Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
I
The jigsaw puzzle of death began on a calm, quiet Sunday in the Cumberland mountains where Kentucky and Virginia rub shoulders. On that afternoon Colonel Thomas MacGowan walked toward the two soldiers standing in front of the doorway to the gray, flat-topped, two-story building.
"Red" MacGowan to his classmates at "the Point," but definitely the Colonel to everyone else, had already passed the outer security checkpoint and the main gate station. The two privates snapped to attention as he came up to the door. He returned their salutes with brisk smartness. Sunday was always a quiet day, in fact a boring day to stand duty, but he was in the rotating pool and this was the Sunday he'd drawn. He carried, the morning paper under his arm, crammed with the usual bulky Sunday sections.
As was his habit, Colonel Thomas MacGowan paused at the door to glance around at the stillness of the compound. He should have been relaxed, as befits a man on a boring tour of duty. Yet for some reason he was on edge, almost jumpy. Mildred had even passed comment on it during breakfast, but he'd chalked it up to a poor night's sleep. The Colonel was a traditional military man and not given to thoughts of extrasensory premonitions.
Beyond the flat, gray, unattractive main building, but within the fenced area of the compound, were the small cottages of the scientific personnel. Almost everyone was away this weekend attending the big seminar in Washington. The main building and the houses in back of it had suddenly appeared in the fastness of the Cumberland mountains one month, almost as if set down there by some giant hand.
He doubted that any of the residents in a fifty-mile area even suspected the building's purpose. Oh, there was talk of secret government work, and it gave spice to gossip during long winter nights. But communication between the scientific people at the compound and the residents was kept at a minimum.
The Colonel went inside the building, into a clean, antiseptically white interior with various corridors branching off from the main foyer and laboratories extending from each corridor. Before going up to his second-floor office, he paused at a steel door marked RESTRICTED-AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He peered through the small glass window. Two soldiers stood inside, rifles in their hands. Beyond them another steel door, this one windowless with a slot across it, stood closed. Sergeant Hanford and Corporal Haynes were the two men on duty. They returned his glance with stone faces, and he knew they didn't like the Sunday detail any more than he did.
He turned, went up the short flight of steps and into his office. General O'Radford was in command of the compound, but the General was away in Washington and Colonel Thomas MacGowan was in charge. Perhaps that was adding to his edgy feeling, he told himself.
Red MacGowan spread the newspaper on the desk and began to read. The caption on the lead-column item leaped out at him at once.
INTERNATIONAL BACTERIOLOGISTS MEETING VIRUS STOCKPILING A POSSIBLE ISSUE
The colonel's smile was a little grim as he read the article.
"The International Symposium of Bacteriologists meeting in the nation's capital was concerned with the increasing creation and maintenance of deadly germ warfare viruses for which man has no known defense. The leading government bacteriologist, Dr. Joseph Carlsbad, has called such viruses an invitation to disaster. He has called for a halt to further stockpiling. Government officials have said there is no cause for alarm and that such defensive measures must be continued."
Red MacGowan's smile broadened at the line about no cause for alarm. They were right. An unauthorized flea couldn't get into the main building, to say nothing of the surrounding compound. He turned to the sports pages.
On the floor below, Sergeant Hanford and Corporal Haynes were peering through the small window at the tall, white-haired, thin-faced man on the other side of the door. They both knew him by sight, and he had to pass three security checks to reach that door, yet they had him hold up his ID pass.
Behind the man with the ascetic face there stood a mountain that walked like a man, some 325 pounds of flesh, Sergeant Hanford guessed, a Japanese, perhaps once a Sumo wrestler. He was flanked by two small, thin, wiry Japanese. The sergeant opened the door for Dr. Joseph Carlsbad and the scientist stepped into the small anteroom. "Thank you, Sergeant," the scientist said. "We want to go into the Repository area. Will you please tell the inside guards to admit us?"
"Have these men restricted clearance, sir?" the sergeant asked. Corporal Haynes stood back, rifle in hand.
"They have visitors' passes and general security clearance." The scientist smiled. At a gesture, the three men produced their passes. Sergeant Hanford picked up the telephone. It rang at once in the windowless second-floor office where Colonel MacGowan had just finished reading the sports section.
