by Nick Carter
Annotation
The spy who mixed love and duty.
The woman teased him, and so skillfully that he almost lost control before realizing that he could plot her every provocative movement in advance!
Several years earlier, in an Oriental port, he had posed as a naval officer and discovered The Heaven of a Thousand and One Delights. Its inhabitants were exquisite members of the oldest profession… especially trained to use their wiles on foreign officials to compromise them into working for the Red Chinese cause.
This woman was no love-possessed secretary: She was a spy.
Well, two could play at that game. For the man was also a spy. In fact, he was Nick Carter, the agent known as «Killmaster» in America's super-secret intelligence organization AXE. And the Yoga-trim body that had mastered every conceivable science of killing could match this harem-trained beauty in her own arts as well.
Nick Carter decided that in this particular assignment, love and duty were going to be mixed…
* * *
Nick Carter
Old Scent, New Danger
Death and Consolation
Two Down… And More to Go?
Tomato Surprise
The Man Who Wasn't There
Beauty and the Beasts
Bird Gotta Fly
Bargain in Bombay
A Meeting and a Parting
Special Surprise Number One
Take-off for the Taj Mahal
Special Surprise Number Two
Help Wanted, Male
And on Your Left, Ladies and Gentlemen, a Corpse
Pictures at an Exhibition
The Guided Tour
In a Cavern in a Canyon
* * *
Nick Carter
Killmaster
Fraulein Spy
Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America.
OCR Mysuli: [email protected]
Old Scent, New Danger
Herr Friedrich Hauser stared. His whisky glass thudded down onto the solid oak tabletop and the mellow liquid fountained out to trickle down his bony hand.
"Now just a minute, my good friend," he said thickly. "Please. I think you will have to repeat for me how you reached that particular conclusion." His dry left hand sought the silk handkerchief in his breast pocket and mopped clumsily at the right. "It is perhaps that I am enjoying too much this so splendid beverage that you were good enough to send me, but for some reason I am unable to follow you." He laughed, a fruity little gurgle that contrasted oddly with the bony leanness of his frame but seemed to go well with the slurred tones of too much whisky and well-being. Nick disliked him intensely.
"From which point would you like me to repeat, Herr Hauser?" he said respectfully. "From Bonn? The ranch? Here in Buenos Aires?"
"Oh, Bonn is all right, Gruber," he said munificently. "I understand that you work for the magazine Achtung! I know about the magazine. Sometimes I even buy it, when there is a very sensational story, you know what I mean?"
Nick knew what he meant. That was why he had chosen the Achtung! as his cover, and why he had transformed Nick Carter of AXE into Karl Gruber of West Germany's answer to Confidential. Achtung! was a magazine for lovers of the lurid, for political hysterics, for sensation-starved housewives. Achtung! found a minor government clerk with his fingers in the stamp drawer and enlarged him into Rot in Government; Achtung! found mommy kissing Santa Claus and spotlighted her as Corruption in Society; Achtung! looked through every keyhole and under every bed and found a Communist spy — a depraved and sex-crazed Communist spy — wherever its hot-eyed gaze roamed. All its heroes were cut from cloth that looked vaguely pre-war and all its villains came in tints of pink and red. In the West's battle against Communism, Achtung! was nothing if not loud.
Friedrich Hauser refilled his glass. This fellow Gruber of the magazine had been most generous for the past few days. It was a welcome change to be treated like royalty; even in Buenos Aires, Germans like Hauser did not always feel at home. There was always the sneaking feeling in the back of the mind that someday, someone… But not Gruber; a very sympathetic fellow, he, with all the right ideas.
"Now you were telling me," Hauser said with careful distinctness, "that your magazine is on the track of a very dangerous Communist spy named Judas. That this Judas, working hand in glove with the East German people and their Russian mentors, is planning to destroy the new Germany that is rising out of the ashes of the old."
Nick thought he heard the thin man's heels click.
"That is very much the story," he agreed.
