he fell, his shirt nearly black with his own dark blood. The second caught the man with the spear in the left eye. It vanished in a red smear; the back of his head erupted, blowing giblety brains halfway down the street. The spear clattered on the pavement.

The third...

Wilhelmina jammed,

Faithful Wilhelmina, who rarely fails me, now failed to fire. Too late I remembered: I hadn’t cleaned her since I’d taken her back from the General. They stopped making new Lugers before World War Two; sensitive weapons get old and cranky; they have to be cleaned often and reassembled with care. My old friend hadn’t been.

The guy with the machete was upon me.

Behind me I heard Tatiana’s shrill scream. And footsteps. And a man’s sudden, violent bellow of rage: the kind of bellow a karate champ sometimes uses as a kind of weapon in itself. And the clash of metal against metal.

I didn’t have time to look around.

The machete sliced through the air past my head; if it’d caught me even a glancing blow it would have killed me easily.

I made a quick motion with my right arm; Hugo, my pencil-thin stiletto, was in one hand the moment I did it. And I danced quickly out into the middle of the street, hoping no one was behind me waiting to strike.

It wouldn’t do, I knew, to parry with Hugo. Not against those three feet of razor-sharp steel. The only chance I had was to make him lunge, and miss, and let me slice his wrist open. Then, with the tendons cut through and his arm disabled for life, I could slip in and gut him the way I’d gutted Tamura.

Behind me were the sounds of battle. What was going on? I didn’t dare look around. The trouble with my strategy was that this guy was a master with that sword. His swings didn’t expose him to danger. His recoveries were lightning swift. And that martial-arts stance of his — bowlegged, low-slung — offered me nothing to chop at closer than his ankle. Fat chance: the moment I dipped down to slice at his leg he’d behead me with that weed-cutter of his.

His next attack brought the sword down in an overhand slicing action that would have halved me at the part in my hair if it’d hit me. Quick as lightning, it turned into a lateral slash that missed my nose by inches.

I continued to circle, hoping against hope that I could draw him away from her (hoping that she was still alive back there). As I did, he attacked again. His next move came fast and furious as usual — but it had a hole in it somewhere. Don’t ask me where; I didn’t have time to think it out. I just let the adrenalin take over.

His two-handed slash was on the diagonal, sixty degrees from the ground. It wasn’t at me. It was at my feint. And it was right on target for where I’d have been if I hadn’t been faking it.

As it was, I just plain wasn’t there. And the backswing nearly tore his arm off. As he tried to regain control I put Hugo up just under his jaw and sliced, forward and down.

Hugo is like a straight razor on both edges. The cut he made was narrow, but deep. In the dim light I could see the pink vein sticking out of his neck, spurting blood. He dropped the sword; he put his hands to his neck; he fell to his knees, quivering and whimpering helplessly.

I turned to the scene behind me.

Tatiana stood with her back to the wall. Her eyes were not on me. They were on an incredible scene in the middle of the street.

One of the attackers lay dead in the gutter. His guts were out in the street in front of him, and the pavement was slippery with his blood.

That wasn’t what she was looking at.

In the center of the street the man with the trident and the man with the spear had, boxed between them, a little old white-haired man — a Caucasian, and in his sixties at least — armed only with a curious pair of knives. These he held, blades pointing to the sky, to his fore and aft, in a posture of two-way defense; I could see them clearly in the dim light. They were single-edged and massive, like Bowies, only bigger — a foot in length, perhaps two and a half inches wide at the blade. The handles were fitted with knuckle-guards in front, curious up-jutting hooks in the rear.

The old man was smiling serenely, as if the deadly game he was playing were no more lethal than chess. He was inviting their attack.

In a moment I saw why.

The man with the spear lunged forward.

The old man, for a second ignoring the man behind him, moved — not backward, but forward. The twin hooks engaged the thick spear-handle, diverted it from his body, slid swiftly up the wooden shaft. At the handle — the attacker was still lunging forward, confident of skewering the old man on that first rush — the forward knife disengaged from the spear’s wooden base. Its blade ran softly across the attacker’s neck, slicing through the same vein I’d hit on his machete-wielding partner.

The attacker dropped.

At that moment the second spearman — the man with the big, deadly-looking trident — attacked from the old man’s rear.

The old man’s head didn’t even turn. He caught the trident on his rear knife, turned it to the ground, and only then, with a single piercing cry, whirled to swing the lethal blade in his other hand in a wide arc.

The attacker’s head was down, drawn there by the old man’s pinioning of the trident. The blade sliced through his face, cutting it instantly in half. The wounded man screamed; his hands went to his ruined face. He sank to his knees.

Calmly the old man bent over one of the dead men and wiped his knife clean; he’d only soiled one blade. Then he looked up and smiled first at Tatiana, then at me. And he picked up the machete-like sword.

All the others were dead. The man with the ruined face was still kneeling, crying. Blood dripped from between the fingers that pressed the slit surfaces of his face together.

In a single powerful but effortless movement the old man swung the machete high, brought it flashing down... and the faceless man became a headless corpse. The bloody trophy of the brief battle rolled to rest in the gutter. The body slumped forward.

The old man bowed to the bodies. The bow was measured, respectful. I was still in the Orient after all.

“Hello,” he said to me. Then he turned to her, still smiling that same Buddha-like smile. “Tatiana, my dear. How glad I am that I was able to arrive on time.”

Her eyes still full of nameless terror, she melted into his arms. Patting her on the back, the old man turned that same smile on me. “Well,” he said. “You certainly acquitted yourself well tonight. My compliments.”

I bent over as he had done and wiped Hugo clean. “I’m lucky to be alive. But you... I’ve never seen anything quite like that before.”

“Oh,” he said, shrugging it off. “I am a man blessed by fortune. I have had much good luck in my life.”

Inside the circle of his arm the girl sobbed. She clung even more closely to him. Her weeping was loud and unashamed; disconsolate. I could understand nothing of it all. “That wasn’t luck,” I said. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

“Ah,” he said. “Every form of contest has its own rules. A logical contest, as in choy li fut, has logical rules. It only remains to learn them. They will apply, to the extent that we learn them well.” The smile was calm, happy, forgiving. He turned to the girl in his arms. “But come, my dear. Time to take you home. There, there. It’s all right now. You’ve no reason to be frightened. No more. Now, now — come along. Mr. Carter and I will just go turn off the lights, and lock up, and we’ll be home in two shakes. There. There’s my good girl...” His wrinkled old hand patted her short cap of hair gently. He looked at me; winked. “Here, my dear, let Mr. Carter hold you. He can comfort you quite as well as I. I’ll just finish closing up; I’ll be done in a jiffy.” And he handed her to me. And I held her while he skipped nimbly down the block to that single light we’d seen burning; held her while her sobs grew lighter, softer; held her while she got control over her emotions. Finally, as his light went off and I saw him come out of the distant building and head our way again, she nestled her tear-stained cheek against my shirt and nodded up to me that everything was okay.

Okay? Everything was crazy. Who were these hired killers, with their medieval weapons? What were they up to? What was the girl up to? Who was the old man?

And how did he know my name?

Chapter Eleven

On the Western shore of the Kowloon Peninsula a sturdy breakwater juts far out into the bay to give protection to as odd an assortment of boats as you’re likely ever to see, anchored inside the mole and sheltered against the typhoons that sweep in from the Pacific every late summer or early autumn.

These include motor launches, fishing boats, sampans, junks, houseboats, cargo lighters, commercial vehicles — the more far-ranging among them bearing a curious double registry and even, often as not, flying double flags of both the Crown Colony itself and of Red China. The Yaumati people, the guide books will tell you, live most of their lives over the water, supporting themselves by fishing or other seagoing pursuits and raising their families in the houseboats that lie permanently moored in the nest of slips that acted as the backbone of the water community.

I was wondering, as we negotiated the short brisk walk from Temple Street to the water town, just why she chose to live there.

I was wondering a few other things as we hustled along, trying to keep up with the old man, Tatiana’s short choppy steps matching my own longer ones. The hurried pace made I good sense, I was thinking. Before long somebody’d happen upon that street full of corpses back there and call the cops, and they’d fan out through the neighborhood, asking questions. And I had blood on my pants.

Up ahead, though, the old man must have been reading my mind. “By the way, Mr. Carter. In case you were wondering, the police will be unlikely to trace us in this direction.” He looked familiar; where else had I seen that face before?

“What do you mean?” I said, trying not to puff and blow, considering my ribs.

“I took the precaution of leaving some misleading graffiti behind,” he said with that pixie smile. “In Cantonese. My scribbles said something rather like ‘Death to the Butterfly Gang’ and carried the identifying ideogram of the Three Tiger organization, from Kowloon City.”

“Good,” I said. Quick thinking there. The old walled village, now grown into a sprawling, tough slum, was way up by Kai Tak airport; the phony clue would lead the cops away from us. The old boy impressed me more and more. “Say,” I added. “You better lead the way. I don’t know my way around here.”

“A wise decision,” he said, not slowing down a bit “The admission of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. Ah, but there I go again, Tatiana my dear, talking like a fortune cookie.” His laugh was merry and gently self-mocking. “I have been in the Orient too long, I think. My neighbors in the market say I no longer speak their tongue like a gwai lo.”

“Foreign devil,” translated Tatiana in a low whisper.

“They do not know what to make of me,” he finished.

Fine, I thought. Neither did I. When we came to roost at last, I had some pointed questions to ask. Sensing my doubt, Tatiana squeezed my hand; the smile that accompanied the squeeze was meant to reassure.

At the breakwater he stopped and helped us down to a low float where a flat boat was moored. “Tatiana’s home, and mine, cannot be reached by land,” he explained. He started the boat’s nearly silent electric motor and cast off. “When you begin to see the sort of hornet’s nest you have wandered into, Mr. Carter, the location will begin to make more and more sense. On the water nothing can be hurried — not easily, at any rate. No one can swoop down upon us in a fast car and gun us down. By the same token it is difficult to sneak up on a member of the boat community. If you have ever lived in a waterfront area you may know what I mean. The inhabitants grow unusually sensitive to the presence of outsiders in their midst.”

There were gentle sounds of Chinese music out on the water: soft pops and twangs from the bi wa and the moon lute, and somebody singing a song. The oars on a passing rowboat dipped, splashed; soft lights up ahead joined the round moon on the water.

The water community went on and on. The old man’s hand at the tiller threaded our way for us through a confusing, mazelike path I could not have duplicated afterward on a bet. “This is huge,” I said. “Are all these people refugees? From the mainland?”

“Heavens, no,” the old man said. “Almost none of them. As a matter of fact, Tatiana and myself are the only refugees we know in here.”

“Then what...”

Tatiana broke in just then. “Look, Mr. — Nick.” Her hand squeezed mine: electricity again. “As we pass, you’ll notice that a slip with sampans on it will have no junks. And vice versa. You will see in the daytime that the junk people — the Tanka — are even a different race than the Hoklo, who live on the sampans. You’ll have to come shopping with me tomorrow. The community has its own independently functioning economy. There are stores, gambling houses, barber shops, schools, even factories, all afloat. One shops for dinner sitting on one’s own deck. The grocers and butchers come parading past in their own boats. You...”

“All in good time, my dear,” the old man said. “Here we are.” He guided the little boat expertly to a float, tied up, and cut the motor. Beside the float a stately junk lay at anchor — as they’d said, apart from the dock. “Home,” he said, his smile visible in the dim light of the docks. “Here, my dear. Let me help you up. Or will you do the honors, Mr. Carter?”

The inside was a mixture of cultures. The table and the tatamis were Japanese, the decor Chinese. Tatiana, leaving her shoes on deck, padded in and busied herself with a big wok and a chopping board. The old man and I sat down crosslegged before the low table; he produced a stone bottle and tiny earthenware glasses. With Oriental solemnity he proceeded to pour libations for the two of us.

I lifted mine, paused. “Sake?” I said.

“Ng ka py,” he said. “Sip it with circumspection. Hold it in the mouth for a moment, savoring the taste on the back of the tongue. Ah, yes.” He followed some of his own advice, smiling. So did I. The drink brought a warm glow with it almost immediately.

He put his glass down gently, unhurriedly. Then he looked up. “Now,” he said, “I think we’re ready for all those questions you want to ask us, Mr. Carter.”

I bit my lip pensively. Then I said, “Okay. You know me. How? Who are you? The two of you?”

“In no particular order: when you presented your card, with Meyer’s picture, Tatiana called me. I recognized the name; just how will became evident. I asked her to test you, to see if you were the man you said you were. She did; you were.”

“That funny handshake? I don’t even remember where I picked it up.”

“You don’t? Let me refresh your memory. You did a certain chore for David Hawk, of AXE, in the spring of 1962, in Ceylon. The password was a certain sophomoric routine one of your confederates had learned in his youth, at a certain Northeastern university. There was a certain curious handshake—”

Hawk. AXE. I was on my guard instantly. But my mind was racing. Ceylon...

“Your contacts were a British gentleman long since dead, I’m afraid — a man named Wilkins — and myself.”

I dropped the stone cup; it shattered on the teak table. “You’re not—”

“Will Lockwood.”

“That was you?”

“The last job I did before, well...”

“But you’re dead. Years ago. I heard about it.”

“I could quote Mark Twain right now: the rumors concerning my demise...”

“But...”

“I was shot down over Chinese territory. My plane crashed; I was badly hurt. I fell into the hands of the People’s Republic, with some good results, some bad. The good results include the excellent doctoring to which they subjected me. I have, as you can see, a new face. I have grown used to it; it fits me now. I am no longer young; I was, to put it bluntly, over the hill when you saw me last.”

“The hell you were,” I said. “Tatiana — do you know what he was?”

“I know some things,” she said. “Tell me.”

“He was the best agent we ever had. The best. Hawk told me once that Will Lockwood was a man who could give him lessons.”

“I did once. David would not enjoy having me tell you the story, though. Oh, yes, once I was valuable. When the plastic surgeons of the People’s Republic had finished patching my face, I had a whole new identity. Of course, when the rest of the doctors had finished with me, I had...”

“Oh, damn,” Tatiana said. “We are out of shrimp. Oh, Will, how could you let me do anything so foolish? I...”

The seraphic smile turned her way. “What was for dinner?”

“Eight-precious soup. On the Mongolian hotpot.”

“Serve seven-precious, my dear. Nick and I won’t mind.”

“You were saying,” I said.

“Oh, yes. Anyhow, I escaped. On the way a woman — a Chinese woman with a teen-aged daughter by her Russian husband, a woman who had been repatriated forcibly when her husband was killed in the taking of Harbin — helped me at grave risk to herself. I took her and her daughter with me when I went over the border. The woman was killed. The daughter...” He nodded at Tatiana, busy at the chopping block, out of earshot. “She had no papers. Another repatriation was out of the question. When I came out into Hong Kong I gave a false identity, to match my false face. I took the name of a friend who’d been in prison with me, a man with no relatives and no importance to the American government. When I had established my own false identity I bought bogus papers for the girl. I knew my career with AXE had ended; I settled down to raising the girl. But talk about busman’s holidays. I couldn’t stop snooping. I wound up doing exactly what I’d been doing before, but without portfolio, so to speak. My activities are somewhat hampered, I admit, by...”

“Oh, Will,” she said behind him now. “Do come and light the stove for me. I never do it right...”

He rose and complied. His eyes remained on me. The soft love-pat he gave her shoulder was a father’s indulgent caress.

“Wow,” I said. “I’m still having a hard time taking this in. You’ve never contacted Hawk again?”

“Not directly. From time to time I’ve fed him a tip or two, but always via the anonymous letter or call, and sometimes even by a sort of dog-leg approach, running the information through the British first. There’s a funny sad-faced fellow there with an odd sense of humor.”

“Fredericks?”

“That’s the man. I will not go through our own Embassy channels. Anyhow, some interesting things are going on right now.”

“They sure as hell are. And that was going to be my next question.”

“Right. The men you met tonight — the men we left in Temple Street — were paid assassins. They seem to have been hired by someone who knew of Tatiana’s innocent association with the late Mr. Meyer. They were sent after her to close her mouth on the remote chance that she might know something. Having, as I say, very likely murdered Mr. Meyer...”

“That’s a moot point,” I said. I bit my lip again. Should I open up? And get some feedback from the greatest agent of them all? Some help, perhaps? I swallowed hard and plowed forward. “I know the guys that killed Meyer. They seem to have a particular nasty little trademark.” I told him about their bloody signature. “The question is, are these the kind of guys who’d hire a bunch of crazy assassins.” I poured myself another cup of ng ka py and had a leisurely snort. Then I took a deep breath and told him most of the rest of it. He sat back, nodding and smiling and not interrupting me once. At the end of it he smiled and shook his head.

“My, my,” he said. “An entire shipload of American arms. And not one but three competitors contending for it.”

“Hey,” I interrupted. “Three?”

“Not counting the late Mr. Meyer, who was merely acting as a go-between, mediating between the General and... and... excuse me a moment, Nick... I...” His hands went to his head; his eyes seemed to go out of focus for a second or so; then he seemed to regain control. “I... an old war wound... excuse me... where was I?”

“Three groups contending for the arms shipment,” I said. “Will — are you all right?”

He waved away help with one hand. “Oh, yes, yes. It’s just...” Another flicker of pain passed visibly over the round face. “No... I was saying... the... the Israelis seem to be some sort of outsider group, Nick. I don’t see them as agents of their government.”

“Me neither. Will, can I get you anything?”

“No, no. No, I’m afraid there’s no Alka-Seltzer that will wash this stuff away. It just seems to be something I have to live with.” He cocked his head at Tatiana, still busy behind him, ignoring the two of us. “I try not to let her see more of it than she has to. It upsets her so.” His smile was suddenly an old man’s smile; the youthful pixie was gone for now. “Anyhow, there’s that group, and there’s somebody else that you may not know about. Meyer had more than one offer, it appears. He told Tatiana something or other about one of them. Not much, you know, just a word or two in passing, but enough to pique one’s curiosity. Something Middle Eastern. Something... well, I was wondering whether Meyer may have been killed to keep this other deal from going through.”

“That’s a new one on me,” I said. “But that still leaves a lot of it wide open and unexplained. Meyer was carrying something when he was killed — something he’d just purchased from a man I came out here to get. Whoever killed him — and I’d pick Zvy and Shimon, the Israelis, I think, in spite of it all — took the item. And the item... well, I don’t think it had anything at all to do with this arms shipment of the General’s.”

“Oh?” he said. “That’s interesting. What was it?”

“Reel of microfilm. And don’t ask me what was on it. I haven’t the foggiest notion.”

“Hmmmm... yes. And these people either killed Meyer in order to get it, or killed him to keep the deal from going through, and, in the course of rifling his papers, found it and took it with them. Which of these is correct we have no way of knowing. Yes. Most puzzling. And then, of course, there’s the third, and in some ways the most obvious, contender in our little arms race to consider.”

“Who’s that?”

“Why, Ko...” The pain hit him again. His face convulsed; his hands clawed at his temples. “I... Ko... Komaroff, of course, we...” Then the big one struck, as forceful as an earthquake tremor and just as devastating in its effect on Will Lockwood. The serene face underwent a series of uncontrollable spasms, quick and violent, that pulled his face out of shape the way a spastic’s face is distorted by his illness. The hands, shaking wildly, tore at his head; the eyes rolled; and out of the mouth, smiling and composed only a moment before, came a low animal wail of excruciating pain. The eyes blinked twice at me; then all the humanity and capacity for reason died in their blue depths. “Oh God oh God oh g-g-g...” he said; then it all turned to groans. The nimbly competent hands turned into clumsy paws. The tongue lolled. The gaze fixed on me again, registering only pain — hopeless suffering, beyond all help. Then he pitched forward and lay still, scattering stone bottle and earthenware cups before him.

