by Nick Carter
Ruppert made another of his shrugging movements. "You know, I'm not even sure if your Bronson is the one I'm looking for," Nick said thoughtfully. "Hauser said something about his hands being crippled. Would you know how that happened? I don't remember that the Von Reineckes said anything about it."
Ruppert's eyes narrowed slightly. "As I said, we were acquaintances, not friends. And one does not ask about that sort of thing."
"No?" said Nick. "I suppose not. Forgive me. But my profession brings with it a natural curiosity."
Ruppert clucked apologetically. "I did not mean you should not ask. I merely mean that I did not. And if you wonder why I should have his address, he simply asked if I would take it in case anyone should ask for it."
"I see," said Nick. He studied Ruppert out of the corner of his eye. What he saw was a paunchy Bavarian with beetling brows and solemn, rather dull eyes that still looked dull even when they were narrowed in thought.
Nick was carefully framing another question when his sixth sense warned him of an alien something in the room. He drained his glass and looked around. He smelled Cop.
He saw Cop. A broad, strong-faced man of about his own age and height was standing at the top of the carpeted stairway leading into the Club lounge talking to the assistant manager. A little wave of awareness and tension went through the room. Nick could almost feel it splash against him.
"One more for me," said Nick, pretending to stifle a yawn. "Join me?" Ruppert nodded eagerly. Nick ordered and produced his forged Club card, mentally counting up his crimes to date: forgery, impersonation, welshing on Club debts, leaving the scene of a homicide, tampering with evidence, assault, robbery, plain and fancy lying… He drank quickly, yawned again and signed his chit.
"Well, that's all for tonight," he said. "My plane leaves early. Thank you for your company, Herr Ruppert." The tall policeman, he saw, had moved inside the room and was asking something of a group of men clustered around a drink-crowded table. Ruppert offered casual goodbyes and Nick ambled off with the loping stride that looked slow but would get him out of there — he hoped — quickly.
There were other people strolling about and he made the top of the stairway knowing that no one was paying any particular attention to him. Then he felt the wave of tension again. When he was halfway down the stairs he heard a voice calling, "Señor! Señor!" He looked up casually, saw the authoritative stranger coming after him, and kept on going as though he knew the call could not be for him. After all, he was from Bonn, wasn't he, and he didn't know the fellow, did he?
He had reached the sidewalk outside the club when the man caught up with him and said in English: "Herr Gruber? Forgive me, I do not speak German. Lieutenant Gomez. A word with you, please."
Nick turned. "Lieutenant?" he echoed, with admirable surprise. "Of police, is it?"
"That is correct," Gomez said crisply. "It is necessary for me to ask you a few questions regarding Friedrich Hauser. Would you mind coming back into the Club?"
"Hauser?" Nick frowned. "I barely knew the man. Is there something wrong?" The street and sidewalks were, he noted, dismayingly full of people.
"He has been shot," Gomez answered quietly. "I understand you have been seeing him lately. So I must ask you…"
"Shot!" Nick breathed, contriving the expression of delighted horror that he thought writer Karl Gruber should wear. "An accident?"
"Please, Herr Gruber. If you will be so kind as to step into the Club. The street is no place to discuss it." Gomez was getting impatient. Nick liked the looks of him. Strong face with the suggestion, now, of a frown; lively intelligent eyes and wide, firm mouth.
One of AXE's cardinal rules stated firmly: Never, never, never, get involved with the police of another country and preferably not even your own unless you have prearranged an impenetrable cover that includes cooperation with them. And this Nick certainly had not done. Karl Gruber was without reality in Bonn or even an address in Buenos Aires. He was "staying with friends;" one friend, actually, name of Nick Carter.
