A Korean Tiger

by Nick Carter

  As he fumbled for a cigarette he saw the red light in the ceiling begin to blink off and on. Perfect timing. How considerate of his boss, of Hawk, to wait until he had finished. It was Hawk, of course. Only Hawk knew where he was. Hawk did not really approve of these "retreats," as he called them; he said they dulled Nick's edge. But the line was a direct one to Washington, and it would be Hawk, all right. That meant only one thing. Back to business! Nick reached down and pulled on his swimming trunks. He felt a tremendous sense of relief.

  He kissed Peg's forehead, tasting the faint perspiration of spent passion. She said, "Ummmmmm," but did not open her eyes. Nick took his cigarettes, and a lighter and left the lodge. As he left he glanced at a cheap alarm clock on the mantel and realized, with a little sense of shock, that it was only a few minutes past one. The day had only begun. He did not think he would be around to see the sun go down over the flat prairie to the west.

  Killmaster found a path that skirted the lake to the east. Hot sun beat at his scarred, tanned shoulders and chest. He passed the woodshed and the towering stack of wood he had chopped since his arrival. It was good exercise and kept his muscles in tone. Beyond the shed was the Chevy he had rented in Indianapolis — his own Jag Special attracted too many eyes — and Peg's Buick hardtop.

  He came to a fork in the path and left the lake side. As he was about to plunge into a narrow ravine, a loon came skittering down to a landing on the water, giving its maniacal cry. A lunatic laughing in this vast asylum cell that was called the world. Nick thumbed his nose at the bird and went sliding down into the weed-choked ravine. Burrs and wood lice plucked at the hair on his stalwart legs and he had to go carefully through a patch of bramble.

  At the far end of the ravine there towered a majestic weeping willow, its dripping linear tears forming a tent around the huge bole. Nick pushed through the green fronds and approached the tree. He was completely hidden now, encompassed by the drooping greenery, and for a moment he had the feeling of moving under green, faintly sun-tinted water. He thought of Peg's dream and his grin was hard. Not just yet.

  There was a canvas camp chair by a hollow in the huge tree trunk. From above a catbird whistled at him and squirrels chittered angrily. Possibly the same squirrels he had dispossessed to install the phone.

  Nick tossed away his cigarette and lit another before he sank into the camp chair. Hawk wasn't going to hang up. At last he reached into the hollow and took out an Army field phone in a leather case. It was, in this his last refuge, the only concession he had made to the electronic age. If his boss considered Nick a little touched, he had been gracious enough not to mention it. No radio, no TV, no electronic gimmicks or gadgets. No other AXE agent, lacking Nick's seniority and prestige, could have gotten away with it.

  He took the phone out of the leather case. "N3 here."

  A female voice, metallic over the wire, said: "Just a moment, N3. Blackbird wants to talk to you. Will you scramble, please?" The prim tones of Delia Strokes, Hawk's ultra-efficient private secretary.

  "I'm scrambling." He pressed a button on the phone.

  Hawk came on the line. "You there, son?"

  "Yes, sir. What's up?"

  Over the years Killmaster had learned to decode the nuances of Hawk's voice. Now his boss was speaking in a slow, steady, almost too casual cadence. It was his worried, high-priority voice. Nick Carter, who was never far from tension, came completely alert.

  "All hell is up," said Hawk. "Or may be. That's part of the hell — we aren't exactly sure yet. It's either a false alarm — or we're in the deepest trouble we can be. You get back here right away, boy. As of right now. Boy Scout camp is over. Start as soon as you hang up. That's an order."

  Nick frowned at the instrument. "Of course, sir. But what is it? Can't you tell me a little more? Something to chew on while I'm traveling."

  Hawk's laugh was bleak. Nick could hear the dry crackle of his unlit cigar over the line. "No can do," he said. "Too complex, Nick. Anyway, as I said, we aren't really sure where we stand yet. But I'll tell you this much — if we're right, and it is trouble, it's one of our own. We've got a traitor in AXE!"

  "I'm starting now," said Nick. "Be there in a few hours, sir."

  "Make it damn few hours," said his boss. "Goodbye."