"Ah!" said Hauser. "As I thought. And the new Germany that we are both talking about is not this feeble, decadent alliance with the West, but the true Germany, the real Germany, the German Germany."
"Without a doubt, a German Germany," said Nick.
"So. And this Judas will destroy us before we begin." Hauser got unsteadily to his feet and stood swaying with his glass in hand. "That is, unless we find him first. Yes? Ah, that is the point. You thought you had found him, yes? And then it seems that you lost him at the last minute, yes?"
"Yes," said Nick, beginning to tire of his share in the conversation. "And it was at that point that you asked me to repeat the story, or part of it."
"Ah, part of it. Part of it will be enough," Hauser mumbled, no longer quite so crisply wartime German. He sat down opposite the living room window of his lovely, wifeless Buenos Aires home and stared out of the window as if at a vision of the past or future.
"Judas," he murmured. "Now that is really quite funny. Begin with your friend on the ranch, who thought he had seen the man called Judas." Inexplicably, Hauser started laughing softly to himself.
Nick felt a frown growing inside him. What in hell had Hauser found to laugh about? Maybe he thought it was funny that someone — specifically Karl Gruber of Achtung! — had painstakingly tracked down a vicious master spy only to have him slip through his fingers. On the other hand, Hauser seemed genuinely indignant that a man like Judas should be working to destroy "the true Germany" on behalf of the East German and Russian Communists. In fact, Judas was almost certainly doing nothing of the sort, but that was none of Hauser's business. It made a useful story for Nick, and for his alias, Gruber. Of course, it was possible that Hauser was putting on an act, that in some inexplicable way he was linked with Judas and enjoying the joke of having this earnest Neo-Nazi newsman make enquiries about him.
But Nick's background check of Hauser, plus his cautious, probing approach to him, had turned up an individual who had fled Germany during the final days of the war and settled down in Argentina to build up a used-car business, a growing hatred for Communism, and a hope of eventual return to a Germany miraculously transformed into Hitler's dream. It could be an elaborate cover, but the fellow's manner and lack of discretion suggested otherwise. And his fondness for drink was no cover; he was close to falling-down drunk right now. Chances were he wouldn't shield a Judas any more than he was trying to hide his own abominable master-race ideas.
Nick tried again.
"As I told you, I first met this Judas toward the end of the war. He pretended to be on our side, but he was actually playing both ends against the middle. He had no loyalties except to himself. The treacheries he committed against our people were enormous. But I go back too far." Nick settled into his deep high-backed armchair that commanded the two doors to the room and shielded him from the window. "I mention it again only to explain that at some point in the course of his crimes he lost his right hand and replaced it with a steel device that can play murder in five fingers. His face was also damaged, so that when he is undisguised his hideousness is indescribable. It is quite possible that since I last encountered him — and you understand that my glimp
ses of him have been brief and accidental — he may have had his looks improved by plastic surgery. Also, I understand that his left hand was badly injured recently, perhaps within the last year or so." Nick knew the date to the day and could have described in lurid detail exactly how Judas' left hand had been injured, having tossed the vicious little grenade himself and watched Judas shield his awful face from it with his one good hand. "It is therefore possible that both of his hands are now artificial, or at least that one is and the other is so horribly crippled that he must cover it with a glove. Then, too, he is built like a Prussian ox — curse him! — and could easily be mistaken for one of us if it were not for his infernally ugly face. Which, as I say, could easily have been disguised."
Hauser nodded and pulled at his drink. He himself, with his string-bean body and cadaverous face, could never have been thought of as "a Prussian ox," yet he obviously knew what Nick meant and admiringly — enviously — identified himself with the breed: bullet-headed, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, narrow-hipped, thick-calved, gloriously arrogant, utterly invincible, cultured, forceful animals. He sat up straighter in his chair.