"Lieutenant, I would be glad to. And of course I would like to know, for myself, what happened to poor Hauser, as well as wishing to cooperate as much as I can. But — for a reason which I shall explain when we talk in private — I much prefer not to go back into the Club after what you have just told me." The strain of impatience in Gomez' eyes changed to a glint of interest. "And also," Nick went on, "as you may know, I have to catch an early plane in the morning. So if it is at all possible…" and he made himself sound very reasonable and sincere"…I would appreciate it if you could accompany me to where I am staying. I can start getting ready, perhaps, while we are talking; or we can talk on the way. You have a car? Or there is always the taxicab." His voice was crisp and eager, the voice of a successful magazine writer anxious to get a story and accustomed to conducting interviews on swift cab rides between airplanes.
Gomez scrutinized him. "Where are you staying?" "With friends." Nick gave an address in a nearby suburb that he knew to be quiet, especially at this time of night.
Gomez nodded slowly. "Very well, then. My car." He gestured with his head to indicate the direction and took one swift step along the sidewalk.
A second is a long time even when it's split in two. It was long enough for Nick to think: Too bad. Nice guy. Carter adds to list of crimes and slugs a cop.
For a fraction of that second there was the slightest lull in the swish of passing traffic, and in that same pinpoint of time Gomez was between Nick and the street.
The gunshot and Gomez' gasp of pained surprise were almost simultaneous. Nick saw Gomez hanging poised in air and time for the next of those long seconds. He ran even as Gomez fell.
The good cop, nice guy, landed with a deadened thud and rolled once. Nick dropped to his knees at the tail end of a parked car and saw the gap in the traffic close. Beyond it, a news van gunned its motor. For one incredible moment the driver stuck both his head and his gun out of the window and fired at where Nick had been standing. He hit the driver of another car instead. The car went wild and slammed into the far side of the car Nick had ducked behind.
A wave of black-red anger burned through him. He threw caution to hell where it belonged and stood up tall and unshielded, a target begging to be hit. The driver of the van saw him, slowed, aimed, fired. Nick matched him: watched him, waited, aimed and fired. But he fired first and saw a hard, expressionless face turn into a horror mask of smashed red pulp. The van stopped. Nick ran — ducking and weaving through the hesitant traffic. Around him was a street of curious muted noises, small panic sounds squeaking through the general stunned silence; and the bodies of three men — one killer, one decent-faced cop, one innocent bystander. And he, Nick Carter, had killed the lot of them.
* * *
The head of AXE sat behind his vast desk in one of the inner offices of the Amalgamated Press and Wire Service headquarters on Dupont Circle in Washington D.C. His desk, meticulously clear between the hours of midnight and eight a.m., was an organized chaos of reports, cabled messages and bulging folders. The man himself looked more like the tough but easygoing editor of a rural weekly than the chief of his country's most effectively deadly counter-espionage agency. AXE was not essentially an information-seeking agency; its operatives, supplied with background data by other branches of the secret services, moved into troubled areas, zeroed in on their targets, struck swiftly, mopped up and vanished only to strike again at other times in other places. As the troubleshooting arm of American security forces it had to be able to act quickly, efficiently, and ruthlessly. At its disposal were all the technical advances of a highly developed technological society, and a selected group of skilled, hard men trained to think on "their feet, use all the complex weapons in the vast armory available to them, command their bodies to achieve almost superhuman feats, and kill when necessary. It was known in the combined security services that when an AXE man was sent on a job it meant that those who had sent him were convinced that death was the most likely solu
tion to the problem at hand.
Yet in the course of AXE's specialized but varied operations it encountered certain individuals and situations that demanded long-term and personal investigation by AXE's own personnel. One such individual was the master spy and brutal killer for the Red Chinese, a man whose code name was Judas. His machinations, and those of his masters, were the immediate concern of AXE. And the man who knew him best was Special Agent Carter, who had earned for himself the title of Killmaster. Carter was responsible only to Hawk. Hawk, organizer and controlling hand of AXE, was responsible only to the National Security Council, the Secretary of Defense, and the President of the United States.
