by Nick Carter
Hakim laughed. “Unadulterated villainy is my specialty,” he said cheerfully. “Though sometimes the adulterous kind can be amusing, too. Forgive me, friend. Nicholas did warn me that you might find me not entirely to your liking, so I must confess I was having a little bit of fun at your expense. You are not angry?”
This time it was Eiger who put out his hand and clasped the other’s.
“Of course I’m not,” he said, and smiled.
“I thank you,” Hakim said courteously, and bent his darting head in a courtly bow. Yet, it seemed to Eiger that, even as he bowed, Hakim was swiveling his vagrant eye around the lobby in search of something he did not want to find. “It is not wise for us to stay here,” Hakim said quietly. “I have been followed much today, and my house is being watched. Let us drink together in celebration of our meeting and we will share news of mutual friends. The public bar, perhaps? Although it would be preferable to talk in your own room.” His voice rose and fell in a curious but calculated way, as though there were words for public cars to hear and words for Eiger’s ears alone.
Eiger shook his head. “You were in such a rush when I called that I didn’t get a chance to tell you, but I have no room, I’m sorry to say. This place is booked to the seams, and so are all the others. The Lotus promised me one for ten tonight, but until then I’m on the loose.”
“But what a nuisance for you.” Hakim shook his head and clucked sympathetically. “Then let it be the bar until we decide what we do next. But take all care, please, Mr. Eiger.
It is more than being watched. There was an accident today with my car that I think was not quite . . . How was our friend Nicholas when when you last saw him?”
“In his usual irrepressible good spirits,” said Eiger, watching a tourist couple pass by in the wake of a laden bellhop. “Full of the joys of life and rather bawdy messages for you.” In fact, he had not seen Nick for many months and did not really like him much. Carter was too much of a womanizer — for him, too fond of taking up with the peculiar characters he met in the line of business. And yet this friend of his was oddly appealing. Eiger looked into the wandering eyes and felt a sudden genuine warmth for the incredible Hakim.
“The bar, then,” he said quietly, “But not for long. I hired a car as soon as I got in today. I think it might be best to take a drive and talk in peace.”
“Good,” said Hakim. “That is very good. Perhaps along the Nile, and I can show you some of the sights. Have you been here before?”
They strolled together into the mainstream of the lobby, chatting amiably as they headed for the bar.
Until Eiger slowed and stopped to take a casual look at a carving in a showcase.
“There are two men near the bar door that I don’t quite like the looks of,” he said conversationally. “And they seem to be watching you.”
“So they do,” Hakim said, without apparently looking at them. “And not only watching — get back, my friend, quickly!”
One long, lean arm reached out and struck at Eiger’s chest and the other snaked into an inner jacket recess and came out with a gun. Eiger staggered back slightly but stood his ground.
“No, you get back, buddy,” he said crisply. “This one’s on me.” His craggy face was hard and the hand that reached for Hakim and jerked him off his feet was packed with power. Hakim flew through the air and slammed into a heavy chair, and the force of his impact was enough to throw the chair over and pitch him to the carpet on the other side.
For one ear-shattering, mindless moment he thought that he and the falling chair had made the thundering sound that reverberated through the lobby. But as he crawled to his feet and heard the splintering tinkle of glass and the echo of a gunshot and saw the smoky chaos around him, he realized with sudden horror that this time they had come for him with high explosives.
Come for him —!
And caught God knows how many other people because he had been fool enough to meet Dan Eiger in a busy hotel lobby.
He was on his knees now and jabbing his gun out from behind the fallen chair.
The lobby was a mess. The glass case was shattered into a million pieces and broken furniture lay scattered about like fragments left in the wake of a hurricane. Several people were lying on the floor. Some of them were moaning. Two or three were silent.
Dan Eiger was one of the silent ones. His torn body lay sprawled, face upward, on the floor, and there wasn’t much left of his face. But he had shot once before dying, and with deadly accuracy. One of the enemy lay dead only feet away from him.
