Eighth Card Stud

by Nick Carter

  "I'm sorry," said Anne Roxbury, staring at my unbandaged face for the first time. "He never mentioned anything of this to me. I would have turned him in if he had."

  "That's not what I'm asking, Anne. I want to know about the man's personal tastes. Where would he feel safe? Did he mention any city more than once favorably?"

  "I can't say he did. We, well, we went to Vegas a couple times," Anne admitted. "But he didn't like to gamble. We just hung around our room and…"

  "I can guess," I said, disgusted. Remembering my own short sojourn in Las Vegas made this task even more distasteful. "Dr. Sutter? You've worked longest with him. Any ideas where he might have gone?"

  "We went to Vegas a few times, on our way through to the Nevada Test Site. We worked on a project a few years ago that required testing in an intense radiation environment. The underground atomic tests at NTS were just what we needed. But, as Anne said, he didn't like to gamble. He struck me as the type who always played it safe — except with women." Realizing that what he'd said applied to Anne, Sutter hastily added, "Not you, of course, but in general."

  I turned to Marta and saw the peculiar expression on her face. Deciding both Sutter and Anne Roxbury had been milked of all useful information, I told them, "Why don't the two of you go home? If you think of anything that might help, call me here."

  As soon as they had left, Marta spoke up. "Nick, I've been trying to put my finger on it. Ed mentioned something once — but I can't remember what it was."

  "About a city?"

  "Yes, a city. One that we were all talking about once. But I'm so confused. Nothing works right in my head anymore. You… you don't have to pose as Richard anymore and the others know he's dead and… and I should be able to get over his death, but I can't." She broke down and cried, her face cupped in her hands.

  "Take it easy," I said, my arm reaching around her quaking shoulders and pulling her closer. "Don't worry about this. It probably wasn't anything. Edward George is too smooth an operator to reveal where he's likely to go for the sale of the laser switching device to Madame Lin. But a man as security-conscious as George would pick only a place where he felt safe. Where?"

  "I don't know, I just don't know!"

  I rocked her back and forth for a while, then put my finger under her shaking chin and raised her face to mine. Our eyes met and a silent communication flowed. I gently kissed her lips. The kiss became more and more passionate. Soon, we were hungrily kissing, as if discovering this wondrous act for the first time.

  Her fingers began working at the buttons of my shirt, fumbling at first, then moving with greater dexterity. I let her strip off my shirt. She ran the tips of her fingers over the many scare crisscrossing my bare chest.

  "You've been in so many fights, Nick," she said softly. "You must be very good at what you do to still be alive."

  "The other side of that is that I'm not so good, otherwise I wouldn't have any scars at all."

  "Are there any spies who don't have scars?"

  "I don't know. I've never checked out the others."

  I silenced further debate on the subject by kissing her ruby lips again. They tasted like wine. At any rate, I felt myself becoming more and more intoxicated. I couldn't get enough of her. I kissed her lips, her cheeks, her closed eyes. My lips brushed gently over her face until I came to her jawbone. I traced backward along it until I came to the perfection of her shell-like ear. My tongue slowly circled the rim before diving into the tight little channel. She strained against my body, her fingers insistent and clawing.

  While I toyed with her ear, gently nibbling at the lobe, blowing hotly to further sensitize the flesh, my hands stroked over her lush, trim, quivering body. Her blouse vanished as if by magic. She wasn't wearing a bra.

  My hands cupped her large breasts, as if weighing them. The nipples throbbed with life, growing larger every time I stroked over them. When I took both rock-hard nipples between thumb and forefinger and began rolling them around in tiny circles, she squealed with joy, caught her breath and tensed all over. She shuddered, shoving her chest forward so even more of the firm, resilient flesh pressed into my palms.

  "Yes, Nick darling, yes!" she hissed. "It's so good being with you. You know just the right things to do."

  My hands shoved her melon-sized breasts upward as my mouth worked down along the hollow under her ear to the point directly under her chin. My tongue dragged a wet, rough path down between her breasts. She shivered again as passion seized control of her body.