"Dr. Carlsbad is here, sir," the sergeant said. "He wants to go into the Repository area and he has three visitors with him." He paused a moment and then went on. "No, sir, they only have general visitors' clearance," he said.
"May I speak to the Colonel," Dr. Carlsbad said. The sergeant handed him the phone.
"Colonel MacGowan," Dr. Carlsbad said, "I have three visiting bacteriologists from Japan with me. They're attending the symposium in Washington. But of course you know about that. I didn't think to get restricted personnel clearance for them but I'll vouch for them. After all, I had to sign their general clearance myself, didn't I?" He laughed, a small, comradely laugh. "I'll assume full responsibility, Colonel. I just didn't think to ask General O'Radford for restricted clearances when I saw him in Washington. I would be terribly embarrassed if my colleagues here came this distance for nothing."
"Naturally, Dr. Carlsbad," the colonel answered. Hell, he told himself, Carlsbad was Scientific Director of the place. He, if anyone, ought to know what he was doing. Besides, there were two more armed guards inside the area.
"Give me the sergeant, please," he said. When the sergeant put down the phone, he turned and called through the slot in the steel door. In a moment it was opened by a soldier wearing sidearms. Dr. Carlsbad and the other men went into the Repository area and the door was shut after them at once.
It turned out the colonel was right about one thing. The good doctor knew very well what he was doing. Casually he took the other men down a corridor lined with rows of small steel boxes, each about the size of a cigar box but tightly latched and made of heavy-gauge steel. Beside each box was a chart listing the contents of the box and the scientific uses for it.
"No one can leave the base with one of these boxes," he explained to the huge Japanese, "without orders countersigned three times by the Commanding Officer, the head of Bacterial Warfare Section Ten and by one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
Dr. Carlsbad pulled one of the steel boxes out of its slot and out of the corner of his eye he saw the two soldiers, one at each end of the corridor, reach for their guns. He smiled and pushed the box back into its slot again. The huge Japanese strolled casually to the far end of the corridor and smiled pleasantly at the soldier while Dr. Carlsbad and the other two men moved to the opposite end of the room. Still smiling, the large man lashed out with one arm and grabbed the soldier's throat with a hand that closed entirely around it. Squeezing at the right spots, the Japanese killed the soldier in less than five seconds.
Meanwhile at the opposite end of the room the two men had casually sauntered over to the guard and, acting as one, plunged two daggers into him. That also took a matter of seconds. Dr. Carlsbad yanked a particular box from its slot; he knew the vial inside the metal box was securely locked in place and protected from breakage and accidental dislodging.
"The window is behind us on the right wall," he said tensely. Later on, Sergeant Hanford was to report that Dr. Carlsbad's usually bright eyes had seemed extremely intense and burning, the eyes of a man on a holy mission.
The windowpane was found later, cut out silently with a plastic-handled, diamond-tipped glass cutter which had gone through the electronic eye at the main gate undetected. It was left behind with a note. The four men were last observed walking casually across the grounds to the rear of the compound where the cottages stood. Private Wendell Holcomb, on sentry duty near the side fence, saw the quartet. He had no reason to question them inside the compound, knowing that they had to have passed all previous checkpoints of the security system. Besides, he recognized Dr. Carlsbad at once.
In his windowless office, Red MacGowan was feeling more restless. He wasn't worried about Dr. Carlsbad, not really, but he had permitted him to take in three people not cleared for restricted area. In twenty years Red MacGowan had never violated a rule, and it ate into him that he'd done so in this instance. He picked up the blue telephone and rang Sergeant Hanford downstairs. When the sergeant told Colonel MacGowan that the doctor hadn't come out yet, MacGowan slammed down the phone and took the short flight of steps three at a time.
Hanford and Haynes still wore their expressionless stone faces, but there was worry in their eyes. It grew when the Colonel didn't get an answer as he called through the slot in the Repository door. Suddenly feeling very cold, MacGowan took out a set of keys and opened the slotted door. The body of the nearest interior security guard half-blocked the door as it swung open. The colonel didn't have to see any more.
"Red Alarm!" he shouted. "Hit that button, dammit!" In three seconds he heard the high-pitched intermittent horn as it echoed from one end of the compound to the other. The colonel and the two soldiers entered the repository. When they saw the empty slot, their eyes met, communicating confused astonishment, anger — and more than a little plain everyday fear.