Chapter Twelve

I scuttled around the low table as fast as I could; quick as I was, though, Tatiana was faster. She pulled him back, laid him out on the tatamis, checked his pulse, and — before I could stop her — pulled a pin out of her purse, felt in his mouth for his tongue, pulled it out, and pinned it to his cheek. I winced a little at that, but on second thought I let her work. She obviously knew what she was doing, and it was one sure way of keeping him from choking to death on his own tongue, helpless as he was.

“Watch him,” she said, and skipped away into another room. She returned testing a syringe, the little needle squirting a clear liquid into the air. I held his arm as she expertly gave him a shot of something; then we watched as the pain left his face and he fell into an increasingly more peaceful sleep.

We sat there for a moment, knees touching on the mats, sitting back on our stocking feet, looking at him. Then I let out all that held breath in a big sigh. “What was that? The only thing I ever saw that was even remotely like it was a grand mal seizure and that wasn’t...”

“No,” she said. “That was something else. Nick, in the prison hospital they did something to his mind, to his brain — some experimental surgery. Anyway, it’s been getting worse, these last few years. He’ll be going along as you’ve seen him — brilliant, masterful — and then all of a sudden this thing reduces him to...” She waved a helpless hand, looking up at me; her eyes were full of tears.

“Can’t anybody do anything?” I said.

“Without the records of the operation, nothing. Nobody seems to know precisely what it was that they did to him. And the gradual deterioration has begun to accelerate, little by little. Attacks that once came months apart now come weeks apart, even days sometimes. He’s in the middle of a particularly terrible swing of these things right now. This is the third this week. That was one of the reasons I asked you to help me tonight, Nick. Ordinarily he’s quite adequate to protect me, all by himself. You saw what it was like. But now, oh Nick, fighting those men — he could have had one of these things in the middle of the fight. They would have butchered him — and me.”

I put my arm around her. “Look, let me get you guys back to the States. There’s got to be something somebody can do.”

“We’ve been to all the doctors, Nick. The best in London. The man whose identity Will assumed had a pension. I saw to it that the British Government flew him back for tests.” She nestled her small head into my chest. “Nothing. Nothing at all. The pension would have paid for anything... even treatment in a home... but Will wouldn’t stand for it. You know how he is.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think I do. He wanted to die in harness. So he went back to where it was happening. He was a Far East expert, and he settled down at the hub of Far Eastern activity, and he’s been working like nothing had happened ever since.”

“Right.” She gave me a squeeze. “I knew you’d understand. Maybe you’re a little like him yourself. He has this quality of remaining undefeated, no matter what the world throws up to him. ‘If the world hands you a lemon,’ he says, ‘make lemonade.’ But now, with these things coming on him thick and fast...” She turned her wet face up to me and hugged my sore ribs with a sudden intensity that surprised me. “Oh, Nick, I’m so alone. I’m so afraid. I need... I need...”

The message was clear. What she needed was me. And I didn’t have any qualms about that. Not when she reached up and kissed me hard, twice, and, still kneeling above Will’s inert body, unbuttoned that dark cheongsam with deft fingers, all the way down, to make that golden body ready for me. By the time she’d sunk back against the mats, the lust in her eyes gleaming through the tears she hadn’t bothered to wipe away, I was ready for her; but even then, the passion my first touch unleashed in her came as a surprise. I was taken aback by it, but only for a moment. After that it was thunder and lightning, and typhoon winds blowing outside on an otherwise peaceful sea, and clinging to each other so hard we both left bruises...

Afterwards I always want a smoke; but I’d lost the last of my brand when I took that dumb spill in an alley in Saigon, and you can’t buy my special blend in Hong Kong, and I won’t smoke anyone else’s. I settled for a cup of green tea, which she served me sitting up naked, her perfect skin still free of goosebumps in the damp chill of a Hong Kong late evening. I looked at her with still-hungry eyes; I’d never seen anything like her — or maybe what I mean to say is that I’d never had quite the same reaction to another woman. Even now, telling about it, I couldn’t tell you whether her breasts were large or small, for instance; all I can say is that — like all the rest of her — they were just right. Can any man say more about any woman?

We checked Will out, though, and unpinned his mouth now that he was sleeping soundly, free of those little jerks and twitches. She put a pillow under his head and covered him tenderly, with a solicitude I envied even as I knew the same care would be mine if I needed it or wanted it. Only when she rose to finish dinner did she relent and throw that black cape over her shoulders, but, sensing my wholehearted approval of her flawless, golden-brown body, she left it open in front, all the way down, and contrived to face me as she worked. When she had the broth ready she poured it into the doughnut-shaped bowl that surrounded the hotpot to let it simmer. She had her eyes on me all the time. I sighed and went to get her, and took her back to the tatamis for another session. This time it was slower, more relaxed, more sensuous; we took our time about everything. And I do mean everything.

Then we got up for dinner and I was ready for plenty of it. The Chinese can eat a hot-pot soup, lingering delicately over each new flavor as the ingredients, added serially, gradually pile up the cumulative richness of the stock, and then, having finished the soup, can sit down and pack away a full meal. And, I might add, not gain an ounce. Don’t ask me how. With us foreign devils, hot-pot soup alone is guaranteed to stave off hunger for a week afterwards. Even with the shrimp left out.

At the end of the meal I stumbled over an additional surprise. I was just saying, “I understand you heard that Meyer had had a second offer for the arms if he could secure the shipment.”

She said: “Oh? Did you hear it from Hermann?”

I said: “No, from your father.”

She said: “From... from who?”

I said: “Your father. Will. Well, adopted father, then.”

She said: “Nick, Will isn’t my father. Adopted or otherwise.”

I said: “Well, what is he?”

She said: “My husband.”

“Husband?” I said. I almost dropped the teacup. “But I thought...” I looked over at him, sleeping peacefully now on the mats, the covers up to his chin.

“Oh,” she said, and put a reassuring hand on mine. “No, Nick. It isn’t what you’re thinking. And you’re right: if he’s anything to me it’s a father. But when he brought me out of China, and my mother was killed as we ran the border, we had an immediate problem of how to establish some sort of diplomatic identity. He had a false identity of his own, which he assumed. Papers were issued quickly; the man whose identity he had taken over had been a war hero, with a pension and a World War II Victoria Cross. But I? I was thirteen. I had nothing. Adoption was out of the question; Will was a single parent, and a male. The only way to get me any claim on citizenship was to marry me. I am listed now as Mrs. Arthur Jeffords: that’s Will’s official name.”

“And you’ve survived all these years this way?”

“Yes,” she said. “Will and I... we’ve never been... you know. Yet in my own way I have been true to my strange marriage. I have had lovers: a few, anyway. But they have never had any claim on me. Never until...”

I plowed onward. “And you have the income from your work, and the income from Will’s pensions, to live on. And that’s it?”

“Well, no,” she said, pouring tea again. “Will does have his little business. He has a little tattoo parlor on Temple Street, in the middle of the market. He also functions as a Chinese-language scribe, in a community where few can read and write. But these businesses he maintains mainly in order to keep in touch with the facts of the community’s existence at the basic, rock-bottom level. As a scribe, he intercepts messages within the Chinese community; as a tattoo artist he overhears sailor talk. He operated at first in Wanchai; then, when the action shifted to the peninsula, to a little place in Tsim Sha Tsui, not far from where I work. He...”

“Yes, Nick, the action’s over on this side now,” Will said in a weak voice. He was sitting up, looking at us, his hands rubbing his temples again. “Excuse me for butting in... but I came out of it a moment or so ago.”

“Hey,” I said. “Do you think you should be sitting up so soon?”

“Oh, quite all right,” he said. “I just feel as though I had drunk a 55-gallon oil drum full of jungle juice and had the great Katzenjammer of the world to contend with. Tatiana, my dear: do you suppose I could have a bit of tea?”

“Oh, Will. Certainly. I’ll fix you some soup...”

“Yes, yes, that would be fine. Thank you. Anyhow, as I was saying, Nick, the action’s over here now. That’s the thing about Fiddler’s Green.”

“Fiddler’s Green?” I said.

“That’s the old name of Sailortown, in these shore cities. It’s where the action is... but it changes from time to time, as channels silt up and the turning basin changes, and ships are diverted to new areas of the harbor for docking and loading. The original Fiddler’s Green of Hong Kong — the place the city was named for — was Aberdeen, where the other big floating village is. The Cantonese name for Aberdeen is Heung Kong Tsai, or ‘small fragrant harbor.’ It gave its name, suitably mispronounced by the British, to the whole colony.”

“Then,” Tatiana said from the galley, “it moved to Wanchai. Many of the Caucasian sailors still hang out there, as the tourists tend to congregate in Tsim Sha Tsui.” I noticed she’d buttoned up the robe; somehow I felt better about that. Will went on:

“But with the Ocean Terminal’s completion in Kowloon — and, I suppose, with the additional flow of people through Kai Tak, and the gradual reclamation of more of the shoreline! — Kowloon has assumed greater importance. There was a time, not so long ago, when all deep-draft ships had to lie at anchor well out in the bay and get unloaded by cargo lighters. Now the important ones can deal with cargo at dockside, right here in Kowloon — a railhead, mind you.”

“And the unimportant ones? Or the ones which... the ones like our missing ship, with the arms cargo?”

“Ah,” he said. He’d regained at least part of the merry smile. “Now that sort of thing is why I moved to Yaumati, or, more correctly, Yau Ma Tei” — he gave the words a proper Chinese singsong that mocked the simplistic British pronunciation — “and installed myself on Temple Street.” The smile was knowing; the drawn face winked at me. “Cargo not bound for the main slips here is still unloaded well out into deep water, with the old tub lying at anchor. The lighters which serve this entire sector of the Bay all dock at Yau Ma Tei, in this picturesque shelter, when they are not working. Their captains and crews are my friends and neighbors.”

“Hey,” I said, “that means...”

“That means I may have a lead on where the arms shipment was unloaded before noon tomorrow, if I’m lucky. It means I am almost sure to have one by nightfall. The longshore workers are not easily fooled by falsified ships’ manifests, you know: they can’t read them in the first place. And there is no containerized service here. If crates of rifles came ashore here, they came ashore as crates of rifles, not as crates of oranges, and my friends will know precisely where they went.”

“Great,” I said. “And...”

“And if you’re interested, perhaps we can take ourselves a little stroll tomorrow night. And see what we can turn up. Who knows? By the time Tatiana’s second show is done we may have a lot more answers than we have now.”

“In the meantime, I wonder what I ought to do about those orders to phone in daily and keep in touch. I’ve stirred Basil up, but I’m damned if I want him in on this thing. No. The more I think about it the more I want to hand this all to him with a nice pink bow tied around it. Fait accompli...”

“My God,” Tatiana said, coming up with Will’s soup bowl and another pot of tea for the three of us. “You two are exactly alike. Stubborn as mules.”

“Comes with the job, my dear,” Will said with a tiny ritual bow before taking his first spoonful of soup. “Why, you should have seen some of the things David and I cooked up, working in Tokyo before the War, to keep a certain big cheese from taking credit for work we’d done.” He shook his head with a wry, faraway smile, remembering. He was himself again.

“Remind me,” I said, “to pump you about David Hawk.”

Will looked up, eyes wide. “He’d have me assassinated in some dingy alley. He would. And he wouldn’t pick any bumbling oafs to do it, either. He‘d send an expert, like you. And the man would come back with my scalp.”

“Not if you’re the man you were tonight.”

“Oh, I can still call upon the old stuff, now and then,” he admitted. He took a sip of the aromatic tea and smiled. “But then of course you also saw the other side of me tonight. No, Nick, I won’t last much longer. These things are coming thick and fast. I recovered quickly enough tonight, thanks to the fact that Tatiana acted as quickly as she did. But when it happens to me when she isn’t here... The last time, I was out of commission for four days. My dear friends in the Tanka community sent up the kind of prayers one sends up for the dead. They were more than half right, too. There is a part of me you can effectively write off as dead.”

“Will.” Tatiana’s hand, warm and tender, was on the old man’s knee. “No, please.”

“No, darling,” he said with a resigned — even serene — smile. “This thing Nick and I seem to have uncovered with your help, I have a feeling that it may well be the last job I get to do. If we do it well, why, nothing could make me happier than to go out, right here in Fiddler’s Green, still in the traces like an old drayhorse.” His hand covered hers; he smiled up at both of us. “And if we manage to finish the job to boot...”

The smile widened; the old merry gleam was back in it again.

Chapter Thirteen

We had ourselves a nightcap for good luck, and then Tatiana fixed me up a Japanese-style bed on the mats before the galley and kissed me good-night and went off to her own little cabin next to Will’s. After an hour or so had passed, in she padded, all warm and soft and naked and tousle-haired, and tucked herself in with me, and things got all chummy again. It’d been many lonely months since her last man and-she needed some reassuring the way women do. And of course I didn’t need much persuading. Bum ribs or no.

But then, after she’d slipped off into a tranquil sleep beside me, I found myself still too wound up, tired as I was, to get to sleep easily. I would have loved a smoke. I settled for lying back and letting the boat rock gently under me and for thinking about a lot of the events of the past two impossibly crowded days, and about a few questions I’d managed neither to answer nor to ignore.

For instance:

Three contenders for that shipment? Who were they all? I didn’t even know who the two Israelis were, except that they were a couple of cold, bloodthirsty bastards. But what were they up to? Were they renegades, perhaps, working for the OPEC people or one of the Arab Bloc nations? Free agents of some kind? I thought I knew better than to take them for official Israeli undercover types; I’d worked with some of them before, and this didn’t seem anything like their style, but I wasn’t sure.

Mercenaries? Not likely. Wild cards, emissaries of some foreign power we weren’t on to yet? Possibly. But without closing my mind on the matter, I was willing to guess that what we had here was the dedicated terrorist type, working for God alone knew who — but in it as much for the thrill of it all as anything. They seemed like paid professionals, after all... but then there was that strange business about the decoration of Meyer’s corpse.

But now: who were the other two contenders? I’d have to remember to pump Will in the morning. He’d mentioned the mysterious Mr. Komaroff, and it’d rung a bell with him. Who could that be? Someone attached quite recently to the local KGB unit — too recently to be on the lists posted in D.C.? I wouldn’t have put it past Will to be one up on David Hawk on nuts-and-bolts intelligence matters here, especially if Hawk got his information in large part from people like Basil Morse. I promised myself a snoop through Will’s mental dossier on the Russian gentleman in the morning.

Then, too, there was that “third party” of Will’s. Neither of us knew anything about that one. I had only Will’s hunch to go on in believing it existed, and all his hunch said was that the present facts didn’t work if there were only two parties. I fell asleep promising myself a long chat with Will about that the next morning, too...

But it didn’t work out that way.

When I woke up, both of them were gone. On the bulletin board next to the galley, next to Tatiana’s shopping list, a pair of notes were pinned to the wall. I took them down and read them.

My dears—

The cargo-lighter crew gets up with the bloody birds around here; I’d better, too, if I’m to get anything out of them. Tatiana: In the meantime please call all the rolling mills, here and on up into the New Territories, and see if any contracts have been let for cutting up any cargo vessels for scrap in the last week or two. Then meet me at the little seafood place in the front of the Ocean Terminal at eleven. Nick: Break into Meyer’s old place again, will you, and finish the job that got interrupted yesterday. We need at least a superficial peek at the whole file cabinet, but we need to go through the files for the letters G and K with a fine-toothed comb. Chronological files for the past two months, too, if Meyer kept things that way. Snitch the whole bundle if you can. Then give me a call at H-643219, around noon. The files ought to keep you busy until then. By God, I’m enjoying myself.

Will

I knew what he meant; I was almost beginning to enjoy this confusing trip for the first time, with a couple of leads at last and a bare outside chance to get somewhere during the next few hours. I read the note again. Yes, they’d either drop the load and junk the boat or they’d put back out to sea and change the flag and registry and name again, depending on whether the General’s confederates had made the transfer yet. If they hadn’t, they’d be playing it smart to hightail it.

And what was this business of the G and K files? “K” could be “Komaroff,” but what about the “G”?

Tatiana’s note was briefer:

Nick darling—

It was so hard leaving you this morning. I can’t wait until the evening. Keep safe...

T.

I looked around. No phone on the boat. She’d have had to go ashore to make her phone calls. I had a sudden thought, and stuck my head out on deck, wondering what that left me to get ashore with, but there was a flat-bottomed rowboat tied up alongside the junk. I dressed, had coffee, and went outside to get things started for the day.

It was a beautiful, clear morning — the kind you always hope you’re going to have when you come steaming into a place like Hong Kong, with its steep mountains plunging into the rich blue of the sea. If there were any problems in the Crown Colony — poverty, crime, the threat of Red China hovering overhead — you didn’t want to know about them as you drank in the sheer beauty of the place.

Sculling slowly through the nest of docks and slips, I had time to look around me and to savor some of the strange and intriguing sights and sounds of the waterfront community and to feel a little sorry that I hadn’t made it with Tatiana beside me, telling me all about it, or with Will spinning rich sailor yams about the Islands and Fiddler’s Green. As it was, it was a fine ambience on a clear morning, and it got me, little by little, into a fine mood well before I docked the little boat and went ashore.

There is, however, one all-purpose rule of thumb in any kind of warfare, be it cold or hot, overt or covert, and it goes like this: keep your ass down.

So as my cab putt-putted through the dense morning traffic on its way to 68–72 Nathan Road, I hauled out Wilhelmina and busted her down and checked her out. She was full of goop where some fool had dropped her and then not cleaned her, and I promised to give her a real Number One scrub-down and oiling, first chance I got. Meanwhile, I scraped her down with the old pocket knife — it would have been a waste of Hugo’s delicate blade to use him — and, by the time I was ready to tuck the old girl away in her holster, she was at least in serviceable condition. She’d shoot. She’d shoot better clean; but now I knew exactly how far I could trust her, and I felt a lot better about that.

This didn’t sit well with the driver at all. The first time he looked back and saw me oiling a 9mm Luger, smiling and whistling, he came unstuck a little. We almost hit a cop, but we finally rounded the corner and shot down Nathan Road, past the Fortuna Hotel, into Tsim Sha Tsui.

I’d cracked that front door once before; I could do it in my sleep. In spite of all the to-and-fro traffic on old Meyer’s floor, I decided just to walk up and let myself in as though I were one of the family. I walked confidently up to the door; I fumbled in my pocket as a secretary from an adjoining office walked past; and, when she’d gone, I shoved that credit card home again, forced the bolt upward, and stepped into the room.

Sometimes you’re not sensitive to vibes, sometimes you are. That day I know I was. The minute I stepped inside I could feel something wrong. Don’t ask me what it was. There was just a tension in that room you could cut with a knife.

There was a noise in the rear, out the window.

I ran to the window and looked out, Wilhelmina held at the ready in my hand.

Down in the alley the big Israeli — Zvy — was racing around the corner. I heard the Jag’s motor fire up, race; Shimon would be driving this time. Why the hell hadn’t I spotted him in the street?

There was a noise down by my feet.

I looked down. There was a man there. His hands were pressed to his throat, but they wouldn’t do much good. As I watched, a gout of blood spurted forth from the gaping wound where somebody had taken a razor-sharp knife to his throat.

He couldn’t talk. The vocal cords had been cut.

He was dying, horribly, in a pool of dark blood. I noticed that his belt and fly were undone — and bloody. His killers had left their mark: a star in deep, red welts.

I knew him.

I bent over him, trying to listen, trying to catch that last desperate message he wanted to give me. My head was reeling. My heart was beating fast. My hand squeezed Wilhelmina’s scored grip as if my object were to tear the dark gun in half.

He couldn’t talk. His hands trembled in panic. He knew he was dying. The panic grew. One hand held his throat, hard. The other traced a single letter in the air, boldly, as if it meant to continue.

Then it fell.