  "Goodbye, sir." Nick put the phone back in the leather case and replaced it in the tree hollow. Remembering his vow not to return to the lodge again, he yanked out the case and disconnected the wires. He coiled the wires as best he could and hid them under leaves beneath a bush. On his way back to the lodge he tossed the field phone into the lake.

  It was typical of Killmaster that he gave not a thought to the parting scene that lay ahead. He was already working again. The time for softness, for moodiness and nonsense and sex and booze, was over for the time being. Until the job was done.

  A traitor in AXE? It seemed impossible. Incredible. And yet he knew it was neither of those things. Every organization had its weaklings, its potential betrayers. Why should AXE be an exception? Just because it had never happened before....

  That killing would be involved, he had no slightest doubt. Nick merely shrugged and walked faster. Killing was a foregone conclusion in a case like this. Mere routine. He did not give it another thought.

  The lake looked cool and inviting and, now that time had run out, he suddenly felt like a swim. Nick chuckled at his own perversity and went into the lodge to tell Peg it was over.

  Chapter 2

  Nick left Peg Tyler to close up the lodge — she could mail the keys to his agent in Indianapolis — and late that afternoon he returned the rented Chevy and caught a jet for Washington. His parting with Peg had been brief and unemotional, verging on the brusque. It was best that way for both, and both knew it. Neither voiced what they both sensed — that they would never see each other again.

  On his way south to Indianapolis Nick stopped in Fort Wayne long enough to call a puzzled sheriff of Limberlost County and tell him that the special patrol could be taken off. Said sheriff was puzzled because he had never really understood, in the first place, why a patrol had to be maintained twenty-four hours a day around Nick's hundred acres. The sheriff had never seen Nick, nor had the patrolling deputies, but it stood to reason that he was very VIP. The orders had come straight from Washington.

  It was, rather amazingly, cool and pleasant in Washington. Weather-wise, at least. The professional climate was something else again, as Nick found out the moment he entered his chiefs barren little office on Dupont Circle. Hawk was alone, a cigar clamped in the corner of his thin mouth. He looked haunted. His suit looked as though he had slept in it, but this was par for Hawk.

  Nick Carter was wearing a two-hundred-dollar tropical suit from London's Regent Street, a Stetson straw, and Brooks cordovan moccasins with leather tassels. His shirt was of pristine Irish linen, dead white, slightly open at the throat where he had loosened his wine-colored tie. Nick had developed a thing about tight collars — ever since he had barely escaped being garrotted in Istanbul.[1]

  Hawk eyed Nick's sartorial splendor with a cold eye. The old man rubbed the back of his weathered neck, cross-hatched with wrinkles like a farmer's, and rolled his dead cigar to the opposite corner of his mouth. "You look fine," he said at last. "Rested and ready, eh? You must have taken my advice for once and really had a vacation, eh? No booze and no women?"

  Nick said nothing. He sank languidly into a hard chair, crossed his legs — careful to protect the crease in his trousers — and lit one of his long gold tips. Then he nodded at his boss. "It was all right, sir. But I was ready to come back. So what is it? Who's our pigeon?"

  Hawk tossed his chewed cigar in the wastebasket. He jabbed a new one in his mouth, then immediately took it out and pointed it at Nick like a rapier. "It's a good thing you're sitting down, boy. Maybe you better hold on, too. It's Bennett. Raymond Lee Bennett!"

  For what seemed a very long moment, Nick could only stare at his boss. As sharp as his mind was, as awesomel
y computerlike his brain, still it refused for the moment to ingest this information. It just didn't make sense. Bennett wasn't even an agent. Not even a low-level official in AXE. Bennett hadn't been — at least not until this moment — much more than a cipher, a lowly cog in the organization.

  "You can close your mouth now," said Hawk. His laugh was harsh, mirthless. "But I know how you feel. I looked the same way when they first told me."

  Nick leaned forward in his chair. He still couldn't believe it. "You mean little Bennett? The little file clerk? But didn't he retire about a month ago?"

  Hawk rubbed a skinny hand through his dry, brittle hair. "He did. Just a month ago. After thirty years in Civil Service. He was only on loan to us, you know."