Hawk chewed thoughtfully on his cold cigar and studied the report from the F.B.I. whose work, these days, seemed to be overlapping more and more with his own. His spare, stringy body and genial, leathery face gave little hint of the tremendous energy and toughness of the man. Only his crisp, waste-free movements and icy eyes suggested that he was anything but the farm-bred, country newspaperman he seemed.
A buzzer sounded on his desk.
"Yes?"
A dulcet, feminine voice said: "A-4 has N-3 on the scrambler from B.A."
"Thank you," he said, and rose from his desk.
A preference for lovely feminine voices was one of the few things that seemed out of character to those who really knew Hawk. To him, woman's place was in the home and home belonged in the AXE-free suburbs along with children and washing machines and other things that had long since been lost from Hawk's own world. But he did admit that there were certain jobs that men should not be wasted upon, and he insisted that these should be filled by intelligent young women with attractive voices and physical qualities to match. Yet his relations with his «harem» were as crisp and businesslike as his attitude toward the toughest of his hell-hardened male operatives.
A-4 handed him one of the headsets in the communications control center that was labeled Teletype Room. Hawk nodded acceptance and gave the go-ahead signal.
Nick Carter's message came through from Buenos Aires, a scramble of meaningless vibrations along the airwaves that were translated into normal human sounds by the complex machinery of the receiving set.
Hawk listened gravely, now and then frowning. At last he said: "No. I'll send an operative down to take your place. Give me the contact address and keep out of sight until he gets there. I'll send detailed instructions with him."
The sounds twisted through the wires and emerged as Hawk's voice through a receiving set in a modest hotel room in Buenos Aires. Nick's forehead furrowed. "Why a replacement?" he asked, and his words were caught by his sending set and shuffled beyond recognition until they reached its sister set in Washington. "I'm on the spot. Give me a couple of days to set up a new cover and let me dig into this thing."
"No. Give me a couple of days," Hawk interrupted. "I want another man down there, someone who comes in with an unbreakable story. It's too big to take chances. Now. Any suggestions for the new man?"
Brief silence, then Nick's reply.
"An accredited investigator, then. Someone to work with the police. Say that we — you, that is — have a particular interest in Hauser, that he was a suspected escaped criminal, that his murder seems to overlap with some case in the States. Or the same story with Gruber, if you like — they'll be looking for him. But I'd say it was essential to make it an Interpol-type thing. I've already put all the material from Hauser's safe in the drop for you. Something else might suggest itself there. Especially the two pictures I marked. But give our man an official cover he won't have to worry about. They'll want to catch the people who sent the killer after Gomez; we'll have to help them. Is there any reason why I shouldn't stay here and work undercover with the new man?"
"Yes, there is. You're going to Berlin."
"On one phony lead? A plant? Why not investigate Ruppert first?"
"Ruppert will be investigated. And that's not the only lead. While you were trailing after a rumor of Judas, one or two other things were happening in the world." Hawk's tone, unscrambling, was dry. "We think we know who your two scientists might be. There may well be others. But one of them's been missing from an English university lab for some weeks. And we've just had a report saying he was spotted in West Berlin. He is, of course, a German, like the one who's missing from Australia. Now. This Campos of yours, the rancher who steered you toward Branson. You're sure of him?"
"Positive. I've known him for years. He thinks I'm a private eye with some kind of personal vendetta against Judas. I've double, triple-checked him. He's in the clear. But I do think the heart of the matter lies right here in Argentina, in spite of this signposting to Berlin."
"We follow the signposts," said Hawk. "Now. We want to get this under way without waiting for your written report. Tell me exactly what you took from Hauser's house and what was in the pictures that you marked."
Nick told him.
Tomato Surprise
The man in the darkened upstairs office of Universal Electronics in greater Los Angeles shifted his earphones and sat back to listen.
He knew almost all there was to know about Mark Gerber: how he had left his native Germany with his lovely wife more than twenty-five years before when the Nazi menace threatened his unsettled land — and the world. How the Gerbers had made their home in California, raising a blue-eyed, laughing little towhead they called Karen. How Gerber had become one of America's top scientists, known all over the world for his contributions in the field of nuclear physics. How Karen had grown into womanhood, only to die in that shocking automobile accident several weeks before her wedding, and how she had been followed into death days later by Mark's wife, Anna.
