Eighth Card Stud

by Nick Carter

  I had killed a man disgustingly average in every way. I wiped off Hugo on the man's work shirt and resheathed the blade. A quick survey of the house disclosed nothing more than it hadn't been lived in for at least a year.

  Dust had accumulated and blown against some walls in rooms where the windows had been broken out. Some furniture remained inside, but not enough to be worth anything. And Sutter and the mysterious man handing over the money had long gone.

  A cursory search of the grounds showed where the second man meeting Sutter had parked his car. I found the dead man's car run off the road into an arroyo a hundred yards from mine.

  Again, a search revealed nothing. Every possible clue as to the man's identity had been scoured away. I suspected the car itself was hot, so I made sure that I left no fingerprints behind to incriminate me. While a computer search of the FBI fingerprint files wouldn't turn up my name, the police could compare latent prints with my own if I happened to be in their custody. I had already been careless enough to allow the man to follow me while I was busily tailing Sutter.

  The way things had gone tonight, getting busted for some minor violation and then being tagged with car theft — or murder — would fit right in with my run of luck. All I had to show for my little outing were a few bruises and a wound bloodier than it was dangerous.

  Some nights it doesn't pay to leave the house. Dejected, I went back to my car and drove away into the dusty night.

  Chapter Three

  The bandages chafed at my neck, but I had to be content with simply sitting in the car as Marta expertly steered it on two wheels around corner after corner. Glancing over at the woman's grim profile, I wondered if she always drove this recklessly. I asked.

  "Sorry," she answered, slowing the breakneck pace. "I'm nervous. This isn't as easy as I thought it would be. With you posing as…" She bit off her words and tossed her head like a frisky filly, black mane catching the sunlight in a cascade of lustrous color.

  "Do you regret pretending I'm your husband?" I had to ask. Her answer might mean the difference between life and death for me later. After returning to the house after the fiasco on the outskirts of town, there had been scant chance to speak with her. She had gone to bed, fitfully tumbling and churning up the bedsheets. While my role called for me to get in next to her, something about the tortured, sleeping face had touched me inside. I'd spent the night uncomfortably curled up on the sofa in the front room.

  "No," she said after a little deliberation. "I want those bastards dead."

  "For what they did to your husband or because of the danger they pose to the U.S.?"

  "Both, I suppose. I… I haven't thought about it. The death, the not-death, and you appearing all wrapped up like King Tut. It's taken me by storm." Her hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white. I gently reached out one of my bandaged hands and rested it on top of her straining fist.

  "Relax and we'll both be okay," I said. "I'll find whoever killed Richard." I sensed her slump as she continued to drive just over the speed limit, but the deathrace instinct had gone from her.

  For the moment.

  Watching the sparse scenery flow by outside the window proved almost hypnotic. A few mesquite trees, some salt cedar, and an occasional cypress tree provided all the greenery to be seen. I snorted at the sight of the tumbleweeds dotting the sandy hills. I knew they were really Russian thistle, another gift of the Russians to this fair country: Squinting in spite of the dark sunglasses I wore, I made out the austere entrance to the laboratory shimmering in the heat-racked distance.

  "Better tell me about the security again."

  "We've gone over it a dozen times," she protested. "Didn't your boss in Washington clue you in to it? Those people should know the system inside and out."

  "They probably designed it," I said, "but the way something is designed and the way it really works are usually two entirely different creatures. I need subjective feelings about it. How did Richard react to the tight security?" I saw her flinch when I mentioned her husband's name. Viciously, I said, "I am alive. Your husband is sitting beside you in the car. I need sympathy for my horrible burns. Am I going to get it from my adoring wife?"

  She gritted her teeth so hard I thought she would grind them to dust. A tiny tear of frustration popped out of the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek, leaving behind a salty trail. The dust in the air quickly muddied the track. I reached out and clumsily brushed it away.

