by Nick Carter
"Why, yes, I'd love to." Julie turned on a glowing smile that encompassed all three of them. Elena smiled back with her lips.
* * *
He knocked again. Room 207 still didn't answer.
Nick frowned and went to work with the Lockpicker's Special.
He and Mark and some of Hubie's party had become embroiled in a card game that had gone on for hours. Julie and Elena had drifted upstairs, both of them pleading a long day and too much dinner at the Golden Dragon.
Nick worked quickly. Elena's room was 212, Mark's 214. It would hardly do for either of them to see him picking at Julie's door. And Mark would be on his way up any minute.
Her door squeaked open softly and he closed it after him. Julie wasn't in and her room was in disorder.
Nick padded quietly around. The dress she had been wearing was lying on her bed on top of her underwear. Shoes on the floor. Suitcase and bureau drawer open. Slippers discarded halfway across the room. He thought back to the Julie he had known. Quick in her movements, strewing things about her as she moved, tidying up when she was ready for bed. She must have left it voluntarily just before straightening up for the night… He hoped he was right.
Nick pulled a small notebook from his pocket and tore out a page. He wrote: Mother wants to see you the minute you come in. He left the note propped up on the bureau. He was at the door, ready to leave, when he heard knocking across the hall. The door opened silently at his careful touch and he looked through the tiny crack. Mark was rapping at Elena's door. No answer. Nick saw him hesitate, try again, then move to the next door and let himself into his own room. Nick gave him a minute and then stepped quietly out into the corridor, closing Julie's door behind him.
He walked up to his room, hoping to find her there. But it was as empty as he'd left it.
He left the door on the latch and went into his bathroom for a rapid shower. When he came out, stripped and tingling, he stretched out on his bedroom floor and began his Yoga exercises. His body remembered its tangle with McHugh, and he bent every controlled effort of muscle, breath and limb to eradicating the lingering effects. Stretch, breathe, stretch, and breathe again. Stretch, breathe, stretch and breathe…
Fifteen minutes later he sprang to his feet from a prone position and toweled off the sheen of perspiration that covered his lithe, tanned body.
Nick was wrapping the towel around his waist when he sensed the presence at his door. Maybe he wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't been waiting for something; but he was waiting. God, I hope it isn't Elena, he thought, off on a night-time prowl. Tonight of all nights, not Elena. The door answered him. Dit dah dah dah, it said. Dah dit dit dit.
J.B. for Julie Baron. "Come in," he called.
"Well," she said as she came in. "The old Yogi himself. And how's my muscle man tonight?" Nick reached past her and locked the door. His arms went around her and his lips bent to hers in a kiss that released the pent-up passion of the months without her.
"I see you are quite well," she said at last.
"Julie, baby, sweet baby," he whispered. "Where the hell were you?"
"Ah," she said, detaching herself gently. Nick noticed belatedly that she was wearing a summer wrap and casual shoes. "That's the question. Fix us a drink and I'll tell you all about it. You look just the same, Nick darling. Hello, muscles. Hello, scar. Hi, there… Oh, yes, where was I?" She settled herself on his bed. "I had just come out of the bathroom when I heard a knock at someone else's door, and it struck me that it could be Elena's. Now I'm not nosey, as you know, but I did wonder who might be calling at that hour. Mark, perhaps? Or you?" She scowled at him. "That wouldn't be unheard of, would it, lover?"
Nick grinned and poured from a flask.
"Three long raps, and Elena opens the door. Guess who was knocking?"
"Brian McHugh," he guessed, handing her a drink.
"McHugh is right," she said. "Smart aleck. Here's to you, darling." He took her hand and held it lovingly. "And to you, sweetheart," he said.
"They had a whispered consultation," Julie went on. "But he must have asked her to go somewhere with him because she ducked back into her room to get a wrap. Of course I did the same. And then I followed them — but with the utmost care, Nick, lover — and they went off to this seedy little bar down the street. When they got there Mauriello was waiting for them with a tall Indian gentleman who was looking very cross indeed until he saw Elena. Then she smiled that sickening smile of hers, and he seemed to melt a little. Then some men came out of the bar and — and, well, I thought it best to leave."
