by Nick Carter
Dropping to my knees, I looked under the bed. Blind eyes stared back at me from a face that must have been pretty before a bullet tore away part of the jaw, splattering blood over long black hair that fanned out on the floor. She was wearing a quilted yellow housecoat and the front of it was caked with clotted blood where the second shot struck her.
I dropped the bedspread and got to my feet. Moving swiftly through the rest of the upstairs, I checked out a third bedroom and the master bath, both of which testified further to the neatness of the CIA housekeeper. Hidden behind a stack of towels in a linen closet, I found a powerful two-way radio, set on a frequency which I recognized as one assigned to the CIA. It probably was operated only when the safe house was being used. There was little need for direct communication with the intelligence agency’s super-secret headquarters near Langley, Virginia, except at such times. I flipped the receiver switch but no noise came from the set. Feeling behind the cabinet, I picked up some wires that had been pulled loose and cut.
Going back downstairs, I stood in the front foyer and listened intently for some sound that might indicate the Sword and Abdul Bedawi, hopefully Sherima and, probably two of the three assassins from the camper still were in the house. Only the ticking of an old Seth Thomas beehive clock on a sideboard in the dining room broke the silence.
I tiptoed back to the kitchen and found a door that had to lead to the basement. I tested the knob and found that it was unlocked, so I eased it ajar. A slight hum came through the crack, but no human sounds carried up the flight of about ten steps I saw as I pulled the door open wide.
The basement light was on, however, and below I could see a linoleum-covered floor. As I inched down the steps, a washer-dryer combination came into view against a far wall. An oil burner and water heater were off behind the stairs. Almost at the bottom of the steps, I stopped short, suddenly realizing that only about one-third of the basement was exposed; maybe less, I decided, recalling the rambling rooms upstairs.
A concrete block wall cut off the remainder of the cellar. A wall obviously added long after the house had been built, because the gray blocks were much newer than those that formed the other three sides of the area I had entered. Quickly estimating the size of the house itself, I calculated that the CIA had created a hidden room, or rooms, with a total area of about fifteen hundred square feet. This, then, was the safest part of the safe house, where friends—or enemies—needing protection might be sheltered. The interior is probably soundproofed, too, I guessed, so that if someone were hiding out there, no noise would betray his presence if neighbors should unexpectedly call on the resident agents.
My assumption that no sound would penetrate the walls and ceiling of the secret hideout convinced me that Sherima and her captors were inside, too. Waiting for something or someone, I suspected, but didn’t know what or whom. Certainly, not for any signal on the radio upstairs, for its usefulness had been destroyed by whoever had cut the wires. There was a good chance, though, that the message to Adabi—”The Sword is poised to strike”— had been transmitted from here before the radio was put out of commission.
There didn’t seem to be any entrance into the concrete-sheathed room, but I moved to the wall for a closer look. The CIA had created an excellent illusion; probably, when an explanation of the unusually tiny basement was necessary, should the “young couple” have to admit meter readers or utility repairmen to the basement, they would say, perhaps, that the people from whom they bought the house had not finished the cellar for lack of funds, and had just closed off the remainder of the excavation. I could almost hear the pretty raven-haired woman telling a curious electric company man: “Oh, we’re going to finish it ourselves someday when mortgage money is easier to come by. But we got such a good buy on the house because it didn’t have a full basement.”
Near the furthest point on the wall from the stairway, I found what I was looking for. A slight crack in the blocks outlined a section about seven feet high and maybe thirty-six inches wide. It had to be the door to whatever lay beyond, but how did it open? The glare from the unshaded bulbs overhead provided plenty of light as I hunted for some sort of switch or button that would open the concealed door. There didn’t seem to be any such device on the wall itself, so I began looking around in other parts of the cellar. I had to get inside that door fast; time was running out on me.
I searched for ten frustrating minutes without finding anything. I was just about to begin pressing on the individual concrete blocks in the wall, hoping that one of them might be the key. As I stepped back toward the hidden door, I passed one of the large supporting beams, and there, from the corner of my eye I saw what had been in front of me all along—a light switch. But what did this switch turn on? The one at the top of the basement stairs obviously controlled the only two bulbs, and they already were on.
I checked the wiring that led from the switch. Perhaps it had something to do with the laundry equipment or the oil burner. Instead, the wire went straight up to the ceiling and across to a point near the crack that marked the entrance to the secret room. With my Luger in one hand, I flicked the switch with the other. For a moment, nothing happened. Then I felt a slight vibration in the floor under my feet and heard a muffled scraping as the section of wall started to swing outward on well-oiled hinges, obviously powered by an electric motor somewhere behind it.
Gun in hand, I stepped through the opening as soon as it was wide enough to admit me. The scene that greeted me would have rivaled the cover of one of the old pulp magazines.
Tied spread-eagle to the far wall opposite me was Sherima. She was completely naked, but I didn’t have time to appreciate the lush curves of her tiny figure. I was too busy looking at the man standing beside her, and in covering the others in the room with my Luger. Abdul was standing close to Sherima, and I could tell from the expression on her face that he had been doing something distasteful that was interrupted by my arrival. Seated at a desk in the large open area that had been created by the CIA was a well-dressed Arab, whom I felt certain was the man Abdul had picked up at the Adabian Embassy—the one Hawk and I had figured to be the Sword. Apparently, he had been working on some papers; he lifted his head from his paperwork to stare at me and the gun.
