by Nick Carter
The wall was ancient and mossy, covered with lichen and with plenty of finger and footholds. Even with one arm he had no difficulty getting over it. He dropped inside the grounds and ran toward a blaze of lights near the moat. There was a blacktop drive leading to one of the permanent bridges and a barricade had been set up. There were cars behind the barricade, people milling around and a low-keyed shouting of military and police voices.
A Japanese soldier stuck a carbine in his face.
"Tomodachi," Nick husked. "Tomodachi — friend! Take me to Commander-san. Hubba! Hayai!"
The soldier pointed to a knot of men near one of the cars. He prodded Nick toward them with the carbine. Killmaster thought: This is going to be the toughest part — looking the way I do. He probably wasn't speaking any too well, either. He was nervous, tense, beat up and damned near defeated. But he had to make them understand that the real trouble was only beginning. Somehow he had to do that...
The soldier said: "You put hands on head, please." He spoke to one of the men in the group. A half dozen curious faces turned Nick's way. He recognized one of them. Bill Talbot. Attaché at the Embassy. Thank God!
Nick had not known, until then, how much his voice had suffered from the beatings he'd taken. He was croaking like a raven.
"Bill! Bill Talbot. Come here. It's Carter. Nick Carter!"
The man came to him, slowly. There was no recognition in his stare.
"Who? Who are you, fella? How do you know my name?"
Nick fought for control. No use blowing his top now. He took a deep breath. "Just listen to me, Bill. Who will buy my lavender?"
The man's eyes narrowed. He came closer and peered at Nick. "Lavender is out this year," he said. "I want cockles and mussels. Sweet Jesus, is it really you, Nick?"
"It is. Now listen and don't interrupt. No time..."
He rattled out his story. The soldier had retired a few paces but he kept the carbine trained on Nick. The group of men by the car stared at them in silence.
Killmaster finished. "You take it now," he said. "Quick does it. Philston must be somewhere in the grounds."
Bill Talbot frowned at him. "You've been misinformed, Nick. The Emperor isn't here. Hasn't been for a week. He's in retreat. Meditating. Satori. He's at his private shrine near Fujiyoshida."
Richard Philston had duped them all.
Nick Carter swayed, then caught himself. You did what you had to do.
"Okay," he croaked. "Get me a fast car. Hubba! There might still be a chance. Fujiyoshida is only thirty miles and a plane is no good. I'll go ahead. You organize things here. They know you and they'll listen. Call Fujiyoshida and..."
"Can't. The lines are out. Damned near everything is out Nick, you look like a corpse — don't you think, that I had better..."
"I think you had better get me that car," Nick said grimly. "Right this goddamned minute."
Chapter 14
The big Embassy Lincoln bored through the night, heading southwest over a road that was good for short stretches, bad in most. When it was finished it would be a super-highway — now it was a mass of detours. He hit three before he was ten miles out of Tokyo.
Still, it was likely to be the shortest way to the little shrine at Fujiyoshida, where the Emperor was at this moment in deep meditation, contemplating the cosmic mysteries and, no doubt, seeking to know the unknowable. The latter was a Japanese characteristic.
To Nick Carter, hunched over the wheel of the Lincoln and keeping the speedometer on the highest number without killing himself, it appeared very likely that the Emperor would succeed in penetrating the mysteries beyond the grave. Richard Philston had a head start, plenty of time and, until now, had succeeded in decoying Nick and the Chicoms beautifully.
That graveled the AXEman. How stupid of him not to check. Not to even think to check. Philston had let it drop casually that the Emperor was in residence at the Palace — ergo! He had accepted it without question. With Johnny Chow and Tonaka the question had not arisen, since they had known nothing of the plot to kill the Emperor. Killmaster, with no access to newspapers, radio or TV, had been an easy dupe. It had, he thought now as he came to another detour sign, been simply routine on Philston's part. It would make no difference in the job that Pete Fremont had undertaken to do — and Philston was hedging against any last minute change of heart, betrayal or upset in his plans. So beautifully simple — send your audience to one theater and stage your play in another. No applause, no interference, no witnesses.