That's how it began, the start of a tapestry of terror that was to threaten the world itself.
* * *
Exactly one hour later David Hawk, Director and Chief of Operations of AXE, U.S. Special Espionage Agency, heard the phone ring in his living room. He'd just finished pruning the trellised roses around tie small arbor near the door of his modest frame house outside the capital. It was his Sunday afternoon labor of love. Flowers were soothing to him. A little sun and water and they grew. Uncomplicated, and so unlike the rest of his world. He took off his thick gardener s gloves and picked up the phone. It was the President of the United States.
* * *
The events of that quiet Sunday afternoon were reaching out for me, too, only I didn't know it then. I was busy doing my own reaching. I'd just finished the third very cold dry martini at the end of a lazy Sunday in an elegant town house in the charming Washington suburb of Georgetown. Across the way from me, also very gracious and elegant, was Sherry Nestor, daughter of the billionaire shipping combine owner, Harry Nestor. Sherry, very tall, very langorous and very passionate, reclined on the couch in an ice-blue hostess gown cut extremely low. Her breasts, rounded and softly curved, peeked out around the edges of the deep V-necked gown. I'd met Sherry when I was on a job for AXE involving a lot of "Daddy's boats" — said boats being a fleet of some fifty oil tankers. Sherry had taken a liking to me, something I never discouraged. It was a happy coincidence that on the weekend Hawk had ordered me to attend the dry symposium on bacteriological warfare, the town house was all Sherry's, except for the servants, of course.
Now Sherry drained her martini and looked at me from under half-drawn eyelids. She spoke slowly. Sherry did everything slowly, until she got in bed. I was still wondering how such a relaxed, slow-moving, almost diffident girl could generate so much energy when it came to sex. Maybe it was just a case of saving up. Anyway, Sherry speared me with her gray-green eyes and her lips pursed, edging out into a half-pout.
"Dinner won't be until eight and Paul and Cynthia Ford are coming," she said. "They're night owls and I'm not waiting that long. I'm hungry now!"
I knew what she meant. We were in her rooms on the top floor, and as I stood up, Sherry ticked off the tiny latch holding the top of the gown together. It fell open and her rounded breasts came out like two pink-tipped buds blossoming in the morning sun. Some girls' breasts thrust out, some point up piquantly. Sherry's breasts were all soft roundness and I found them with my lips, caressing them, reveling in their softness.
"Like last night, Nick," she breathed. "Like last night" It had been the first time for Sherry and me, and I'd promised her more and better. "Oh, God, it couldn't be," she had said in my ear. I was about to show her. I lifted her up and put her down on the bed, and her legs, moving up and down, kicked off the gown and searched for my body. I traced my lips down her body, between her breasts, over her abdomen, down across the curving line of her belly.
I was glad the doors of the old house were thick oak. Sherry screamed in ecstasy, her cries growing louder as I made love to her. With each new sensation she'd gasp long, lingering cries, sometimes ending in a laugh of pure pleasure.
"Oh, God, God," she cried, and her long legs circled my waist as she thrust herself up at me. Faster and faster went the rhythm and suddenly she buried her head against my chest and cried out in the eternal rapturous cry of fulfillment. Her body quivered for a long moment before she fell back and her legs fell limply apart. I stayed with her and she moaned, little sounds of pleasure. I moved to her side. She didn't say anything for a long time, and we lay with bodies touching as I took in the beauty of her figure. Finally she turned her head toward me and opened her eyes.
"Don't you want to go into the shipping business, Nick?"
I grinned at her. "I might someday. Can I think about it?"
"Please do," she murmured. "I'm going to nap till dinner. I want to restore my energies… for later on."
I cradled her against me and we both slept.
* * *
We were halfway through dinner when the butler announced that I had a phone call. I took it in the study, knowing damn well who it would be. Hawk was the only one who knew where I was. Leaving word of one's whereabouts was a strict rule for all AXE agents. The tight, strained flatness of Hawk's voice told me there was trouble before he'd said half-a-dozen words.
"Who's there besides the Nestor girl?" he asked. I told him about Paul and Cynthia Ford and that we were midway through dinner. Usually Hawk didn't care what I was midway through. This time I heard him pause.
