Eighth Card Stud

by Nick Carter

  "Good thinking. And you're right. I work for one of the spook groups, one so secret you've probably never heard of it. The reason I'm impersonating Burlison is to stop the sabotage on Eighth Card."

  "And Rich?"

  "He died in the fire out at the bunker." I watched shock and disbelief cross the pretty woman's face. Either she was the best damned actress I'd ever seen or she was truly distraught over her boss' death. "Till now, only Marta Burlison has known. Will you cooperate with me until everything's cleared up?"

  I didn't bother to outline the alternatives to her. Anne would probably think I'd have her kidnapped and held at some government safe house. That was one way; if she wanted to go and tell the security guards about my identity right now, I would have to eliminate her. A short circuit in some electrical wiring can look accidental while being a premeditated method of execution. I'd used it in the past and didn't doubt I would employ it many times in the future. I held no animosity for this woman, but nothing could deter me from ridding the project of Madame Lin's resident spy.

  "Yes," she said, her voice choked and so low I barely heard her. "I'll do whatever you ask."

  "Good. I have reason to believe the spy is Harold Sutter."

  "Dr. Sutter?" Anne's eyes widened in surprise. "But he's been the director of the project since its inception. He lives, eats, and breathes Eighth Card."

  "And is addicted to the bottle and has heavy gambling losses," I finished.

  She lowered her eyes and clasped her hands together in her lap. "I've heard those things. Poor Dr. Sutter. He can't help himself. Honest, the drinking doesn't affect his work."

  "It provides the leverage for other powers to sway him into giving out vital information. Perhaps their hold over him is so great that he would kill a friend and colleague."

  "No! I've known Dr. Sutter for six years. I can't believe he's capable of killing anyone, even in self-defense."

  I didn't want to debate the point with her. I'd seen men and women twisted beyond recognition, doing heinous things, simply because one of the mind-control men from the other side knew which mental buttons to push. I didn't kid myself for a second. In their hands, even I could be turned against the United States. Drugs, diabolical electronic equipment, the most sophisticated techniques possible all chewed away at a man's brain until nothing but putty remained. They were expert at molding what was left. Sutter was vulnerable, Anne was vulnerable, I was vulnerable. But I also carried the time-honored hollow tooth with cyanide in it.

  Dead men don't turn traitor.

  "Men find strange reasons for justifying their behavior, "I told her. "But there's always the chance I'm wrong. Any information I might get could aid Sutter rather than condemn him."

  "You don't really think he's the one who killed Richard?"

  "I have every reason to believe he is," I said, remembering grimly who had called out the demolition team to destroy the bunker — while I was still in it. "But my gut level feelings aren't real proof. It's possible someone is trying to frame him. One or two things don't quite click."

  "The same someone who's done everything else?"

  I nodded. My eyes never left Anne's. I wanted to make certain she was honest about this. Trained actresses can study blood language, how to shift the eyes at the right instant for certain desired effects, even how to lie and seem truthful. But when this is done, other more subtle indicators show up. None did with Anne Roxbury.

  "I'll do what I can. Dr. Sutter's going to be with Ed for some time yet. I can help you get into his office. I… I know the combination to his safe."

  "How did you get that?" I asked, knowing only the project director and the head of security possessed those numbers. With classified information being stored there, it didn't pay to indiscriminately toss around the combination. The old governmental "need to know" applied, even to those with top secret Q clearances.

  "Promise this won't get Dr. Sutter into trouble?"

  "I couldn't care less about minor indiscretions. I'm after a spy and a murderer. But a breach of security might tell me a lot about the way Sutter normally behaves."

  "He… he was drunk once and couldn't get into his safe. He made me promise I wouldn't tell anyone that he'd given me the combination so I could open the safe for him. I don't think he remembered afterward or he would have had a security crew out to change the combination. He's usually quite good about things like that."

  I sighed. Harold Sutter might be as innocent as a newborn lamb where Burlison's death and the sabotage were concerned, but his ordinary workaday behavior was enough to give gray hair to any security chief. Sutter either had to dry out or be replaced on Project Eighth Card — after I'd finished.

  "You won't tell on him, will you? I'm just as guilty as he is for not reporting him to security."

  "I need information. This gives me a swift way of getting it. I won't mention you at all, Anne." The woman visibly relaxed, thinking this was the end of it. "Let's see what he has in that departmental safe of his, shall we?"

  We took the elevator to the second floor. Like most of the hallways in the building, the corridor outside Sutter's office was deserted. It took only a swift turn of a lockpick to open the door and slip into the office. The room looked little different from Burlison's office just off the laboratory upstairs. The lab planners obviously didn't think rank deserved much more in the way of luxury. The same style gunmetal gray desk stood bleakly in the center of the room, with the same type of swivel chair behind it. The only significantly different features in this office were the filing cabinet safes lining one wall and a crudely painted picture of a flower pot taped to the opposite wall.

  Anne noticed my attention and said, "Sutter's granddaughter did it. She's five."

  I barely heard her. My full attention centered on the safe. Anne furnished the combination as I spun the dial. In less than twenty seconds, the drawer slid open on well-oiled casters.

