by Nick Carter
Someone in there, in the dark, was groaning.
Nick stepped to the side of the doorway and let the cellar light flood in.
"No, no, not again," the voice moaned. "Kill me and be done with it." It was a male voice, German, and even in its agony it sounded cultured and gentle.
The light fell upon a rough straw pallet on the floor. A gray-haired man in soiled and rumpled clothes lay face down upon it. Nick edged into the room and fumbled for a light switch. None.
"Who are you?" the man asked into the half-light.
Nick felt a tingle running up his spine. He knew the face. It was that of Dr. Konrad Scheuer, missing from his English lab and briefly seen some days before on a downtown West Berlin street.
"Dr. Scheuer," he said, disbelievingly. "Can you get up? Here, take my hand."
The older man cringed away. "No, no! I know how you people work. You will pretend to be kind and then you will hurt me again."
"I've come to help you," said Nick. "I have nothing to do with the people in this house. Even if you don't trust me, what've you got to lose? Here, give me your hand."
He reached out and took the man's hand firmly in his. Scheuer groaned and stumbled to his feet.
"Wait one moment," he moaned. "The light… so bright… my eyes. Where — where are the others?"
"In another part of the house," said Nick. "Busy with something else. What did they want with you?"
Scheuer shook his head and blinked his eyes. "Kidnap," he muttered. His eyes wandered over Nick. "We must — you will take me out of here? Do you perhaps have some… some weapon for me?"
Nick shook his head. "Leave the fighting to me. Let's get you out of here. Think you can walk?"
Scheuer tried. "I'll be all right. Please… go first. With your gun."
Nick stepped sideways into the outer room. "All clear," he said. Scheuer hesitated, and slowly tottered past him.
"We'll have to go up that ladder," Nick said. "Can you make it?"
"I'll… I'll manage the ladder if you help me," Scheuer answered.
Nick nodded. The trap was too narrow for him to carry the man through it; he'd have to go up first and pull Scheuer after him.
He looked at the man standing under the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, at the worn face and the soiled clothes and the tired, dangling arms, at the collarless neck and the open shirtfront that revealed welts and bruises, at the grizzled chin that slumped down over the chest.
He reached out a kindly hand and grasped the professor on the shoulder. "Hold on just a little longer; we'll be out of here in a matter of minutes." As he withdrew his hand his thumb jerked upward against Scheuer's neck and caught at something just below the ear. Scheuer gasped and pulled away with surprising agility.
"You fool! Have I not been hurt enough already?" He back-stepped without a trace of a totter.
"I'm not sure that you have," Nick said easily, and thrust out one long arm after Scheuer. His fingers caught beneath the older man's chin and pulled upward with a decisive jerk. Scheuer's face distorted hideously and came away in Nick's hand — a soft, flexible mask made by an expert and worn by a man who looked like a hungry wolf.
"Paul Zimmer, I presume," Nick said cheerfully. "Now suppose you put your hands up and turn to face that wall — the one with the outlet for the heating iron."
"You clumsy swine!" Zimmer spat. "You will spoil everything I've worked for. For weeks I have been working on this case, trying to find out what is happening to the missing scientists!"
"You have all my sympathy," Nick said courteously, "and you will even have my thanks if you will tell me all about this case you're working on. In the meantime — put those hands up! Before we have our little discussion I feel I must warn you that I will check every word of what you say with my colleagues upstairs. By now I think they must have extorted — I beg your pardon, persuaded — a considerable amount of information from those hired hands in the lady's bedroom. Now turn…"
"You lie!" snarled Zimmer. "You have no colleagues upstairs. You don't know who I am, you don't know what you're doing…"
"You're too modest," said Nick. "I do know who you are. You've aged, but I'd know you anywhere." His voice grew cold. "Rudolf Müller, onetime aide to Martin Bormann. For some days now I've carried your picture with me everywhere. You didn't know I cared, did you, Rudy baby? Now to the wall, and let us do our talking."