And also how Gerber, after the dual tragedy, worked night and day, weekends and holidays, trying to keep his mind off his sorrows.
Past one o'clock in the morning and there they were, hammering at him again. This time it was something about a party he had missed, a social promise he had broken. And now they wanted him to take off on some kind of trip. A vacation, so they said.
One floor below, Dr. Mark Gerber sat at his desk and looked at his two late callers. One, Rick Harrison, whose party he had missed; the other, Elena, whom he'd promised to take to that party. And then he'd somehow forgotten all about it. He felt an unreasonable twinge of envy as he saw them together, even though he knew that Rick was happily married. He should have been standing there with Elena, feeling that togetherness instead of being preached at.
"Clear your mind," Rick Harrison was saying. "Take a few weeks away from here. It'll do you all the good in the world."
"Will it!" Mark laughed harshly. "Take a trip alone — you think that'll do a damn thing for me? Sorry, nothing doing. I've got things to work on here. For heaven's sake, Rick, I know you're trying to help and I don't like dredging my miseries up in front of you, but don't you realize how lonely a man can get?"
He looked at Elena. For some reason there were tears in her lovely eyes.
"I do realize, Mark," Rick said quietly. "We both do. That's why we're trying to help. We'd go with you if we could."
Elena looked up suddenly. "Mark! Why not? Rick can't possibly, I know — but perhaps I could. Why should people talk? I am your secretary! Look, why not a trip around the world? I've wanted to do it myself — I've saved. You'd have company. I'd have the trip, and I could still keep your notes. Why not, Mark? Please say yes!"
He laughed. "You're not serious." But there was a hint of interest in his eyes.
They stayed there talking for an hour and then all three left together.
The man in the dark room upstairs yawned and clicked a switch to the «Off» position.
Three days later, at dinner with Elena in the Harrisons' home, Mark Gerber began to think it would not be such a bad idea to take a trip in the company of an attractive young woman. And a few days after that, in his office, he said: "All right. All right, you've sold me. Where shall we go?"
Half an hour after he had kiss
ed Elena for the first time and agreed to fly around the world with her, a man at a desk many miles away knew all about it.
The man listened to the telephoned report and nodded.
"Good," he said, his face without expression. "Stay with them as closely as you can. Give them absolutely no cause for suspicion, even if it means losing them once in a while. I don't want them alarmed or alerted. I want them on that plane. You're onto the travel agent, are you? Fine. Get everything you can on the hotel arrangements, the other passengers, and so on. What's that? I thought it was one of those organized tours. Hmm. All right, I'll take care of that end myself. May even be convenient for us if they pick up other passengers along the way. Anything else? Very well. Dig up every ounce of background information that you can, and get it to me fast."
He hung up and reached for the transcript of the report that had traveled via microdot from Peking. In seconds he had switched his mind from his quarry in Los Angeles to a semi-desert plain halfway around the world.
Wilhelmstrasse 101B was a narrow, two-story house that had miraculously survived the bombing raids and avoided the unimaginative face-lifting suffered by its neighbors. The adjacent buildings squeezed it so closely that it seemed to be holding its breath; it no longer had any sides of its own but only a front that looked out on a tree-lined street and a back that peered out on a space where there had once been another house.
Nick surveyed it from across the street. Two hours after midnight was an odd time to come calling, but no one had answered when he — as a "salesman — " had openly rung the doorbell during the day — even though the door had been opened to a couple of other callers in the course of the afternoon. Maybe there was a signal, two longs and a short and Adolf sent me. Anyway, two men had gone in and three had come out, and ever since then the house had been dark and silent. If Paul Zimmer was an innocent private citizen — and so he was, according to all available information — he might never even know about his prowler in the night. And if he was not… the visit could be awkward either for him or Nick.