by Nick Carter
"Most of them worthless," Nick finished. "It's a paper empire; I'm convinced of it. The slightest push could topple it."
"That jibes with something that happened here in Washington," said Hawk thoughtfully. "Senator Kenton delivered a slashing attack on Connelly Aviation yesterday afternoon. He spoke of incessant component failures, cost estimates that have tripled and the company's do-nothing attitude about security. And he urged that NASA drop Connelly and use GKI's services on the moon program instead." Hawk paused. "Of course everyone on Capitol Hill knows that Kenton is in the GKI lobby's hip pocket, but his speech has shaken public confidence badly. Connelly stock took a sharp dip on Wall Street yesterday."
"It all figures," said Nick. "Simian wants the Apollo contract desperately. It's a matter of twenty billion dollars. That's the amount he needs, apparently, to refloat his holdings."
Hawk was silent a moment, thinking. Then he said, "There's one thing we've been able to verify. Reno Tree, Major Sollitz, Johnny Hung Fat and Simian all served in the same Japanese POW camp in the Philippines during the war. Tree and the Chinaman were mixed up in Simian's phony ramie-fiber empire, and I'm pretty sure that Sollitz turned traitor in the camp and was later protected, then blackmailed by Simian when he needed him. We still have to check on that."
"And I still have to check on Hung Fat," said Nick. "I'm praying he's a dead end, that he doesn't represent a hookup with Peking. I'll contact you as soon as I find out."
"Better hurry, N3. Time is running out," said Hawk. "Phoenix One, as you know, is scheduled to blast off in twenty-seven hours."
It took the words a few seconds to sink in. "Twenty-seven!" Nick exclaimed. "Fifty-one, isn't it?" But Hawk had already signed off.
"You've lost twenty-four hours somewhere," said Hank Peterson, who was sitting across from Nick, listening. He glanced at his watch. "It's 3:00 p.m. now. You phoned me from Riviera Beach at 2:00 a.m., telling me to pick you up. You'd been gone fifty-one hours at that time."
Those two plane trips, Nick thought, that torture session. It had happened there. A whole day lost...
The phone rang. He picked it up. It was Joy Sun. "Listen," Nick said, "I'm sorry I haven't called you, I've been..."
"You're an agent of some kind," she interrupted tensely, "and I gather you're working for the U.S. Government. So there's something I've got to show you. I'm at work now — at the NASA Medical Center on Merritt Island. Can you get over here right away?"
"If you'll get clearance for me at the gate," said Nick. Dr. Sun said she would and he hung up. "Better put the radio away," he told Peterson, "and wait here for me. I won't be long."
* * *
"It's one of the guidance engineers," Dr. Sun said as she led Nick along the antiseptic corridor of the Medical Building. "He was brought in this morning, babbling incoherently about the Phoenix One being fitted with a special device that will place it under outside control the moment it's launched. Everyone here has been treating him like a lunatic, but I thought you should see him, talk to him... just in case."
She opened a door and stood aside. Nick entered. The shades had been drawn and a nurse stood beside the bed, taking the patient's pulse. Nick looked at the man. He was in his forties, prematurely gray. There were marks on the bridge of his nose where a pair of glasses had pinched. The nurse said, "He's resting now. Dr. Dunlap gave him an injection."
Joy Sun said, "That will be all." And as the door closed behind the nurse, she muttered, "Damn," and bent over the man, forcing his eyelids open. The pupils swam in them, unfocused. "He won't be able to tell us anything now."
Nick pushed past her. "This is an emergency." He pressed his finger against a nerve in the man's temple. The pain forced his eyes open. It seemed to momentarily revive him. "What's this about the Phoenix One's guidance system?" Nick demanded.
"My wife..." the man muttered. "They got my... wife and kids... I know they'll die... but I can't go on doing what they want me to..."
The wife and kids again. Nick glanced around the room, saw the wall phone and quickly crossed over to it. He dialed the Gemini Inn's number. There was something Peterson had told him on the way up from Riviera Beach, something about that busload of NASA dependents that had crashed... He'd been so busy trying to figure out Simian's financial situation that he'd only half-listened "Room Twelve-o-nine, please." After a dozen rings the call was shifted to the desk. "Would you check Room Twelve-o-nine," said Nick. "There should be an answer." Anxiety had begun to gnaw at him. He had told Peterson to wait there.