The other . . . ?
There were several people moving in the mess. But only one that was crouching and staring around like an animal searching for its hidden prey; only one with a snub-nosed gun in his hand to finish off the dying.
So. One man with a grenade and one to cover.
Hakim fired twice, with the whiplash speed and pinpoint accuracy that he tried so hard to impart to his students in part one of his course in the Seven Lively Arts.
His first shot smashed the hand that held the probing gun and sent the gun itself flying unreachable yards away. His second slammed into the gunner’s chest. The man lurched backwards, screaming.
Hakim rose. This one would live. This time there would be someone left to question.
He picked his way through shattered furniture and people, grimly noting the number of groaning wounded and the dead cashier near the pulverized showcase. The callousness of the killing clawed at his insides. By Allah, these people — whoever they were — would stop at nothing in their efforts to get him!
And he wondered exactly what it was that he was supposed to know, that he required silencing. Surely there was nothing that he had not already revealed to the Police Department? But he would find out what it was even if he had to stoop to torture.
There were other people moving now. His vagrant gaze swept over them and he identified them for what they were — hall porter, assistant manager, house detective, wounded hotel guests. The gunman lay where Hakim’s shots had felled him, possibly unconscious. But no, it seemed not! The body twitched violently as if in pain.
Hakin rushed to him through the debris and went down on one knee beside him.
Then his heart sank in sickening frustration.
For, it had not been a twitch of life but a spasm of death. And the grin on the man’s face was not a greeting. The lips drawn back tightly against the teeth formed the leering smile of death, the sardonic grimace of a man who has swallowed swift-acting poison.
Hakim swore softly to himself in several languages. There would be no questioning now. And yet it was most interesting that his would-be killer had been equipped with a suicide pill and had chosen to take it. It was not gangland’s last resort; it was the spy’s way out.
There were uniformed policemen coming in at the door and he would have to make himself known to them.
He showed them his identification and went with them to their Chief of Police, with whom he had spent most of the day on the baffling case of von Kluge. It was even more baffling now. Or maybe it was not.
He must dig, and deeply. And he must stay alive. Which meant that he must make a radical change in his approach to the problem, and that if he must pass information on to AXE he must do it in some other way.
But what could he know that might be dangerous to them? He sat in Chief Fouad’s V.I .P. chair and explained how he had been meeting a friend of a friend when the attack had occurred, all the while mulling over in his mind what it was that he might know. Everything — but everything — he knew was known to the police.
With the possible exception of one tiny little thing. Or maybe two, the second even tinier. They had the guest list of the party von Kluge had attended. But he and he alone knew exactly who had been in the room at the time when he was listening to von Kluge. Accounts differed, partly because of the consumption of alcohol and partly because party-goers are not particularly observant and partly because no one there had known everybody
else. Neither had he. But he was observant, and he had a photographic memory for faces. He was known for it. And then, too, he was the only one who had heard each nuance of von Kluge’s voice and seen his eyes dart nervously about the room when he had realized that he had said too much.
Thin, Sadek, very thin, said Hakim to himself. But maybe something . . . ?
“We must look for secret files,” said Hakim. “There is no evidence of anything missing even though von Kluge’s office was quite thoroughly ransacked. He might have records elsewhere. We must continue checking missing persons, for there are faces, if not people, missing from Cairo. We must redouble our efforts with embassies, with immigrations, with the Passport Department. We must make people think of faces. Von Kluge’s associates. His friends. His housekeeper. His assistants. All must think of faces that haye come — and gone. We must . . .”
He went on talking, for there was still much investigating to be done in regard to the murder of von Kluge. But with the death of AXE’s Eiger he had an even deeper personal motive than before to unravel this puzzle, and he himself was thinking of one face he had seen . . . .
The square-shouldered man at the head of the boardroom table looked up and nodded a greeting.
