by Nick Carter
“Yes,” I said, as if in answer to an unspoken question, “this is how it is. And if I don’t hurry, millions of others, far more innocent, will die.”
Then I left her, and after a glance up and down the passageway, bolted toward that great steel door, behind which, Warnow, and the apparatus of remote-control destruction, awaited the hour.
A couple of anxious, sweating minutes passed. And then I heard the snick of a latch and the door opened just a fraction. It began to swing toward me but I caught it and squeezed in, just in time to catch a glimpse of Tern’s naked back as it winked out of sight behind a closing door.
I closed the door quietly and swallowed the entire room in one gulp of the eyes. As described by Jerri, it contained a desk with phone, file cabinets, a large framed map of the U.S. and a portion of Central America she had failed to mention. I made a pass at the desk drawers, but they were locked. I made another pass at the file cabinets, same result.
I studied the map. Rings drawn with a red felt-tipped pen circled seven U.S. cities and the Panama Canal. The targets for destruction. One of the cities was Cleveland, but we could disregard that one since the bomb intended to erase it was intercepted by Customs. On the map the cities were numbered and, excluding Cleveland, they were, in order of elimination: New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
I observed that the capital had been saved until last, doubtless to give our government the chance to negotiate right up to the final hour.
The map was suspended with wire from a substantial brass hook. I lifted it from the hook with the certainty that, as Terri said, I would find a gaping hole or cache in which secret papers were hidden. But there was no such depository, the wall beneath the map was smooth as an infant’s behind.
It had occurred to me that a mere hole in the wall behind a map was not very imaginative for a scientist of Warnow’s caliber. And so now I began to experiment with the brass hook, twisting it this way and that but finding it solidly anchored and immovable. But not entirely immovable. Because when I pulled the hook toward me, it gave slightly with a tiny, oiled click. And immediately a square portion of the wall slid back soundlessly to expose a receptacle containing a small, leather-covered notebook and a series of numbered blueprints, each bearing a red, circled skull which obviously, to me at least, indicated the location of the planted suitcase bombs.
They indicated the locations, that is, if you had the related explanation of which building was in what city. For without some text or other guide, the prints were meaningless.
Though it seemed an age in those tight, nerve-wrenching circumstances, a glance at my watch told me that barely two minutes had passed. And since I figured that Wamow could survive another ten minutes or more with Terri alerted to my need for time, I sat down behind the desk and began a rapid examination of the pocket-sized leatherbound book.
At first the letters and numbers it contained were about as intelligible as a Chinese crossword puzzle is to most people. But I’m used to puzzles of all sorts, and there are few agents in the world so well versed on the art of unraveling codes. I soon recognized this one as an American code in use by scientists of Warnow’s era. And, though the code was basically simple enough if one were given the marvellously cunning mathematical formula to decipher it, to my knowledge it had never been broken by an enemy inside or outside of the U.S.
I thumbed back through my memory, and the principle of the code flashed into mind almost at once. I found a pen in a holder on the desk beside a scratch pad and made quick shorthand notes as I decoded and condensed just the bare fundamentals of the text and numbers, an outline of the death’s-head conspiracy. It included the secrets of Warnow’s bomb-triggering device, activated by a self-powered stylus. Microelectronics had been designed into the dollar sized, skin-flap disc to make it capable of transmitting a powerful high-frequency signal to vast distances—an attachment somewhat like the heart pacemaker, but infinitely more complex, exploded all bombs in unison, seconds after the last beat of Warnow’s heart.
This intricate, incredibly small remote-control device was labeled Passkey on the opening page. And on the closing page under the heading: DISARM, there were a series of five numbers which, as the text explained, were the key to disabling the bombs even after they had been signaled to explode. This emergency safeguard would circumvent the pacemaker attachment to Warnow’s heart.
But there was a catch. Once the delayed-action signal triggering the bombs had been sent, there were only thirty seconds in which to cancel the explosions.
I quickly made a mental photograph of the numbers and projected the image of them on the front wall of my mind. I have a nearly infallible memory and to recall a dozen numbers would have been no real problem. Nevertheless, I wrote the numbers on a scrap of paper which I folded and put in my pocket.
For another minute I studied the diagrams of the stylus and disc, then I wrote down the locations of the suitcase bombs in the various cities.
This done, I placed the little book and the notes decoding its essentials in another pocket. I had gambled about five minutes to scribble down the decoded facts because I had to have an immediate working knowledge of the device if I was to abort Warnow’s deadly plan. And I had found that I could remember almost anything if I put the details in writing first. Anyway, once you understood the device, operating it was about as simple as touching a pencil to various points of a compass.
Now I shoved the blueprints, too bulky to carry, into the wall receptacle, thumbed the brass hook to close the opening, and hung the map in place.
I softly entered the connecting bathroom and crossed to the other door. Pressing against it, I heard what I figured was Warnow’s voice, and the answering voice of Terri. I paid small attention to the conversation as I eased the Luger from its holster and grasped the door knob. But the gist of it was Warnow apologizing for haste due to “urgent experiments which must be prepared at once,” and Terri pleading to be allowed just a few more minutes with the charming professor who was so much man that he had left her gasping for more of the same.