"All right, finish dinner," he said. "I don't want you dashing out of there because I called. After dinner, be casual and say that I want to talk to you for a little while and that you'll be back. Tell them it's nothing important. Then excuse yourself and get the hell over here at once."
"To your place?" I asked.
"No, the office. I'm there now."
He hung up and I went back to eat, just as the man had said to do. But during the remainder of dinner my mind was racing, consumed with curiosity. Hawk's insistence on my being unhurriedly casual was a tip-off. It meant that whatever was happening, it was anything but casual. I kept my cool through coffee in the Nestors' antique-gold drawing room and then through some small talk. Finally, glancing at my watch, I excused myself for an hour or so. Sherry went to the door with me, her shrewd gray-green eyes studying me.
"Are you really coming back?" she asked. "Or is this one of your little ploys. I know you, Nickie boy."
I grinned at her and caressed her breast, outlined through the hostess gown. She shivered.
"Damn you. You better come back now," she said.
"If I can come back, I'll come," I said. "And you know it." A fleeting smile in her eyes told me she did.
* * *
The lights of the AXE offices on DuPont Circle in the heart of Washington were yellow eyes watching me as I approached. A long, black Lincoln pulled away from the curb just as I reached the front door and I saw the small State Department seal on it. Full security was on, I noted as I showed credentials three times, right up to the pretty little thing in the outside office.
Two men sat there, briefcases beside each of them, looking for all the world like salesmen, Their fast, probing eyes that watched my every move gave them away. I smiled pleasantly at them and grinned inwardly at the effort it took them to nod back.
The girl had put my card through her little computer and a tiny screen beside the desk showed her my picture. It also told her I was AXE Agent N3, rating Killmaster, could pilot a plane, drive Formula 1 racing cars, speak three languages perfectly and four more passably. It also told her I was single, and when she handed me back my card her eyes were full of interest. I made a mental note to get her name. The Chief, for all his New England conservatism, knew how to brighten up the outer office.
He was in his leather chair, spare, lean face controlled as usual, steel-blue eyes alert. Only the way he kept shifting the unlit cigar from side to side told me he was unusually agitated. He always chewed rather than smoked his cigars. It was the speed at which he chewed them that was the tip-off.
"Big visitors at this time of night," I commented, sliding into a chair. He knew at once I was referring to the State Department limousine.
"Big trouble," he said. "That's why I didn't want it spread that you dashed out of tie Nestors' house. We've already got enough newshawks sniffing around."
He sighed, sat back and regarded me with a long stare.
"I only sent you to attend that bacteriological symposium because I wanted you to get up to date on the stuff," he mused aloud. "But sometimes I think I'm psychic."
I didn't debate the point. I'd seen plenty of evidence of it.
"You're aware of the Cumberland Research Operation, of course " he said.
"Only aware of it," I answered. "Our virus factory. The stuff that's been getting such a second look from so many people lately."
Hawk nodded. "In the Cumberland operation there are sixty bacterial strains for which man has no known antidote. Let loose, they could wipe out whole areas and perhaps more than just areas. Of them all, the deadliest strain is one called X–V77, X–Virus seven-seven. Sometime between four-ten and four-twenty this afternoon, X–V77 was removed from the Cumberland Repository."
I let out a low whistle. "It was," Hawk continued, "removed by the Director of Cumberland, Dr. Joseph Carlsbad, and three other men unknown to us. Two guards were killed."
"Carlsbad is the guy who's been making noises of late," I recalled. "Is he some land of kook?"
"That'd be too simple," Hawk said. "He's a brilliant bacteriologist who, as we piece it together, worked along with us so he'd be in a position to influence government thinking. When he found he couldn't really do that, he began planning to take things into his own hands."
"You say planning. That means you feel this wasn't a sudden, impulsive action."
"Hell, no," Hawk said. "This move took a lot of planning. This was left at the scene."
He pushed a note at me and I read it quickly, aloud. "I have stopped talking," it said. 'This is my ultimatum. Unless all bacteriological warfare stockpiles are destroyed, I will destroy those who would destroy mankind. Science cannot be misused for political ends. I shall be in further contact. Unless what I say is done, I will strike a blow for all people everywhere."