Two other Arabs were lounging in another corner of the hideaway. One was seated on the bed normally used by the CIA’s temporary guests. An automatic rifle lay beside him. Its twin was in the hands of the last of this group of occupants of the government hideout. He had started to raise the rifle as I stepped into the room, but stopped as the muzzle of my pistol swung in his direction. None of them seemed surprised to see me, except Sherima, whose eyes had widened, first in astonishment, and then registered embarrassment at her nudity. I was certain that I had been expected when Abdul spoke:
“Come in, Mr. Carter,” he said, still polite even under such a tense, situation as he was in. “We’ve been waiting for you to arrive. Now my plan is complete.”
Calling it his plan threw me for a minute. Hawk and I had been wrong. The man who had played bodyguard for Sherima and chauffeur for the Adabian Embassy official was the Sword, not the one who had been his passenger. I stared at Abdul now as though I were looking at him for the first time. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement from the side of the room where the two men had been frozen in position. I was pulling the trigger as I swung my head, and the slug from the Luger hit the Arab with the automatic rifle in the temple as he shifted to try to line up the barrel on me. He was dead before he hit the floor, following his rifle, which had dropped from his hands.
“Don’t try it,” I warned his companion, who had started to reach for the gun beside him on the bed. I wasn’t sure he understood English, but he apparently had no trouble interpreting the tone of my voice or my intention, because his hands snaked back and up toward the ceiling.
“There was no need for that, Mr. Carter,” Abdul said coolly. “He wouldn’t have shot you. That wasn’t part of my plan.”
“He didn’t hesitate using that thing earlier today,” I reminded the Sword. “Or was killing those three men part of your plan?”
“That was necessary,” Abdul replied. “It was almost time for me to come here—and they were following too closely for me to do it without disclosing where my men were holding Her Highness.” The last was said with a sneer as he turned slightly toward Sherima. “Were they good company, my lady?” He said those last words in a tone that made them seem dirtier than anything he or his two thugs might have done to the beautiful, bound captive, and the blush that spread from her face down over her bare throat and heaving breasts told me that her ordeal had been both mental and physical.
Sherima still hadn’t spoken since I opened the secret door and stepped into the hidden room. I had a feeling she was in shock, or just coming out of it. Or, perhaps, she had been drugged beyond the tranquilizers given her by Candy, and only now was starting to recover full control of her senses.
“All right, Abdul, or should I say Seif Allah?” I said. His reaction to my use of the Arabic for the Sword of Allah was simply to bow slightly. “Get those chains off Her Highness. Fast.”
“That won’t be necessary, Abdul,” a voice behind me said. “Drop your gun, Nick, and put up your hands.”
“Hello, Candy,” I said without turning around. “What kept you? I’ve been waiting for you to join us down here. If you’d arrived a couple of minutes earlier, you might have saved the life of one of your pals.”
The shock of seeing her long-time friend and companion holding a gun on the man who had come to rescue her snapped Sherima fully awake. “Candy! What are you doing? Nick came to get me out of here!”
When I told her that Candy Knight was the one who had made it possible for her to be captured in the first place, the revelation was too much for the former Queen. She dissolved in tears. Gone was the royal dignity that had maintained her bravely in the face of her tormentors. She was a woman betrayed by someone she had loved like a sister, and she sobbed over and over, “Why, Candy? Why?”
Chapter 11
I still hadn’t dropped my gun or raised my hands, but Abdul left Sherima’s side and walked over to take the Luger away from me. There was little I could do at the moment except let him take it. If Candy pulled the trigger on me, there was no hope for the sobbing woman whose head had slumped forward on her breast. Her world was shattering into a billion pieces, and for her, physical pain was forgotten. The raw creases that the ropes had cut into her wrists and splayed ankles was no longer nearly as brutal as the process of her life disintegrating—a process that had begun when she’d been forced to leave the man she loved and her children.
“Now, if you will just move over against the wall, Mr. Carter,” Abdul said, gesturing with my gun where he wanted me to go.
Playing for time, I asked him: “Why don’t you let Candy tell Sherima why she sold her out? You’ve got nothing to lose now.”
“Nothing but time,” he said, turning to order the gunman on the cot to come and guard me. As the man picked up his automatic rifle and began walking toward me, he paused to look down at his dead companion. Rage crossed his face and he raised the rifle threateningly and pointed it at me.
“Stop!” Abdul commanded, still speaking to him in Arabic. “He must not be killed with that weapon. When everything is ready, you may use the pistol which you used on the ones upstairs.”
Sherima lifted her head to look at me questioningly. Apparently, she had been kept outside until the Sword’s men had disposed of the CIA’s resident agents. “There’s a ‘nice young couple’ dead upstairs,” I told her. “At least, the lady next door described them as nice.”