As I inched the door open and peered into the room, Knox Warnow, white lab jacket over slacks, stood in profile to me, hands resting on Tern’s shoulder as she, clad in her boudoir attire, gazed up into his eyes with a pretense of adoration.
Warnow’s abundance of hair was black, heavily seasoned with gray. He had small undistinguished features and a slender body that seemed almost frail. Until I got a look at his intense green eyes which were chillingly vacant of emotion though as hard and brilliant as emeralds, he appeared an unlikely threat to the survival of the world’s most powerful nation. And hardly a man who could go a single round with Terri or her twin.
“This evening I will send for both you and your sister,” he was saying now. “There will be much to celebrate with vintage champagne and a special dinner. Then well share a long exotic night of pleasure together.”
“I doubt that very much, Warnow,” I told him as I stepped into the room behind the Luger. “This evening I expect that you’ll be on your way back to the United States as my prisoner.”
His face dropped with surprise as his head snapped toward me. While he groped for words, I said, “Terri, go back to your room. I want you and your sister to be dressed and waiting when I come for you.”
She opened her mouth to speak, then hurried out
“I know who you are,” said Warnow quite calmly, his face working for composure. “Does that surprise you?”
It did, but I said nothing.
Warnow sank into a massive leather chair beside the bed, crossed his legs, and folded his arms across his chest. “Do you think, Carter,” he continued with the whisp of a smile, “that I’m unprepared for an eventuality such as this? Of course not. I will never leave this room with you alive. And if I should die, half the world will crumble in ashes at almost the same moment.”
“I know all that,” I said. “I’ve decoded your secret papers and your prep
arations are wasted. Do the numbers 5-21-80-54-7 mean anything to you?”
His maniacal expression flickered like a candle in the wind—and went out. For a space I could almost see the gears of his mind shifting down, clashing harshly, then grinding on the alternatives.
He shrugged and fashioned a wan smile of resignation. “Well,” he said, “ultimately nothing matters. All the people, all the foolish creations of mortal men, must come to an end.”
“A noble philosophy,” I answered.
“The two of us,” he went on, “we alone in this dungeon of a room control the density of the world. Think of it. Just think of it! The unspeakable power we hold in our hands.” He paused. “We can join forces and rule the world together. Or we can destroy each other in the next few minutes. Which shall it be?”
“Neither,” I said. “Even a bad loser knows when the game is over. And accepts his losses. Now—I’ll give you thirty seconds to decide. Come with me and face trial, or die in that chair. Personally, I hope you choose to die. Because it will take more than a little doing at the risk of my neck to get you out of here.”
The spastic fingers of one hand tensely kneading the thick, padded arm of his chair, Warnow slowly nodded. “All right, I’ll come with you,” he said. He uncrossed his legs and seemed about to rise.
But suddenly he shoved against the chair arm. The top, cushioned portion of the arm instantly folded back on concealed hinges to reveal a small, lighted console. It contained a large, red button, a toggle switch and a numbered dial.
As he hit the button sharply with the heel of his palm, I shot him through the chest Even so, his other hand was already reaching for the dial. So I shot him again. The hand convulsed, drifted back toward the toggle switch. I don’t know if it was the reflective spasm of death or the last superhuman effort of a man who was just a second from eternity; but to my astonishment, the hand continued its descent, and in so doing, yanked the toggle switch.
A thin click was followed by the distant, muted sounds of alarm bells and wailing sirens. If such sounds could filter through great stone walls and about half a ton of steel door, I knew that outside in that commune of soldiers and workers, it was a screaming, clanging, ear-bursting summons for help.
I had intended to force Warnow to tell me where he kept the all-important stylus without which the pacemaker detonating signals could not be canceled But now he was dead, I didn’t have the stylus, and the last thirty seconds were ticking away toward the most devastating multiple explosions in the history of man.
Wamow’s eyes were rolling up, glazing in death when, darting a glance at the sweep hand of my watch, I bent, tore his jacket open, and ripped away his shirt in almost the same motion. And there was the stylus; suspended from his neck on a long silver chain!
His chest was bare but awash with blood. Madly, I wiped the blood from a four-inch square of skin bordered on three sides by a plastic seam. I worked my fingers under the edge and pulled the flap of skin loose —to reveal the passkey with its spiral of tiny, numbered contact points.
Holding the stylus as delicately as a brain surgeon would a scalpel, I touched the tip to the contact points, sparking the electronic combination for the DISARM signal: Five . . . twenty-one . . . eighty . . . fifty-four . . . seven!
Now my eyes leaped at my watch. Four—three-two—one and—wham! Time for a bursting and rending of cities that never came I had made it with four seconds to spare. And it was done!
Or was it?
I peered down at the chair-arm console. Above the red button, there was the label: DESTRUCT. Above the toggle switch the label read: ALARM. Now I studied the numbered dial. It was labeled DESTRUCT TIME DELAY and circled by gradations marked from zero to sixty minutes. The pointer control which Warnow had obviously been trying to twist down to zero, rested on sixty.