  She smiled weakly, turning to me and saying, "That's just the way Richard would have done it." I filed the information away but stayed silent. She would have to do the talking. The entry gate to the test site was less than five minutes away.

  Marta cleared her throat with a small cough, then said, "Richard wasn't obsessed with security the way some of the scientists are. He never complained about all the red tape to get into the compound. But he'd never praise it, either. He just accepted it as necessary, always watching his own behavior. He was the perfect scientist for such a sensitive position." Her voice turned brittle. "There are three or four stages to pass through, depending on some sort of random selection done by the security force every day. A handwriting check, security pass check, voiceprint, and fingerprint. I worked with the DIA office on the far side of the base and we had a similar system. The security pass is always checked. Sometimes they skip all the others. I doubt they would in your case. They can't compare your face with the photo on the security badge, after all."

  I fumbled out my security pass, cursing under my breath. The bandages made my fingers into bulky, almost useless appendages. If I had to use either Hugo, strapped to my forearm, or Wilhelmina, strapped to my right ankle, it could take precious seconds of clumsiness just unlimbering them. Seconds such as those often spelled the difference between life and death in my business.

  "Does the security guard use a metal detector at the gate?"

  "I don't think so. They search you if you're leaving, sometimes. Again, it's a sporadic thing. Keeps people on their toes." She heaved a deep sigh as she wheeled around into the blacktopped parking lot. The pathetic guard's shack stuck up in the middle of the eight-foot-high chain link fence like an elephant hiding in a herd of wildebeest.

  "Thanks, dear," I said, leaning forward and pressing my lips through the gauzy curtain and lightly brushing her hair. It didn't surprise me when she failed to respond, only waiting for me to get out of the car before speeding back toward town, the thick brown dust cloaking the car totally.

  I went to the guard shack, the security badge clutched in my fingers. I thrust it toward the armed, uniformed man, who took it and stepped back a half pace.

  "Dr. Burlison?" he said, his tone half-question, half-accusation.

  "None other."

  "I can't allow you in without a full security clearance."

  "Do whatever you must." I waited while he inserted the badge into an encoding device. A security computer, miles distant, assimilated the code on the metallic strip, thought it over for a few nanoseconds, then shot back a green light on the control console. The guard grimly nodded at the preliminary authorization.

  "The badge is alright, but I can't see your face to match it with the photograph. Anyone might have stolen this."

  "I know. Do whatever you must," I repeated, a bit of annoyance creeping into my voice. "But please hurry. It's getting hot out here, and I'm not feeling all that well." The last part was true. The harsh desert sun threatened to cook my brains. My throat was parched and nothing would go better now than a beer to cool me off.

  "Your handwriting, sir," he said, pointing to a strip of metal with an electronic light pencil dangling by a nearby cord. He waited to see what I wrote. Hawk had been thorough in his briefing on this aspect of the security system.

  "There," I said, finishing off the standard, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog's back" and adding my bogus signature at the bottom with a flourish.

  The computer thought about this for an eternity. I wo
rried for a few seconds that Hawk hadn't substituted my handwriting sample for that of Burlison. I need not have worried. AXE is efficient. The computer finally okayed this, too.

  "Voiceprint," said the guard, beginning to tire of the game but still having to play it through to the end. He had convinced himself I was Burlison, but the powers that be required him to continue. I spoke a brief paragraph into a hushed microphone, the contents of the message known only to me and the computer. Another green light.

  "I suppose you want my fingerprints, too," I said. "That might pose a problem." I held up my bandaged hands. "I only have three fingers that aren't going to be scarred."

  "Press them into the plate," the guard ordered. I did and for a final time the green light winked on. "Sorry to do this. Dr. Burlison, but you understand. Security."

  I remembered what Marta had said about Burlison's attitude toward such things. He didn't complain, but he didn't praise, either. I said, "Could you call up building 23 and get my assistant to pick me up? I don't feel like walking all the way in the hot sun."