  I felt myself growing harder. My pants were a nuisance. Marta's swiftly flying fingers took care of that. Soon enough, my hot, hard manhood throbbed in the circle of her fingers. She stroked up to the very tip, squeezed lovingly, then stroked back to tap her fingertips against my scrotum. I felt a surge of desire for her unlike anything I have ever felt for another woman.

  She was special. She was the epitome of womanhood. I needed to possess her more than I had ever needed any other woman in my life. My weight carried her backward to the floor. She sobbed and kissed and moaned as we passionately clung to one another.

  In my haste to get her totally naked, I tore her skirt. She cried out, "Rip it off me, Nick! Do it! I want you! I need you now!"

  My fingers slipped under the waistband of her skirt. Tendons stood out on my forearm as I jerked. A ripping noise, her sharp intake of breath as the fabric cut into her flesh, then the skirt came free. She kicked savagely to get clear of the tattered garment. Lifting her behind so that I could slide off her panties, I felt the dampness seeping out from between her trim legs.

  Her thighs opened wantonly for me. We needed one another desperately. I didn't understand it and I didn't take the time to analyze my feelings. The desire boiling in my loins drove me on. I slid forward, my tumescence sliding along her vulva. I felt the thick lubricating oils seething from her interior. My erection savored the slippery cradle of her labia as I moved back and forth.

  "All the way in, Nick. I need you in me!"

  She lifted herself off the floor and jammed her hips downward. For a second, I thought she was trying to get away. Then I sank all the way into her steamy, humid interior. We both froze, savoring the most intimate feelings possible.

  Then I began to pump in and out of her softly yielding body. Her hot tunnel of female flesh surrounded me, sucked me in deeper with each stroke, clutched fiercely at my hard length as I retreated. I began a corkscrewing action that ground our crotches together and stirred our passions to the breaking point.

  I pistoned savagely into her, barely hearing her shrieks of pleasure. All too soon, it was over and we lay on the floor in each other's arms, panting, sweaty, contented.

  She trailed her fingers through the hairy mat on my chest. She said, "I don't know what to say, Nick."

  "Don't say anything. Just lie back and enjoy the glow. You do feel that, don't you?"

  "Yeah, I do. It… it seldom was like this with Rich. He wasn't the best lover in the world, but I loved him."

  I didn't have anything to say to this. I kept my silence, being happy enough to feel the warm pressure of her body against mine.

  "It was as good as this once with us," she said, lost in the fairy land of memories. "That conference in San Francisco we'd gone to. Richard gave a paper on something or other — I never understood a fraction of what he talked about — and he'd received such compliments he almost popped. The feeling carried over that evening. We made love all night long." She sighed again, snuggling closer. "Even Ed claimed he'd gotten enough that night. Maybe it was the air coming in off the ocean."

  "Ed? Edward George?"

  "Yes. He said there was always something magical about San Francisco. The city for lovers or the city of lovers or something. He went there for every scientific conference he could. I thought San Francisco was nothing but a windup toy of a city at first, but Rich changed my mind." She spoke quietly now, without much emotion. I felt a tear against my bare chest, but she quickly wiped it away. There wasn't a second on
e.

  "Did George ever mention visiting San Francisco other than for business?"

  "No, why? Do you think that's where he might have gone?"

  "I don't know." I thought hard about this. The pleasurable postcoital glow vanished from my mind as the more analytical portion of my brain took over. Things began to click into place. Edward George needed to make the exchange of the laser switching device for his money in a place where he felt safe. He was no fool; he knew Madame Lin would try to double-cross him.

  Would he feel safe enough in San Francisco to attempt to make the trade there?

  "How many times did he go there?"

  "Every time he could," Marta said. "That'd be about four times, I think. And he went a couple more times, to Berkeley, really. He visited the Lawrence Berkeley Lab but stayed in San Francisco."

  "Any particular hotel?"