"I'm glad you did," Nick said thoughtfully. "You don't know if the others stayed there, then?"
"Oh, but I do know. I swooped around the block and saw them coming out. They all climbed into a taxi that just seemed to appear for them, on cue. But then I lost them altogether. There simply wasn't another cab around. They headed away from the hotel. Where to, I wouldn't know. I'm sorry, Nick. I did the best I could."
"You did well," he said. "At least we know for sure that the three of them are working together." He thought for a moment. "The Indian in the bar. Had you seen him before? On the plane, or anywhere?"
Julie shook her head. "Uh-uh. I got the impression that he was a local man — man of connections, with his own tame taxicab. And distinctly annoyed about the meeting, or about something."
"I'll bet he was," Nick said drily. "People usually are when they have corpses dumped into their laps. Man, I'd really like to know how they're going to explain that business in the tunnel… Thanks for everything you did today, Julie. Perhaps you'd better go and get some sleep while I glue my eye to Mark's keyhole." But his eyes Were caressing her face and his hand tightened around hers.
"Mark's keyhole. Elena's, you mean — you rat." But her face was far more gentle than her words and her cat's eyes were dreamy. She smiled, showing the slightly crooked teeth that, to him, made her face perfect. "Yes, it's bedtime, honey. But do you think it's very gallant of you to chase me out?" Her fingers brushed his cheek. "I don't," she murmured. "No, indeed I don't. Do you remember, sweetheart when…"
He remembered. And in a moment, together, they were reliving that memory.
In that pocket of time there was no Mark, no Elena, no watchful hunt; no masks, no dead men, and no killers. Only two magnificent human bodies almost melding into one, and two urgent sparks of passion fanning the other into a single blaze.
Somehow the lights went out. And somehow the darkness was brighter and warmer than the light. Two intense, hard-living and hard-loving people made rapturous love until the ecstatic pleasure of their joint perfection was almost too much to bear. They clung to each other, rocking rhythmically, their bodies instruments of infinite delight. They whispered endearments that trailed off into moans of pleasure. And suddenly a thousand skyrockets burst up through the ceiling and zoomed into the sky, lighting the entire city… perhaps the universe.
Or so it seemed to them.
"Love me, love me, love me… I love you, my darling. Love me."
"I love you. I do love you."
And this time it was no he.
Take-off for the Taj Mahal
Nick watched them come aboard.
Some of Uncle Hubie's party. Little part-Japanese lady. Chinese couple. A nothing sort of couple. McHugh, a solemn look on his face and something around his wrist: a bandage. Nick remembered that twist with pleasure. Mauriello, redolent with alcohol that wasn't after-shave lotion. An old man with white hair and two cameras. Nick mentally checked his own cameras; all present and correct, easily accessible. Miss A. J. Wyatt ("Alma Jane — awful, isn't it? Call me Janie"), closely followed by a lively oldster whose eyes popped dangerously whenever they went too high or too low or too anything in Julie's general direction. Mostly he seemed to be a leg man and he liked trailing her up stairs. Uncle Hubie was a breast man, himself. There he was now, with a neat little round lump on his forehead. Serves him right for trying to stick his nose down the front of Julie's dress. Sti
ll, if you were going to take a poke at all the males who leered at her lasciviously, her path would be strewn with fallen bodies.
Mark and Elena. More of Hubie's people. Some of the singles, no longer solitary; widows and widowers, with someone to talk to. No one new.
Nick hitched a camera strap around his neck and made his customary stroll down the aisle.
He noticed that the passengers were considerably more relaxed and clubby than they had been when he had joined the flight. The purser was helping Mrs. Adelaide Van Hassel sort out her tangle of bundles, and one of the stewardesses was looking at her watch. Captain Tormey tore himself away from conversation with a recently retired Air Force colonel and walked down the aisle toward the flight deck. And that seemed to be it. No more passengers.
"Hi, Phil," said Mark. "Got ahead of us, I see."
"Hello, you two. Guess we're about ready for take-off. But we seem to be missing someone. What happened to old Brown?"