Sixty minutes to what? A green light glowed above the red DESTRUCT button. There was no other button to cancel the time lock so I hopefully pressed the same button again. Nothing. The green light remained aglow.
I listened. Distantly, the alarm bells and sirens continued their awesome clamor. I whipped the chain and stylus over Warnow’s head, stuck the device in my pocket and loped for the door, gun in hand. I yanked the door open and was hit by the deafening sound of bells and sirens. I checked to be sure that the steel door had locked in closing so that no one could enter to discover Warnow’s body, and rushed through the guard room to the tunnel. At first I saw no one and hurried toward the door of the twins’ chamber.
As I reached it, two soldiers with rifles appeared from around a bend and took aim. I flattened myself against the chamber door as they fired, missed. I straight-armed a careful shot at the lead man. As he tumbled and went down, the other quickly retreated around the bend.
Hammering on the door, I shouted my name. Terri peered out with enormous eyes, then opened to admit me and slammed the door shut.
Both girls were dressed in unrevealing, almost severe gray suits. A pair of small, matching suitcases rested by the door.
“Forget those cases,” I said. “We’re in a tight squeeze, and you’ll be moving too fast to carry them. Are you ready, then?”
Both nodded gravely.
“Have either of you ever fired a gun?”
“My father taught me to shoot at targets with his pistol,” Terri offered
“Jerri?”
She shook her head. “I always hated guns. But if I must, I suppose I can aim and pull a trigger.”
I crossed to the sprawled body of Marcus and snatched his gun from its holster. I gave it to Terri. “Shoot to kill” I told her. “C’mon, let’s go!”
I led them cautiously into the tunnel. The alarms had now ceased, the silence was shattering. We crept sideways to the first bend of the tunnel, hugging the wall. There I bellied down and slithered forward until I could see around the curve.
Three feet away, the soldier who had retreated stood against the near wall, rifle at the ready. He saw me a split second too late and I fired at his chest My aim was high in that awkward position, and I caught him souarely in the mouth, the bullet drilling a couple of front teeth before passing through his brain.
As we passed his body, the girls paused to look down with expressions of revulsion. The soldier was carrying a sidearm. I bent to claim it and passed the weapon to Jerri. For a moment, she gazed at the gun as if it were a deadly snake. But then, with a shrug, she asked me how to use it and I showed her.
Now we dashed for the mouth of the tunnel where I checked for lurking soldiers. Finding none, we burst into daylight. We hurried along a path for a few yards, and were confronted by a pair o£. men in work clothes walking briskly toward us. They were unarmed and so I made no attempt to shoot them. They barely glanced at me. but looked curiously at the girls in passing.
And then I remembered that I, too, wore work clothes, the men had been so distracted at the sight of the girls that they had failed to take a close look at me. Perhaps there were so many working types that they were not all well-known to each other.
I cut away from the path and led the girls up a hill strewn with great boulders that offered cover and concealment. As I paused by a great rock, gazing back down to see if we had been followed, two men in uniform, one wearing the insignia of an officer, stepped from behind the rock with rifles aimed directly at us from six feet away.
I had not heard a whisper of sound and was caught with the Luger at my side, no time to bring it up.
“Stand right there and tell me who you are?” the officer said to me in Russian.
Happily, I was trained to speak the language with a flawless delivery, and I said quickly in Russian, “I am Boris Ivanov, and I have been detailed by Major Raszky to escort these girls up into high ground among the rocks, where they will be safe until the danger has passed.”
The officer made a sneering face, kept his rifle staring me right in the eye and said, “The major would not send a worker to do a soldiers job. Anyway, the assignment of workers is m
y personal task and no such name as Boris Ivanov has ever appeared on my roster. Nor do I remember your face, which has a foreign cast —American, no doubt. So you would be the Nick Carter we are hunting. With great difficulty, since you are dressed as one of us.”
As this rather lengthy indictment was pronounced by the officer, I stole a couple of glances at the girls. They wore the puzzled frowns of people who do not understand the language spoken, but at the same time they appeared frightened witless, Terri eying the relentless, cocked-rifle stance of the Russians with something close to panic.
“You will open your right hand,” said the officer’s companion, “and you will simply drop the pistol to the ground. And then you will come with us.”
With only a moment’s hesitation, as both men fastened unblinking eyes upon the gun hand I held limply at my side, I relaxed my fingers and the Luger fell to the ground. The small thump it made as it landed was never heard. The sound was erased by two crashing shots fired close together, like giant hands clapping my ears.
As I watched with a sense of total unreality, the officer, one eye rammed back through his head, slowly stumbled back, slumped against the rock, gave up his rifle, and toppled sideways to the ground.
His companion, who had been shot through the neck, gushed crimson as he sagged to his knees and pitched forward, his rifle still clutched in his hands.
And there behind me, still pointing Marcus’s heavy, smoking pistol, stood Terri, her pretty mouth forming a great round, speechless ohhhh . . .
Jerri also held her pistol, though it was. half-heartedly raised and ineffectually aimed.
Abruptly, Terri lowered the gun, sank to the ground and bawled. “You—you were supposed to—to shoot at the same time,” she sobbingly accused Jerri, who, staring down at the dead soldiers, also began to weep.