"Is this Mr. Harmon?" The desk clerk used the name Nick had registered under. Nick said it was. "You're looking for Mr. Pierce?" That was Peterson's cover name. Nick said he was. "I'm afraid you just missed him," said the clerk. "He left a few minutes ago with two policemen."
"Green uniforms, white crash helmets?" said Nick, his voice tense.
"That's right. The GKI force. He didn't say when he'd be back. Can I take a?.."
Nick slammed the receiver down. They had grabbed him.
Through Nick's own carelessness, too. He should have shifted his headquarters after the Candy Sweet angle had blown up in his face. In his haste to follow through, though, he'd forgotten to do it. She had pinpointed its location for the adversary and they had sent a mop-up team. Result: they had Peterson and maybe the radio link to AXE, too.
Joy Sun was watching him. "That was the GKI force you just described," she said. "They've been keeping close tabs on me for the last few days, following me to and from work. I was just talking to them. They want me to stop by headquarters on my way home. They said they have some questions they want to ask me. Should I go? Are they working with you on this case?"
Nick shook his head. "They're on the other side."
Alarm flickered across her features. She pointed to the man in the bed. "I told them about him," she whispered. "I couldn't get you at first, so I called them. I wanted to find out about his wife and children..."
"And they told you that they were all right," Nick finished the sentence for her, feeling the ice suddenly run down his shoulders and into his fingertips. "They said they were at the GKI Medical Institute in Miami and therefore perfectly safe."
"Yes, that's exactly..."
"Now listen carefully," he broke in, and began to describe the large room filled with computers and space testing devices in which he had been tortured. "Have you ever seen, or been in, a place like that?"
"Yes, it's the top floor of the GKI Medical Institute," she said. "The Aerospace Research Section."
He was careful to let nothing show in his face. He didn't want the girl to panic. "You'd better come along with me," he said.
She looked surprised. "Where to?"
"Miami. I think we ought to investigate that Medical Institute. You know your way around inside. You can help me."
"Can we stop by my place first? I want to get some things."
"There's no time," he replied. They would be waiting for them there. Cocoa Beach was in the enemy's hands.
"I'll have to speak to the Project Director." She was beginning to look doubtful. "I'm on standby duty now that the countdown has begun."
"I wouldn't do that," he said evenly. The enemy had infiltrated NASA, too. "You'll have to trust my judgment," he added, "when I say that the fate of Phoenix One depends on what we do in the next few hours."
The fate of more than the mooncraft — but he didn't want to go into that. Peterson's message had come back to him: it involved the women and children injured in that bus crash, the ones now being held hostage in the GKI Medical Center. Peterson had checked out their husbands' jobs at NASA and found that they all worked for the same division — electronic guidance control.
The heat was stifling in the closed room, but it was a stray image that made the sweat spring suddenly to Nick's brow. An image of the three-stage Saturn 5 lifting off, then wavering slightly as outside control took over, directing its six-million-gallon payload of highly inflammable kerosene and liquid oxygen toward
a new target — Miami.
Chapter 14
The attendant stood by the Lamborghini's open door, waiting for a nod from the maitre d'.
He didn't get it.
Don Lee's face had a "no reservation" look on it as Nick Carter advanced from the shadows into the circle of light beneath the Bali Hai's sidewalk canopy. Nick turned, linking his arm with Joy Sun's, letting Lee get a good look at her. The maneuver had the desired effect. Lee's eyes faltered, were momentarily uncertain.
The two of them advanced on him. N3's face was his own tonight and so were the accoutrements of death he carried on his person — Wilhelmina in a snug holster at his waist, Hugo, sheathed inches above his right wrist, and Pierre, with several of his nearest relatives, nestled in a waistband pocket.
Lee glanced at the clipboard he held. "Name, sir?" It was an unnecessary piece of business. He knew perfectly well the name wasn't on his list.