  "I can't remember," she said, beginning to sob silently. I cursed myself for ruining the otherwise lovely moment between us, but it had been necessary. Only when she'd gotten totally relaxed did the proper memories come rushing to the surface for me to pluck from her brain.

  Sometimes, being an agent for AXE is the hardest thing in the entire world.

  Chapter Ten

  "Do I have to go along, Nick?" Marta Burlison asked. "Don't get me wrong. I like being with you, but this isn't the sort of thing I relish getting involved in. I quit the DIA because of all the cloak and dagger nonsense."

  "This nonsense, as you put it, might cause another world war. I'd call it mighty important."

  "I didn't mean it that way, Nick. Really, I didn't. I just can't get my head straight. Everything is moving too fast for me. Now that I can come out and admit that Richard is dead, I find that there's nothing inside me. I've become a hollow shell. I should mourn, but somehow I just can't."

  I sympathized with her. She had held her grief inside so long it gnawed away at her guts. Now that she could let it go, it stayed firmly entrenched and refused to leave. She was emotionally stunted right now. One day — who knew when? — it would all come pouring out in huge emotional torrents.

  That wasn't my concern. I had to find George. More important, I had to recover the high-voltage laser cannon switching device he had stolen. Even though Harold Sutter solemnly assured me that it would be difficult to reverse engineer the switching device, taking the physical model and figuring out what all the integrated circuits did, Hawk had ordered me to recover it.

  One thing was in my favor. Burlison had etched the circuitry onto a piece of frangible glass. The slightest scratch across its surface caused the entire switching device to turn to powder, ruining it forever. I'd heard that many of the trigger circuits for the atomic bombs were similarly constructed to prevent terrorists from tinkering with them and getting workable schematics for more.

  I wanted to personally recover that piece of circuitry, however. My reputation was on the line — and my pride had been cut to ribbons. Madame Lin had made a fool of me over and over and Edward George, amateur that he was, had stolen the switching device from under my nose.

  That switch had to be recovered intact, both for national security reasons and personal ones.

  "I need your firsthand impression of San Francisco. You know the places where you and your husband went. George went along with you to some of them."

  "That's true, but I can't remember the names."

  "Exactly, but your memory'll be tickled by the sight of those places, and you'll remember then."

  "I hope so," she said dubiously. "It never seemed important at the time. We'd just walk around in Chinatown until we saw a likely looking place, then we'd eat. Or shop and just sightsee. There wasn't any pressure on me to remember the places."

  "I know, I know," I said soothingly. "Don't worry about it. Just relax and try to wipe it all from your mind for the moment. The plane will be in the air soon, and in no time we'll be in San Francisco."

  The seat belt sign lighted and the stewardess went through her robotic "in case of cabin depressurization" speech. The 727's nose tipped into the sky, and the rush of the takeoff pressed us back into our seats. I waited until the "no smoking" sign winked off, then lit a cigarette, puffed on it twice, and passed it to Marta. She gratefully took it while I lit another one for myself.

  "Just relax," I repeated. "Imagine yourself in San Francisco. What hotel did you stay at?"

  "We took the bus from the airport and walked a few blocks to one of the streets with the cable car running on it. We jumped onto the cable car and went past a big square with lots of grass. Union Square, I think. Yes, definitely, it as Union Square."

  "Good," I encouraged. I formed a mental picture of all that went on as she spoke.

  "We got off. I thought it was funny we didn't pay. Rich just laughed at me, saying we hadn't been on long enough. We got off just beyond Union Square. The doormen wore funny English uniforms. The St. Francis!" she exclaimed. "Yes, that's where we stayed." She puffed furiously at her cigarette, her face vanishing behind a cloud of smoke. I puffed more sedately on mine, feeling we made progress.

  "The cable car didn't run where we wanted to go. We walked up Grant Avenue and went into Chinatown. But it wasn't far. Only two or three blocks. I… I don't remember much after that."

  "You've done as well as can be expected," I told her. "Chinatown's not only a tourist spot, it also fronts for a variety of less legal organizations, like the various tongs."