He slowed the Lincoln to a crawl as he went through a village where candles made a thousand saffron polka dots in the gloom. They were on Tokyo power here and it was still out. Beyond the village the detour continued, muddy, saturated by recent rains, better suited for ox carts than for the low-slung job he was driving. He slammed the gas pedal down and spun her on through the clinging mud. If he got bogged down it was the end.
Nick's right hand was still tucked uselessly into his jacket pocket. The Browning and the hunting knife were beside him on the seat. His left arm and hand, numb to the bone from wrenching the big steering wheel, settled down to a steady relentless ache.
Bill Talbot had shouted something at Nick as he pulled away in the Lincoln. Something about helicopters. That might work. Probably not. By the time they got matters organized, what with all the chaos in Tokyo and everything knocked out, and by the time they could get out to the airfields, it was going to he too late. And they didn't know what to look for. He knew Philston by sight. They didn't.
A helicopter, flapping into the tranquil shrine, would scare Philston away. Killmaster didn't want that. Not now. Not after he had come this far. Saving the Emperor was number one — but getting Richard Philston once and for all was a very close second. The man had done far too much damage in the world.
He came to a fork in the road. He missed a sign, rammed on the brakes and backed up to catch the sign in his lights. All he needed was to get lost. The sign said Fijiyoshida to the left and he had to trust it.
The road was good now for a stretch and he let the Lincoln out until he was doing ninety. He rolled the window down and let the damp wind blast at him. He was feeling better now, beginning to come around and into his second store of reserve strength. He careered through another village before he knew it was there and thought he heard a frantic whistle behind him. He grinned. That would be one indignant cop.
A sharp left turn raced up at him. Beyond it was an arching, narrow, one-car bridge. Nick saw the turn just in time, clamped on his brakes, and the car went into a long, sliding, tire-screeching, right-hand skid. The wheel lashed at him, trying to tear away from his numbed lingers. He fought her out of the skid, cornered into the turn with a wrenching scream of springs and shocks and ruined the right rear fender as he just made it into the bridge.
Beyond the bridge the road went to hell again. It made a sharp S turn and began to parallel the Fujisanroku electric railway. He passed a big red car standing dark and helpless on the tracks and caught a dim instant flash of people waving at him. A lot of people would be stranded tonight.
Less than ten miles now to the shrine. The road got worse and he had to slow. He forced himself to be calm, fighting back the frustration and impatience that gnawed at him. He was not an Oriental and every nerve cried for immediate and ultimate action, yet the bad road was a fact that must be faced Patience. To ease his mind he allowed himself to think back along the tangled path he had been following. Or, rather, the path he had been pushed along.
It was like an enormous, intricate maze in which four dim figures stalked, each intent on his own plans. A black symphony of counterpoint and double-double-cross.
Tonaka — she had been ambivalent. She had loved her father. Yet she had been pure Communist and, in the end, had set Nick up to be killed at the same time as her father. It must have been that way, only the assassin had botched it and killed Kunizo Matu first and so given Nick his chance. The cops could have been coincidental, but he still thought not. Probably
Johnny. Chow had set up the killing, against Tonaka's best judgement, and had phoned the cops as a secondary measure. When it hadn't worked Tonaka had asserted herself and decided to pull Nick back into the web. She could have been waiting for orders from Peking. And working with a maniac like Chow could never have been easy. Thus the fake kidnaping and the breast sent to him along with the note. That meant he had been followed all along and had never once spotted the tail. Nick grimaced and slowed nearly to a stop for a gigantic chuck hole. It happened. Not often, but it did happen. Sometimes you were lucky and the mistake didn't kill you.
Richard Philston was as good as Nick had always heard he was. It would have been his idea to use Pete Fremont to plant the Eta story in the world press. At the time they must have been planning on using the real Pete Fremont. Maybe he would have done it. Perhaps Nick, playing the role of Pete, had spoken truly when he said a lot of whisky had gone under the bridge. But if Pete had been ready to sell out Kunizo Matu hadn't known it — and when he decided to use Pete as cover for Nick he had walked right into their hands.