"Harmon," said Nick. "Sam Harmon."
The answer came instantly. "I don't believe I see..." Hugo snaked out of his hiding place, the tip of his vicious ice-pick blade probing Lee's belly. "Ah, yes, here it is," gasped the maitre d', struggling to suppress the quaver in his voice. "Mr. and Mrs. Hannon." The attendant slid behind the wheel of the Lamborghini and swung it around into the parking lot.
"Let's go to your office," rasped Nick.
"This way, sir." He led them through the foyer, past the coatroom, snapping his fingers at the assistant captain. "Lundy, take over the door."
As they moved down along the leopard-striped banquettes, Nick murmured in Lee's ear, "I know about the two-way mirrors, friend, so don't try anything. Act natural — like you're showing us to a table."
The office was all the way to the rear, near the service entrance. Lee unlocked the door and stood aside. Nick shook his head. "You first." The maitre d' shrugged and went in, and they followed. Nick's eyes swept the room, looking for other entrances, anything suspicious or potentially dangerous.
It was the "show" office, the one where the Bali Hai's legitimate business was conducted. There was a white broadloom carpet on the floor, a black leather sofa, a kidney-shaped desk with a Calder mobile hanging above it and a free-form glass coffee table in front of the sofa.
Nick locked the door behind him and leaned against it. His eyes moved back to the sofa. Joy Sun's eyes followed his and she blushed. It was a celebrity sofa, having played a supporting role in a now famous pornographic photo.
"What do you want?" demanded Don Lee. "Money?"
Nick crossed the room like a swift, chill wind. Before Lee could move, Nick delivered a quick left scythe-like blow to his throat with the edge of his hand. As Lee doubled up, he added two hard hooks — a left and a right — to his solar plexus. The Hawaiian fell forward and Nick brought up his knee. The man dropped like a sack of shale. "Now then," said N3. "It's answers I want and time is running out." He dragged Lee over to the sofa. "Let's assume I know all about Johnny Hung Fat, Reno Tree, and the operation you're running here. Let's start from there."
Lee shook his head, trying to clear it. Blood made dark wriggling lines down his chin. "I built this place up from nothing," he said dully. "I slaved day and night, sank every nickel I had into it. Finally I achieved what I was after — and then I lost it." His face twisted. "Gambling. I've always been a sucker for it. I got into debt. I had to bring other people in."
"The Syndicate?"
Lee nodded. "They let me stay on as nominal owner, but it's their operation. Completely. I've got no say in it. You've seen what they've done to the place."
"In that secret office in back," said Nick, "I found microdots and photographic equipment that pointed to a connection with Red China. Is there anything to it?"
Lee shook his head. "That's just some game they're playing. I don't know why — they don't tell me anything."
"What about Hung Fat? Any possibility he could be a Red agent?"
Lee laughed, then cradled his jaw in sudden pain. "Johnny's strictly a capitalist," he said. "He's a swindler, a confidence man. His specialty is Chiang Kai-shek's treasure. He must have sold five million maps to it in every big-city Chinatown."
"I want to talk to him," said Nick. "Call him back here."
"I'm already here, Mr. Carter."
Nick spun around. The flat, Oriental face was impassive, almost bored. One hand was over Joy Sun's mouth, the other one held a switchblade. The tip rested against her carotid artery. The slightest movement would send it slicing into her. "Of course we bugged Don Lee's office, too." Hung Fat's mouth smiled. "You know how wily we Orientals can be."
Reno Tree stood behind him. What had appeared to be a solid wall now had a door in it. The dark, wolf-faced gangster turned, closing it behind him. The door sat so flush with the wall that no line or break in the wallpaper could be seen from more than a foot away. Down at the baseboard, however, the joining wasn't quite so perfect Nick cursed himself for not having noticed the thin vertical line in the baseboard's white paint.
Reno Tree slowly advanced toward Nick, his eyes boring auger holes through him. "You move, we kill her," he said simply. He took a twelve-inch length of soft, pliable wire from his pocket and tossed it on the floor in front of Nick. "Pick it up," he said. "Slowly. Good. Now turn around, hands behind you. Make the thumb-tie."