“Ah, good to see you, BP.,” he said in a thin-toned voice that seemed to be inappropriately fragile for such a barrel-chested man. “You are late — I was beginning to think you were unable to come.”
B.P. put his briefcase on the table and drew up a chair. It was unusually cool, even for late fall, and yet there were beads of sweat on his brow and he was puffing slightly.
“So was I! he said, flinging himself down beside a tall dark man with an open folder in front of him. “This is a busy time for me. But I thought it best to come at this stage, before things get even busier. I see I am not the last one here, though,” he added, glancing around at his half-dozen colleagues.
“Ah, but I am afraid you are,” the chairman said regretfully. “Jones and Meister are both away on business and will not be back until tomorrow. However, I shall see that they have copies of our minutes and I, of course, will go through their reports myself. In the meantime we have a quorum. So. gentlemen, let us call to order this meeting of Canadian Ceramics, Ltd. We will commence at once with item one on the agenda.” As he spoke he reached for the compact black box on the table near him and flicked a switch. “Market trends continue to favor the expansion of our enterprise,” his high, reedy voice went on. But his pale, almost bloodless lips were motionless. One after the other, the men with him at the table slid sheets of paper across to him and he read them without comment.
Another, deeper voice filled the room, to be followed by yet another. It was a typical enough board meeting; each member spoke in turn and then the voices joined together in a round-table discussion. Yet, none of the men at the table spoke a single word.
“By nineteen-seventy-two, then, we should have eight factories in complete operation,” the thin voice piped confidently. But the face of the man at the head of the table mirrored the man’s displeasure. He leaned across the table and spoke for the first time since he had switched on the tape-recorded meeting, but his voice was a low, hissing whisper that reached only the ears for which it was intended.
“That was bad, J.D., very bad,” he hissed. “Why was I not informed of this before? You will have to go there at once and put a new plan into effect. And you had better make sure that it works. I will not take a lot of that sort at this stage — at any stage. And you had better arrange it so that you yourself will be free for your other duties. Pay what you must — but get it done and be sure that it’s done right!” His head swung in another direction. “You, B.P.” The sounds of the meeting droned on steadily, like a high waterfall drowning out the tinkling sounds of the river. “You. Is there no way that you can arrange to be away from there?”
B.P. shook his head. “It would look extremely strange, M.B.,” he murmured quietly. “My position compels my presence. Even supposing I were to have some sort of ill-timed accident it would perhaps be thought a little odd. But . . .” He scribbled a note and thrust it across at the man he had called M.B.
The chairman of the board read it with narrowed eyes. His thin eyebrows arched speculatively and his lips curved into something like a smile.
“But of course you must be there,” his thin voice tinkled.
“So true, what you say of accidents. And you, of all people — no, I cannot spare you. Very good, B.P. Very good, indeed. For that I think we might arrange a bonus. A special dividend.” He paused, and his cold gaze swung around the table. “Anything else?”
Silence. Heads shook. The take-up reel on the recorder was almost full. The man at the head of the table unlocked a sturdy leather portfolio and gave each man a thin sheet of paper.
Each read in silence, nodded and reached for matches or lighter.
The slips of paper flamed, then curled to blackened crisps among the cigarette butts in the ash trays.
There were only inches to go on the tape.
“Then the meeting is adjourned,” said the sibilant voice of the chairman.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lady In A Cage
“Ah, the great outdoors, how I love it, Nickska!” Valentina boomed. Her big hand gestured expressively at the wintry landscape of upper New York State. “I wish I had been in time to see your turning leaves, but even so, this is so very beautiful.” She turned toward him suddenly and her round face was solemn. “But you are not happy, Nicholas. You are much too silent.”
“Let us be thankful for small blessings, Madam Sichikova,” said the girl in the front seat. “Usually, it’s impossible to turn him off.”