"You hadn't heard?" Mark asked. "Young McHugh said he'd had a minor heart attack last night. He insisted he'd be well enough to travel, but it looks as though the doctors wouldn't let him."
Nick clucked sympathetically. "I hope the old boy's going to be all right. It did strike me that he's been looking awfully tired."
"Ye-es," Mark said thoughtfully. "Funny, y'know. He looks so much like someone I used to… well, not exactly know, but… well, he just looked oddly familiar." Elena glanced at him sharply. And then caught herself quickly. Mark shrugged. "Now I don't suppose I'll ever have a chance to ask him if he had the same feeling about me."
"I don't suppose you will," said Nick.
He walked back along the aisle to the rear of the plane.
The Chinese couple were giggling and chattering like a couple of newlyweds. Nick grinned at them companionably.
And then the new passenger boarded hurriedly.
It was impossible to hear his name at that distance and through the noise. But his face was indisputably Chinese.
"A fellow countryman of yours," Nick remarked to Mr. Lee. "Not many on this flight, are there?" It was a banal enough comment, but it got a startling reaction. Lee Sob smiled and peered down the aisle. "Ah, so…" he began. His smile froze and hung in the air like a terrified Cheshire Cat's. The parchment-yellow face twisted. The strange shape of his mouth emitted a gasping sound halfway between a sob of absolute terror and a meaningless word. It sounded like "hhuhhgoon."
"You know him, I take it," Nick said mildly.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Lee Soo turned their faces away.
The new arrival walked slowly up the aisle searching for his seat. He carried one bag, a worn black leather affair that looked like a doctor's bag that had grown a size or two. One side of his face was marred by a scar that reached from his eyebrow to his chin.
Nick felt a strange sort of relief. This was the man he had been waiting for.
"Scarface Moon Goon." It had to be. At last the crazy name made sense. A Chinaman with a scar.
Scarface found a seat near the rear of the plane about two rows in front of where Nick stood in the aisle.
The door of the plane closed and the airstair was whisked away. A red sign flashed. The great jet engines roared.
Nick sat down in the aisle seat of the nearest empty double, a warning signal ticking in his brain. A map of their air route formed in his mind. And on his mental map a border stood out clearly. He strapped his seat belt and unstrapped the camera that he sometimes carried but only pretended to use.
The camera came out of its case. And out of the shell of the camera came a small metal container with a single, simple switch. It only needed one switch, for there was only one thing the metal container was equipped to do: send out one steady signal on one single frequency to be picked up by the very few men in the world who were standing by to receive its secretive blip-beep. With any luck it would pinpoint their location when whatever was to happen actually did happen. Nick reached under his seat and felt the two tiny curved hooks clawing into the fabric. When he was sure the little transmitter was firmly attached he leaned back comfortably and waited for the Seat Belt sign to blink out.
Moments later he was back in his own seat, half-hearing the crisp British accent of their Indian stewardess offering flight statistics to a tour-weary crowd.
"…Your hostess Edda… Welcome… flying… thousand feet… time… Agra… Taj Mahal… refreshments… enjoy… Captain Tormey… Thank you."
The soft metal of the camera shell crumpled between his crushing fingers. When he was through with it no one in the world could possibly have guessed what it had been or what it might have contained. He put the empty case into his camera bag.
The galley curtain billowed. Stewardesses and purser were making movements and clinking sounds behind it. McHugh was reading. Couples talked together softly. Snatches of talk… A night arrival… Taj Mahal in moonlight… so romantic.
Nick's spine was creeping with a feeling something other than romantic.
Mauriello's face was set in an ugly granite mask.
Julie was asleep. Mark and Elena had stopped talking. Brian McHugh was no longer reading.
Scarface… Nick turned in his seat, suppressing a yawn.
Scarface was nowhere in sight. Maybe he was slumped, asleep, against the window. No, he wasn't. Ah. Two of the lavatories were marked "Occupied." Well. Mauriello? Still sitting there like a block of stone. Now he was getting up. Walking up the aisle toward Nick. Passing him. Face strangely set, as if — as if he were having trouble breathing.