I leaned back and slowly sat down on the stained rug, not really looking at anything. My eye kept lighting on little things. A spot of blood on my pants, from last night. The dead man’s gun, across the room on the floor. His sightless eyes. The gore at his throat. The gore at his crotch... I looked away.

Finally my eyes came back into focus again, and I got up wearily. My ribs ached, and I felt like an old man, beaten and defeated. I leaned against the filing cabinet, trying to get it all together; but I hadn’t got anything together at all when I tried to talk to the dead man. My voice came out a quavery old man’s croak.

“Fred,” I said, “this is going to cost somebody something. I promise you, so help me God I do. Somebody is not only going to get it, and painfully, but he’s going to have to beg me not to do it. And when he’s done with begging, I’m going to give it to him anyway. Just you watch, buddy.”

Fred, Goddamit...

Fred, why did you have to get in on this one? Why didn’t you just send some tyro to do it, the way Basil Morse would? Why did you always have to tackle the tough ones yourself, you crazy bastard? Why couldn’t you be cautious, like your boss? Why couldn’t you be yellow...

After a while I went to work. The filing cabinet, however, had been rifled — and the things that were missing were precisely the things Will had asked me to look for. I did a bit of useless cursing about that, and then I settled down to looking over whatever might remain. I didn’t know for sure what I’d be looking for, besides the obvious.

After a while I closed the file cabinet and went over and sat down and looked out the window.

A “G.” That was all I knew. Beyond that, and the fact that “G” was the other file letter Will had asked me to look up in Meyer’s files, I knew nothing at all of the one last despairing message Fredericks had tried to give me.

Except it had been a cursive “G” and it had been definitely leading into something: an ascending stroke. “G-I,” perhaps? “G-L”? I was wondering if Will would know — Will, who seemed to have a handle on almost everything that happened here in Hong Kong — when the phone rang.

I froze.

I looked down at my watch. Eleven-thirty, give or take a few minutes.

I picked it up. “Hello?” I said.

“Nick? Will here.”

“Will! What are you...”

“Not much time here to talk, Nick. Tatiana’s with me. We seem to have landed in the shit, old boy.”

“Where are you?”

He gave me an address in Wanchai, across the Strait. Of course, of course: that number he’d asked me to call at noon had had a Hong Kong Island prefix. “And look, Nick. Your deadly little friends are here, and...”

“Who?”

“The Israelis. They...”

“But that’s impossible. I... they just killed Fredericks. Right here. I just missed them. I saw the bigger one as he was getting away. They couldn’t have had time to get across the Strait and get to where you are. Not on the Ferry, not on a ’copter, not any way.”

“Well, whoever they are, they’ve got us boxed in. We’re in an office in the warehouse, Nick. The one the shipment was to have gone to. I’ve got the place barricaded, but they’ll be busting through in a few minutes, I think. Looks like I was right, there’s three groups. If only...”

“Will,” I said. “You said was to have gone to. It’s not here, then?”

“No. It was intercepted — hijacked out at sea, as far as I know, destination unknown. But I think Europe, Nick. Europe or the Middle East. Perhaps somewhere in the Mediterranean. I... no, Tatiana! Back from the door! No, my dear... Nick, where was I? Oh, yes... ah... well, I think it won’t be much longer. Nick, for the love of heaven, get through to David. Follow this up, all the way. This is something big, I’m sure of it — bigger than any damned single arms shipment. There’s a new factor in... in... N-no...”

“Will!” I said. “Will, hang on!”

“Oh, God... oh, God, my head... oh, God, not now... not n-n-n...” The rational voice became a low keening. There was a loud report in my ear; another. There was a woman’s shrill scream. More shots. Six, eight; I’m not sure how many. After a while somebody put the phone back on the hook.

After a while I put my own receiver down, too.

Chapter Fourteen

I called Basil Morse.

“Basil? Nick Carter. I...”

“Oh, Carter. I was wondering when the devil I’d be hearing from you.”

“Basil,” I said. “I’m at Meyer’s old place. I think you’d better get down here and have a look around.”

“Meyer’s...?” His voice was annoyed, nasal, intolerant “Where the devil is that?”

“68–72 Nathan Road, Basil. You’d better hurry. There’s been a murder here, and this one is going to kick up a bit of a stink in this tight little undercover community of yours here.”

“Murder? Look here, Carter, if you’ve killed...”

“Not me, it’s... Look, Basil. The cops are not going to be too far behind me, I just got here. You’ll want to give things a look-see before they arrive. The cops are going to impound this guy’s file cabinet as soon as they find this,” I said. “You’ll want to go through it. Look Basil...”

“Calm down, Carter. One can’t make heads or tails of things with you...”

“Basil, I saw who did it. It’s the same people who did in Meyer. And they did it the same way, with the same trademark. I want to put a description of both of them in every diplomatic bag we have. These guys are going to show up later, you can bet on that.”

“Yes, but...”

“Take my word for it. You want to look in those files. I’ll show you how. You start at. A. That’s up in the top drawer. Then you try B...”

“Oh, confound. 68–72, you said? Nathan Road?”

“Yes, and make it snappy. I haven’t any idea whether or not these bozos tipped off the cops beforehand. Not that I have any idea why they would, but I’m taking no chances. Get on the stick.”

“All right,” the stuffy voice said. “Uh... twenty minutes.”

“Make it fifteen.”

“All right.”

“Hey. Don’t hang up.”

“Oh?”

“You must have a man over in Victoria. Preferably in Wanchai, or as near to there as possible.”

“Yes, I...”

“Get hold of him immediately. Immediately. Get that? Send him around to this address.” I gave him the address Will had given me. “And in a hurry, and armed to the teeth. A couple of my friends are there, and they’ve been ambushed. I’m not quite sure by whom. I just got a call from them. We may be too late. But just in case there’s a chance, any chance at all...”

“Right. I’ll get right on it.”

“You do that.” I hung up.

Then I sat back down again and tried not to look down at Fred. He’d died with that last rush of blood from the deep slash on his neck, much as Meyer had. So many people had died, in so short a time. And for what? An arms shipment that somebody had beat them to?

I tried, too, not to think of Will. I knew just what had happened. He’d been ready for them — as ready as anyone ever gets — and, gutsy old devil that he was, he’d almost been looking forward to having the first of them burst through that door. Then the pain in his head had hit him, right when he needed it least, right when...

I shuddered. And Tatiana? Would she survive him for long? I doubted it. Not after they’d sicked those kung fu types on us back in Temple Street. No; they wouldn’t let her live, to tell what little she knew.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. I wanted a hundred percent lucidity right now, so that I could take it all in and catalogue it and crossfile it and index it so thoroughly that I’d never have the chance to forget it. I wanted it all clear as crystal in my mind, for the future.

Some day, somewhere, I was going to bring it all together. And I was going to make use of it. And when I did, the axe was going to fall on somebody. Hard.

I promised myself that much. For all of them.

I was still thinking all these things when Basil Morse turned up, a few minutes late again, but, I noticed, in no particular hurry this time. I didn’t get mad; I hadn’t expected him even to give me this much in the way of speed and despatch. I filed it away.

He walked in, looked down, and said, “Good lord.” He looked away quickly; I wasn’t sure whether or not he’d recognized the man on the floor. I filed that away too. “You... you’ve left no prints of your own?” he said.

“No,” I said. I didn’t know whether I was lying or not. I didn’t give a damn. I didn’t care whether or not somebody took out a billboard saying Nick Carter was in the room that day. I was feeling old and tired and stove-in, and I’d about had it with Hong Kong for now. “That’s the file cabinet over there,” I said. “I’ve been through it, but I was looking for my stuff. You know, riding my own hobbyhorse. There may be things in there that would concern you that wouldn’t me.” He made no move to examine it. He was staring at the wall, biting his lip. “Basil,” I said. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Oh, I... was thinking. You... well, nothing that would concern you...”

I was wondering what he could find to think about right now that wouldn’t concern me. “Basil,” I said. “Did you send a man out to that address I gave you?”

“Addr...? Oh, yes. Yes. Griffin. He said he’d drop by on his way to...”

“Drop by? Drop by? Goddamit, Basil, you...”

“Well, he was down in Aberdeen, and it’d take him a bit to get up to Victoria, but I asked him if he’d...”

“Asked? Didn’t you have anyone closer?”

“Well, yes; Kennedy. But he was busy with some work for the Chief of Operations, and I couldn’t very well...”

“Look,” I said. I stood up all the way, pushing off from the wall I’d been leaning on. My ribs either didn’t hurt anymore or I couldn’t feel any pain of any kind. There was a tightness in the back of my throat. It showed when I said, “Goddamit, Basil, I said hurry. That was a matter of life and death, and there wasn’t any...”

“Carter, there’s such a thing as procedure. You door-to-door salesman types never seem to recognize that, but those of us who have to stay behind and do the work...”

I sat down and glared at him. My own temples were ready to burst.

“That fool Fredericks. God, what an ugly thing to... Oh, the damned idiot. What a stupid thing to do, coming blundering in here like that. Well, that’s the British for you. How they got the reputation they have in the intelligence game I’ll never know. I wonder what the devil he thought he was going to find...”

I stood up. My palms were sweaty; my head was swimming. “Well, buster, you can find out for yourself. I...”

“What? What’s that?”

“You can have the whole stinking case. You can have everything that happens in Hong Kong. I drop it all in your lap. I’m heading back to Washington. I...”

“Back to...? What the devil are you talking about? You’re not going anywhere. You’re on detail to me, Carter. You’d better not forget that. You’ll leave when I say you...”

I hit him.

It must have been the sucker punch to end all sucker punches. The minute I threw it, I knew it’d connect. It just felt right. I knew, the minute I swung, that it’d contact that aristocratic chin of Basil Morse’s right at the maximum point of power, with plenty of English on it and plenty of meat and bones behind it. I also knew that the minute it clicked, and hit him right on the button like that, it would lay him out to sleep. And it did. Just the way I’d figured it. On the way down he knocked over a lamp and a chair. Nighty-night, Basil.

I stood there for a moment, rubbing my hand. It wasn’t enough. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to break bones. And then I wanted to throw him out the window, and set the room on fire, and then go out the front door and shoot the first three people I ran into.

The miserable sonofabitch. There’d been maybe the half of a ghost of an outside chance that somebody might have arrived in time to help Will and Tatiana. That, however, had been before Basil Morse had rearranged the priorities for the sake of internal protocol. Can’t disturb the proper order of things. Can’t inconvenience the Chief of Operations. Can’t...

Will. Tatiana.

Fred. Christ, Fred. It hadn’t even been his affair. He’d just smelled a fish, given the little I’d told him, and he’d done some checking. I’d brought up Tatiana. She’d been seen with Meyer. He’d checked and found out Meyer hadn’t come back to town, although he’d been expected. He’d looked up his office address and broken in, same as I had earlier...

I sat down. And I took out Wilhelmina and jacked a round into her chamber. My hands were steady as I looked down at j them.

I’d taken a hell of a licking here in the Far East this trip — first in Saigon, now in Hong Kong.

I was tired of that.

I wanted some answers, and I wasn’t going to get them by continuing to play this stupid game I’d wound up in. I had to get back to the capital, and find out what the hell had happened to David Hawk, and talk to a bunch of people who could help me put the pieces of this confusing jigsaw puzzle I back together. And when I did...

When I did, I was going to break up a few ball games. I was going to put all of these bloodthirsty bastards out of business. I promised myself that. I didn’t know how, but I did know what I was going to do. I felt achey, and decrepit, and sweaty, and thoroughly miserable. But now that I’d made up my mind about everything I felt a little better.

In the meantime I had one more thing to do before I’d be able to leave town with a clear conscience.

I looked down at my watch. Twelve o’clock. Will had said to call him at noon.

I dialed that number he’d given me, with the Hong Kong Island prefix.

Somebody answered after three rings. “Yes?”

“This is Nick Carter.” I let the name sit there in the air.

“Carter?” said the voice. “Yes, I think I know about you. What can I do for you, Mr. Carter?” The voice had a familiar ring, somehow.

“Nothing. Where are my friends?”

“You know already where your friends are.”

“Yeah. I guess I do.” My throat was tight again. “On the other hand, you didn’t get the shipment, did you?”

“Shipment?”

“The arms shipment. Let’s not play games. It’s out to sea by now, isn’t it?”

“Ah... perhaps. Perhaps not. Your... ah... friends were kind enough to tell us...”

“He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t even think by the time you came in that door. And she didn’t know. You’re as much in the dark as I am and you won’t admit it.” I took a deep breath. “All I want to know is if they died quickly.”

“Quickly? Why, yes, I suppose. I...”

“Good.” There was a lump in my throat I chose to ignore. “That means when I get to you I’ll kill you quickly. Humanely. You’ll hardly know it. And I’ll get to you, sooner or later. You can count on that.”

“You do not know who I am.”

“Yes I do. I just don’t know who you work for, or what your name is, or what your game is. And I won’t be ready to kill you until I have all the information needed to sink your ship and bust up your whole operation. But then, old buddy, look out.”

“I am listening. I am waiting.”

“Yeah? Well, don’t stand on one leg. I’m in no hurry. But I’m going to put you out of business. Just you watch.”

“Mr. Carter, you...”

“See you later,” I said.

I hung up after a moment. And then I looked at the wall for a few minutes, counting up all the debts I’d have to pay for this little trip. And then I looked down at Fred and I got to feeling sick and mad again. And I promptly cured the sick part by looking down at Basil Morse. I stayed mad.

I let out a deep breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Basil, you sonofabitch,” I said. “I’m going to put a crimp in that old school tie of yours. I’m going to set you up. I’m going to fix things so that you have occasion to remember this day and wonder just what it was that happened to you, and what you could have done to deserve it.”

I bent down over his outstretched body. And I picked up one of his hands and swung it over, limp and lifeless, and dipped it in Fred’s blood, palm down. And then I smeared it, all red and sticky, all over the side of his head. What was left I smeared into the rug in front of Basil’s peaceful face. And then I stood up.

They wouldn’t suspect him... really. Not after a good solid British-type investigation had been made. Nobody who knew how closely knit American and British undercover operations are would imagine that an American agent would rub out a British one. Particularly not at the level on which both of them operated. And there’d be other questions. Motive. The missing murder weapon. The open rear window. The mysterious fourth party (me). No, they’d clear him, all right.

But there’d be this funny shadow. He wouldn’t be able to bring me up in his defense. He wouldn’t be able to explain away everything. And there’d always be that strange doubt hanging over it all. There’d be rumors behind Basil’s back, rumors that he hadn’t told everything he knew, and perhaps, just perhaps, that meteoric rise of his would develop a hitch in it somewhere, someplace along the way to the higher State Department levels, or the Cabinet, or the Senate, or wherever people in his social circle are programmed to end up. Perhaps, then, he’d get sidetracked for a hitch or so. He’d sit on a back burner for a while like any other poor simp who hadn’t had his background or advantages, and maybe — just maybe — he’d begin to wonder how things had come to this sort of pass.

Maybe Basil Morse, sooner or later, would grow up. And maybe he’d come around to the realization that all the other people in the world were not necessarily the Pawns, and that he and his kind were not necessarily the Players.

Maybe. But I wasn’t going to offer odds on it.

I picked up the phone and made a couple more calls. Anonymous tips for the Crown Colony cops, with a built-in time lag in each tip, enough to allow me to clear out and be on my way out of Hong Kong by the time they arrived. I called the Kowloon cops and sent them to Wanchai, across the Straits. Then I called the Victoria cops and told them about the dead men over here in Tsim Sha Tsui. Then I wiped the receiver clean. And I went out the back way and down to the street, came around the block to Nathan Road, and hailed a passing cab. “Kai Tak Airport,” I said.

I was going home.

Chapter Fifteen

The airport cab, coming in from Dulles, pulled up on Connecticut Avenue just above Bialek’s bookstore, “Hey,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“You said Dupont Circle,” the driver said. “If you’ve gone and changed your mind all you’ve gotta do is tell me about it. Meanwhile, while you’re sittin’ there dreamin’, I got a livin’ to make, buddy. I don’t mind lettin’ this meter run, but...” He let it hang. His eyes in the rear view mirror were bored and skeptical.

“Sorry about that,” I said. I’d had a lot of things on my mind on the way back, and I hadn’t had much sleep in the past week. I must have just popped it out, Dupont Circle, force of habit. Well, I thought, as good one place as another. My digs were within walking distance, and it made a convenient reference point. “Here,” I said, and slipped him three bills. Getting out of the car, I wished there were some way of bending over, when you had a couple of cracked ribs, without feeling like a Tinkertoy figure who’d been run over by a truck.

“Nick.”

That wasn’t all the voice was saying, coming toward me. It was just all that I could pick out of a constant mutter with its own built-in static. The red-bearded face and the slightly potty body, stuffed into a suit so disreputable even David Hawk wouldn’t have worn it, were nothing particularly distinctive, but I’d have known that lurching gait and nonstop chatter anywhere. It had to be Robert Franks.

Well, listen to a little of it:

“...got a message for you the other day, and whoever she was, she sounded interesting. I stuck the note under the door of your office, anyhow, after hours. I wonder if she’s got a friend. Like to snag the lady and perhaps some little thing she might be pals with and come on out this weekend? Boy, You’re looking rocky today. Want to go grab a cup of coffee? I’ve got a minute or two. On my way over to Interior. Big hassle over Indian fishing rights. Tell you all about it later. Sure I can’t interest you, huh? They...”

“Bob,” I said, “slow down, huh? What was it you said just now?”

“When? Uh... well, the Indians want...”

“No,” I said. “The part about sticking a message under the door. The door of my office.”

“Hmmm? Oh, yes. Well, you know, Ed Quinlan’s out of town this month, and I’ve been using his office and phone... well, until they turned it off. My base of operations, you know. When he gets back I’ve got a consultancy job...”

“Who’s Ed Quinlan?”

“He’s got the office three doors down from yours. No, I guess it’s two now, isn’t it? Almost forgot about that. Anyhow, Ed’s place is the office next to the john. Better Beekeeping magazine, it says on the door, only there aren’t any magazines there and the typewriter doesn’t work. I’ve been wondering just what the place is a front for. Ed never comes to work, and his wife is always calling... well, she used to and...”

“Say, Bob, hang on, would you? I’ve got to go find out something. Look, I’ll call you, soon, okay?”

He smiled his lopsided smile. “Won’t do any good. I haven’t paid that phone bill either.” But he waved me off in his cordial, offhand manner, and was doing the speed limit by the time he hit the crosswalk, muttering to himself, lips pursed, his red eyebrows going up and down.

I was moving too: opening the door of the old building and pounding up the stairs, one hand on that achey rib cage. It wouldn’t be the first time Bob had inadvertently slipped me something important. He had this way of getting around Washington and keeping his eyes and ears open, and I’d have bet he had enough odd information stashed away in that brilliantly disorganized head of his to make or break half of the bigwigs on the Hill. But this? If only he knew what he was talking about this time. I reached the right landing, pushed through the door, chugged down the hall, and tried the fourth knob.

Nothing. The sign on the door said Joel Eigen, Custom Jewelry. Mr. Eigen wasn’t in.

I stood there for a minute, thinking about what Bob Franks had said. Three doors down from yours. No, it’s two now, isn’t it? Almost forgot about that... Of course, the question was, forgot about what? I stepped back and checked the doors: the men’s loo, the Better Beekeeping thing he’d mentioned, the storage room, and the office of...

Of Maytag Corp.: Regional Sales Office...

I let my breath out. Then I moved over one door and tried the knob.

It wasn’t a work day. It shouldn’t have opened.

It did open.

There behind the desk sat David Hawk in his usual grizzly-bear-at-bay attitude in his usual dog’s-blanket suit, savaging one of those ghastly cigars with those strong back teeth of his. He was looking up at me with eyes that held neither irritation nor surprise. He jerked his head at the open door. “Nick. Come on in. Where’ve you been?”

I sat down, a little uneasily... and I told him.