  "All the way" was less than a hundred yards, but the guard complied. In less than five minutes, I saw a bleach-blond woman dressed in a flowing white lab coat silently gliding toward me driving one of the in-compound electric carts.

  "Richard?" Anne Roxbury asked. "Did you actually come all the way out here? You should be resting."

  "Resting?" I snorted. "Work to do." I didn't want to press my luck too far. This young woman had worked closely with Burlison as his assistant for too many years. A single slip now and the entire mission would have to be scrubbed — or still another added to the list of confidences. I disliked anyone other than Marta knowing her husband was truly dead and quietly buried.

  "You always were a fanatic for work. Climb in."

  "Tell me about the progress. How'd the test go? Other than the obvious problems?" I held up my bandaged hands in mute indication of what I meant. The woman shifted nervously on the hard seat and stared straight ahead, not meeting my gaze with her soft brown eyes.

  "The entire bunker was destroyed. We could salvage only a few pieces of equipment. The laser tube itself was warped from the heat, a total loss. The backup unit has been installed in bunker 82. Dr. Sutter and Ed are out calibrating it now."

  "But the results," I pressed. "Favorable?"

  "You wouldn't know, would you?" the blond woman asked turning and looking at me. "Of course not! You were out of it when you…" She stopped speaking abruptly, swallowed, and continued, "The generals loved it. The brass put through an immediate authorization for increased funding. The computer analysis shows we hit it right on the money. Dead center on the drone with every erg of energy planned."

  "Good," I said, nodding. I didn't want to get in over my head. This woman might be only a lab assistant, but she knew more physics than I did. She had worked with the world's top experts in laser physics for several years and had done enough of the electronics instrumentation to be able to construct a laser from the floor up. All I knew about them came from reading Science News and the occasional AXE briefings I usually slept through.

  "Look, Richard, Ed and Dr. Sutter are back. You can talk with them about the new installation."

  "I want to check my lab first," I said. I had no idea what I might find in the lab or the adjoining office, but looking was part of my job.

  "If you like," she said. "I shouldn't say this, but you don't seem like yourself."

  "Why should I?" I snapped, hoping my voice sounded sarcastic enough to cut off further thoughts in this direction. "I damned near got roasted, I'm scarred for life, and Marta's talking about leaving me. Why should I be the same?"

  "Marta?" the woman said dully. "I didn't know. I thought everything was fine between you two. I'm sorry, Richard. I should never have said anything. This entire business is so terrible."

  "That's okay. Marta and I'll get our problems ironed out. As soon as I can get rid of these damned bandages.: I banged my hands against the front of the electric cart, feigned a wince, and settled back. In less than a minute Anne had the cart parked and the charging plug stuffed into its receptacle.

  "Up the service elevator's faster this time of day," she said absently. I had made her uneasy, which suited my purposes. The less she questioned me, the less likely I was to betray my faulty knowledge of the building, the experiment, the people. We went up the creaking freight elevator to the third floor. I waited for Anne to get out first so I could follow her. She started to the right, and I turned behind her.

  "Thought you were going to the lab." She frowned enough to let me know the lab was in the other direction. That did me little good. I had been given a rough sketch of the layout, but it hadn't shown any freight elevator. I was on the proper floor, but had no idea where to go. Wandering around in a high-security area could only attract unwanted attention.

  "Feeling shaky. Could you…?" I played on her sympathy and guilt. She pressed against me, her breast rubbing along my side. In another circumstance, this would have been most enjoyable. I told myself that duty came first.

  "Do you want me to get you some coffee? A Dr. Pepper? Water?" Her concern over my well-being had served me to this point, but I wanted to look over the lab alone now.

  "Nothing, thanks. But do check back on me in an hour so that I can go over some of the… things," I said vaguely, gesturing with a sweeping motion of my arm. She nodded, a tiny strand of her blond hair falling forward into her eyes. Pushing it back, Anne smiled weakly and almost fled.