Nick shook his head. It was as tangled a web as he had ever clawed his way out of. He was dying for a cigarette but no chance. He hit another detour and began to skirt a swamp that must have once been a paddy field. They had put down logs and covered them with gravel. From the paddies beyond the swamp the breeze brought an odor of rotting human feces.
Philston had been watching the Chicoms, probably a routine precaution, and his men had picked Nick up without any trouble. Philston thought he was Pete Fremont and Tonaka hadn't told him any differently. She and Johnny Chow must have gotten a real charge out of that — snatching Nick Carter right out from under Philston's nose. Killmaster! Who was as hated by the Russians, and as important to them as Philston himself was to the West.
Meantime Philston was getting his charge too. He was using the man he thought was Pete Fremont — with the Chicoms knowledge and permission — to set them up for the real payoff. To smear the Chinese with the onus of killing the Emperor of Japan.
Figures in the maze; each one intent on his own plan, each one trying to figure out how to double-cross the other. Using terror, using money, moving the little people around like pawns on the big board.
The road was blacktop now and he stepped on it. He had been to Fujiyoshida once before — a girl and saki pleasure jaunt — and for this he was now grateful. The shrine grounds had been closed that day, but Nick recalled seeing a map in a guide book, and now he sought to recall it. When he concentrated he could remember nearly anything — and he concentrated now.
The shrine was just ahead. Maybe half a mile. Nick turned off his headlights and slowed. He might still have a chance; he couldn't know, but if he did he mustn't blow it now.
A lane led off to the left. They had come this way, that time before, and he recognized it. The lane skirted the grounds to the east. There was an ancient wall, low and crumbling, which would present no problems even to a one-armed man. Or to Richard Philston.
The lane was muddy, hardly more than two ruts. Nick ran the Lincoln in a few hundred feet and cut the engine. Painfully, stiffly, cursing a little under his breath, he got out without making any sound. He put the hunting knife in his left jacket pocket and, working awkwardly with his left hand, slipped a fresh clip into the Browning.
It had cleared off now and a crescent moon was trying to sail through the clouds. It gave just enough light for him to feel his way down off the lane, into a ditch and up the other side. He walked slowly through wet grass, already tall, to the old wall. There he stopped and listened,
He was in the umbrella gloom of a giant wisteria tree. A bird cheeped sleepily somewhere in the green cage. Nearby a few peepers were making their rhythmic castrati song. A strong scent of peonies tinged the faint breeze. Nick put his good hand on the low wall and vaulted over.
There would be security guards, of course. Maybe police, maybe the military, but they would be few and they would be less than alert. The average Japanese was incapable of thinking that the Emperor might be harmed. It simply would not occur to them. Not unless Talbot had worked a miracle in Tokyo and somehow gotten through.
The silence, the quiet darkness, belied that. Nick was still on his own.
He remained under the big wisteria for a minute, trying to visualize the map of the grounds as he had seen it that one time. He had come in from the east — that meant the little shrine, the chiisai, where only the Emperor was allowed to go, was somewhere off to his left. The larger shrine, with the arching torii over the main entrance, was straight ahead of him. Yes — that had to be right. The main gate was on the western side of the grounds and he was coming in from the east.
He began to follow the wall to his left, going cautiously and angling in a bit as he walked. The turf was springy and moist and he made no sound. Neither would Philston.
It struck Nick Carter then, really for the first time, that if he were too late and he walked into the little shrine and found the Emperor with a knife in his back or a bullet through his head AXE, and Carter, were going to be in one hell of a spot. It could be damned messy and it had better not happen. Hawk would have to be put in a strait jacket. Nick shrugged and nearly smiled. He hadn't thought of the old man in hours.
The moon showed itself again and he saw the glitter of black water off to his right. Carp pool. The fish would live longer than he would. He went on, slower now, alert for sound and light.