He listened, asking a question now and then in monosyllables and grunts, with a poker face Nick the Greek would have been proud of. When Will Lockwood came on the scene, he betrayed surprise. Just once. One eyebrow went up a millimeter, no more. That was a big reaction. The cigar took one hell of a beating, though.

At the end of my story, Hawk finally realized the stogie had had it. He took it out of his mouth, still unlit, gave it a dirty look for letting him down, and dumped it in the wastebasket. Then he looked at me, the poker face in place again.

“You know there’s going to be a stink,” he said. “About Morse.”

“Uh... yes, sir,” I said. I was preparing a defense. Apologize? No way, sir.

Hawk scowled. “Well, that’s all right. Come to think of it, if you hadn’t creamed him you’d be in worse trouble with me. I’d have put you out to pasture for losing your punch.” His smile, now, was more like anyone else’s idea of a frown, but I could tell the difference. “As it is, you could use a few weeks off...”

“Hey,” I said. “No, sir. No vacations. I’ll wear some elastic around my ribs and I’ll watch my step, but I’m not taking any time off. The only reason I came back when I did was to get more information, and to get plugged back into AXE, and to set things up so I can bust those...”

Hawk put up one broad palm. I slowed down, then stopped dead. “I didn’t say anything about a few weeks in a rest home. You’re going to be working your rear end off, all right; don’t worry about that.”

I sat back and relaxed a little — but only a little.

“Actually,” Hawk continued, “you did pretty well out there, Nick. Matter of fact, I don’t think I know how you could have done better. You...”

“I did lousy,” I said. “I screwed up gloriously. That’s why...”

He waved me to a halt again. “No, no. I know you were flying by the seat of your pants. That’s all right. That’s my fault if it’s anybody’s. I feel bad about that. I’ll never send you out cold like that again, and if I hadn’t been thinking about six other things at the same time I wouldn’t have done it this time. There were complications here. We...”

“I’d been meaning to ask about that. What happened?”

“There was a major compromise, Nick. Here in the capital. Some fool on the staff of a Congressman — we know who, but it won’t do us any good — got hold of a batch of papers he shouldn’t have and leaked it out to one of the papers. We’re right in the middle of a big internal-affairs fight just now, trying to block publication and we may succeed. This time the material is so sensitive even the Washington Post is having qualms about printing it.” Hawk looked at me hard. “Meanwhile, since it impinges on one small corner of our own activity, and comes within an ace of blowing AXE’s own cover, we went underground for the time being. Sorry about that. I had no idea it’d tie your hands at a ticklish time. I thought of taking out a new address altogether, but moving would have telegraphed things completely. I settled on a move next door. Regular movements to and fro, that sort of thing.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought I’d better mention something.” I told him about Bob Franks, and Bob’s knowing where I worked, which had surprised me. We’d only met at press functions before.

“He’s okay,” Hawk said. “We’ve checked him out. Somebody talked to him a while back. He’s just one of these Washington types, cutting across one agency or discipline after another. He used to have quite a high security clearance back between Korea and Vietnam: a consultancy. He knows the score, and when to clam up.”

“Oh,” I said. I should have assumed he’d have given everybody on the floor the once-over before moving in. “Anyhow...”

“Anyhow, you did pretty well out there, all in all. You lost the film, maybe, but it led to a couple of discoveries. Never mind the film. I said it couldn’t be replaced, but maybe it can. Matter of fact, that’s precisely what you’re going to be doing on your little vacation, among other things.”

“I don’t understand.”

Hawk held that palm up again. “All in good time. Anyhow, everything seems to have worked out all right...”

“It worked out lousy,” I said bitterly. “Will and Tatiana are dead. And Fred. And the trail’s cold. All I have to go on is...”

“You have plenty to go on. You’ll see. And don’t take it to heart so much. The only way you could have saved Fredericks would have been to rub out Shimon and Zvy, the Israelis, back in the warehouse the first time. And much as I hate to hear about Fredericks — he was a good man, and both we and the British will miss him — I’m glad those two are still alive. Alive, they may lead us to something. Frankly, they’re a new wrinkle, and as soon as I’m done talking to you I’m alerting Tel Aviv. They need to know — if they don’t already — that there’s a new pair of wild cards in the deck.”

“You don’t know who they are?”

“No. But I will, and so will you. By the time we’re done with this little operation we’re going to know everything anybody needs to know. Including what happened to that shipment of arms, and where it’s gone, and who, right now, is going around thinking he’ll be getting a chance to use it. And how, too. Nick, if we can head the stuff off — well, I don’t need to tell you how much damage that much in the way of new firepower can do to the world balance-of-power situation, whether or not it’s used in the Middle East...”

“Excuse me, sir. Is that the place you’re expecting it to wind up? For sure?”

“I was going to get to that. Yes, that’s a distinct possibility, and one we didn’t know about until you turned up with our friends Mr. Zvy and Mr. Shimon. There’s another possibility, another powder keg around the world just waiting for the spark to touch it off — and a whole damned shipload of arms, dropped into a seller’s market, might turn out to be just the kind of spark we’re talking about.”

“Where’s that?”

“Angola. With Portugal getting out, we can expect another Congo all over again. This time, if our information is correct, with Russian fingerprints all over one side of the conflict — and, we suspect with some kind of intervention from Cuba as well.”

“But... why Angola?”

“Why the Russians? Well, we’re on the brink of a new colonial era in southern Africa. Only this time better than half the world — three quarters of the U.N. — is going to be calling the colonialism of the Soviet bloc ‘self-determination.’ ”

“Black is white, huh? ‘War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength?’ ” I said, quoting 1984.

“You’ve got it. And Angola’s in a nice strategic position in the new oil-oriented geopolitical picture, Nick. It will also make a nice hiding place for guerrilla raids across the South African border and for eventual invasion of the Cape. And our friendship with our Boer friends may be strained at times, but they are our allies. Well, you see the problem.”

“Okay,” I said. “In the meantime...”

“In the meantime you’re going to work on the middle men in these wildcat arms deals that have been going on. You...”

“Middle men?” I said. “You mean the two Israelis? Or the guys Will broke in on?”

“Will...” Hawk sighed. The sides of his mouth turned down. “I don’t feel any too good about that, either. I... well, he told you. We were pretty close once. I thought he was dead.”

“Yes,” I said. “He wanted it that way. He was a real trouper.” I didn’t want to talk about Will or Tatiana. I didn’t want to think about them. Not until all this was over. “Anyhow...”

“Anyhow,” David Hawk said, catching my mood, “it isn’t Shimon and Zvy you’re going after. You forgot that all-important name, Nick.” He decided to light that cigar. He had it going, spewing billows of smoke, before he spoke again. “Komaroff,” he said, dropping that other shoe at last.

“I’d been meaning to ask. Who the devil is Komaroff?”

“If I’d told you in the first place... But no matter. Spilled milk. Here. I had the staff file digested for you while you were gone. Read it, get some sleep, and come back in tomorrow. All right?” He handed me a legal-size file with one stubby-fingered hand and dismissed me with the other. “And dig into the wardrobe for whatever they’re wearing at the beach this season. If they’re still wearing anything at the beach this season.”

“Beach?” I said. “Where?” I still hadn’t looked at the file. “Odessa? The Black Sea resorts? Sevastopol?”

“Nothing so fancy,” he said. “The Mediterranean. The Adriatic. The Aegean.” Hawk shuddered; he hated travel. He looked back up at me one more time, and the frown was almost a real one this time. “Damn it, Carter, aren’t you gone yet?”

Chapter Sixteen

I did what Hawk said. And next day, when I walked in that ratty-looking door and sat down, I handed him the digested file with an air of finality.

I didn’t need it. I’d memorized it.

“I almost don’t believe it,” I said. Hawk was poring over a report, not paying any attention to me, taking sips from time to time from a paper cup full of coffee that looked blacker than his own cigars and thicker than Basil Morse.

Finally he looked up. “Oh. Oh yes, Nick. Good to see you. You read the file?”

“Yes sir. Read and digested and ruminated upon. But I can barely believe it.”

“Hmm? How’s that?”

“Komaroff. I mean, how could he get that big... and cause that much trouble... without somebody getting wise?”

“You’re wrong, you know,” Hawk said, swivelling around to face me.

“Wrong?”

“Komaroff doesn’t cause trouble. He only makes it possible. He doesn’t start wars. He just sells arms to both sides, on such a scale that it’s almost impossible for anybody with a belligerent urge in the war cabinets of either side not to start some sort of conflict.”

“He takes sides, too. Guatemala, Chile, the generals’ coup in Greece...”

“Sure he does. You’ll find he always winds up taking sides sooner or later. And that the minute one side starts faltering in any way — showing signs of possibly losing — you’ll find Komaroff cuts off credit so fast you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Strictly dollar-sign Realpolitik, huh?”

Hawk scowled. “You overvalue the dollar these days. There’s a better medium of exchange in the Petrobuck, or whatever they’re calling it right now. No matter. That, as you could see, was one hell of a success story. And, as you’ve guessed, somebody had to be deliberately looking the other way to let him get that big over a period of no more than twenty-five years while simultaneously — and none too secretly, for that matter — bending all the regulations on international arms traffic out of shape.

“Komaroff has one Senator and several members of key congressional committees right on the payroll, directly or indirectly. Two others — Senators — have their wives working for Komaroff on highly paid consultancy jobs on which no work at all is done.”

“But operating as brazenly as all that...”

“Now recently, Globalarms, the Komaroff corporation...”

“Hey,” I said. “Fredericks was trying to tell me something. As he was dying, his finger traced a G in the air...”

“I thought of that. Very likely. It seems Fredericks happened on the ‘G’ file just as they were breaking in — beating you and Will to it, as a matter of fact. And they nabbed it after killing him. You remember Will sent you after the ‘G’ file...”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anyhow. Back to the meat. A few years ago the Gun Control Act of 1968 put a real crimp in the operations of the big fish. You’ll find the new ground rules detailed in this.” He handed over a State Department booklet called Title 22, Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 121–128: International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The date was November 1973.

“Yes sir,” I said. “This was cut up in bite-size chunks for that digest you gave me, I think. It must have caused some problems.”

“The effect of the 1968 law that we’re interested in is the effect on a shark like Komaroff, who had no diversified interests to fall back on. And who, in the volatile atmosphere of today, with pocket revolutions and two-bit takeovers going on on all sides, has started meddling again in the affairs of various small countries just to get his business back in operation again.”

“Pardon me, sir,” I said. “Komaroff is an American citizen? I didn’t get that straight.”

“No, he isn’t. He was a refugee after World War II — one who managed to smuggle his money out through Switzerland. We let him in, and he managed to live here for twenty-odd years and grow fat, and...”

“So where’s he operating out of now?”

“A yacht in the Mediterranean, Liberian registry. And because we no longer have a man in the castle, so to speak, ratting on Komaroff’s activities for us, we...”

“No longer?” I said. “We had one?”

Hawk looked at me through those beetling brows. The look was bland as cream of mushroom soup. “Yes,” he said. “His name was Walter Corbin.”

“Corbin?” I said, incredulously. “But...”

“Yes,” Hawk said. “And the big job Corbin had to do was to... Well, Komaroff had been breaking out in a furious flurry of activity lately. Buggering up the entire world balance-of-power situation, as a matter of fact. Overloading several of the little OPEC countries with arms, allowing for a buildup in the continuing war against Israel that exceeds anything we consider safe or manageable. Beefing up tiny little African banana republics’ stores of arms just as the ‘republic’ parts of the places were tottering and falling into the hands of people like Idi Amin and company. That southern tip of Africa is ready to explode right now, Nick, and if there isn’t a major Vietnam-type incident there before the year’s out it’ll surprise me plenty.”

“But Corbin?”

“We smuggled him aboard as a Diesel mechanic,” Hawk said. “He wasn’t a reliable type in the first place, you know, but he was the only free agent we knew who had the requisite skills. We had to take the chance.”

“And his job?”

“To bust into Komaroff’s files and microfilm the whole damned thing. Records of everyone he’s doing business with, times, places, amounts, type of armaments, so on.”

“And what went wrong?”

“We’re not absolutely sure. We just got a tip that Corbin had sold us out. We weren’t sure to whom. But with him disappearing on us and then turning up in Saigon like that all we could think was that he wanted the info for sale to the Cong. Now, I’d lay odds against it. It had something to do with Meyer as a middle man, and the thing we now have to do — well, one of the things we have to do — is find out who the outfit was that grabbed it. The Israelis, for instance? The guys who killed Fredericks, and almost got you? The strange new crowd that killed Will? Somebody we don’t know anything at all about? Well, that’s where we’re at, Nick. That’s your job — finding it all out. Well, part of your job, anyhow.”

“Okay,” I said. “Now how about dropping that other shoe, sir?”

“Oh, yes. You’re to finish the job Corbin was hired to do.”

“The whole thing? The mircrofilm? Get it back... or replace it?”

“Right.” Hawk opened his desk and got out one of those awful cigars. “Play it by ear. Komaroff’s thing has to be stopped. He seems to be operating out of some sort of panic these days. These moves of his... they don’t seem to make any sense. Beforehand, Komaroff’s sales pattern had one dominating factor: money. Money we can understand. But now? There seems to be some sort of ideological tinge in there. He’s backing one side at the expense of the other and the only people who really stand to gain are those nice fellows who vote in blocs against us in the U.N.”

“You said play it by ear.”

“Yes. Get the intelligence covertly, if you can. If you can’t, do whatever’s necessary to foul things up. The files? Film them if you can, bum them if you can’t, but memorize everything you can get in your head before you burn it. Cover your tracks as much as possible.”

“Couple of unanswered questions,” I said.

“Yes?”

“That arms shipment to Vietnam, for one.”

“We’re working on that. Maybe you’ll find out where it went before we do. If so, you know how to get the news to us.”

“Right. Meanwhile, the Israelis.”

“Got Tel Aviv working on that. Matter of fact, they’ll be sending you one of their boys to work with you.”

“And I’m supposed to be working my way aboard Komaroff’s boat covertly?”

“That’s all right. Their man’s already aboard, from what I understand. May even be some help. Their agents tend to be pretty good.”

“Yeah,” I said grudgingly. “And my cover?”

“You’re in luck there. Know anything about astrology? Komaroff’s daughter — she’s one of these freaked-out jet-set types from all reports — just fired her resident gum.”

“I’ll bone up.”

“You better. Your application’s already being processed.”

“Hey,” I said. “How do I recognize the Tel Aviv agent? The one that’s supposed to meet me on the boat?”

“He’ll contact you.”

“And the... uh... password? He’ll be wearing a red carnation?”

Hawk frowned. “He’ll slip you that handshake of Will’s.” The corners of his mouth turned down even more. “It was all I could think of offhand.”

Going out onto the Circle again I ran into Bob Franks again. “Say,” he said before I had a chance to open my mouth, “haven’t changed your mind about the weekend, have you? Damn. Hmmm. Too bad. I could have used a ride. Say, you’ve got a pensive look about you, today. What’s the matter?”

“What do you know about astrology?”

“Astro... Hmmm. From what angle?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean are we proceeding on a basis of logical and rational discussion, in which case sorry, Nick, it’s a lot of hog-wash, or are we proceeding under the assumption that...”

“I’ve got to bone up on it in a hurry,” I said. “What have you got hidden away under that bald spot that will help me convince somebody that I know all about the mysterious stars and the secret personal message they have for each and every one of us?”

“How fast do you need it, and how smart do you have to sound?”

“I have to become one of the immortal masters of the art by, uh, let’s say yesterday afternoon, around four p.m. or so.”

Franks’s sandy eyebrows went up and down like Groucho Marx’s. He chewed his lip. “Better come get a cup of coffee with me after all. The mystical wisdom of the centuries cannot be imparted to the uninitiate who knows not the secret password.”

“Copping out?”

“No, but that’s shortish notice. I was, after all, going to fob off this book I have which’ll buy you just about enough double-talk to impress some dimbulb you picked up in a bar somewhere after about four hours’ study. Just read the book and memorize a few stock phrases...” He chewed his lip some more. “But a master? An exalted panjandrum of the mystic shrine? Hmmm. And by tomorrow? This will take the full Robert M. Franks Special Treatment...”

“I said yesterday, you know.”

“I can tell when you’re in a hurry and when you’re just talking. Okay. Tomorrow it is. Tomorrow you will pass for a master astrologer in any crowd that doesn’t include Sydney Omarr. Make that virtually any crowd. Stay away from anybody at the party who wears a red bandanna around her head and gold bangles in her ears. She’ll tip off your scam in a minute.”

“Sold,” I said. “I’m in your hands. You said something about coffee?”

Chapter Seventeen

“My name is Harry Archer,” I said, “and I am Miss Komarova’s new astrologer.”

“So?” the blonde said, unimpressed. She flipped her convertible shades up and had another look at me. “And who sent you out here to bother me? What is that to me?”

I gave her another look up and down. What I could see was something like ninety-nine percent lovely bronzed skin and the rest rubberized cloth. There were maybe forty other people on the beach.

A week had passed. Hawk had pulled strings to expedite the mating dance of getting me my new job, and now here I was in the south of France in my new denim windbreaker, boating shorts and espadrilles, getting the eye from another one of Alexandra Komarova’s hired help. I was getting fidgety. “I... I was sent here by the little man at the desk,” I said.

“Ah, Philippe,” she said. Her smile was wry. “He’s a bit Spoleto for your taste? A wonder you did not get assaulted. Ah, he always sticks me with the orientations. But now that I see you...” The red lips pursed thoughtfully. We were on a sort of semi-private beach at Nice, where Alexandra Komarova maintained a residence, an office, and a personal staff to manage them when she wasn’t cruising the seven seas on her father’s yacht, the Vulcan. I’d checked in at the big building less than an hour before, been assigned a suite and shown around the service floor, and, on the little male receptionist’s advice, had changed and gone in search of further enlightenment. And here she was, my assigned tour guide, a gorgeous peroxide blonde with skin tanned — all over — the color of good Utah honey. The way that little swim suit kept hitching this way and that I figured that if there were six square inches of flesh she hadn’t shown me yet it must be on the bottoms of her feet.

“Well,” she said at last. “You’ll do, I guess.” Her smile mocked me, but not in contempt. “I am Vicki Weiner. Welcome to our... operation. Whatever you may choose to call it.” I was trying to peg the accent. No dice so far. She stooped now and picked up her little beach bag, sitting on the sharp pebbles next to her tall wooden clogs. When she made any kind of extreme move like that the little swim suit just gave up in disgust. “So,” she said, standing. “I see it’s my job to... how you say...”

“Show me the sights?” I volunteered. “Miss Weiner, I am at your disposal.”

“Splendid,” she said. And she wheeled and walked away, inviting me to follow. The view from the back was every bit as nice as the front view had been. I kept the pace behind her.

The beach all but vanished around a rock abutment, though, and she had to go ankle-deep in the cold Mediterranean to get around it. I took my shoes off and followed. The thinning crowd that had spotted the earlier strand disappeared altogether here. The beach was totally empty for a couple of hundred yards before a sheer cliff cut it off, plunging into the sea in an almost vertical line. White water-birds slicing across the black rock gave the place a sort of solarized-photo look broken only by the blue sea and sky.

As soon as our feet touched dry land again she turned and matter-of-factly handed me the beach bag. “Here,” she said, unzipping its top as I held it and pulling out a rolled blanket. “I’ll spread this. You reach down in the bottom of the bag and get our lunch out.”

There was a little wind blowing sand my way; I turned my back and blocked the dirt headed for the bag. She came prepared: sandwiches, salad, everything in its little plastic container; even a couple of bottles of golden Pilsner Urquell beer. “Lunch for two?” I said, puzzled, picking the bag out and setting the little knapsack down. “You were expecting me?”

“No,” she said behind my back. I dug in the canvas bag looking for a bottle opener. “I had an appointment with someone else. He did not show up.”