  I should have kept her around to tell me what most of the equipment did. Even faithful reading of Science News and listening to boring AXE briefings didn't prepare me for the expensive equipment performing arcane functions beyond my understanding. I idly flipped a few switches and watched blinky lights come and go on panels. Since no sirens rang out and no guards came running with pistols drawn, I knew I hadn't done anything grossly wrong — yet.

  Pawing through the drawers in the lab bench revealed only a clutter of broken glassware, electronic parts, soldering guns, and other less recognizable implements of experimentation. Disgusted, I went into the office adjoining the lab and closed the door. The thin walls in this section of the laboratory provided scant privacy. I could hear a heavy generator running in the next lab and the vibrations through the floor were enough to loosen the fillings in my teeth.

  I settled in the swivel chair and opened the center drawer of the big gunmetal gray metallic desk. A pair of lab books caught my attention. The pages were filled with miles of esoteric Greek letters and columns of numbers, a few computer printouts stapled in. Bold letters on the front of the books spelled out, "Unclassified Material Only." The lab book with the real information about Project Eighth Card would be locked up in the departmental safe, red and white stripes around the cover. Leaving such a classified notebook in an unsecured area would be a primary security violation, something Richard Burlison would never do. I shoved the notebooks back into the drawer and continued to search until I heard low voices intruding on the hum of the X-ray generator in the next lab.

  The thin metal walls proved beneficial to my job this time. Pressing my eye next to one of the ill-fitting seams, I saw Anne Roxbury in the arms of a man. The way they kissed told me this wasn't a casual, friendly kiss. Finally, Anne broke it off and pushed away, obviously with great reluctance.

  I had to press my ear painfully hard against the wall to hear, "Not here, Ed. Please. We have work to do."

  "Anne, really, darling. It gets lonely out there in the middle of the desert. Thinking about you makes it even worse."

  "I suppose you start thinking even the prairie dogs look attractive," she joked, her supple fingers stroking over the man's arms. I got a quick look before shifting my ear to the metallic panel to listen again.

  "I mostly think about you." He kissed her again, and she melted into his arms. So much for a scientific laboratory being free of all the office intrigues and romances found in other businesses. Human beings don't cha
nge; only their jobs do.

  "Not here," I heard her protest. "What if one of the guards finds us?"

  "We'll both wear our security badges. What can he say about two naked people as long as they're wearing the damned security badges?"

  She snickered and brushed fingertips across his badge, dangling from a clip on his lab coat pocket.

  "You think we could get away with it. Dr. George? If we wore our badges?"

  "Into the photo darkroom, Miss Roxbury. No one will open the door if they think we're working."

  They walked off toward a small room at the far end of the other lab, soon passing out of my narrow line of sight. I saw the reflected red flash of a warning light and heard a door slam. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Anne and Dr. Edward George had gone into the darkroom to see what developed.

  Leaning back in the chair at the desk, I thought hard about what my next course of action should be. The laboratory yielded little to my untrained eye. I had no idea what I might find. Some tiny clue that a vital piece of equipment was out of place, perhaps. Not knowing what 99 percent of the equipment did prevented that line of inquiry from amounting to a hill of beans. An on-site examination of the ruined bunker where the test firing had occurred seemed the only likely way to proceed.

  And with Anne Roxbury and my erstwhile associate, Edward George, busily attending to one another, this was the perfect time for me to make my explorations.

  Another count against the bandages swaddling my face and hands: the dust clung tenaciously to the gauze. I looked like a mobile dustball before I had arrived at the distant test site. Getting a car from the in-compound car pool had been easy. The security measures there were simplified versions of those used at the main gate. The only added requirement was presentation of a special government driver's license. I had one made out in Burlison's name but with my thumbprint on it.

  That had been the easy part. Next easiest was finding the road to the bunker. Hardest was putting up with the choking dust. I took small consolation in the fact that this was the rainy season and that an occasional brief shower held down the brown grit to some extent — this desert got less than seven inches of rain a year and I had been unlucky enough to miss the day when it all fell.