  "Look, Mister, uh," she started.

  "Just call me Richard Burlison. As far as anyone is concerned, that's my name."

  "Well, okay. Look, Richard, I'd better get out of here. This makes me nervous."

  "Go on. I won't be long."

  She closed the door behind her as she stepped into the hall. I watched the woman's shadow cross the frosted glass in the door, then vanish from my sight. I turned and dove into the files. Most had the red and white stripes around the borders to indicate classified information and reports. I had no real interest in any of this. Most was too technical for me to understand in the first place and, moreover, if I had really wanted the information, I'd've called Hawk and had it given to me, complete with deciphering by an AXE expert in physics. Only when I came to the bottom drawer did I find the things I wanted.

  A half-empty pint of cheap bourbon sloshed on top of a stack of papers. Even on the job Sutter tippled. Disgusted, I pushed aside the bottle and leafed through the documents. Sutter's finances suddenly sharpened with crystal clarity in my mind. He had taken out loan after loan from banks, deafulting on many. A few numbers and addresses, probably of loan sharks, were entered into a tiny notebook in Sutter's precise, small handwriting. Sutter's gambling debts totaled over eight thousand dollars. Not much for a man of his stature and position, but still considerable considering he had reached his credit limits with all the legal money lending institutions.

  This provided the motive for sabotage. Madame Lin had great wealth backing her. Harold Sutter might have been bled white by one of her agents posing as a gambler or loan shark. An easy jump between this and "All you have to do is stop a few Eighth Card tests and we forget what you owe." It had been done before with great success. I didn't doubt it would continue to be the sword of Damocles held over many other honest men's heads.

  I read with great interest the small diary Sutter kept. It confirmed my suspicions about his gambling. He lamented constantly his need to drink, his inability to stop due to the pressures on him from work and family. I gathered that his relationship with his wife was
something less than pacific. He itemized his gambling losses, his loans, his debts. Whether gambling loss fed his need for drink or drinking caused his heavy losses, there was no easy way of telling. The diary and records I'd found indicated Harold Sutter had at least two monkeys on his back.

  Whether Madame Lin clung there, too, goading him along the path to betraying his country I still couldn't say. While Sutter had been open in his diary, I suspected a wide streak of paranoia in the man. Even if he thought this safe completely secure, he might not entrust evidence of his espionage here. After all, the security chief also had access to the safe, if necessary. The evidence I'd uncovered was damning but probably not enough to cause Sutter's dismissal. The laboratory had come to realize the widespread drinking problem among its workers and had a program to help them with the disease.

  I quickly scanned page after page, hoping for the clue I needed. I froze when I heard a shuffling sound from the direction of the door. A pudgy outline appeared against the frosted glass, and it wasn't the late Alfred Hitchcock's. Harold Sutter fumbled for the key to his office door.

  I was trapped, nowhere to go or hide in the windowless room.

  The door swung open.

  Chapter Eight

  Frantically, I considered all possible avenues of escape and came up empty-handed. The best I could hope for was hiding in the knee-well of the desk and not being discovered. This wouldn't work too well if Sutter decided to sit at his desk. In this office, there wasn't much else to do.

  Scrambling on hands and knees, I crouched behind his desk, peering around the gray metal edge. With a surge, I could bowl him over and be gone. Little chance existed, however, that I would get away with it. The white bandages on my face branded me.

  The door opened three-quarters of the way, and I saw Sutter's paunch poke into the room. As I tensed for action, I heard a loud voice outside call, "Harold! Wait a second. Can I have a word with you?"

  Edward George.

  He joined Sutter, pulling the director's attention away from the interior of the room. I reached out and quietly pushed shut the bottom drawer of the safe, then half-stood and relocked it. I hunkered back down and strained to hear what George said to his superior.

  "I've been thinking about the cycle time. That gadget of Burlison's might require extra power and…"

  "You still want to tear into his little black box pretty bad, don't you, Ed?"

  "Well, yes, I do," the man admitted. "I don't know how he could come up with a solid state switching device that handles the incredible voltages used by the laser cannon. If I can get the circuitry diagrams for the box, I can rechannel part of the electricity lost in useless discharge and feed it through the switching device so that we might double the efficiency of the laser."

  "Can't see it."

  "Show me why not, will you? This is hot stuff. I don't believe we can't get more out of…"

  George reached out and took Sutter's arm, gently guiding him away from the door. I heaved a sigh of relief and crossed the office, pressing my face against the cool metal wall and peering out the crack between door and frame.

  George gestured emphatically while Sutter stood with his arms crossed, obviously not convinced by the man's pleas. Edward George finally grabbed Sutter's arm and dragged him into a small conference room at the end of the hall. I didn't hesitate. I left Sutter's office and ran for the elevator. Since George had just come down and the cage was at this floor, I didn't have to wait. The doors opened and swallowed me from sight immediately.

  I went back to the lab, looked around for Anne, and didn't find her. Going into the adjoining office, I closed and locked the door. Knowing the telephone on the desk received a periodic debugging by security prompted me to take the risk of calling Hawk.

  The phone rang seven times before he answered.

  "N3," I said, waiting.