“That’ll do, Miss Baron,” Nick said austerely. “One more crack from you and I’ll send you straight back to your cluttered desk at the O.C.I.” He sighed heavily. “Really, the quality of the help these days . . .”
Valentina chuckled, hugely enjoying the exchange. “You do not fool either of us, Nicholas. You could not have been more pleased when you heard that the delightful Julia was joining us. I, too, am pleased. But very pleased.” She leaned over and patted Julia on the shoulder, and the two of them exchanged the knowing smiles of sophisticated women.
The Cadillac skimmed smoothly over the road, heading west with the afternoon sun. The car was bullet-proof, crashproof, and almost bomb-proof, and its driver was AXEman Johnny Thunder. Nick was armed and so was Julia, his very favorite spy. Maybe Valentina was armed, too (she had been a little coy about that and he had not pressed the point). But they were surrounded with as much security as Valentina would permit. There was a plain dark car a little way ahead of them and a plain light car a little way behind, both of which carried AXEmen. And the plant itself was well policed by its own security guards.
Yet, Nick was uneasy. They had talked for one solid day — he and Hawk and Valentina — about the implications of the attempt on her life and the Chinese disappearances from Moscow. She had listened with great interest when they had told her about Hakim’s letter, but it had puzzled her.
“Of course! Of course! They must be the same men!” she had said excitedly. And then her brow had clouded. “But — I had begun to be so sure that the attempt to kill me could mean but one thing only: that there is something at West Valley that I must not be permitted to see. Because of course the Chinese scientists — and therefore their government and their intelligence people — know very well that I am here to see the plant. But it cannot be the plant itself that they want to keep me from. It cannot be a thing. It must be a somebody. But why should they be afraid of recognition if they have all changed themselves?” Her brow had clouded even more darkly. Then it must be a thing. But what thing?”
“I can’t imagine what sort of thing it could be that hasn’t been seen by hundreds of people already,” Hawk had said dryly. “But one thing is increasingly clear to me — you must postpone your visit to West Valley and make a secret trip some day.”
“Postpone! So
me day!” Her enormous bulk had seemed to expand like an overinflated balloon. “I am here now, now I go.”
So now she was going. She had been adamant.
Which was why Nick was worried, because he too believed that there was something at West Valley that was dangerous to her.
Another thing that worried him was that he had not heard again from Hakim or D5. Hawk himself had heard nothing from D5 since Eiger had reported his arrival in Cairo.
“Enough,” said Valentina. “Enough now. You make this sweet day sour. I promise you I shall take the utmost care. Also, I am wearing my bullet-proof corsets. Does that make you feel better?” Her body shook as she chortled, and her hand came down on Nick’s knee in a bone-crushing grip.
“Oh, infinitely,” said Nick. “I always enjoy a broken leg.” Then he laughed. She was a target as eye-catching as a tank, but at least she was armored like one. He did feel better. “You might have told me that before,” he said. “Julia wears hers all the time.” He ignored Julia’s snort and jabbed a tanned finger to his left. “See those stacks?” he said. “Beyond the fields? That’s it. We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
Valentina looked. “Why, it’s like a little oil refinery!” she exclaimed. “Or something on a farm, like a group of grain elevators. Siloes, do you not call them? But all the land around it is farm country I This is not at all what I expected.”
“Well, I hope that’s the last of your surprises,” Carter said.
Their arrival at the plant passed off with a slickness that did credit both to AXE and West Valley’s own security force. The guards were courteous and alert. The occupants of the plain dark car and the plain light car flashed their ID cards and were permitted to station themselves at key points in the plant. Johnny Thunder hovered in the background, a concrete hunk of man.
Even the introductions were admirably neat and brief.
“Honored, Madam Sichikova,” said the president of the company. “My plant manager, James Weston; vice president, Barrett Pauling; chief of security, J. Baldwin Parry. I trust you will join me later in my office for refreshments. But in the meantime, shall we go?”