  Nick shook his head. "I didn't know anything about Bennett. I hardly ever saw him, and didn't notice him when I did — if you know what I mean?"

  Hawk's smile was grim. "I know, all right. Neither did anyone else — notice him. Bennett was the little man who was always there — only we were all so used to him that we didn't really see him. Not that it made any difference — then! It sure does now. The chickens are coming home to roost."

  Killmaster rubbed his well-shaven chin. "I'm afraid I still don't quite get it, sir. You said we had a traitor in the organization. Did you mean this Raymond Lee Bennett? But how could he be? I mean, after thirty years? He must have been checked out a hundred times! Anyway, what could he know, or find out? He was only a file clerk and..."

  Hawk raised a hand. "Hold it — hold it! I told you it was pretty damned complex. That was maybe an understatement, too. Let me give it to you in the proper order, just the way I got it. Then it makes more sense. You just listen, son. No interruptions until I finish, eh?"

  "Right, sir."

  Hawk left his desk and began to pace the tiny office. He was in his shirtsleeves. Nick noticed that his tie had a soup or gravy stain on it His chief was not the neatest man in the world.

  Finally Hawk said: "Bennett is, or was — he may be dead — fifty-five years old. He left Columbia University, in New York, and came to Washington to work when he was twenty-five. I suppose some sort of security check was run on him, but I doubt that they were as tough and thorough in 1936 as they are now. Anyway he was cleared and went to work as a typist and file clerk.

  "He must have been in some sort of pool at first, because he worked around, and I mean all around, Washington."

  Hawk paused in front of Nick. "That is important. Damned important. Here are some, just some, mind you, of the agencies Bennett worked for." Hawk ticked them off on his fingers. "He started with the Post Office. Then, over the years, he worked for the Treasury, the Secret Service, the OSS, the FBI, the CIA and, finally, for us. For AXE. Just before his retirement last month."

  Nick whistled softly and dared to interrupt. "He sure got around. But that doesn't make him a spy, or a traitor. And as I said before, he must have been checked and rechecked over the years. He must have been clean or..."

  Hawk nodded and resumed his pacing. "Oh, he was clean. Never a breath of suspicion. Bennett was like Caesar's wife — above suspicion. Besides being damned near the invisible man! But let me go on.

  "Over the years Bennett became an expert stenographer. He learned to use a stenotype machine and he sat in on a lot of important conferences. Not any top-level stuff, as far as we know, but enough. He could have picked up a lot."

  Noting the expression of near pain on Nick's face, Hawk paused. "Okay. Ask the question. Before you burst."

  Nick asked. "Supposing he was a plant, and I'm presuming you mean Commie plant, how could he pass on his information without getting caught? Over a period of thirty years! The FBI isn't that bad!"

  Hawk clutched the back of his scrawny neck, his features contorted as if in agony. "Now you're starting, just starting, to see how screwed up this whole mess is. First thing — we don't really know, can't prove, yet, that Bennett was a spy. But if he was — and we think there's a good chance he was — we don't think he did pass on any information. That clear things up a little?"

  Nick was aware that his mouth was open again. He closed it on a fresh cigarette. "No, sir. It clears up nothing. But I think you were right — I'll have to hear the whole story. Go on, sir. I won't interrupt again."

  Hawk paced again. "I'll have to jump ahead a little in the story, just to give you the peg on which we're basing this investigation. So it will make a little sense. Without it the whole story is just so much smoke. Okay, to jump ahead. When Bennett and his wife disappeared a couple of weeks ago a routine investigation was started. Just routine, nothing more. It got more and more involved, and less routine, as it went along. But just one thing is important right now — they came up with some information that was missed thirty years ago. Raymond Lee Bennett did have some Commie friends! At Columbia, when he was going to college. This fact wasn't caught at the time and Bennett was cleared. He was clean. No Commie leanings, he belonged to no front organizations, he was absolutely in the clear. Then! Now, thirty years later, the picture is a little different. He could have been, all those years, a well-hidden Commie plant."

  Hawk went back to his desk and put his feet on it. He had a hole in the sole of one shoe. "To get back to the present, in the right order. Bennett retired a month ago. No breath of suspicion. He took his gold watch and his pension and retired to his little house in Laurel, Maryland. That's about twenty miles from here.