Zimmer-Müller's eyes shot sparks of hatred and the wolfish teeth parted as if to bite a chunk of flesh out of the tormentor. He half-turned and his hand flashed to his waist. It was a move Nick had been expecting. He let Müller complete his useless grab; his muscles waited. The darting hand came out from the waistband holding a small, snub-nosed gleam of metal that pointed at Nick from beneath Müller's left arm. Nick's foot moved in that same instant, arching upward and striking the gun-hand with the numbing kick of an outraged mule. The small gun spat viciously into Müller's own left arm. He screamed shrilly and let the gun clatter to the floor.
Müller stood staring at Nick, one hand clutching the opposite wrist. Then he turned and walked slowly to the wall.
"We'll start by having you tell me where Hugo Bronson really is," Nick said easily, "and what is happening to the scientists. You can get hurt or not, just as you like. It makes no difference to me."
Silence.
"Where is Bronson, Rudy?"
Silence.
"Where is Bormann, then?"
"What'll it be, Rudy — the iron or the wire? Or a knife, to snick little pieces out of you?"
Silence. But the shoulders bunched tightly.
"The wire, I think," Nick said reflectively. "I suppose you have enjoyed its effect on other men." He tugged thoughtfully at the looped wire hanging from the ceiling. "I see it is in good working condition. Fine. Turn around, Müller!" he rapped suddenly. "Take your clothes off. And do it quickly."
Müller's head turned first with his chin almost touching his shoulder, as if he were favoring a crick in his neck. Then the chin ducked and the wolfish mouth tore at the button on the point of his shirt collar.
For a moment Nick was amused by what seemed to be an irrational, demented act. Then he cursed and leaped.
Müller turned on him a grin like the risus sardonicus of strychnine poisoning.
"Too late," he hissed, and the yellow teeth clamped together for the last time. The German sucked in a final, painful gasp of air. His knees folded, and he dropped.
Well, it was too goddamn bad. Three sources of information, and all of them dead. But that was the way the game so often was played: kill or be killed, and so little time for finesse.
Nick searched Müller's body for the usual next-to-nothing, removing a wicked little knife, a wallet, and the remaining collar-point button. Maybe AXE's Editing Department could have fun with it.
The cellar itself yielded undreamed of dividends.
The locked cabinets gave in to the Lockpicker's Special and proved to be goldmines of information. One was a miniature darkroom equipped with sink and faucet as well as 35mm cameras, film, developers, photographic papers, equipment for making microdots, and a high-powered microscope. A slide under the microscope bore two microdots ready for reading. The second cabinet contained a radio transmitter and a box filled with make-up and masks, all of which were incredibly lifelike. One or two of them looked vaguely familiar, but it was impossible to tell who they were supposed to represent without first fitting them onto a living face…
It all took considerable deciphering, and after an hour of engrossment Nick was only able to discover that agents Paul, Dieter and Hans were engaged in a maneuver called Operation Decoy, which was designed to dovetail with the movements of various people from points A, B, C, and others to point XYZ. And from what he could gather, point XYZ was not West Berlin. It was somewhere behind the Iron or Bamboo Curtain.
In the midst of trying to decide how to handle his find so as not to reveal to the enemy how thoroughly they had been uncovered (quickly
restaff house with AXE-oriented personnel? stage police raid on so-called brothel, planting headlines in paper about escape of chief pimp and company? expose ring of neo-Nazis planning comeback in heart of Berlin?) Nick belatedly remembered his glamorous and tipsy hostess.
And having decided what to take with him and what to leave behind, he went back up the ladder to the top floor of the house, stopping to make a brisk but thorough survey of the deserted first floor: nothing but a stage-set of dusty furniture. Zimmer's house, it was clear, was like a well-stacked woman: plenty of top and bottom, but no middle.
He scaled the top steps of the ladder into the dressing room.
Brigitte was not there. Neither was she in the bedroom.
Hans and Dieter were there, more awful in death than in life and caked with dried blood; but Brigitte Elsa Schmidt was gone.
The window was apparently untouched but the chair had been moved and the bedroom door was unlocked.
On impulse or by instinct he crossed the landing to the second bedroom. His pencil flashlight flickered around the room and its beam settled on the bed. It was occupied, and what occupied it was an alluring arrangement of mounds and curves that were hidden by nothing at all…
Brigitte stirred and blinked. "Oh, God, who…!" she gasped. "Nicky, sweet! I've been so frightened. I couldn't stay in that awful little room. Oh, hold me, please hold me! Oh, sweetheart, not with all those clothes on!"