Hawk got up, paced the room and gave me a total picture as it had been reconstructed. When he'd finished, the lines in his face were even deeper.
"This has to come on top of the World Leadership Conference scheduled for next week," Hawk muttered. I knew about the Conference, hailed as the first real gathering of the world's leadership to try and solve the problems of this old planet, I didn't know AXE was involved in it, and Hawk grimaced at my question.
"Everybody's involved," he said. "They've got the FBI on internal security, State on operations, the CIA on watching known problem areas. Here, just look at this list of biggies due at the United Nations General Assembly building on the opening day of the Conference."
I scanned the list briefly and saw some one hundred and thirty names. My eyes picked out the chiefs of state of all the major powers, Russia, France, Japan, Italy. I saw that the Queen of England was listed. So was Chairman Mao of the People's Republic of China, his first trip to the UN. The head of the International Council of Churches was on the list as was the Pope, all living past Presidents of the United States, the prime ministers., presidents and kings of every country on the globe. It was to be a first of its kind, all right, a major step in assembling the world's leaders in one place to act, even superficially, as one body. I gave the list back to Hawk.
"Got any leads on Carlsbad, any particular person he might be after?" I asked.
"We gave everything we know about the man to the Chief Psychiatrist at the Pentagon, Dr. Tarlman," Hawk replied. "His conclusion is that Carlsbad's real desire is to injure the United States, probably by infecting one of the world's leaders. Carlsbad's parents and sister were killed at Hiroshima where, as Methodist missionaries, they were interned during World War II. Dr. Tarlbut says Carlsbad's principles may be sincere, but they're abetted by his repressed hatred of those who killed his parents and sister."
"Interesting," I commented. "In any case, it all means that the doctor might do any damn thing with his deadly strain of bacteria. And if we start alerting every prominent person in the world, the cat's out of the bag."
"Exactly," Hawk agreed. "So for now, at least, this is still top-secret security. Our one lead is Carlsbad's niece, Rita Kenmore. She lived with him, and we know be is very devoted to the girl. She's still at his house. I've got men watching it on a twenty-four-hour basis. Tomorrow, I want you to go to her and see what you can find out. I've a feeling that Carlsbad will try to contact her."
"Should I go back to Sherry Nestor tonight?"
"Absolutely," Hawk snapped, and I knew it was hurting him to give me another night of pleasure. Normally he'd have me on some plane within the hour. "I want nothing added to the rumors already starting to fly. Boxly of the Post-Times has wind of something already, and hell have his crew beating the bushes in all directions. In the morning, instead of going to the symposium, you'll go to Carlsbad's home here in Washington. Check with me first, though."
Hawk swiveled and gazed out the window and I knew he was through.
I left with a chill wrapped around me, a feeling of elements outside man's control waiting to descend. The pretty little thing in the outside office smiled at me. It was an effort to smile back, and I forgot to get her name. It didn't seem important anymore. I walked slowly through the night, thinking about what I'd just been told and putting together what few things we knew. Carlsbad had not been alone. He had some kind of organization. A giant Japanese ought to be easy enough to spot.
I had no idea then what land of an organization Carlsbad had put together. I was to find out, however, that it was kind of an elite of the damned.
* * *
When I got back to Sherry's, Paul and Cynthia were still there, and I maintained a casual air until they left. It was Sherry who, with her native shrewdness, saw through my façade.
"I know better than to ask what, but something's gone wrong," she said. I grinned at her.
"Not here," I said. "Let's get lost." She nodded and she was naked in my arms in moments and we got lost, the whole damned night, lost in the pleasures of feeling and not thinking, of the body over the mind, of the present over the future. It was a nice way and a nice place in which to get lost, and Sherry was as eager as I was.
II
I left Sherry half-awake in bed, murmuring for me to stay. "Can't, darling, I said in her ear. Her soft breasts were outside the sheet and I covered her up. She pulled the sheet down again without opening her eyes. "Still no go, doll," I chuckled. I brushed her body with my lips and left her grumbling. I'd checked out Wilhelmina, the 9mm Luger in the shoulder holster under my jacket, and I'd strapped Hugo, the pencil-thin stiletto, in its leather sheath on my forearm. Pressure at the right spot and the tempered steel blade dropped into my palm, silently, deadly.