“They were spies for your imperialistic CIA,” Abdul snarled at me. “We knew all about this house for some time, Mr. Carter. Selim here,” he continued, nodding toward the man at the desk who had gone back to his paperwork once I was disarmed, “was quite helpful on that score. He is attached to security at the embassy, and once had to escort Shah Hassan here when our illustrious monarch was in Washington to get his orders from his masters in the CIA. That meeting lasted almost six hours, and Selim had ample opportunity to memorize the layout of the house. For spies, they were not very clever; Selim was even permitted to stand guard outside the secret door to this room and see how it operated while he waited for Hassan.”
“The Shah never took orders from anyone!” Sherima snapped at her former bodyguard. “I remember him telling me about that meeting when he returned to Sidi Hassan. The CIA was briefing him on what was going on in the rest of the Mideast so that he could protect himself from those who pretended to be our friends while they were making plans to take the throne away from him.”
“Who besides you and Hassan believe that fabrication?” Abdul said smugly. “By the time we are finished, everyone in the Arab world will know of his treachery and how he let himself and his people be used by the imperialist war-mongers. And how he became their running dog, thanks to you”
When Sherima’s attractive face showed a big question mark, Abdul gloated. “Oh yes, my lady,” he said, walking back to her side, “Didn’t you know? You are the one who so clouded Hassan’s mind that he could not determine what was best for his country. You used this evil body of yours to inflame him with passion so that he could not see who his true friends were.” To emphasize his point, Abdul reached out and stroked Sherima’s breasts and thighs salaciously as she tried to twist away from his torturous caresses; pain from her coarse bonds and nausea from his barbaric touch mirrored in her face at the same time.
“Then, when you had made Hassan your love slave,” Abdul continued, “you began to pass on to him the orders from your masters here in Washington.”
“That’s a lie!” Sherima said, her face flushed again, this time from anger rather than embarrassment at what her former servant was doing to her body. “Hassan’s only thought was of what was best for his people. And you know that is true, Abdul. He trusted you as a friend and often confided in you, too, from the day you saved his life.”
“Of course I know it, Your Highness,” Abdul admitted. “But who will believe that when the world sees the evidence Selim is preparing here—evidence that already is waiting to be handed over to the mighty Shah when we send word of your death at the hands of the CIA.”
Sherima gasped. “You intend to kill me and blame it on the CIA? Why should the Shah believe that lie? Especially if you are going to insinuate that I worked for the CIA.”
Abdul turned to me, saying, “Tell her, Mr. Carter. I am certain that by now you have figured out my plan.”
I didn’t want to reveal just how much AXE knew of the Sword’s plot, so I merely said, “Well, they might try to convince the Shah that you were killed because you had decided to expose the CIA’s operations in Adabi to Hassan and the rest of the world.”
“Precisely, Mr. Carter!” Abdul said. “I see that you people in the Executive Protection Service have some brains, too. We had assumed that you were little more than glorified bodyguards, good for nothing better than to stand outside embassies and consular offices.”
The Sword didn’t know it, but he had answered a big question that had been on my mind since he first had said he was expecting me at the CIA safe house. He obviously didn’t know about AXE or who I really was. I looked over at Candy, who had been standing silently, still holding a little gun in her hand during the entire conversation between Abdul and Sherima.
“I guess I have you to thank for telling him who I am, Lovely,” I said. Her face was defiant as I continued, “You use that body of yours pretty well to get what information you want. Thanks.”
She didn’t reply, but Abdul chuckled and said, “Yes, Mr. Carter, she does use that body of hers well.” From the way he sneered as he spoke, I realized that he, too, had experienced the delights of Candy’s love games. “But, in your case,” he went on, “it was not uncontrollable passion that influenced her. You were treated to her pleasures as my guest—at my instructions.
I needed to know just where you fit into the picture, and once she discovered that you, too, were in the employ of the capitalists’ government, I decided to include you in my plans.”
“It was my pleasure,” I said, speaking to Candy rather than to Abdul. “Tell me, Candy, the man on Sherima’s balcony—was it an accident when you drove my knife into his throat? Or were you afraid that he was going to talk and tell me that the Sword was on the Watergate roof, too, directing the abduction attempt on Sherima?”
The big hazel eyes refused to look at me, and Candy still didn’t speak. Abdul wasn’t nearly so reticent, however. Satisfied his plot to destroy Shah Hassan was going to succeed and that there was nothing standing in his way, he seemed almost eager to discuss every facet of the operation.
“That was very clever of her, wasn’t it, Mr. Carter?” he said condescendingly. “I heard about it when I came down to Sherima’s room to see what had gone wrong. That was when I told her to keep you occupied for the rest of the night while we made off with Her Highness . . . excuse me, Her ex-Highness. Imagine, that old fool of a hotel detective thought he could stop us. He walked right up and wanted to know what I was doing at the door to the suite at that hour, flaunting his hotel badge as though I were a peeping torn.” He didn’t add the obvious—that he wouldn’t have had to kill the old man—Abdul was, after all, recognized as Sherima’s official bodyguard.
“Unfortunately for him, that may be just what he thought,” I said. “He didn’t really know what was going on, only that he was to protect the lady from being bothered.” That had been our mistake, I admitted to myself.