Clothes did get in the way a Utile. Especially the skin-thin, fingerprint-free gloves supplied by Editing. They were versatile, but not that versatile.
Nick slid animal-naked into bed beside her. There was plenty of time for abandonment before contacting Washington, where it was now well past midnight and the end of Hawk's long working day. Anyway, if he was going to wait and see who else turned up at this incredible house, he might as well make himself comfortable.
Brigitte sighed beside him, a little bundle of love waiting to be tightened up and then unraveled. They played each other like sensitive instruments, each with an expertise that gradually brought the other to an exquisite, tightly-strung pitch that drew them together in a flaming duet. And suddenly the bold little sex kitten with the double-bed eyes became a clawing wildcat of desire. Nick's superbly muscled body jerked with hers… smoothly, gently, but with a controlled strength and rhythm that captured every sensual need of hers and doubled it. Their bodies burned together and at last convulsed in one long, wonderfully savage moment of sublime, deep satisfaction.
They rested for a moment, drawing breath.
Nick opened his eyes suddenly. Brigitte was tugging at him urgently. "More," she crooned. "More… my animal, my love…"
Bird Gotta Fly
Brigitte had told him, in considerable detail, the little that she knew. Yes, these men were all Germans; the big, ugly one was Hans, the languid, slender one was Dieter, and wolf-face was Paul Zimmer. Had he ever given her the impression that Hugo might actually turn up? Absolutely not. Had she known that Zimmer was not Zimmer's real name? Well, no (shrug), but she wasn't too surprised. Did she often get the kind of proposition he had offered? Nicky, baby (pout and wiggle), let's not talk business, sweetie; it was just a way to make a little extra cash… closer, sweetie, closer… mmm-mmm! Did she have any idea what they had been up to in that cellar, and how it was connected with her job upstairs? Not really, but he hadn't really fooled her with that talk about playing a joke on someone. They were gangsters of some kind, maybe counterfeiters. But honestly, Nicky, I swear to you I didn't think they were really bad, and I didn't see any harm in making a little extra…
She proved to be very talkative, quite ignorant of the truth, incredibly athletic, and absolutely insatiable.
Her beauty continued to dazzle, but after a while the entertainment wore off. Nick was satiated. And he didn't particularly like being called sweetie.
And by the time AXE headquarters had received his wealth of information, Nick was ready for his final scene with her.
It was an explosion of abandonment followed by lies (his), tears (hers), and a last goodbye. Brigitte went back to her club and Nick removed his subtle disguise (it was fortunate that Brigitte had preferred to make love in the dark) so that he would be recognized by the man who was to contact him. When he was ready he looked like himself, something he hadn't done for weeks.
Every night he did the nightclub circuit. Between eleven and twelve he would drop in at the Resi and sit at a wall table where he could drink and think in peace and watch the dancers from a distance.
On the fourth night after his visit to Wilhelmstrasse 101B he arrived at the Resi a little earlier than usual, at a time when there was a slight lull in the flow of customers. The sixth sense that had forewarned him of trouble so many times before sent up a sudden flare in his consciousness without giving him any reason why.
Nice table; friendly waiter; no sinister faces peering out from behind the floral decorations; chair of his own choice, not attached to some deadly explosive… He sat down and ordered, identifying the feeling. It was that old familiar skin-tightening sensation of being watched.
He relaxed and waited.
All over the huge room men with telephones on their tables were calling girls with telephones on theirs; old bags were dialing gigolos and sweet young things were buzzing tourist sugardaddies; fags and drags and dates and strangers and visiting schoolteachers were having fun-fun-fun sending messages streaking around the room through the pneumatic-tube mail service provided by the management.
The cylinder whizzed along its appointed course and plopped down decisively into the tubular slot beside Nick.
The hair stood straight out on the back of his neck as he gazed at the cartridge. He could see himself twisting the cylinder open and having the whole damn thing blow up in his face.
He reached for it gingerly, wondering if he should take it to the men's room and drown it, or be brave.
He decided to be brave because he saw the sign when he turned it over. It was a little AXE insignia, a crudely drawn replica of the tattooed axe he wore on his right arm, and he knew that it had been drawn in rapidly fading ink by a nearby AXE-man. Even now the tiny design seemed to be melting at the edges. He opened up the metal chamber and withdrew a folded note.