“The more fool him,” I said, turning. “Now me, I’m totally at your disp...”

That was one sentence I never finished. Probably I never will. There was Miss Weiner stepping daintily out of those tall clogs, those delicious breasts bared to the warm sun by the little bra she was engaged in folding and dropping softly on the blanket. As I watched, her hands went to the side-straps of her Lilliputian bikini pants and shoved them down... all the way down to her ankles.

And damned if she wasn’t a real blonde after all.

I looked up and caught her eyes on me. They were sea-green, humorous, self-assured. The red lips on the wide, witty mouth smiled mockingly at me. “Well, Mr. Archer?” she said. “This is France, you know. Surely you’re not shocked.” She sank down on the blanket, sitting crosslegged like a yogi.

“Come, join me, Mr. Archer,” she said. “And what part of the United States did you say you were from? Iowa? Kansas?”

“I didn’t say,” I said. I sat down beside her, dug into the bag again, and found the opener this time. I cracked the pilsner caps and handed her a beer. I won’t say I didn’t get an eyeful. That golden body just jumped out and socked you a good one. I don’t think even Philippe, with his distinct disinclination going for him, could have looked away from her right then. She touched her bottle to mine with a tiny clink. “Prost,” she said.

“Votre santé,” I said. “I have here one paté sandwich, I think, and one... hmmm...”

She saved me the trouble; she grabbed the second one and sank strong white teeth into it. She smiled at me, chewing. I shrugged and bit in. It was pate, and it was excellent. The sun, the cool breeze, the food, the beer, and the beautiful woman stark naked beside me on the beach blanket on this utterly deserted beach... I was beginning to like this leg of the trip, even if I didn’t have the foggiest idea where it all was leading.

“You,” she said. “You... read the stars?”

I had another sip of beer. “Well, yes. I...”

“And you believe that these little dots up in the sky affect our lives?” Her smile was mocking as ever. “That in alignment of the planets can make this man rich, this man poor?”

That wasn’t my favorite subject, really. I wanted to change it somehow. “Well,” I said, “the contemporary astrologer doesn’t tend to speak of these things in terms of cause and effect any more, you know. The concept of synchronicity...”

“Oh, no matter,” she said. “Mr. Archer, I think you are a phony. That is the word, right? Phony?”

“What do you mean?” The alarm bell went off. Quietly.

“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t expose you. Ah... at least not that way.” She smiled, not so mockingly this time, and reached both golden arms over to pull the zipper of my wind-breaker down slowly, all the way. Then her hands pulled it gently away from my chest.

She stopped when she saw the bandage — but only for a moment. Her lips made a sympathetic moue. “Oh, you’re hurt. Here, let me...” And this time she was a little gentler with me, taking the coat the rest of the way off.

“I see,” I said, “that I’m going to have another one of those weird suntans.”

“My... how did you do that?” she said. I’d debated doing something with body makeup about the bruises that stuck out from under the bandages all around — dark blue-black bruises on shoulders and arms and kidneys — but had given up on it An integrated excuse was best all around.

“Auto accident,” I lied. “I... ah... rolled an Aston Martin near Carmel. That’s how I lost my last job. The employer was in the back.”

“Remind me not to ride with you,” she said. “What happened? Had he found you out?”

“What makes you think I’m a phony?” I said. “You...”

“Oh, that,” she said. She waved one tanned hand at me, up and down. “Astrologers are unhealthy little men who look like night clerks at some dingy off-season hotel,” she pronounced it clark; British education, then. I was still working on the accent. Not French, German or Italian. Three down. “You, on the other hand, weigh perhaps...”

“One eighty,” I said. “That’s pounds. I wouldn’t know how many kilos offhand.”

“Yes, and you are athletic. No. I would not buy you for a star-gazer, Mr. Archer. I do not know what your game is, but...”

“I haven’t got any game,” I said, biting down hard on the sandwich again. “I’m just earning a living.”

“Oh, come now,” she said. One brown hand was on my thigh. “You don’t have to hide it from me, just Alexandra. And perhaps Elsa, and Boris, and Michel. All the rest of us are phonies just like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, take Philippe. He is supposed to be La Komarova’s personal secretary. He is not. He is her hashish connection. I, I am supposed to be her hairdresser. Hal Alexandra does not need a hairdresser. She...”

“I’ve never seen her,” I said. That part was the truth, anyhow.

“I’ll point her out. If, indeed, you do not know her immediately from her manner. She is a rich father’s brat. She is all the brats of all rich fathers rolled into one. But hairdresser? Bah! I am a painter, Mr. Archer, and a good one. I am here because she wants her portrait done. Not once but many times. Always when she is on drugs. All...” She did not blush, after all, but she did stop and start again. “All nudes. She has terrible taste. The intention is always erotic. She will bring a lover in and pose, ostensibly for me, actually for him. She will talk — bed talk — to him as I paint her. You realize she is very high during all this. For her I hardly exist any more. All the better. If she is concentrating on her lover of the moment I hardly have to go through the motions of painting her. She never asks to see the portrait, anyhow. All the better, I say. As long as her lovers keep her busy she does not grow amorous toward me. I remember once...” But she shuddered here. She looked at me again. “You, Mr. Archer. Who hired you?”

“Why, I suppose Philippe did. He handled the application I sent in with my photographs.”

She shuddered again. “You see? You’re a phony too. If you cast so much as a single horoscope while you are on board the Vulcan it will be a miracle.” Her mouth shut tight in a wry smile; the brown hand gripped my leg hard. “I... I’m sorry...” The green eyes, looking up at me, were penitent. Were something else, too; she was near tears. There were goosebumps on her naked shoulders.

And there was a moment there when my lovely, blonde, naked blanket partner nearly melted into my arms... and it passed. She picked up my jacket and threw it over her shoulders; her gaze, pointed out to sea, was full of self-loathing. The green eyes brimmed with bitter tears.

“If you don’t like it,” I said, “why don’t you leave?”

She looked at me oddly. “Yes,” she said. “Why don’t I?” But she didn’t answer me. She bit her lip and shook the jacket off her body and lay back, taking the sun. She forced all expression off her lovely face, looking up at the sun like that, and only then put on a pair of dark glasses from the beach bag. She didn’t say anything more.

“I gather,” I said, “we’re going on a cruise shortly.”

“Yes,” she said at last. “The Vulcan is due in port tomorrow. It will lie off Nice at anchor; we will go out in a motor launch.”

“Where’s it coming from?” I said. “Philippe didn’t tell me.”

“Oh... outside Gibraltar, I think. The Canaries, perhaps. The African coast. I’m not sure. Does it matter?”

“I guess not. Where’s it going?”

“Greece. Cyprus. The Levant.”

I’ll bet, I thought. I didn’t believe that business about the Canaries, either. Not with Angola on the way. I couldn’t wait to start finding out what the devil was going on. Anyhow, I would have put a month’s pay, right then, on the incidence of another Middle Eastern outbreak before the year was out. That orientation Hawk had given me on Komaroff’s arms operation had been enough to raise the hair on my head every time I thought hard about it. Where Komaroff trod, the grass died and would grow no more. It was as simple as that. “Do you ever see much of Mr. Komaroff?” I said. “I mean, I understand he and Alexandra Komarova have their own different worlds.”

“Komaroff?” she said. “No, no. He very much sticks to his own quarters these days. I think he has been ill. Why? He does not concern you.” She raised her upper body on her elbows, looking at me. “Come, Mr. Archer. The sun will heal your bruises...”

She looked up suddenly. Past my shoulder, at something behind me. No, make that someone behind me: his long shadow advanced along her brown legs. Her expression was one of quick rage.

I turned as fast as I could without shaking the ribs up any worse than I had to. It wasn’t fast enough. A fist as big as Walter Corbin’s caught me one over the ear and laid me out across Vicki Weiner’s brown body. The ribs felt like somebody had shot me there with something like an elephant gun.

“Constantin...” the girl said. She was trying to push me off. It didn’t help the ribs any. I shoved loose, gritted my teeth, and rolled over past her, keeping her between me and whoever had hit me until I could get my legs under me.

When I did — struggling up to my feet, muttering unkind words under my breath — I got a look at him at last. He was one of your beach-boy types, with the bunched-up bicep and deltoid muscles that look so good under the lights in posing contests. Strong as hell. Not somebody to let close to you. His eyes were on me but his words were for her. “Here... what you do with this... this swine...”

“None of your business!” she yelled. It was a good lusty yell; I had to say that for her, she didn’t screech like a fishwife. “I told you I come and go where I please. I gave you one more chance and you did not come.” And there it went off into rapid-fire French, as quick on the tongue as the incredible Spanish the women talk in Madrid. She still had an accent, I noticed, but she had a fine vocabulary of gutter argot. It began with telling him his mother was a cow and went rapidly downhill from there.

I stood up and circled away from her. I noticed she’d gotten into my jacket. I didn’t think a good look at me would scare him. I don’t, after all, have those pretty bunched-up muscles and all, having trained for the kind you can actually do something with. And the rib bandage only added to his self-confidence: he was going to be insufferable in a minute.

I gave him another look. He was about my height; his hair was a shock of unruly black, and there was that Levantine olive cast to his skin and that definitely Mediterranean nose that told me he wasn’t standing too far from his birthplace. “Come on,” I said disgustedly. “I don’t feel like chasing you, and I haven’t got all day to wait for you to come to me. Let’s get it over with.”

He showed me a lot of white teeth. And the bellow he let out at me as he charged was dark and full of phlegm. The big fists were raised; one of them cocked back as he came forward in a rush.

I didn’t feel like screwing around this time. My ribs hurt and I was feeling nasty. I’d have a nice headache after that wallop he’d given me. I stepped aside and gave him a nice medium-strength karate chop in the Adam’s apple, not enough to put him out, just enough to drop him to his knees, gasping and holding his throat. Then I aimed another one at his collarbone and only pulled it at the last moment. It landed him on his face on the rocky beach.

I looked down at him. He was still awake. I picked him up by the shirtcollar and dragged him to the waterline and dropped him on his kisser in two inches of ice-cold water. It woke him up all the way. He got up looking worse than I felt. He didn’t even think about coming my way. He did give me a bad glare though. I shrugged and felt my aching ribs with one hand, watching him plod heavily away.

I turned and looked at the girl. She held the two halves of her swimsuit in one hand; the jacket was still thrown over her shoulders. She was looking at me with new eyes, and precisely what was in them I couldn’t say. After a moment her eyes dropped; she turned her back and slipped into her ridiculous little suit under the jacket.

“What,” I said, “was that the hell all about?”

“He thinks I am his. I have not encouraged him. I had a date with him earlier, just to keep the peace. He was late. I went with you to spite him.” She turned to face me, the bikini in place now. She handed me the jacket. “I am afraid you have made a terrible enemy. I do not know what he will do. I am sorry. I was foolish. I have caused you great trouble. Please... please forgive...”

“Never mind,” I said. “You could show me where the booze cabinet is, though. The doctor who put me in this corset is going to kill me when he sees this.”

“Poor Mr. Archer.” She moved close to me and put one soft hand on my arm. “I... I will try to make it up to you, for my foolishness. Please let me. Please forgive...”

And now she did melt into my arms. Briefly. And the green eyes that looked up at me out of that lovely face were concerned, deeply troubled. Then she kissed me, quick and hard, and it was my turn to step back and do a double-take. “No problem,” I said. “Not if you can find me a drink. And... Miss Weiner...”

“Vicki, please...”

“Okay, Vicki. And it’s Harry, right?”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled again and took my hand, leading me around the headland again. When we reached the beach I’d found her on I felt both of her little hands on mine, grasping hard, as she walked close, very close to me.

It’d been a hell of a meeting. No place to go but up.

Chapter Eighteen

In her room she went modest on me. She’d been stark naked with me on the beach, and now when we got back to her suite of rooms, what did she do when she got out of that bikini she’d almost been wearing? She handed me a drink and stepped behind a curtain.

The big room we were in served her as bedroom and sitting room. She’d converted the second room into a painter’s studio and had let it become a comfortable mess, the way most painters’ studios are. This room was more like the rest of the house — First Empire, I guessed — and I ought not to have liked it any more than I did my suite or the rest of the house, which had a museumy feel I couldn’t get close to. But this was a room Vicki Weiner lived in, and she made the place livable. I’d been on the edge of being furious at her for her little stunt on the beach, using me to tickle her boyfriend’s temper; but now I found myself relaxing and feeling at home. Another chance for Vicki Weiner, I decided. And a few points for good vibes.

“Hey,” I said. “This Constantin guy. Just what’s his place here?”

“Oh,” she said. I could tell from the way her head and shoulders were moving that she was slipping into a bra and hooking it in the back. “He is a phony like the rest of us. He is supposed to be the pilot of the little launch that will take us to the Vulcan tomorrow when it anchors. With Alexandra away out of town so much, you can see that without other duties he would...” She shrugged.

“Yeah,” I said. “A captain without a ship.”

“Correct, Harry. Well, what he really is is the most recent one of Alexandra Komarova’s lovers to be... ah, put out to pasture. I have the right phrase?” I nodded. “I am not entirely surprised. He is not her usual type. She has fair taste in men sometimes. I don’t know. Perhaps she is changing. She has not been here in... oh, three months perhaps. I have heard nothing from her except impersonal cables. I am not looking forward to dealing with her again.”

“And Constantin? He went after you on the bounce?”

“Bounce? Oh, I see: the rebound. Yes. And just this once, like a fool, I let him talk me into a date on the beach. And... oh, Harry, I am so sorry I got you into this. Your chest... does it hurt terribly?”

“No worse than usual, I guess.” I was lying in my teeth all the way. “Now what do you have to tell me about Alexandra Komarova?”

“Alexandra? What do you want to know?” It’s funny how you can see someone’s face only, that way, and tell just what she’s doing. She’d be getting into a pants suit and she’d look terrific.

“Well, if as you say she maintains only a marginal interest in astrology, in occult things, why me? Why a whole string of guys like me?”

“Ah, Harry, the others were not like you. And Alexandra was more interested in, ah, spiritual matters once. More recently she has become more serious. Businesslike. Except when she uses drugs; then she grows amorous. Harry, did you send her your photo? With your dossier?”

“My resume? Yes, I did. Matter of fact, the ad stipulated full-length front and side views. Something about security matters, the way they put it. And when they told me what her father did for a living, well, I...” I let the Awful Truth dawn on my face. “Oh. That? You mean... me?”

“Oh, Harry,” she said. “This is no place for you. The Vulcan is an institution for the insane. It’s not too late to back out. A handsome man like you, you can always find another job, a real one. I’ll give you some names to call, people in Menton, Cannes...”

“No, no,” I said. I stuck a cynical smile on my face. “I’m here, and I think I’ll just stick around a bit just to find out what happens. Just for the hell of it. If it turns out to be too much to put up with, I’ll leave. I think about half my motivation for taking the job was just plain curiosity. You know, I’ve never been on a really big yacht before. And I’m curious. I know the rich, now. The kind of middle-aged money you find in Carmel, in Santa Barbara and Montecito. But these people... I’ve never had much to do with anyone like them. Something in me gets curious to see what the real prime movers of the world are like.”

She looked at me, her mouth frozen, one white tooth biting into one red lip. “Harry,” she said, “you are too much like me. We would not be good for each other.” She stepped out from behind the screen and widened my eyes for me a little. She was exquisite, in blinding white pants and halter and jacket and sandals. Wherever skin showed, the white set it off deliciously. I tipped my highball glass at her, drank.

“Well, why worry about that either?” I said. “If we are a pair of adventurers the only excuse for that line of work is enjoying it. You look great. Let’s go do a bit of enjoying.” I held a hand out for her to shake, but she turned away. I put my hands on her brown arms and spun her back around again. “What’s the matter?” I said.

“Oh, Harry, halfway through my little act this afternoon I realized what a fool I was being, playing with you like that. You are not a man to be played with. And most certainly not by me. I was thinking what a mess I’d made of things in the last year or so.”

“Here?” I said. “So leave. Nothing easier.”

“No, no, I have obligations. I’ve gotten in over my head in something.” She bit that full red lip of hers again. “I have to work my way back out again. My own way.”

“I don’t know,” I said. I smiled and kissed her lightly on the tip of that perfect little nose. “I’ll have to take your word for that. In the meantime, the boat comes in tomorrow. We have tonight. I am new to Nice. I know nothing of the area. You can show me around. We can have a good dinner: candles, seafood, wine. I...”

“Oh, Harry, my dear,” she said. “It would be such fun. But I... I have an appointment later this evening. It is important, and...”

“You couldn’t call this person? And reschedule?”

There was a new light in her eyes as she pondered that one. “Perhaps I could. We could leave early, and take a nice drive — I know such a lovely place here in the Old Town, small and quiet. The oysters just went out of season, but... oh, you’d love it, I know you would...” Now it was her turn to step up on tiptoe and kiss me lightly. “Yes, yes, Harry. Look, you go dress. I’ll have my little car brought up from the garage...” I was still working on placing that accent. “I’ll meet you up front in... say ten minutes? Fifteen? Fifteen it is.” As I went out I looked back; she had the house phone under her chin, and the smile she gave me was warm, almost shy.

Her “little car” was a gorgeous classic Morgan, one of the kind with the wooden chassis we won’t allow for sale in the U.S., and I did some discreet coveting, right up to the moment common sense stepped in and reminded me I wasn’t “home” — if that’s what Washington was to me after all these years — often enough to justify owning even a classic car. When I figured that out, I stopped thinking about cars and started thinking about what I was doing.

Not that beautiful women aren’t their own excuse for doing things. But I was here for a reason and it wouldn’t do to forget that the job came first. I pondered the ifs, ands and buts, and decided I could justify getting involved with Vicki on the grounds of her being close to Alexandra. Maybe I could get her to keep an ear cocked for idle conversation, and report back to me? I know it sounds crass, but that sort of thinking comes with the job.

Vicki seemed happy and vivacious. Only every so often I’d see a sort of shadow cross her face — and it’d put ten years on her age each time — only to be wiped out by that warm smile I was getting, more and more often now.

Dinner was, as she’d said, in the Old Town — the winding-streets, narrow-alleys part of town between the Paillon, the underground river that cuts the town in two, and the chateau on the hill above the port. And it was every bit as nice as she’d said it would be: perfect blue trout, a glorious salad and I still wish I’d written down the name of the wine. Soft light that just let us see each other’s eyes and hands, and small talk about what do you like, and what do you dislike, and I was almost beginning to forget the ache in my side and the messy job I was here to do.

And then she had to bring me back to earth. “Harry.” Both of those soft hands on the back of mine. “I have to do an errand in the neighborhood — that appointment I told you about. You will forgive me, won’t you? Please? I’ll be a half hour at most. Harry...”

And what could I do but help her into her jacket and show her out into the narrow little street promising to meet her at the car in forty minutes?

There’d been one thing I hadn’t lied to her about and that was the fact that I have an insatiable curiosity. The next thing I knew, I was scurrying silently through the dark streets after her, under the white arches of clean sheets hanging across the little alleyways from third-floor windows, down a stone staircase and, finally, up an outside wall to a stone balcony overlooking the window in which she sat silhouetted, talking to someone I couldn’t see.

“...No, there’s no one by that name. Look, how many times do I have to tell you? I... please, let my arm go, you’re hurting me...”

I couldn’t make out the other person’s voice. It was a man; that was all I could tell.

“...Look, you’re going to have to let me go sometime. I’m no good to you this way. I... I’ve got to live my own life...”

There was a sound below me.

I froze.

The building I’d climbed up the side of had looked empty: dark and dusty and abandoned, for all I could see. It was situated across a narrow alley from the room Vicki was in; all the lights were out below me.

There was somebody down there, though.

Had I been followed? I didn’t know. But if I’d picked up a tail back at the restaurant, and hadn’t noticed it until now, I was losing my touch.