He came to a graveled path leading in the right direction. It was too noisy and after a moment he left it and walked along the verge. He fished the hunting knife from his pocket and put it between his teeth. There was a cartridge in the chamber of the Browning and the safety was off. He was as ready as he was ever going to be.
The path coiled through a stand of giant maple and keaki trees, laced together by thick vines to form a natural arbor. Just beyond was a small pagoda, roof tiles reflecting the faint sheen of the moon. Nearby was a white-painted iron bench. Sprawled near the bench was, unmistakably, the body of a man. Brass buttons glinted. A small body in blue uniform.
The policeman's throat had been cut and the sward beneath him was stained black. The body was still warm. Not long ago. Killmaster ran now, on his toes, across an open stretch of lawn and around a copse of flowering trees until he saw faint light in the distance. The little shrine.
The light was very dim, as tenuous as a will-o'-the-wisp. It would be over the altar, he supposed, and it would be the only light. It was hardly a light at all. And somewhere in the gloom might be another body. Nick ran faster.
Two paved narrow paths converged on the entrance to the small shrine. Nick ran softly on the grass to the apex of the triangle formed by the paths. Here a thick growth of bushes separated him from the door of the shrine. The light, a streaky drugget of amber, oozed from the door onto the pavement. No sound. No movement. The AXEman felt a surge of belly sickness. He was too late. There was death in that little building. He had the feeling and he knew it did not lie.
He pushed through the bushes, not worrying about noise now. Death had come and gone. The door of the shrine was half open. He went in. They lay halfway between the door and the altar. One of them moved and groaned as Nick entered.
They were the two Japanese who had gun-hustled him off the street. The short one was dead. The tall one still lived. He was belly down and his glasses lay nearby, casting twin reflections of the tiny lamp glowing above the altar.
Trust Philston not to leave any witnesses. And yet something had gone wrong. Nick turned the tall Japanese over and knelt beside him. The man had been shot twice, gut and head, and he was just dying. That meant that Philston was using a silencer.
Nick put his face close to the dying man. "Where is Philston?"
The Japanese was a traitor, he had sold out to fhe Russians — or perhaps a lifelong Commie and faithful after all — but he was dying in terrible pain and had no idea who was questioning him. Or why. But his fading brain heard the question and gave
the answer.
"Go to — to big shrine. Mistake — Emperor not here. Change — he — go big shrine. I..." He died.
Killmaster was out the door and running, taking the paved path off to the left. There might be time. Christ almighty — there might be time!
What vagary had prompted the Emperor to use the big shrine and not the little shrine on this particular night he did not know. Or care. It gave him one last chance. It would have upset Philston, too, who would be operating on a meticulously thought-out schedule.
It hadn't upset the cold-blooded bastard so much that he had overlooked the chance to get rid of his two confederates. Philston would be alone now. Alone with the Emperor and that was just as he had planned it.
Nick came to a broad tiled walk bordered by peony trees. Off a way was another pool and beyond that a long stretch of barren garden with black rocks arching into grotesques. The moon was brighter now, so bright that Nick saw the body of the priest in time to vault over it. He caught a glimpse of staring eyes, a bloodied brown robe. Philston had been this way.
Philston did not see him. He was intent on his business and he was loping along, light footed as a cat, about fifty yards in front of Nick. He was wearing a robe, a brown priest's robe, and his shaven head caught the moonlight. The sonofabitch had thought of everything.
Killmaster moved closer to the wall, in under the arcade that skirted the shrine. There were benches here and he twined his way among them, keeping Philston in sight, keeping the same distance between them. And making a decision. To kill Philston or take him. It was no contest. Kill him. Now. Get in range and kill him here and now. One shot would do it. Then go back to the Lincoln and get to hell out of there.
Philston turned to his left and vanished.
Nick Carter turned on a burst of speed. He could still lose this battle. The thought was like cold steel in his guts. There wouldn't be much satisfaction in getting Philston after the man had murdered the Emperor.