I paused in the study downstairs and called Hawk. He was still harried, a man juggling more than he could safely handle. He told me they'd confiscated the only copy of the speech Carlsbad had sent to the symposium chairman to have read for him.
"It was rambling, threatening in vague ways," the Chief said. "It had Dr. Cook, the chairman, thoroughly confused and he was happy to see us take it off his hands."
"I'm on my way now to see the niece," I said.
"She's in scientific research herself, Nick," Hawk told me. "The two men watching the front and back of the house are FBI, I'm in walkie-talkie contact with them. I'll tell them you're on your way."
I was about to hang up when he spoke again. "And Nick, bear down. Time is short."
I went outside to the little blue Cougar parked near the Nestor house. I drove to the edge of Washington proper and found the Carlsbad house in the run-down area, the last house on a long street. A thick wall of woods was about twenty yards behind the house and there was heavy shrubbery in a vacant lot across the street from it. The house itself was run-down and decrepit-looking. I was frankly surprised. After all, Carlsbad wasn't drawing peanuts in his position as Director of the Cumberland Operation. Certainly he could afford something better than this.
I parked and walked to the weathered, cracked door and rang the bell. My next surprise was the girl who answered the door. I saw china-blue eyes, big and round, under a shock of short, brown hair set in a round, saucy face with a pert nose and full lips. A blue jersey blouse, almost the color of her eyes, tightened itself over full, upturned, thrusting breasts and a deep blue miniskirt revealed young, smoothly firm legs. Rita Kenmore was, to say the least, an eye-filling bit of fluff.
"Dr. Carlsbad, please," I said. The china-blue eyes stayed the same, but in this business you learn to catch the little things, and I saw the tiny line of tension tighten in her pretty jaw. I also noted that her fist was clenched white around the doorknob.
"He's not here," she said flatly. I smiled pleasantly and moved into the house in one quick step. I flashed an identity card that she hardly had time to read. "Then I'll wait," I said. "Carter, Nick Carter."
"Dr. Carlsbad won't be back," she said nervously.
"How do you know?" I asked quickly. "Have you heard from him?"
"No, no," she said too quickly. "I don't think he'll be back, that's all."
Little Miss Blue-eyes was lying. Either that or she damned well knew what had happened and expected to hear from Carlsbad and didn't want me around when she did. My eyes scanned the room and its worn furniture. I stepped to a doorway and peered into an adjoining room, a bedroom. A woman's traveling bag was open on the bed.
"Going someplace, Miss Kenmore?" I asked. I saw her china-blue eyes flare and seem to grow smaller as she tried an indignant act.
"Get out of this house, whoever you represent," she cried. "You've no right to come in here and question me. I'll call the police."
"Go ahead," I told her, deciding to sail with it. "Your uncle's got no right to steal vital government material."
I saw some of the bluster go out of her eyes, and she moved away. From the side, her breasts turned up sharply in a saucy, piquant line. "I don't know what you're talking about," she snapped, not looking at me. I had to admit that there was absolute conviction in her voice. But then maybe she was merely a good actress, a natural feminine talent. She turned toward me, and the round, china-blue eyes were a mixture of defensive righteousness and worry.
"He hasn't done anything wrong," she said. "My uncle is a sincere, dedicated man. Whatever he does is done only to make the world listen. Somebody's got to make it listen."
"And Dr. Carlsbad is the one, eh?" I offered. She took a deep breath in an obvious effort to compose herself. It may have helped compose her but the way it thrust her breasts out against the blue blouse didn't help my composure. It was damned hard to imagine her in some stuffy laboratory.
She glared at me. "I told you I don't know anything about anything," she said. When she looked at me again her eyes were misty. "I wish you'd tell me what's happened," she said.
Suddenly I had the distinct feeling that she was telling me a half-truth at least, that Carlsbad had not really taken her into his confidence. But she was waiting for someone or something and packing to go some place. I decided not to enlighten her. This way her anxiety would stay high. It might trip her up into revealing something. I merely smiled at her, and she turned away and began pacing up and down the room. I casually folded myself into an overstuffed chair and pretended not to catch her furtive glances out the windows. Good. She was expecting people, not phone calls. Maybe even Carlsbad himself. It would be nice to wrap this one up so quickly, I mused.