Someone was coming down the aisle behind Nick. Past him. Scarface. The lavatory lights still read "Occupied." Mauriello was standing outside one of the doors, holding a black bag that looked very much like Moon Goon's. Strange. Then, Mauriello was pulling something over his head. For Chrissake, it was a kind of snout — Nick cursed and caught his breath. Scarface? McHugh?
Scarface had stopped in the aisle alongside McHugh. Both of them had suddenly become transformed into something like monsters from outer space. Goggle eyes and snouts. Gas masks.
Nick rose clumsily in his seat and pawed into his jacket for Wilhelmina.
Scarface and McHugh, monstrously masked, walked down the aisle away from him. He could see something dangling and glinting in their hands. Loops of wire. Garrotes.
His swirling brain fumbled with the thought as he stumbled into the aisle and clutched the seat in front of him for support. Garrotes meant one thing. Kill. Stop them! No, gotta go with plane. Everybody else asleep. No, there was little Japanese lady, practically falling into the aisle. Big man with glasses, standing, dropping in his tracks. Behind, a peculiar muffled voice saying something like: "All right, youse guys. Nobody moves. I got you covered." Nick managed one more step and stopped. He saw the Captain's light flashing for a stewardess. And he saw the two masked men with garrotes opening the door to the flight-deck. His feet were rooted to the carpet between the rows of sleeping passengers. Time froze.
* * *
Captain Tormey sensed the opening door and felt his hand slip off the automatic pilot. Thank Christ he'd managed to set it before passing out completely; the oxygen tube had helped a little.
"For God's sake," he said thickly. "What goes on? Stuffy as a prison cell in here. Whattsa matter?"
He heard two crisp, sickening thuds and saw his copilot managing a slow half-turn and then jerking back his head with a gargling cry. Tormey swung around clumsily. His confused eyes caught a nightmare scene. Co-pilot Jack wrenching at something around his throat. Radio operator and flight engineer lying sprawled out like straw men with the stuffing kicked out of them. Two incredible figures in horror masks, one of them relentlessly tightening a wire around Jack's throat and the other reaching out dirty yellow hands and a gleaming cord toward him… Captain Tormey swung out wildly.
The last thing he saw was a hideous close-up of two huge goggles and an elephant-like trunk. He thought he said something about Oh God, all the people, but the only sound that came
from his throat was a retching rattle that ended very suddenly. His arms and legs flailed out uncontrollably through the red mist that was wrapping itself around him. One leg struck something, hard, but Captain Tormey didn't know it. The red mist had turned to black.
The giant aircraft bucked and plunged.
Underneath his mask McHugh uttered a sibilant exclamation. He pushed his way past Goon and shouldered Tormey's body aside. He reached for the controls. The jet was losing altitude too rapidly.
* * *
Nick struggled desperately. Only to walk a few steps, only to reach for Wilhelmina, open that cabin door and stop the killing he knew was taking place inside. The poisoned breath he had sucked in was telling on him. But if he could just… He didn't know, couldn't figure out, what it was he could «just» do. Oh, yes. Wilhelmina. He could hold his breath another couple of minutes; Yoga training. But Yoga couldn't help him smell odorless gas; couldn't keep his head clear when he had already breathed it in. Just one minute with Wilhelmina. One quick shot would get Mauriello… Nick swayed and peered over his shoulder. Mauriello stood motionless at the rear of the plane, a.45-caliber machine gun clamped into his hands as firmly as if it was growing there. One spray of shots from that thing and half a dozen people could die and the windows be blown out and the pressure would drop and a stray bullet could strike God knows what vital part of the plane. Anyway, Mauriello wasn't on the flight-deck with a garrote.
Flight-deck. Get there. But his muscles rebelled. His mind told him that they were still flying and that he was supposed to stay with it no matter what. The plane shuddered slightly, pitching him forward a couple of feet. Mauriello's muffled voice yelled down the aisle: "Hey, you! Siddown or I blow your head off."
The huge aircraft bucked and plunged. Its movement was so violent, so abrupt, that Nick was flung heavily to the floor. His breath slammed out of his body. His lungs sucked in a long draught of the poisoned air. He rolled once, feeling a sensation of great weight as the airplane plummeted down, and then he went on going down and down and down and down until he saw and heard no more.