Across from me the girl was saying, “...I don’t care. I just can’t go through with it any more. I’m a nervous wreck as it is. I...”

I was beginning to want to sneak a look over the edge at what was happening down there. That wouldn’t have been smart. The dim light shining through her window, across the narrow alley, was just enough to pick out my face for the benefit of anyone below me looking up. I cursed myself for leaving Wilhelmina at home, but managed to salvage one pat on the back from the reassuring presence of Hugo, his razor-sharp length safe in its scabbard on my forearm, under my shirt.

There was more than one person down there. There was...

I forgot what Vicki was saying for a moment. There was a sharp intake of breath down below and then a strangled gasp. I sneaked a look over the edge. There was a dim light coming from one of the windows: somebody with a flashlight down in one of the rooms, flashing its flickering beam around the room.

I slipped Hugo out of his sheath and wormed my way over the edge of the little balcony, letting myself down slowly to the next balcony. One floor down, I could hear somebody grunt, low and guttural; he was lugging something across the room. I took a deep breath and eased myself over the edge again. I let myself down staying in the shadows as much as possible and finally my feet touched the stone wall of the balcony.

I faltered just once. It was enough to save me. There was a short phfft from the door, and a 7mm bullet, silenced, whizzed past my face. If I hadn’t slipped — well, there are times when it doesn’t pay to be perfect.

I hit the floor and rolled. The guy with the gun was crouched in the door opening, and, fool that he was, still had the flashlight on, waist high, in the hand that wasn’t holding the gun.

I came out of the roll full of bounce and didn’t give him time to react. If I’d known who it was — if I’d thought about it — I think I’d have cut him up then sat there watching while he slowly bled to death. I put my little friend Hugo up between two ribs and gave him a vicious shove, right into heart muscle. It took all the strength I had, but Hugo went in all the way until the hilt stopped on a rib. The guy went straight down. Dead.

I stepped aside, grabbed his flashlight, and took a look at him. I shoved his corpse out of the way, and shone the flash around the room. It picked out approximately what I’d expected to find, once I’d found my bearings. The muscleman, Constantin, was lying on the floor, his chest a mass of red. I guessed I must have missed the sound of the silencer that first time, under the other sounds of the evening; the only time those things make much in the way of noise is when they’re aimed right at you. I let the flash play over his body and found something else I’d expected to find. The loosened clothing; the splash of dark blood on his belly...

I shone the light once again on the face of the man I’d killed. What a fluke, I was thinking. Poor stupid Constantin had tailed me, just wanting to put a dent in my nose for doing what looked like stealing his girl. Somehow he’d gotten between me and the much deadlier tail I’d picked up on the way down here, and had been mistaken for me.

Wouldn’t he have looked at Constantin’s face, and seen it wasn’t me? Wouldn’t... I looked at the man’s face, hard and brutal even in death. No; maybe not. Not with a crazy like Zvy. Well, it was the last time he’d apply that little tattoo of his to anybody, the miserable bastard.

I flipped off the flash. “There’s one of the bastards, Fred,” I said under my breath. Maybe I’d have said more, maybe not. The next interruption made it all academic anyhow.

“Leon, look out! You...”

The words were Vicki’s, and they came from that upstairs window across the way. That was all she had a chance to get out; the rest was buried under the roar of a large and powerful handgun. Once. Twice. Then silence.

Chapter Nineteen

That was it for the moment. I flicked the flash at Zvy’s body and picked out the shape of his gun with the silencer on it. I bent — cursing the ribs, which were giving me fits — and picked it up; then I snuffed the flash and jammed it in a back pocket.

There was another gunshot up there — but this time from a smaller weapon. A Saturday Night Special, for all I could tell. They go pop, while the big guns make your ears ring.

I’d recognized that first pair of shots, though. At least I thought I did. There is only one gun louder, or more powerful, than the .357 Magnum, and that was the .44. This hadn’t been any .44. It hadn’t made me flinch and the .44 is the only one that makes me flinch. No, 357 was it, and I’d bet a Webley-Vickers...

Shimon was out there in the night. Stalking Vicki and her boyfriend. Or me?

Well, it didn’t matter, I decided. I didn’t care who he’d been chasing. Now the tables were going to be turned. I was going to wind up chasing him. And this time, I was going to catch him. And bum him. I caught myself grinning in the dark.

The little gun went pop again.

I slipped forward and stuck my head out the window; I counted to five and moved out on the balcony.

There was no sign of life up there.

I shoved the gun in a pocket and headed back toward the door. If he tried to come down via the nest of balconies, the way I’d gone up, they’d see him and pot him; now I knew one or the other of them — Vicki or whoever Leon was — was alive, and armed. Okay. That meant he’d have another way out, and it’d likely be the way he’d taken to get inside the building. The way Zvy had taken when he’d come in and surprised Constantin. I headed for the main staircase of the old building.

When I cracked the door, paused, and finally stepped out into the stairwell, though, there wasn’t a sound to be heard.

I decided to force the issue.

I pulled the gun back out again and tiptoed cautiously up one flight. Then I paused at the landing and listened for sounds. Nothing. Even more cautiously than before, I headed up again.

At the top of the stairs I stepped back and kicked in the door... and almost got shot for my pains. The little gun across the way went pop again and a slug sang its way past my head into the wall. I hit the floor fast — and wished I hadn’t.

“Hey,” I said. “Vicki. It’s me. Harry Archer. The guy with the gun is gone.”

“Harry?” The voice was nervous, tentative. “What are you doing here?”

“I... I got jealous and followed you.” I’d explain later. “The man up here — the one with the pistol — he’s gone. I checked everything out.”

“Harry... can I trust you?”

“You’d better. Anyhow, you’d better do something quickly, shoot me or trust me. The cops’ll be here in a matter of minutes.”

“Could you come up? I mean... there’s someone wounded here. I...”

“Hang on a second.” The balconies were so close together that high up that the housewives could have had regular conversations over hanging out the wash. I got up, painfully, went out to the balcony, tensed up, and jumped across.

As I did, the rail on my balcony — some sort of stucco stuff — gave way underfoot. The broken pieces went clattering down into the alley. I hit the next rail hard, hung on with both hands and it held. I climbed up, aching and cursing.

They were in darkness inside. I pulled the curtains and as Vicki flipped the light on — a single overhead bulb, and a dim one at that — I pulled a piece of beaverboard off what had been a rotting closet and laid it over the window opening.

When I looked down, she had the guy’s head on her lap and a little purse gun in one hand. He had a big wound in the thigh and he’d lost a lot of blood. “We don’t have much time to lose,” I said. “Go get the car and pull it up at the head of the next street over. I don’t remember the name of it; there’s a vespasienne just above it, or there was the last time I was here...”

“But Harry, you said you’d never been to Nice before...”

“Never as Harry Archer,” I said. “Explanations later. We’ve got to get your pal here out of the area before the flics arrive. Do as I say.”

“All right, but... here, my gun...”

“I’ve got one. I took the gun off the guy I killed downstairs. It’s okay. His chum ought to be far, far away by now.”

She looked up at me with those sea-green eyes. “I... okay.” She let me take the man over; then she bolted for the door, agile in her flat sandals. I could hear their soles flapping all the way down the stairs.

I turned to the man. “This,” I said, “is going to hurt me as much as it does you. But we’d better do it anyhow. If I can get you up to my shoulder...”

He looked up and said, “It’s all right.” Then his eyes widened. They narrowed again, scanning my face. He had a long lean face, the face of a high-metabolism, overactive, driven man. There was a small scar under one eye. “You... give me your hand first. Please. I...”

I put one hand in his; his was cold; shock.

And damned if he didn’t slip me Will Lockwood’s funny handshake. Just as the sirens went off down the way.

“Well, for chrissake,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “And you know me. We worked together four years ago in the Bahrain Gulf. I...” But he looked lousy. I put one finger over my mouth: Save it for later; we’ve got to get out of here first. Know him? Of course I knew him. Leon Schwartzblum. One of Israel’s toughest and most reliable undercover boys. He’d switched services as the need for his talents had demanded — he’d been one of the guys who got Eichmann out of Argentina — and now he was working this gig with me. Or had been. That leg wound was going to put him right out of this ballgame, leaving me pretty much where I’d started.

“Right on, buddy,” I said. “More later. But bite down hard right now; I’m going to try to get you up on my shoulder. Hang in there.” But I knew he would anyway. He was the hanger-inner type if ever I saw one.

Carrying a badly wounded man in a Morgan isn’t easy. We had to put him in my lap, and between my ribs and his thigh, it didn’t help anything.

Vicki was silent for quite a while, shifting gears expertly, racing style, and really moving up into the hills behind Nice. It was a road I’d never travelled, but I had some idea where she was going. They’d have a meeting place stashed close by, a place with a radio...

“What do you know about doctoring?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said, her eyes on the road. “But we have a friend I can call...”

“I’ll be all right,” Leon said, but from between clenched teeth. He understood the need for her fast driving, too. “Sonia,” he said. “This is Nick Carter.”

“Nick Car...?” She turned her eyes to us. “B-but...”

“As you said,” I told her, “we’re all phonies here. Sonia? I kind of liked Vicki, somehow.”

“She is... my sister,” Leon said. “She has been our contact aboard the Vulcan. She has had the bulk of the dirty work so far.”

“I was trying to talk Leon into letting me go,” she said. She bit her lip, then went on. “I saw myself being a little fool, turning into the sort of vain and stupid and capricious person they were, just from being around them all the time. Today — I was so stupid and mean, playing with you like that...”

“Okay,” I said. “No problem. Besides, Constantin’s dead.”

“Dead? But he was not one of them...”

“But he followed me, and they took him for me in the dark. I ran into the somebody afterward, a minute or so later, and stuck a shiv into him. He...”

Leon tried to sit up some. “Nick. Did you see his hands? Did he...”

“Did he have a little Star of David tattooed on the web between thumb and forefinger? Yes. Why?”

He just nodded, though. “I knew it. I knew we would run into them here. The opening moves are over in that particular search. You hear, Sonia? It is the endgame. We are getting close. We...”

But she was paying attention to the road, and a good thing too; it was winding and twisting, and all the curves were banked the wrong way, and there wasn’t any shoulder above a sheer drop. I decided not to look down. Presently she turned into a big gap in a long row of trees on the shore side of the road, and we slowed down as the car’s tires hit gravel and crunched loudly, throwing rocks up against the mudguards.

Watching the “friend” — who turned out to be a brawny nurse — patch up Leon’s leg, with him grinding the molars but smiling, I decided he was more extraordinary than previously thought. We could only make small talk until she left; but then it seemed time to open up. We had to decide what we could do to patch up the operation.

“You were,” I said, sipping the straight scotch Sonia had handed me, “going to tell me about the guys with the tattoos. You...”

She handed Leon a drink, too. “The Sons of David,” she said. “They are the pilot fish of the people Leon and I are here to smelt out.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Israel,” Leon said, taking the ball, “has her own crackpots, fanatics — whatever you choose to call them. We also have our own traitors and renegades. We are a small country, but already we have a little of everything one can expect to find in a much larger country.” He sat up in the bed and pulled a pillow behind his back.

“There is a type of mentality I can only call suicidal. Fundamentally suicidal. Capable of orienting the entire organism around the prospect of its own death. In a way you’d have to say Hitler was an extreme example of this sort of already extreme mentality. The one thing you could reliably predict, given the first organization of the German war machine, was the eventual sight of Germany in ruins and rubble, her people demoralized, many of them homeless, starving. In a way you have to say that Hitler did everything he possibly could to ensure that this would happen. Every foolish move that he made, with such a bold and confident air, only hastened the arrival of that day in that bunker in Berlin. He had gone out of his way — perhaps more than any man in history — to make enemies, the stronger and more unforgiving the better...”

“I get you,” I said. “It’s one way of looking at it.”

“Nick,” Leon said. “Our parents managed to live through Auschwitz. My father once told me that the only thing that saved them was being able to take an objective view. Any other view ended in madness. Sonia and I have had to turn certain switches inside our minds off from time to time. We have had to...”

“I understand.”

“All right. These people — the Sons of David — are people who cannot wait for the next war with the Arabs. They want one right now — and one to the death. You know what that would mean, given the present odds as of the Yom Kippur War...”

“Ouch,” I said. “And... omigod.” I told them about the Hong Kong incidents — the hijacked shipment of arms, the lost microfilm, everything. “I couldn’t understand their actions then, though, and I can’t understand them now.”

“Oh” Leon said. “The... mutilation of the victims? A biblical thing, Nick. The ancient Israelites, in the period of the Books of Kings, were a very warlike people. King Saul was a mighty warrior. Kind David was even mightier. And those were not wars fought with tournament rules. Following a Jewish victory the conquerors would circumcise their fallen foes. The soldiers collected foreskins the way the American Indian often collected scalps. These Sons of David leave their own stamp of victory and I’m sure the location of the cuts is no coincidence. Someone knows some history. I make no apologies for a barbaric time.”

“They killed a good friend of mine. I got one of them. I want the other.”

“You shall have him. If I have to kill him for you.”

“You do and I’ll wait until that leg’s cured and I’ll break the other one for you. I want him myself.”

“He’d do it too, Leon,” Sonia said, smiling. “Harry — I mean Nick — is very tough.”

“I know,” Leon said. “All right. But now what are we going to do? We’ve got to make plans, and amended ones at that. This leg... well, the original idea was to get me aboard as part of the galley help. I was a sous-chef in a three-star restaurant once; Sonia was to create an opening there, as she created others in the past. Not yours: that young man simply couldn’t take any more of Mlle. Komarova.” He turned to her and took her hand. “Sonia? Do you still want out? Because...”

“No, no,” she said. “Not now that I know who is going to be working with me on the boat.” Her eyes went to me once; her face flushed.

“You’re sure? Because a greater burden will be upon you now...”

“No, no.” She reached over and took my glass; her fingers touched mine as she got up and went to the sideboard. The house was small, isolated, lived-in. It was high above the bay and, I figured, there ought to be some kind of view of the Mediterranean by dawn.

“Okay,” I said. “But what did the Sons of David want the shipment for? To arm their group and start a war?”

“Yes, and, being the fanatics they are, when their plans were foiled they murdered everyone who, in their opinion, had double-crossed them. This of course meant Meyer, for one, and of course you did the job for them on the Vietnamese gentleman who started the whole thing, and who was the real double-crosser.”

“The General?”

“Yes. And then, as your Mr. Hawk suggested, the whole thing passed into the hands of a third group.”

“Who? Komaroff?”

“That’s what we’re not sure. But, as Hawk says, Komaroff’s activities have undergone certain changes of late. Where once he sold arms to both sides, to anyone, now he is getting choosy; and in the present case he is choosing the side of the various terrorist groups on the Palestine Liberation Organisation list. He has been selling them every surplus arm he could get his hands on. And on credit, which was not his practice before. He has definitely taken sides.”

“What do you think caused the change?”

“We’re not sure. But, as Sonia said, the Sons of David are like the pilot fish that follow a shark. The trouble with the Nazi mentality they exemplify is that it tends to seek out kindred minds, regardless of left or right. Fanatics of the left are more like fanatics of the right than either is like anyone else. And they understand one another. They are like different drawers in the same desk.”

“So?”

“Sonia has not been to sea with Mlle. Komarova for some months now. The great lady” — his tone was sarcastic — “has disappeared from view. Perhaps with some lover so disreputable she dare not show him to the world, perhaps to some dope den. In the meantime, all this has been happening. We suspect Komaroff has found new friends, and that they accompany him as advisers.” His brows rose in perplexity. “Or as captors?” He shrugged. “Something decidedly odd is happening. And it is your job, and ours, to find out what it is.”

I looked outside. There was a pink tinge in the dark sky. It’d be dawn in moments. My God, where had the time gone to? “Meanwhile,” I said, “what are your boys up to?”

“Among other things, we’ll be staying in contact. The Sons of David being here... your friends Shimon and Zvy, incidentally, are — or were? — among the top ‘hit men,’ I think you call them, in their organization. Anyway, their being here means that we are very likely right, all of us: the trouble is aboard the Vulcan. All three of us — you, I, the Sons of David — have independently come to that conclusion. Thanks to various sources, we have at least a vague idea as to the itinerary of the Vulcan in the next few weeks. We will contact one or the other of you from time to time. In the meantime we are keeping an eye out for the missing ship.”

“You mean it’s still out there? Hasn’t been unloaded yet?”

“Yes, or so we think anyway. Under what name, what flag... who knows? But we’ll know before long, we think. And Nick: the people aboard the Vulcan, the dangerous ones, the ones who are influencing Komaroff...”

“Yes,” I said. “I was going to ask you to go on a bit more about them.”

“Among them is a man whose original name, some time back, was Kurt Schindler...”

I whistled. Schindler? Alive? The highest-up man in the hierarchy of what Mr. Himmler called the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem — an even bigger wheel than Eichmann himself.

“Ah,” I said, after I’d thought about that a bit. “So you haven’t changed agencies after all. You’ve got a little personal stake in this too, just like me.”

“Worse,” Sonia said. She was standing by the window. “I want Schindler myself, as bad as you want Shimon. But Leon, he lives for this thing. He needs this... this holy cause of his the way a flower needs sunshine. He...”

“That’s very good,” Leon said. His face was drawn and pale, but there was a thin smile on it. “That’s it, my dear. It is a kind of tropism by now. Instinctive. I think Nick understands, though.”

“Yes,” I said, “I guess I...”

“Harry,” Sonia said from the window. “I... I mean Nick. Look.” She was pointing out across the suddenly visible bay. The rosy-fingered dawn was right on schedule, and the blue bay curled at the foot of pink mountains below us and to the west of us as her hand pointed down the coast toward Monaco and Italy. “It’s here,” she said. “It’s early. I...” The words trailed off. I stood and looked where she was pointing. Just inside the mole I could make out the classic lines of a great three-masted sailing ship. The Vulcan had arrived.

Chapter Twenty

“What are they doing now?” I said, watching the crew aloft, scampering from sail to sail. We seemed, for some reason, to have our nose pointed at a looming cliff, and for some even stranger reason we were not going that way at all. We were slowly moving sideways down the little river to its mouth.

“The action is called backing and filling,” Michel said in his flawless, accent-free English. He wasn’t exactly my kind of guy, but he’d have to do for company. Sonia — Vicki, dammit, I’d have to remember that — hadn’t turned up in three days. “Look,” he went on. “We filled the topsails to go this way. Notice the direction the wind is going? Well, once we’d held her in the fairway past the headland there, we backed the mainyard to stop her and make her drift broadside downstream. Now the motive power is the tide.”

“Don’t you have auxiliaries?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “but Monsieur Komaroff has a bit of tummy today and doesn’t like the feel of the diesels under him. Fortunately, the crew make short work of this sort of thing. And heavens, Harry, you’re in no hurry to go anywhere, are you? I mean, we’ve no place to be, dear boy. If it weren’t for the lovely party Alex is planning up in the Islands tomorrow night, it’d be a crushing bore. But I do adore those rough Greeks. So... what is the word...”

“Funky?” I said. I dug one of my tailormades out of its case — this time I’d brought some along without the “N.C.” in gold on the filters — and lit it, sending a blue trail of smoke in the breeze.

“Yes. Funky. Look, now we back all to make her take a stern board. In the middle of the channel we will point the yards into the wind and let the tide carry us again. As we approach the mouth of the river we will first fill the fore topsail, then fill all, and once we’ve trimmed them by the wind, making sail...”

“Clear as mud,” I said.

“...we’ll stand to sea under all sail on the starboard tack. Oh, Harry. You really should make some attempt to get into the spirit of things aboard the Vulcan. Otherwise you’ll find it such a bore here.”

“Sailboat talk is pretty weird,” I said. “How do we manage to go that way when the wind is going this way? Even with the sails all turned around...”