  "Okay. So far so good. Nothing. But then the milk and the mail and the papers start piling up. The meter readers can't get in. The neighbors begin to wonder. Finally the local police are called in. They force their way into the house. Nothing. No sign of Bennett or his wife. He had been married for twenty-five years.

  "A lot of their clothes are gone, and some suitcases that the neighbors remember seeing. So at first the Laurel police don't think too much about it. Natural, I suppose." Hawk found a fresh cigar and actually lit it. It was the ultimate act of desperation and a tip-off to his mental state. Nick repressed his faint grin.

  Hawk pointed the cigar at Nick like a pistol. "Then it happens. It begins. One of the Laurel cops smells something. Literally. And it stinks."

  Despite his vow, Nick could not resist. "The wife? Dead?"

  Hawk's grin stretched his wizened face into a death's head for a moment. "Go to the head of the class, son. But not stuffed into a closet or buried in the basement. Nothing as mundane as that. There was a secret room in Bennett's basement. The FBI found it, after the Laurel people called them in. I guess they had a hell of a time finding it, and if it hadn't been for the smell they might never have found it, but they did. Back of what used to be a coal bin. The neighbors say that Bennett was quite a do-it-yourself man. He did a good job on his wife, that's for sure. He used a hatchet."

  Hawk took some 8 X 10 glossy photos from his desk and scaled them at Nick. As the AXE agent caught them he murmured, "Secret room, eh? Now that's something you don't often find these days in this profession. I thought they were rather passe. Except in castles on the Rhine."

  Hawk, half snarling, came up with a reprimand from his own generation. "It ain't funny, McGee! If this thing turns out the way I think it's going to turn out — we're in trouble up to our ass. Just remember that Bennett was working for us, for AXE, at the last. We're going to be left holding the baby."

  Nick was studying the photo of the dead woman. She was fat and lay in a congealed web of black blood. The hatchet, which still lay beside her, had done nothing to improve her features. He doubted they had been much to begin with. But then neither had Raymond Lee Bennett, as Nick remembered him. He strove to visualize the man now and found it hard. Yet he must have seen Bennett a thousand times. Lurking in halls, working over a desk, at a water cooler, in the elevators. Under normal circumstances you just didn't notice the Bennetts of this world. Balding, skinny, a long horsey face ravaged by a terrible case of juvenile acne. Dull eyed. Shambling walk. The image of the man was coming back to Nick now. And a more unlikely ca
ndidate for spy, for Commie agent, for traitor, he could not imagine. As he remembered now, forcing his mind back, Bennett hadn't even appeared very bright. Certainly he had never advanced, never gotten anywhere in government service. Why would the Kremlin employ a man like that? Especially, why would they employ him and then never contact him? Never use him?

  Nick frowned at the dead fat woman and then looked at Hawk. "It doesn't make a goddamn bit of sense, sir. Something, or somebody, is way out of line. The more I remember about this Bennett the more impossible it is. I..."

  His boss was smiling at him. An odd smile. "There's one other thing I didn't tell you," Hawk said. "It slipped my mind."

  Nick knew it was a lie. It hadn't slipped Hawk's mind at all. He had been saving it for the last, this little tidbit, whatever it was. Hawk had a rather distorted sense of the dramatic at times.

  "Raymond Lee Bennett was something of a freak," Hawk said. "He wasn't very bright in school. He got lousy marks. He dropped out. And he never got anyplace here in Washington. But the FBI found an old retired professor, who used to teach Gestalt psychology at Columbia. He's almost ninety now, but he remembers Bennett from one of his classes. Bennett was a freak — he had total recall. A camera mind. And a recorder ear. Once he read, or heard, a thing he never forgot it! So every document he's seen, every damned word he's heard in Washington in the last thirty years is filed away in his freak brain like books. Thousands of books. All the Commies have to do is open the books and read!"

  Nick was still pondering that when Hawk said, "Come on. Get your hat. We're driving out to Laurel. I want you to see this secret room for yourself. What you learn may help you catch Bennett — if it's not too late."