  "Go ahead, Nick."

  I knew he had processed the voiceprint on that recognition codename and had come up with a green light. The AXE computer even checked background levels and harmonics to insure someone didn't tape record my voice and use that to gain access to Hawk. Sometimes the paranoia of my business got to me; at other times, like now, I was glad the precautions were taken. Few people can reach their boss as fast as I can get through to Hawk, thanks to the electronic and computer screening techniques used by AXE.

  "I've just been through Sutter's files. He not only drinks and gambles, he owes a lot of people a lot of money. Take this down." I recited the long string of names and numbers garnered from his diary and notebooks. "Check them out and let me know if any of them have a connection with Madame Lin."

  Silence. Time passed slowly, then, "No connection with Madame Lin we can uncover, Nick. The bank computer records are being scanned. One thing has turned up that might interest you. That house where Sutter and your mysterious man in black met belongs to Sutter's brother-in-law. And we think the man in black was Robert Woodward, the husband of Sutter's sister."

  I sank back into my chair, deep in thought. "Is this Woodward bailing out Sutter by paying off his gambling losses?"

  "From the evidence of his bank withdrawals, yes."

  "So this Woodward is protecting his wife — Sutter's sister — from the knowledge Sutter is out of control. Damn." The neat picture I'd constructed of Sutter taking money from Madame Lin fell totally apart with this information.

  "That seems the most likely scenario. If Sutter's gambling or drinking ever became public knowledge, the embarrassment to the family would be significant."

  "I can imagine the reaction of the public finding out one of the top government scientists gets drunk and blacks out."

  "Indeed?" said Hawk, I mentally pictured one of his eyebrows arching. I knew he entered that datum into the computer. While a case grew against Sutter, none of it helped me solve the problem of sabotage on Project Eighth Card.

  "What's the primary item invented by the scientists with Eighth Card that makes it so different from any other run-of-the-mill high-powered laser?" I asked.

  "That," said Hawk, "isn't easy to answer. The consensus in AXE's research section is the switching device Burlison designed. Without that, the entire laser is close to worthless. However, they've come up with many other unique items that might be counted as breakthroughs in laser technology."

  George had mentioned the switching device when he had stopped Sutter from entering his office and discovering me. I mentally reconstructed the conversation.

  "How many know of this switch? The inner workings, the basic circuitry, the nitty-gritty details about it?" I asked.

  "Only Sutter, now that Burlison is dead. It's a hand-built device. I can make an educated guess about what goes into it on the basis of their equipment and parts orders, but that's like asking what a building looks like knowing that a million bricks and forty loads of concrete have been delivered to the construction site."

  "Schematics exist for this switching device," I declared. "No one in the government ever allowed such knowledge to rattle around in a single man's head."

  "Right," confirmed Hawk. "But the schematics are at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base right now — the only set in existence. Not much chance of anyone lifting them from the middle of the most secure installation in the country. Do you have any evidence on Sutter pertaining to this matter?"

  "You just shot it all down," I told Hawk. "Everything can be explained more simply on the basis of his brother-in-law loaning money to pay the debts to remove family problems and to keep Sutter on the job. No trace of Madame Lin's fine touch in any of that. Hmmmm."

  My mind raced, reassembling the pieces of this gigantic jigsaw puzzle. The bolts removed from the carriage of the laser before the fire. Burlison's death. Harold Sutter's personal problems. Madame Lin. The ambush in the canyon after the superb driving by whomever had stolen Sutter's car. The laser switching device.

  "You did see him take money outside his house, just before you were ambushed," Hawk said.

  "I saw someone
I thought to be Sutter. That entire scene could have been staged to make me think it was Sutter. What worries me is that Sutter just doesn't have the nerves to drive so expertly. The way he drinks, getting the key into the ignition would be a major accomplishment. And yet he seems to know I'm not Burlison. A dilemma." I thought about it a little longer, then asked, "Tell me, where is the solid state switching device installed in the laser?"

  Hawk grumbled as he punched up the new information from the AXE computer.

  "It is buried in the base of the laser carriage," he told me, carefully reciting from the printout so that he wouldn't make a mistake. "It can't be touched without first lifting the entire laser tube off the carriage."

  "That's all I needed to know," I said. "I've got to add a few more nails to the coffin, but I know who's responsible for Burlison's death, and it's not Sutter."

  "The President requires a speedy termination of this matter," Hawk said. The meaning was clear. Killmaster was to permanently eliminate the spy on Project Eighth Card.

  As I hung up, I heard Anne returning to the lab. I unlocked the office door and motioned her inside.

  "Did you get what you wanted?" she asked eagerly. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement.

  I nodded. "I was almost caught in the act, though. Edward George just happened by and decoyed Sutter away so I had the chance to slip away."

  She smiled, then averted her eyes guiltily. "I told Ed you were a government agent. I guess it was a good thing, huh? Otherwise, he wouldn't have known to stop Dr. Sutter when he did."

  "When Burlison was killed in the bunker, was George with the bigshots in the observation bunker?"

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Why, no. He was out on the test range with one of the framing cameras."

  "Did the pictures he took come out alright?"