“There is a maneuver, Harry, for everything the wind can do... except, of course, when the wind dies altogether. If that should happen right now — if we were becalmed — we would have to seek new orders from Komaroff. We would either have to anchor and await a change in the wind or use the auxiliaries. Look: the wind is coming in from offshore. We set the sails, so; now the boat is what we call sailing on the wind.”

“How does that differ from before the wind or with the wind?”

“Easy. Let me show you...” But one of the boys in white came up — that spankingly clean, gold-piped livery everyone but us professional help (plus some hangers-on like Michel) wore aboard the Vulcan — and handed me a folded note on a silver salver. I looked at Michel, not opening it. He pursed his lips, made a thy-will-be-done gesture with his palms together, and moved away, a cynical little smile curling up the sides of his mouth. I said “Thanks” and the servant moved away too, leaving me standing by the windward rail, one foot irreverently resting on one of the antique brass cannons that decorated the bark.

Mr. Archer—

I will need a complete chart for the twenty-seventh; location, the border between Israel and Syria. Please have it ready for my inspection by to-morrow afternoon.

In the meantime, may I expect you at dinner in my cabin at seven tonight? On second thought, I won’t take no for an answer. My servant will call at your door at a quarter to. Black tie. Welcome aboard—

A.

“Well,” I said. And then I thought about that a moment Israel and Syria. Four days from now. How could I get through to Sonia as quickly as possible?

And Alexandra Komarova? I hadn’t even met her yet. I’d seen her coming and going, always at a distance. The one peep I’d had at what the help tended to call the “Forbidden City” — the great saloon of the ship and the posh suites that radiated out from it, aft — had given me a clear picture of the incredible wealth of Alexandra’s surroundings; the saloon was a regular museum of weaponry and the armorer’s craft, and the fittings were all antique brass and fruitwood paneling. Now I’d be getting a close look at her own digs. And how close a look to the old man’s? I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t seen him at all so far, and I wasn’t sure which cabin was his, but I intended to case the area tonight if any opportunity presented itself at all.

I folded the note and stuck it in a pocket. Then I headed below to my own cabin to dress. That imperious summons of hers didn’t leave me much time.

I was just putting the knot in my tie — I still tie my own; pre-knotted ties always look so sleazy — when there was a rap on my door. Small. Quiet. Timid.

“Yes?” I said.

The knock came again I opened the cabin door — elegant cherry paneling, I noticed — and Sonia, in a messy painter’s smock, slipped inside without a word.

“Nick,” she said with a harried-looking smile. “I’ve been wanting to fall into your arms for days, and the first time I find you alone, you’re dressing for dinner and I’m wearing this.”

I tipped her chin up and kissed her delicately, keeping my splendor clear of all that fresh oil paint. “Just the person I wanted to see. I think I’ve got a lead, for Leon. A big one.” I pulled out the note and showed it to her. She looked — and gasped audibly, one hand to her mouth.

“My God,” she said in a small voice, looking at the wall, eyes out of focus. “Four days? That’s not much time.”

“That’s what I figured. That means the arms delivery has been made, I think. And it probably means...”

“It means somebody’s going to make some very quick use of them, blitzkrieg style. And the last-minute plans... I’ll bet they’re going to be discussed ashore tomorrow night. But... but Nick. That means...”

“That Alexandra’s part of whatever it is? Maybe. It’s her party. Her idea to go ashore. And in the course of a big village whingding, it’d be easy for her to get together with her friends, and...”

“Nick. I don’t know what to think. Alexandra? She’s a bitch, all right. But this...”

“I haven’t met her yet. What’s she like? Has she changed? I mean, since you saw her last?”

“Yes, but...”

“How?”

“She’s... she’s the same as she always was. Only more controlled. It’s as if she’d found some sort of purpose in life. It’s... but Nick. That would mean...”

“Komaroff’s ill, you know.”

“Oh? I hadn’t heard.”

“Michel let on today that we’re under sail, cumbersome as that is, because of Komaroff’s stomach. He can’t stand the hum of the diesels underfoot.”

“Then maybe he has her doing some of his dirty work. Yes, that would fit. I had been wondering, you know. There I was a rumor that filtered down — from the other side of the salt, as one says — that she had taken a new lover. It was during the last cruise. And... but no, this makes more sense. Of course; he has never trusted anyone else to do the work for him, and if he is deathly ill...”

“Sonia,” I said. “I think tomorrow night’s the big night. The more I think of it...”

“The big night? For them?”

“No, for us. Tomorrow night the party will give you a chance to slip ashore and make some sort of contact with Leon — with the organization.”

“Me? What about you?”

“I’m going to case the Forbidden City tonight. And tomorrow, when the party’s going on...”

“Nick.” She grabbed my arm in her strong little hand. “Yes. I saw the duty roster today. There will only be a skeleton crew aboard her. Almost all the crew has been given shore leave. Yes, yes...”

“Right. And even if it blows my cover, it may not matter much longer. With the big push set for four days from now...”

“Splendid. Nick — I have the little wireless Leon gave me. I will hide it in the bottom of the picnic basket. I will take it to town and set it up and call Leon. If I were to do it here someone would pick up my carrier frequency, so close by. But tomorrow, with, more than likely, only a substitute in the radio shack...”

“Dandy,” I said. “Okay. And I’ll slip back aboard at the same time and see what I can find out.”

“Nick,” she said, squeezing my arm. “I... I am going to worry about only one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“That woman. Alone with you... tonight...”

I bent over and kissed her again, still keeping the shirt clear of her smock. “Not to worry. That’s an order. I’m immune. Now skedaddle.” I patted her on the bottom. Komaroff’s flunkey is due here any minute now.

“Okay. Nick... it will go all right, won’t it?”

“Sure,” I said, nice and confident. I hoped it would, anyhow. “You’ll do okay. If you weren’t all right, Leon wouldn’t have kept you around all this time. He’d have drummed you out of the family.”

“Yes,” she said with a shy smile. “He would, wouldn’t he?”

I followed the silent servant up one flight and into a long hall, paneled in rich hardwoods, with the fittings starting at one end of the hall in polished antique brass and ending at the other in silver — the latter being Russian turn-of-the-century objects, lanterns made for gas operation and converted. Underfoot were Persian carpets; overhead was more paneling.

It was the walls — decked out the way they were, you couldn’t call them bulkheads — that really made the impression. Stuck in precisely fitted niches were a series of matched paintings that looked somehow familiar in style but not in subject matter: I looked at the brass plaques underneath the pictures — a set of depictions in a classically severe style of famous massacres and slaughters — and whistled. If Komaroff were to die intestate I’d have bet Spain would have mortgaged Morocco to buy them — and to build, a special Goya museum to house them. In between the paintings were tapestries equally priceless: one, not noticeably different from its neighbors, gave you what purported to be an eyewitness view of the Battle of Crecy. Another was the Battle of Agincourt, by a man who claimed to have watched it. And, true to the code Komaroff seemed to run by, when we passed a covert guard booth on the way, the man inside it looked out from the filigreed walls of a confessional booth from the days of Torquemada, four hundred years ago.

Komaroff’s man stopped me at the saloon and announced me through an antique speaking tube connected to the starboard door. He heard some reply I couldn’t make out; then he left me alone in the big room.

Here the decor was strictly business. No paintings. No wall hangings. Just weapons.

It seemed, as a matter of fact, to be a kind of museum of weapons — picking out not the various stages of a given gun, but the great breakthrough weapons that, over the course of history, changed warfare. In opposite corners were a Maxim gun and a Gatling, sitting majestically on the decking.

The walls were a beautifully arranged hodgepodge, until you started to get the pattern. Here was a fossilized antelope humerus, marked “Olduvai Gorge” and indexed according to the latest of Dr. Leakey’s datings. There beside it were a stone battle-ax; a Bronze Age Greek short-sword (if I could believe the legend, from the original Schliemann dig at Troy); an iron mace; a suit of armor; a crossbow; an English longbow; a Sharps rifle; a Colt’s Pacemaker...

The other side was more of the same, only specializing in elegant forms. Here were a pair of matched Toledo dueling swords; another pair of Heidelburg Schlaeger; a pair of flawless flintlock dueling pistols; a pair of sai, like the one I’d taken from the assassin in Hong Kong, and a pair of those efficient mock-Bowies Will Lockwood had wielded with such deadly efficiency against three men at a time. So that was the “butterfly knife” Basil Morse had warned me about. And for good reason, I decided.

“Mr. Archer...”

The soft voice behind me startled me out of my reverie. I turned and when I saw who had called my name I said to myself no, baby, no way. You are never going to convince me that this is Alexandra Komarova.

But she didn’t try. The girl in the golden chains said “This way, Mr. Archer.” She averted her eyes. Her head was held down in a slave-like attitude. And the more I thought about it, looking at her, the more I thought that was exactly what she had to be: a slave.

She was dressed in little golden chains, starting from a gold collar around her neck and working down. That collar was connected to tiny chains; these connected to the bound, manacled hands she held so pitiably before her; the manacles connected to the long chains that reached the hobbling bands around her slim ankles.

Other than the chains and manacles, she was totally naked.

As she turned to lead me inside the huge teak door, I could see her back was a mass of fresh scars from a recent whipping.

My mouth pursed to whistle softly, but it was so dry I couldn’t make a sound. I followed the strange girl with the strange, whipped-dog demeanor inside the room. Her soft soles made no sound on the teak flooring.

A voice said: “You may go now.” Not “Thank you, you may go now.” Just “You may go now.” You don’t thank chattels. Pets. Slaves.

I looked around.

I picked her out of a nest of silk cushions. She was, I decided, pretty enough. That much I had already made out from the two long-distance glimpses Td got of her in street clothes. Now she wore a transparent blouse and pants, her nipples gleaming through the gauze with the gold paint she’d put on them. Gold flashed from rings on her fingers and toes, from a jewel in her bellybutton and a diamond gleaming in one pierced nostril.

Her voice was languid, full of drugs. “Ah, Mr. Archer. Come over here and let me have a look at you...”

Chapter Twenty-One

The questions started out being about astrological lore, and at first I thought I had trouble coming, because they sounded like knowledgeable questions. Gradually, though, I came to the conclusion that whatever it was that she was on, opium, acid or whatever, it was calling the tune. She’d listen to the first two words or so of whatever answer I managed to think up, for tone, and then her mind would start wandering.

While I answered, I had a good, long look at her. The lady was handsome enough; if you’re rich enough you can always hire someone to keep the body in presentable shape if it had anything to start with, and she’d started out okay. The face, too, was pretty enough, in the way Mediterranean women are pretty — dark, eyes almost black, strong nose — but that face and that body were inhabited by something creepy and crawly out of some science fiction movie.

My mind was running fast. I knew my limitations. There are very few things I will not do for AXE. I’m still playing it by ear. But if it meant making love to this stoned-out sea monster... I was casting about madly for ideas. There was one possibility.

“Say,” I said, “I’m a little tense, uptight, you know. Would it be possible to come up with a little something to put in the coffee? Something nice and kicky? Or maybe a nice soothing downer?” I gave her my Harry Archer smile.

Her jeweled hand touched mine; it was cold. Wow, I thought, you sure don’t need any more of anything. “Certainly,” her blurred husky voice said, thick with downers already. “Here. Try a little of this.” And her other hand handed me a little vial. “Nice,” she said. “Very nice.” Her hand, with its gilt nails, lingered on mine a moment. I shuddered; she brought chills. Her deep voice whispered, “Laudanum.”

“Mmmmm,” I said. I kept her eyes on mine, smiling my fortune-teller smile, as I cracked the little vial and poured enough of the stuff into one cup to knock out an elephant Laudanum? Just what the doctor ordered. I reached down and picked up the other cup — hers — and raised it to my lips, keeping her gaze locked. I made a nice appreciative face... and swallowed.

For God’s sake, I thought. She’s already doped her own coffee. The switch hadn’t done me a damn bit of good. I put the coffee down with a faltering hand. The room was swimming. “Hey,” I said, “that’s strong stuff.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” she said. Her face went out of focus. The lights near the ceiling were going round and round. “Here, darling, why don’t you get a little more comfortable.” She reached over and untied my tie.

“Hey,” I said, “I...” But the world was spinning like an out-of-control carousel. Her hands shoved the coat off my shoulders, pinning my arms. “Just let me get my bearings...”

I blanked out.

When I awoke — it couldn’t have been much more than ten minutes later — I was in my shorts, and the lady, a dull gleam in her eye, was trying to part me from those. “That was marvelous,” I said. “This, I can see, is going to be quite an evening.”

“It certainly is, my darling,” she said. I was stretched out on the pillows and she was kneeling above me, the gilt paint on her large nipples gleaming through the gauze. “This will be a night to remember. See?”

And her hand pulled something out from under the coverlet and ran it quickly across my chest. Something cold. I looked down. There was a thin line of my own bright red blood bisecting me just above the bandage, just below the collarbone. Then I saw the razor-sharp little knife in her hand, coming toward me again. I rolled away from her; her hand caught me and held me. I was still weak and woozy from the dope.

“No,” she said. “Don’t resist me. That’s an order. I...” And that knife headed for my face.

Sometimes blind instinct is the best guide. I let one hand do whatever it wanted to; it went to her wrist, twisted so hard she yelped like a puppy, and forced the knife free. That hand — it was the left one, the one I do a lot of my own dirty work with — handed it to the other, which heaved it across the room to stick, quivering, in one of those priceless paneled walls. Then the left hand backhanded her a good one across the mouth.

To my amazement it put her out cold. She just collapsed on the cushions and, in a moment, started to snore. Well, she’d had a lot more of those downers than I had tonight; she’d started long before I arrived on the scene.

What do I do now? I wondered. For all I knew, my cover ID was blown. How she’d take to this I had no way of knowing, but I’d have put money on the notion that I had myself a whole mess of new problems I hadn’t had before. I reached for my pants.

“My lord wants wine?”

I wheeled, pants in hand. The naked little slave stood before me, the silver decanter in her hand, her eyes averted. I just stood there like a ninny.

“Hey, look,” I said, “I’m getting out of here. Do you want to come along? I mean, you can’t stay here with somebody who treats you like this. You...”

“My lord clapped his hands for wine?” she said. Her eyes were still on the floor.

“Listen to me,” I said. “What you heard was no hand clap. It was a slap. She’s out cold. Now’s your chance, if you want to get out. We’ll go to the closet and find you a couple of changes of clothes and I’ll give you some money. We’re still close to land, and we’re going so slowly under sail, that if you’re a good swimmer you ought to be able to make it. You...”

“I will pour my lord’s wine,” she said in that beaten, dejected voice. “Begging his pardon for my forward behavior.” She picked up my glass and poured. The full glass she placed on the couchside table. “My lord will drink with a peaceful heart.” She stood there in that exaggerated pose of submission, the little chains tinkling softly. Her face would have been as lovely as her body if it hadn’t had that expression on it.

“She’s going to come out of that in a little while,” I said. “We don’t have long. I...” She just stood there.

My head ached. I picked up the glass the naked and chained little girl had handed me, made a little here’s-looking-at-your-twisted-little-psyche gesture with it, and drank deep.

I shouldn’t have. It was drugged too — even worse than the coffee had been. Apparently the lady had a little scenario that she followed every time, and it called for more dope as the evening wore on. And her tolerance for the stuff, by now, was so far past mine... But by now I was down to my knees and sinking fast, into what felt like a vast, black sea of Turkish coffee...

I awoke on her cushions on the floor. Daylight was coming in through the fancy windows in one corner. I sat up, expecting my head to punish me unmercifully, but the only sign of a hangover, seemed to be a thick coating on my tongue.

I looked around. There was no sign of the Great Lady... but no, there was after all. She’d dressed before leaving, and over by the big wall mirror she’d strewn those queen-of-the- pagan-Nile clothes all over the floor like any other spoiled rich kid.

I had a sudden thought. I looked up and down my body. If she’d found that knife again, and gone to work while I slept...

But I was all there, or at least as much as usual. I got up, feeling, strangely, a few less aches and pains from the chest and the other bruises than usual. Laudanum — and whatever she’d spiked the wine with — were apparently good for broken ribs.

There was no sign of the little slave. Apparently she slept days, when her mistress was otherwise occupied... but where, I couldn’t say. There might be a door somewhere in that wall, past the curtains, but if there was it was well hidden by the paneling. I shook my head again and went to find my clothes.

On the big couch — the one she’d been on — there was another one of those notes of hers, on paper whose edges had been torn, not cut. Always first class. I opened it and read:

Harry—

Darling, you were marvelous. I don’t know when I’ve had a more marvelous time. So masterful — so strong — I will be busy tonight. But I will see you in the days to follow — and often—

A.

I felt a little ridiculous coming out in the open air and making my way back to the cabin in evening clothes, but the way things were on that crazy boat I didn’t draw a single solitary stare. A knowing wink from Michel, perhaps, but from the crew and the galley staff (from whom I got a pot of undoctored coffee), nothing.

By the time I’d showered and shaved and got into deck clothes it was nearly noon, and by that time the coffee had me feeling as though I could face life again. I could hear through the porthole a lot of activity on deck: people hauling on lines, shortening sail. Sailboats, particularly square-rigged dinosaurs like the Vulcan, require an incredible amount of hard labor — which is why they’re such a satisfying hobby, and why nobody in the world uses one to make a living with anymore. I wondered what was happening.

When I got out on deck again I found out. We were coming into the harbor of the little island where we’d be staying the night. It was a spectacular entry: the island itself was nothing more nor less than a gigantic dead volcano, its guts blown out thousands of years before by an explosion of incredible force. The harbor, like so many harbors in the Greek Islands, was itself a drowned caldera, its remaining walls forming three sides of a nearly perfect circle, and we were preparing to enter through the gap carved by fire and lava eons before. On all sides of us loomed tall, precipitous cliffs; far ahead on the land side of the caldera you could see the white, gleaming walls of a tiny town full of scrubbed little fishermen’s houses. My guess was that we’d lie at anchor not near the village, but farther out in deep water; in the calm provided by the natural mole, we’d anchor the big ship and hire the villagers’ caiques for going ashore.

I couldn’t wait for that party to get started.

I must have muttered something like that under my breath. All of a sudden Michel was beside me at the rail, agreeing with me. “Yes, Harry, it is a most lovely sight, isn’t it? I may call you Harry, mayn’t I? And what a marvelous party it will be.” He drew the adjective out: mah-velous.

“Michel,” I said. “I was thinking. I, ah, wonder if the party might not be the right time to make a play for Mlle. Weiner. She really turns me on. Have you seen her?”

“My word,” he said. He turned and looked at me. “Dear boy. You’ve just had an evening in the Forbidden City — with Alex — and you’re already thinking of sex again? My word. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be ten years younger, with all that vigor and elan. But Vicki? Dear me, I wouldn’t have thought her your type. You surprise me.”

“Fach to his own,” I said.

“Well,” he said, watching — with a more than academic interest, it seemed to me — a sailor hand-over-hand it up through the rigging and hook a bare leg over a yard. “She might, of course, be more fun than one of those dumpy Greek cows in the village.” He shuddered delicately. “Nevertheless, my dear fellow, it’s all academic.”

“Why?” I said. I looked at him, his lined little face taking on an air of world-weary smugness.

“Why, she’s gone, old man. Disappeared during the night. Overboard, someone suggested. Nobody’s been able to find the smallest sign of her all morning.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

I checked my watch once before shoving off. It was pitch dark out there on the rocks, but I could make out the luminous numbers on the waterproof watch. Ten-thirty. Across the little bay, the party was in full swing, with bouzouki music tinkling merrily away.

Now, out on the rocks in my wet suit, with the oxygen tanks strapped to my back and the little oilskin package containing my papers, money and weapons snapped on to my belt, I hesitated for a moment before dropping into the bay. I gritted my teeth and stepped off the edge into the cold dark waters.