  "The Chinese Mafia?"

  "Something like that," I said. "Really, there are six different tongs. They're something like social clubs with lots of muscle. They rule Chinatown with an iron grip. But insinuated between the fingers of the tongs is a branch of the Social Affairs Department."

  "What's that? It sounds like a singles bar."

  I smiled. "The Chinese have a wry sense of humor. The headquarters for the SAD is a block off Tien-A-Min Square in Peking. Some of the shrewdest minds ever turned to spy work reside there."

  "I never heard of them while I was with the DIA."

  "You probably wouldn't. It hasn't been until the past few years that they've reached out from mainland China and penetrated significantly into the U.S. They've made up for lost time. At a guess, there are no fewer than twenty cities where they have contact stations established. Madame Lin prefers San Francisco for a variety of reasons. It's a seaport, it has heavy international travel, the city is large enough to get lost in if necessary, and Orientals are commonplace."

  "I know what she tried to do to us at the power tower, but that…" Marta shook her head. "Is she as evil as you make her out to be? Really?"

  I nodded. I felt my fists clenching as I thought of Madame Lin. "That little trick she pulled on us at the solar power tower was mild. She enjoys torture." Marta shivered and pulled her arms around herself. "As a spy, she's world class. I believe Edward George will find that he is playing out of his league."

  "You think she'll kill him and take the laser switching device?"

  "She'll certainly try. I'd like to get it away from him before he has a chance to meet with her." Plans and counterplans raced through my head. Madame Lin didn't have a corner on cold-bloodedness.

  "I still don't know why you're so positive that Ed has gone to San Francisco. Why not Denver or Kansas City or who knows?"

  I didn't have a good answer for her. I had no firm information about the man's destination. Hawk had informed me that all the possible leads uncovered at the airport had failed to pan out. He had ordered a person-by-person check of all departing passengers on the afternoon George had stolen the switching device. That amounted to checking out over five hundred people, men and women. The report would take a week, perhaps longer, to file. By then, George could be out of the country, with Madame Lin in possession of the laser component.

  No, I didn't know if Edward George had gone to San Francisco to make the trade. I only hoped he had. Otherwise, the future of the world appeared filled with mushroom clouds of megaton death.

  * * *

/>   The bustle of the city surrounded us, swallowing people in the crowd and immediately replacing them with other faceless strangers. We stood on a corner in Chinatown trying to figure out what to do next. My feeling of unease at making the wrong decision concerning Edward George's destination after leaving Albuquerque still gnawed at my guts, but this was the only lead I had.

  He had mentioned the city favorably to Marta. Edward George didn't like to gamble. He obviously knew the dangers of dealing with Madame Lin. That was all I had to go on. Slim, very slim, yet I had to turn it into positive results. I had contacted Hawk, and he hadn't turned up anything more checking out the passengers. The chance existed that George had flown off in the helicopter — still untraced — and had taken a private plane, without a flight plan being filed. Or he could have driven to El Paso or Denver or Phoenix and taken a flight from those cities.

  My hunch might be all that would keep the world from catastrophic war, and the possibility of being wrong burned ulcers into my stomach.

  "It all looks familiar, and yet it doesn't," said Marta in frustration. "When you're on a vacation, why bother memorizing your surroundings? You just enjoy them."

  "Madame Lin has several contact points near here," I said. "Let's slowly walk past them. Tell me if you see anything that strikes a responsive chord in your mind."

  "Okay, Nick, but I can't promise."

  I squeezed her arm reassuringly. I wished I felt the confidence I projected to her. We sauntered along the crowded Grant Avenue, a couple idly passing time looking in the store windows. As we passed California Street, I noted we were entirely surrounded by Chinese. Only an occasional Occidental hurried down the streets now. The windows still held many of the tourist comeons, but more ivory figurines were in evidence. Jade carvings, intricate watercolors, and lacquered Chinese boxes replaced the cheap tin and plastic and cardboard.