"So you will understand," continued Nick, "that when Achtung! sent me on this assignment I was most eager to follow up all possible leads. It is not always easy, because to ask questions about a Communist is often to open up a nest of vipers." Hauser nodded again, understandingly. "Nevertheless I persevered. Finally my enquiries led me into the pampas; word had reached me that a man who could be Judas had found himself a hideout somewhere in the trackless plains. Needless to say, I did not find it. But what I did find…" Nick leaned forward and jabbed the air briskly with a pointed forefinger. "What I did find was this man Campos, the rancher. He breeds beef cattle, as I said, and for the last few seasons he has been selling all his stock — he farms on a small scale, you realize, so that if he gets a good price he needs to deal only with one man — all his stock to one man, a man named Hugo Bronson. And the reason he told me about Bronson is that I told him what Judas used to look like."
Nick Carter, alias Karl Gruber, nodded crisply and leaned back in his chair as though he had made a telling point. And yet he was feeling far from as smug as he looked. There was something wrong somewhere. Something as wrong as a sudden knife in the back or a door flying open to reveal a brace of hired killers armed with machine guns and loud mouths identifying him, before he died, as a troubleshooting killer-spy for the United States.
But there was no sound or movement from anywhere in the house, nor from the single low, unshuttered window that was open only a few inches to let in a wisp of the cool evening breeze of May. And he was as sure as he could be without actually searching the man that Hauser was unarmed.
"And what did this man Campos tell you about Bronson?" Hauser's sly smile became an open grin.
Nick suppressed the impulse to clamp his hands around that scrawny throat and squeeze the secrets out of him.
"Campos told me," he said evenly, "that he sometimes met Bronson in the International Club. That he had friends there. That Bronson — just like Judas — has unusually broad shoulders, a barrel chest and a bullet head. That his face is smooth and curiously unlined for a man of his apparent age, except for marks close to the hairline that could be scars. And then, Campos said, there is something very odd about the man's hands. Bronson always wears flesh-colored gloves — is that right?"
"That is right. I knew him well. He always wore such gloves. Sometimes black or white for evenings, depending on the occasion." Hauser laughed outright.
Nick felt a wave of revulsion. Suddenly he had a mental picture of Hauser as a lean and hungry German officer, changing his own gloves for special occasions… special, unspeakable occasions. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to have Hauser more thoroughly investigated. But that would have to keep. Question now was, why did Hauser giggle like a fool when Judas' name was mentioned?
"So. He always wears such gloves," said Nick. "It was Campos' impression that the hands inside them moved stiffly, as if perhaps they were crippled. Or mechanical. Naturally, when I heard this I was interested. I came to Buenos Aires to enquire, only to discover that the Bronson Refrigerating Plant had been sold a short time ago. And that Bronson had left the country, leaving no trace behind."
"And you were sure by this time that my old friend Bronson was your Judas, yes?"
"No. Not sure at all. But I had good reason to believe he might be. So it was only natural that I should make enquiries among his former employees, yes? And at the places Bronson used to frequent, yes? And among the people he used to know, yes?"
"Yes," said Hauser reluctantly, as if hating to have had his favorite word snatched from him. "And so we met. And we found a common interest in our beloved Germany. But you have made a mistake, my friend."
"And what was my mistake?" Nick asked carefully. His hand edged stealthily toward the hidden Luger he called Wilhelmina.
"About Bronson," said Hauser. "Of course it is a well kept secret. But I know it, because his situation and mine have been so very much the same. And I only tell you because you are one of us." He pulled at his drink. "I have known him for years. Under the name of Bronson, under other names." His eyes fixed on his vacated chair and he walked toward it very carefully with only the slightest of staggers. "Ah, no, Bronson is not who you think he is." He laughed his gurgling laugh and sat down suddenly. "Certainly not your Judas, my friend." His thin face contorted and his body wrenched with laughter. "That is the joke, the beautiful, wonderful joke!"
"What is the joke?" Nick's voice lashed at Hauser. "Who is he?"
The rusty laugh came bubbling out.