There’s one nice thing about swim fins: you don’t have to use your arms at all to make good time. I was thanking Leon’s foresight in forcing the underwater gear on me; in that cold water, swimming with my caved-in rib cage would have hurt like hell. Now all I had to do was relax in the water and kick, keeping the head up and a weather eye out for the ship.

It came into view pretty quickly. There were a couple of lights on deck and, to my surprise, the aft section — the Forbidden City, including both Alexandra’s quarters and the old man’s — was brightly lit. I wondered at that; had Alexandra come back to the boat? I hadn’t seen any sign of her in town all evening.

I noticed a skiff tied up below the starboard rail. I filed that information away and decided to swim around the Vulcan and come up the other side.

Clearing the water without a splash and a lot of noisy dripping was a problem, right up to the moment when someone in the skeleton crew left aboard turned on a portable radio and picked up a loud Athens station. Then, just as I was sticking my head over the side, somebody forward yelled for the guy to turn it off.

I froze. The radio went down, but the owner let fly a string of Greek curses at the intruder in the dialect of the Piraeus waterfront. I slowly stuck my head up over the rail. The guy had his back to me, no more than three feet away. I waited until the deck creaked again and used the covering sound to slip up over the side. He never knew what hit him. I gave him a nice karate chop on the side of the neck. I eased him to the deck quietly.

Going below was trickier; it meant opening and closing doors. I slipped into the galley area, dark and unoccupied now, and found the ladder leading down to the next deck. It was ornamental hardwoods all the way; every tiptoed step made its own creak, and I was fully expecting to run into trouble the moment I entered that elegant hallway with the pictures and the tapestries.

Instead I found the area unguarded, but there were still those lights down the way, in the saloon area. I slipped into the unoccupied guard booth — the one with the Alhambra filigree work and the priest’s chair inside it — and shucked the oxygen tank and the flippers. Barefoot, I’d make a lot less noise. And I wrapped the three weapons I carry virtually everywhere and stowed them in their proper places: Wilhelmina in a holster inside the wet suit, Hugo up one sleeve, Pierre down near my crotch. I zipped everything up about halfway. Then I stepped cautiously out into the hall.

There were voices down the way: a man’s and a woman’s. I could make out no more than this until I reached the saloon. Then, as I slipped into the brightly lit area, testing every step for creaks underfoot, I could make out more of the conversation. The voices were coming from the half-closed heavy oak door that, all the time I’d been aboard the Vulcan; had walled away from passengers and crew alike all sight or sound of the owner of the ship, Vassily Alexandrovich Komaroff, arms merchant, dealer in war and destruction.

Only it wasn’t Komaroff talking. It was two other people.

I knew those voices.

Going right through that half-open door didn’t make any sense at all. I didn’t even know the layout of the room.

Someone was coming down the hall behind me.

I ducked into the open door of Alexandra’s room and pulled the door shut behind me. Then I yanked Wilhelmina out and jacked a bullet into the chamber. In the dark it wasn’t easy, but I gradually worked my way through the cushions and accumulated mess of her room to the paneled bulkhead that separated her place from her father’s. Halfway across the cluttered room I could already hear the voices through the wall; it must not, I decided, be as thick as I’d thought.

On the way my bare foot hit something on the floor. I bent over and felt with my free hand. The naked little slave wouldn’t be taking any more beatings; she was cold and dead. I bent my head over her, closer; there was the faint smell of almonds, lingering in the still air. Poison: cyanide.

I stood up again, feeling old and tired, but feeling, also, that Leon had been right. It was the endgame, the one that ends in mate, nice and final. I took a firmer grip on Wilhelmina and edged closer to the wall. I listened to the voices.

“...you double-crossed me, damn you. The transfer was to have been made on Cyprus on the twentieth. There was no ship. We had a deal...”

“Deal? With petty thugs like yourself? With a schoolyard gang of petty thieves and muggers like your Sons of David? Don’t be ridiculous. We accepted your help, here and there, true. You fulfilled a useful function for us along the way, throwing suspicion in another direction. As long as the authorities and their little men in counter-intelligence thought the shipload of arms was intended for a dissident group inside Israel they were thrown off the track; they did not suspect that the arms would be delivered instead, on the twenty-fifth, to the P.L.O., intact, with a new set of papers, off Rhodes. Just in time for... but Shimon, my dear, didn’t you want to provoke a full-scale attack on the Israeli border? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yes, but not with a disparity in arms. Not this way. Not only the first line of the Israeli defense will be wiped out, but our own people, our infiltrators, our fifth column. They won’t have a chance.”

“All the better, I say. War is a matter between principals, two in number, Shimon. Two at a time. The more splinter groups there are around, the more messy it becomes when the war is won and it comes time to establish a power structure. There will be no place in the new Palestine, once the Israelis have been annihilated, for quislings like yourself. Nor, for that matter, for fanatics like the Black Septembrists, or for any of their fatuous little friends in Japan and elsewhere...”

“Alexandra — you have taken sides?”

“And why not? When the new government comes to power in the Middle East it will remember its friends in the world of commerce, of business. It...”

“But your father... he always...”

“My father... look at him. He died during the night. When he died, the power that I have effectively wielded ever since his stroke two months ago fell legally into my hands. Look at him. He has been helpless, senile, unable to speak or communicate; meanwhile, our organization has...”

Organization? Was this Alexandra Komarova speaking? Could it be the same woman — the way she was when she wasn’t bombing herself out on drugs every night of her life? I leaned heavily on a panel, holding my aching side...

...And felt the panel give. And heard the voices grow louder.

“Alexandra, you can’t mean this. We had a signed contract. We...”

“Shimon, don’t be a fool. Put that thing down and leave the ship this moment. I give you my word that if you leave right now I will forget this incident, and...”

I pushed the panel open, slowly. It was almost as big as I was; I slipped through silently, gun at the ready, watching the two of them through the curtains that surrounded the old man’s bed. I’d come out inside the curtained canopy, and I was gambling on their being unable to see me. There was a strange smell in the air; I bent over the old man’s face and sniffed. The same burnt-almonds smell; she hadn’t taken any chances on the old man getting better or, worse, recovering.

“No,” Shimon was saying. “No, you are not going to get away with this. Perhaps I... perhaps our movement is doomed. Perhaps not I have two days to move them out of the area, covertly or otherwise. At any rate, you yourself are unlikely to see any of it. You will not survive the night.” His voice was tight, controlled. I could see the grim determination on his face as he spoke, the businesslike attitude of the .357 Webley he held in his trembling hand.

“No, Shimon, don’t...” Too late, she saw how serious he was. She shrank back against a tall bureau, one hand held up in a puny gesture of self-defense. “Please, I...”

There was a roar of gunfire: loud, deafeningly loud.

Shimon’s body twitched twice in a grotesque dance as the two heavy 9mm parabellum slugs hit him amidships, from the side opposite me. His body rammed into the heavy posts of Komaroff’s bed and slipped to the floor; miraculously, the curtain held.

The man with the black eyepatch and the missing arm stood in the open doorway, holding the big PI5 pistol at the same oblique angle across his body, his body tall and erect and military-looking. He hadn’t changed a bit since Saigon. “Alexandra,” he said, “you are losing your effectiveness. How could you let a man like this get the upper hand with you this way?” His voice was deep and harsh, and still had that touch of strange accent. Well, all the places he’d been in the last thirty years, he’d be sure to have a funny accent by now. A bit of this, a bit of that. Particularly if his English had been picked up on the run — in places like Switzerland, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Syria, Lebanon, from people who spoke English with an accent themselves.

“No,” he said again, looking at her with distaste, “you have grown unreliable. Poisoning the old man... did you think there would be no inquiry? You are in Greek waters. Even if you buy off the local magistrate, can you buy off the press? Those damnable drugs you take, they have weakened your mind.” He made no move to step into the room, standing there in the doorway in that odd military stance, his face dark with anger.

“But Kurt... darling... we have won. We have...”

“Two corrections, my dear. One, we have not won. I have won. You no longer figure in the picture. Two...”

“Kurt, no. No, please...”

“Two...” he said. A strange half-smile flitted across his face. “But no, I suppose the second item does not matter now.”

And he pulled the trigger, once, twice. The first bullet blew her brains all over the curtain; the second one was just tossed in there for meanness. It threw her heavily against the bed-curtain and this time the canopy gave.

I gave him one quick glimpse of me standing there in the wet suit, and then I shot the gun out of his hand. The 9mm slug socked the big pistol right at the front sight; a poor enough shot, all in all, but it jarred his hand enough to make him drop it. He thought of bending over — just once. I fired off another round at the gun on the floor and knocked it out of his reach. He straightened back up again.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “It would be... I suppose it would be Mr. Carter, wouldn’t it? I might not have known if it hadn’t been for the meeting in Saigon. Finding you both there — and in close association with Corbin, too — and here too... no, that would be too much of a coincidence, wouldn’t it? Carter it is.”

“Yes,” I said. “Just don’t move a muscle. Keep talking and don’t move a muscle.”

“All right.” There was a thin smile there. He was flexing his one hand; I’d jarred him pretty badly, and it must have hurt. “I... you owe me a life, you know. I saved yours in Saigon. I wonder if I should have done so, now. Perhaps I should have shot both you and Corbin. Perhaps...”

“Why shoot Corbin?” I said. “I didn’t understand that at first. Because he stole the film? To shut him up once he’d run past you in his panic and slipped you the thing in the hall of the Grand-Bretagne, hoping it would buy you off?”

“Neither of these, of course,” he said. “Corbin did indeed know too much... but not that. That wasn’t important. Your people sent first Corbin, and then you, to steal the records of Komaroff’s — well, Globalarms’s — secret transactions in recent months, to see what the pattern was, to see if some idea as to the nature of Globalarms activities could be derived from them.” He sneered delicately. “Worthless, worthless. The thing Corbin knew, and which alone made him worth silencing, was the fact that Komaroff himself was lying here, a vegetable, unable either to halt or to influence any of the activities which his daughter and I had been carrying on in his name. He was the only person not in our confidence who knew this. This alone made it worth my while to follow him around the world and silence him before you — or anyone else — could get to him. He hoped to finance his escape from both of us — me and you — by acting as a sort of go-between in the disposal of the arms shipment Herr Meyer was meddling with. Unfortunately for that theory, we had already made our plans for that arms shipment — plans which we implemented well out to sea. With, I might add, the covert connivance of a former assistant of your friend the General’s, who double-crossed him neatly and delivered the arms to us instead. Now, if things are on schedule, the arms are being delivered” — he looked at his watch — “no, have already been delivered to the P.L.O., not off Rhodes — Alexandra got so many things wrong — but in Egyptian waters. The attack will take place precisely as planned.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” I said. “Now that the plan for the Syrian-border attack is operational, why kill Alexandra? Why not continue to use her?”

“Who needs her? You forget, I have the microfilm. Worthless to you as intelligence, but priceless to me as a list of business contacts. I have all Komaroff’s — Globalarms’s — suppliers and distributors. And, with the present deal, I have proved my ability to deliver — proved it to the satisfaction of anyone in the arms business in the world. I am, as you say, back in business again.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “You’re out of business as of right now.”

“You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man. Besides, I saved your life. I...”

“And you murdered two of my friends right after that. I owe you something, all right...”

“Two of your...? Oh, yes. Oh, I see. And now I remember the strange telephone call I got right afterward. Yes. Yes, Mr. Carter, I underrated you, I think. My apologies. My...”

He dived for the door. I went after him and as I reached the frame he slammed it on me and sent Wilhelmina flying. There wasn’t time to go chasing her. I kicked the door open and followed him in.

He was armed; strangely so. He held one of the two Toledo swords he’d yanked from the wall. The other lay at his feet. With a thin smile he kicked it my way. “Here,” he said. “I have saved your life and killed your friends. Perhaps that means we are square.”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “This is your last day on earth, whatever you may think.” I picked up the second sword.

“Very well,” he said. “As you wish. But in the meantime, a bit of sport? The only kind of fair fight you can have with a man with one arm?”

“Sure,” I said. “Cutting your guts out will be more fun than shooting you anyhow. I...”

He attacked. And from the first I knew my bravado action was not going to get me far. I hadn’t fenced in years, and these things were a lot heavier than epees.

His attack was tough stuff: strong, vicious, expert. I was in trouble almost immediately. Bad trouble. The kind you die from...

Chapter Twenty-Three

We engaged in quarte; he immediately changed the engagement to tierce, the better to show me how fast he was. That wrist of his, well, he’d had to develop that one hand to make up for the loss of the other. I’d made allowance for that. I just hadn’t made allowance for how much he’d develop it. It was strong, quick, supple. The point was a blur.

He beat and disengaged, showing me how strong that hand was; then he raised the wrist, joining his forte to my foible, and lunged strongly. I parried in sixte and retreated, giving him some room. He followed, feinting, the arm in perfect form, the hand in supination. We engaged, again in tierce; he cut over the point with a sure and supple move and damn near got me in the throat. I parried and retreated again.

“You were,” he said, “going to cut my guts out.”

“Right,” I said. The sweat was pouring down my temples. Don’t try fencing in a wet suit. What you get in padding doesn’t make up for what you lose in agility — and in body water.

I wasn’t going to win this one in a fair fight. That was becoming evident.

I didn’t give a damn. Not about fair fights, not about gentlemanly sportsmanship, not about any of that stuff.

What I was going to do was win.

I had one advantage on him. He’d overcompensated monstrously for that black eyepatch. But there’s no way in the world that you can completely make up for the loss of the parallax vision you get from having two eyes in good functioning condition. I was amazed at the depth perception he had. It was as good as mine — almost. What I was banking on was tiring that one eye of his; single eyes tire more quickly.

I tried a cut over and disengage on him; he parried nimbly, smiling. And I moved to his left, circling like a boxer. Away from that one good right eye.

His smile vanished; I knew I had made a point. His lips set grimly, he attacked again, and I barely beat back his powerful lunge. His recovery was the most startling thing about him; speed, power.

And still I moved to my right and his left. He let out a curse and lunged again; this time he pinked me in the arm. Damn it, I thought, that puts a deadline on things. A short one. That arm would tire, and fast. I had to make my move, my go-for-broke move, and do it quickly while I still had the strength to make it.

I threw away the rule book. I jumped up in the air, screeched like a banshee, swung the sword with both hands and leaped to his left again. At the same time I came down with the heavy blade, forte against forte. It shocked his hand; he was off balance when it hit. I screeched again like a demented karate master and threw my sword at him as hard as I could. He parried, but barely; and it kept him off balance just long enough. Just long enough for me to shake Hugo out of my sleeve into that left hand and, jumping in from a southpaw stance, run Hugo all the way along his forearm, drawing blood all the way. The bright blood shocked him; it was his blood this time. It was his life. He dropped the sword and looked at me through out-of-focus eyes.

There was a single shot from a small gun, close behind me.

And a red blossom sprouted in the middle of his forehead. The glaze stayed in his eyes. His expression didn’t change in the slightest as he pitched forward on his face.

I wheeled, Hugo still in my hand.

Sonia Schwartzblum stood in the doorway, a smoking 7mm handgun in her hand. The expression on her face changed very slowly from one of utter hatred, as she looked down at the dead man, to... I don’t know... a kind of dazed shock as her eyes sought mine out. She was wearing a wet suit much like mine, and her bare feet left puddles on the teak floor and priceless Persian carpet.

I just stood there, speechless, the adrenaline still up, my hand quivering with Hugo gripped tightly in it. “Sonia,” I said. “Beautiful Sonia.”

“I... I’ve never killed anyone before, Nick,” she said. “I had to. I... I know you wanted him for yourself. But Leon and I had a prior claim.” Her green eyes were brimming with tears, but I knew better than to assume they were tears of remorse.

“Yes,” I said. “I guess you did. And Leon was right: he was Schindler. And he was up to the same kind of tricks as before.”

She stepped forward then and hugged me, going easy on the ribs. “N-nick. I brought your fins and oxygen tank up. The last guard, I told him I was bringing him a drink of ouzo from the shore. It had chloral hydrate in it. I...”

“Good,” I said. “But the arms boat — it was landed tonight. In Egyptian waters. It...”

“No, no,” she said. “Leon got the word to the right people. It was torpedoed off Malta this morning. If anybody wants it he is going to have to dive for it.”

“Great,” I said. “That means it’s all wrapped up.”

“Here?” she said. “Komaroff? Alexandra? The others?”

“All dead,” I said. “It’s a long story. And the only thing we have left to do is sink the Vulcan. Sink it, or maybe it’d be better to bum it.”

“But... this...” She pointed down the hall at the art treasures. “I don’t understand. How can we...”

“It’s either that,” I said, “or take the chance that the Globalarms files — either in the file cabinet, or in the form of the microfilm Schindler killed Corbin for — can still fall into somebody else’s hands, and wind up doing the same old business at the same old stand. I think I’d like to see it all stop here — all this arms wildcatting, the meddling with the affairs of every country that shows the smallest signs of instability... No, honey. I’d say let’s put it to the torch.”

“I’m sure you know best,” she said. “Come on, I’ll help you.”

We got ourselves a nice bonfire going, with the flames roaring upward and setting masts and sails afire, before we made ready to go over the side. We put the two crewmen in the skiff Shimon and Alexandra had come over on and set them adrift in the still waters of the bay; then, hand in hand, we just stepped over the side of the Vulcan and swam lazily away out to sea. We had a feeling that some other island might turn out to be a little more hospitable at the moment, given our circumstances. I didn’t exactly have the latitude and longitude memorized, but I had a pretty good idea of where we were, and islands dotted the area like ants on a picnic blanket. It didn’t seem to matter; any direction but south would bring us to someplace interesting, and we weren’t in any hurry to be anywhere... “Sonia,” I said when I pulled close to her, “are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“What’s that, Harry darling?”

“It’s Nick.”

“No, it’s my Harry. And I’m Vicki Weiner, and I had Leon get us a whole new set of papers to prove it.”

“I get the feeling you’re ahead of me.”

“Way ahead of you, Harry my sweet. When we got the news about the ship this morning, Leon called David Hawk...”

“Where did Leon ever hear about the special line?” I said. “We’d better tighten up the ship...”

“Nonsense, Leon’s used it for years. A washing machine manufacturer this month. Westinghouse, I believe...”

“Westinghouse?” I said, turning over on my back and kicking lazily. “You don’t mean Maytag?”

“No,” she said. “Leon didn’t say anything about that at all. He...”

“Ha!” I said. I said it so loud I saw her lift her head up out of the water to see what was the matter. “No, nothing. I just found out something pleasant.” That meant the Amalgamated Press and Wire Services were back in operation on Dupont Circle — with David Hawk at the editor’s desk, running AXE out of that phony press-service front again. Everything was back to normal.

“Harry darling,” she said. “I was going to tell you. I thought of something pleasant too, and I’ve been trying to tell you, and you keep interrupting. Harry, you’re on leave. So am I. Leon and Mr. Hawk don’t need either one of us for another three weeks. We don’t even have to leave our addresses with anyone. Isn’t that pleasant?”

“That is more than pleasant, Vicki. Remind me to kiss you the moment we get out of the water.”

“If that’s all you’re going to do I might as well not have bothered. Oh, well. Where do you want to go, Harry? Delos? Samos? Corfu?”

I looked up at the stars, feeling just fine. “You lead the way. I don’t intend to make another decision for three weeks. I’m on vacation.” I fluttered my swim-fins apathetically, not giving a damn about anything.

“You mean I get to make all the decisions?” she said. “And you’ll abide by them? Really?”

“Mmmm,” I said. I had a short attention span. There was the Big Dipper, and...

“Where we stay, and what we eat, and when we...”

“Yes ma’am.” I wasn’t paying the slightest attention. Star light, star bright, first star I’ve seen tonight...

“I think,” she said, swimming up alongside me, “I’m going to like this...”

Content

Nick Carter
The Vulcan Disaster

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three