I AM EAGLE, it said. INTERESTED IN MAKING ACQUAINTANCE OTHER FLYBIRDS, ESPECIALLY ONE WHO TAKES OFF SOON. SUGGEST RENDEZVOUS FIRST TEN MAIN HEADQUARTERS OF THE BIRDS TO CUT PRELIMINARY RED TAPE. REPLY UNNECESSARY.
Nick smiled thoughtfully and let his eyes flicker around the room as if he were considering a tempting proposition. He folded the note and pushed it carelessly into his pocket, knowing that the writing on the paper would be gone within the next few minutes. He knew, too, that one of Hawk's men was or had been in the dance hall.
Translated, the message read: I HAVE ORDERS FOR YOU FROM HAWK. YOU WILL BE LEAVING HERE SOON. MEET ME AT THE BIRDHOUSE OF THE BERLIN ZOO TOMORROW MORNING AT TEN FOR INSTRUCTIONS. DO NOT REPLY TO THIS NOTE AND DO NOT TRY TO FIND ME NOW. The phrase CUT PRELIMINARY RED TAPE was a security check, as were all the references to birds, but it also suggested a case involving a Communist antagonist.
Nick stayed to watch the dancers for a while and then he left for his comfortable, Brigitte-free and bloodless room at the Bristol Hotel Kempinski.
* * *
It was a blue-skied, invigorating day, far more suitable for children's fun than a meeting between spies. Nick lingered at the monkey cage and watched a group of toddlers chortling with delight at monkey antics so much like their own. Birds were singing with sweet gusto; once in a while a lion roared; way in the distance an elephant trumpeted. Nick felt in no mood for conspiracy. Yet he was curious about his new instructions and how they tied in with his bloody fact-finding in Berlin.
He strolled to the birdhouses enjoying the bright day and the cheerful normality around him.
A few minutes later he saw a tall, wiry old man in a colorful shirt, probably an American tourist, heading slowly toward him. A wave of surpri
se swept through him.
Nick wandered past the cages, gradually making his way toward the bright shirt and noting that it had stopped in front of a cageful of rather unprepossessing crowlike birds. He halted beside the lone viewer and looked critically at the birds.
"Not too handsome, are they?" said the tourist.
"Not at all," Nick agreed. "Not like eagles. And how did you enjoy your night on the town?"
Hawk raised his craggy eyebrows. "It was not a night, simply a brief excursion."
"It wasn't like you, that rather flamboyant business of sending me a message in a tube," said Nick. "If I'd done it, you would have chewed my head off."
"I suppose so," Hawk admitted, "but I can't resist those gadgets. Or zoos. But our problem is far removed from here."
A French couple stopped nearby and expressed revulsion for the ugly birds.
"What say we go look at the elephants?" said Nick. Hawk nodded. They strolled away.
"How far removed?" asked Nick, picking up where they'd left off. "Argentina?"
The older man shook his head emphatically. "Nothing there. You didn't leave many pieces for us to pick up. The police are baffled. But our man did dig up a couple of small points of interest. One: Just about everybody who knew Bronson had the impression that he was an ex-Nazi intending to go home someday, and that Hugo Bronson — which is not, of course, a German name — was not his real name. The suggestion that he might have been Bormann made them laugh. And there does not appear to have been any facial resemblance. That means nothing, though. Two: You recall the second of the two scientists Hauser supposedly saw in Buenos Aires? Rudolf Dietz? Well. Someone besides Hauser claims to have seen him in Buenos Aires. In a car with another man, whose face he did not see, heading in the general direction of Bronson's house. Now, in the light of what you found, that doesn't mean that Dietz was ever in Argentina. But it does bear out part of Hauser's story. Three: Hauser was a widely-disliked flannel-mouth who made no secret of his desire to see a resurgence of Nazism. Hauser was not his name either, of course. The point is that he was in a good position to recognize Bormann if he saw him. He was strictly a background figure in the Nazi movement, but a powerful one. Fell from grace before the end because Hitler didn't approve of his preference for naked women and hard liquor." Hawk glanced sternly at Nick as if suspecting him, too, of harboring a preference for the same luxuries.