"He is Martin Bormann, my friend! Martin Bormann became Hugo Bronson! Our own great Martin Bormann! Alive, safe here among so many of his own people, who did not even know him! Do you not think it is very funny? Judas! Judas!" Hauser collapsed with laughter.
Nick felt very still inside. Martin Bormann. Nazi leader, right hand man to Hitler, sometime secret service chief for the Gestapo. Lost at war's end, vanished to safety to turn up — here?
"Bormann," he breathed reverently. "Martin Bormann! Hauser, are you sure? I have dreamed of this day! Why has he left? Where has he gone?"
Hauser gurgled happily. "Where, my Gruber? Where do you think? Oh, you can be sure that he has plans for the Fatherland. And you can be sure that he has not gone alone."
"Not alone?" Nick echoed. "Who has gone with him?"
"Aha! Who knows who they are, and how many?" Hauser's finger jabbed at Nick. "But I can tell you this. Before he left, two men were brought to see him. Separately, but I am quite sure they came here for the same purpose."
"Who were they?" A current of surprise and disbelief coursed through Nick's mind. The man's brain was swollen with his self-importance and Nick's liquor. But if he really knew where Martin Bormann was and who was with him…
"They were scientists," Hauser said proudly. "Our own. Our own. From the old days. And I can guarantee you that they are working with Bormann to put us back where we belong!"
"Herr Hauser, what you are telling me is extremely interesting," Nick said calmly. "Unfortunately, if it is true, it is of such secret nature that it cannot be used in print. If it is true. However, if you can document your story — offer names dates, places and so on — then there may be a way in which you can be of great value to the movement. You realize, of course, that a magazine such as Achtung! is not always merely a magazine." He spoke carefully, even though he spoke nonsense, and he saw Hauser's drink-glazed eyes blink with comprehension. And greed. Nick aimed for the greed. "Nor does it expect loyal Germans to perform their services for nothing. There are few of us left. We must work together and we must receive just rewards for our work. Now if we — you, I, Achtung! can get together behind the movement, great things can happen for all of us. First, though, I must know — and you must understand that I do not doubt you — but I must know the facts. Where is Bormann? Who are the scientists? How were they brought here? Or ca
n you not tell me?"
Hauser rose unsteadily to his feet. "Of course I can tell you! Do you think I know nothing?" He waved a limp hand at Nick's protest. "Oh, I can tell you, all right. Of course it is true! First, where is Bormann now? That is easy. He…"
A pane of glass shattered. Splinters flew onto the thick rug and lay there shimmering while Friedrich Hauser stared incredulously at the window. Nick Carter leapt out of his armchair and flattened himself against the wall near the window. There was the slightest of movements outside. Nick fired twice in rapid succession. The corner of his vision caught Hauser swaying no longer like a drunk but like a felled tree in the forest. One of his eyes was reddened and enlarged and the strangest sound in the world came from him, a living sound from a dead man's throat. Nick fired again into the night as Hauser fell, aiming in the general direction of the first shot. He heard a muffled yelp and edged closer to the window. Peering out cautiously, gun raised, he saw a small figure bounding across Hauser's lawn toward a low wall beyond which a car was waiting. Wilhelmina the Luger spat at the dodging figure. A burst of answering gunfire came from the car. Nick drew back and felt glass slivers tear at his hand. Wilhelmina tried once more but the hand that guided her was torn and bleeding. Nick cursed and thrust the gun into his left hand. A car door slammed; tires squealed under a racing motor. Wilhelmina spat once more at the fleeing car and Nick heard the distant thunk of her kiss against thick metal. The car kept on going.
Friedrich Hauser lay on the floor, the back of his head a shapeless thing oozing something reddish-gray and scrambled.
Nick wound a handkerchief around his glass-torn hand and set to work to find out how Hauser could have known what it seemed he really had known, and if there was anyone else in this city of intrigue and romance who could have known the identity and whereabouts of Martin Bormann.
Or was it Judas, after all?