Slowly Nick turned, knowing that the first hint of a false move would send the switchblade plunging into Joy Sun's throat. Behind his back, his fingers gave a twist to the wire, making a small double-bow, and waited.
Reno Tree was good. The perfect killer: the brain and sinews of a cat, the heart of a machine. He knew all the tricks of the game. Getting the victim to tie himself up, for instance. It left the gunman free, out of reach, and it kept the victim busy, off guard. It was going to be tough to get the better of this man.
"Lie on the sofa, face down," Reno Tree said flatly. Nick moved across to it and lay down, hope beginning to fade. He knew what was coming next. "The legs," said Tree. With this tie-up you could bind a man with six inches of string. It would hold him more securely than chains and handcuffs.
He bent his knees and lifted his foot, resting it in the crotch formed by the bent knee of the other leg, all the time trying to figure a way out. There was none. Tree moved in behind him, gripping his raised foot with lightning speed, forcing it down hard so that it trapped the other foot behind the back of the calf and the thigh. With his other hand, he lifted Nick's wrists, hooking them over the instep of the raised foot. Then he released the pressure on that foot and it sprang up against the thumb-tie, so that Nick's arms and legs were painfully, hopelessly locked.
Reno Tree laughed. "Don't worry about the wire, friend. The sharks will cut right through it."
"They need incentive, Reno." It was Hung Fat who said it. "A little blood, know what I mean?"
"How's this for starters?"
The blow seemed to crush Nick's skull. As he tumbled warmly into unconsciousness, he felt the blood flowing through his nasal tubes, choking him with its warm, salty, metallic taste. He tried to hold it back, to stem its flow by sheer willpower, but of course he couldn't. It came out his nose, his mouth, even his ears. This time he was done for, and he knew it.
* * *
At first he thought he was in the water, swimming. Deep water. Way out. The ocean has a swell to it, a body that the swimmer can actually feel. You rise and fall with it as you do with a woman. The motion soothes you, rests you, untangles all the knots.
That's the way he was feeling now — except that the pain in his loins was growing unbearable. And it had nothing to do with swimming.
His eyes burst open. He was no longer lying face down on the sofa. He was on his back. The room was dark. His hands were still looped together by the thumbs. He could feel them, aching, beneath him. His legs were free, though. He moved them apart. Something still held them prisoner. Two things, actually. His pants, which were down around his ankles, and something warm and soft and excruciatingly pleasurable around his midsec
tion.
As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he could see the silhouette of a female body moving expertly and wantonly above him, the hair swinging freely with each sinuous movement of the fluid hips and sharp-pointed breasts. The perfume that hung in the air was Candy Sweet's and the panting, whispered words that goaded his passion were, too.
It made no sense. He willed himself to stop, to somehow throw her aside. But he couldn't. He was already too far gone. Systematically, and with deliberate violence, he pi stoned his body into hers, losing himseli in the savage, loveless act of passion.
At the final movement, her nails dragged deeply across his chest. She threw herself across him, her mouth burying itself in his neck. He felt her sharp little teeth nip briefly, unendurably into him. And when she drew away, a thin trickle of blood splattered his face and chest.
"Oh, Nicholas baby, I wish it could have been different," she moaned, her breath hot and ragged in his ear. "You can't know how I felt that day after I thought I'd killed you."
"Irritable?"
"Go ahead and laugh, sweetheart. But it could have been so marvelous between us. You know," she added suddenly, "I never had anything personal against you. It's just that I'm hopelessly hung on Reno. It's not sex, it's ... I can't tell you, but I'll do anything he asks if it means I can stay with him."
"There's nothing like loyalty," said Nick. He sent his spy's sixth sense out to probe the room and its environs. It told him they were alone. The distant music was gone. And the usual restaurant sounds, too. The Bali Hai was closed for the night. "What are you doing here?" he asked, wondering suddenly if this might not be another of Reno's cruel jokes.
"I came looking for Don Lee," she said. "He's over there." She gestured toward the desk. "Throat slashed from ear to ear. That's Reno's specialty — the razor. I guess they had no more use for him."