"Are you a bacteriologist, too?" I asked casually. "Or can't you stop pacing long enough to answer."
She glared at me and forced herself to sit down on the sofa across from me.
"I'm in the field of sexual research," she said, keeping her voice frosted. My eyebrows shot upward. I could feel them go, and I grinned at her.
"Now that sounds like a fun topic."
Her eyes were as icy as her voice. "I've been doing work on the effects of stress, strain and anxiety on human sexual response."
I turned that one over in my mind as I grinned at her. It was a subject I could tell her a few things about.
"All interview stuff?" I asked.
"Interviews, detailed reports from selected subjects and observation, also of selected subjects." She was trying to sound terribly detached and scientific.
"Oh?" My grin widened. "That's a pretty large field — and an interesting one."
Her eyes flashed and she started to answer, then thought better of it. But the proud lift of her chin as she turned away said it all — she was a scientist with ideals and high purpose, and I was a government agent with a dirty mind.
I had my doubts about the scientific detachment of anybody, no matter how idealistic, who stood around taking notes and «observing» while people made love, but I wasn't about to argue the point She was too pretty to argue with. Besides, I was beginning to think that my presence was keeping her from making any moves. Maybe if I left, she would try to join Carlsbad, in which case I could tail her.
I turned and started for the door. Pausing, I took a piece of paper from my pocket and wrote on it before handing it to her. I wanted to make it look good.
"Don't leave town, and if you see or hear from Dr. Carlsbad, call this number," I said. She took the slip of paper without looking at it.
"I'll be back," I grinned at her, letting my eyes linger on the tips of her breasts. "For one reason or another."
Her china-blue eyes registered nothing, but I saw the faint tightening of her lips and I knew she was watching me through the small hall window as I walked to the car, got in and drove away. I looked back at the house as I turned the corner and again wondered why in hell Carlsbad wanted to live in such a run-down old antique.
I drove around the block and then stopped. Moving quickly and silently, I crossed to the edge of the woods behind the house where Hawk said one of the FBI boys was watching the place. He'd said he was staying in constant touch with them via walkie-talkie; contacting them would be the fastest way for me to get hold of him.
Once at the edge of the woods I moved slowly. I didn't want a bullet in my gut. Chances were the FBI boys would be cautious before shooting, but you couldn't be sure. I crawled on my hands and knees through the underbrush and cast a look at the house. I was directly behind it now.
"N3… AXE," I said in a hoarse whisper, pausing to wait. There was no answer. I moved forward and called out again in a half-whisper. I saw an arm raise from behind a cluster of brush. The arm beckoned to me. I went toward it and a man moved into view, young, even-featured, his eyes on me steady. He held a regulation.38 in one hand. I put Wilhelmina into my holster.
"Nick Carter, AXE," I said. I gave him an identifying code and mentioned Hawk. He relaxed and I halted beside him. He nodded past me and I turned to see another agent, a carbine in his hands, move toward us from behind a tree. He had had me covered too.
"Got any more around?" I grinned at my man.
"Just us two," he smiled. "That's enough." In most cases he would have been right. Nothing, as I was to learn, was enough in this one. "I need to contact Hawk on your electronic smoke-signal," I said. He handed it to me. They were both staying low, and I followed their example. With the walkie-talkie in my hand, I turned abruptly and moved down on my right elbow.
I was lucky. The first shot hit the walkie-talkie where my head had just been, exploding it in a blast of metal. I whirled, turning my face away, but not before I caught some of the metal and felt small rivulets of blood erupt on my face. It seemed as though the whole damn wooded area exploded next in a hail of automatic weapon shots combined with rifle fire.
The agent with the carbine rose up, shuddered and fell dead. I'd landed behind a cluster of shrubs and saw figures — two, four, six of them — coming at us through the trees, all carrying weapons. I swore. Damn them, they'd figured the house would be watched and the woods behind it was the most likely spot. So they watched the watchers, surprising the surprisers.
The agent nearest to me was firing, and the figures darted from behind trees, spreading out fan-like. If he fired at one or two, the others stepped out to pour lead in his direction and he had to keep firing and rolling, firing and rolling. It was a technique marked for doom, and the slugs from the automatic weapons were tearing up the ground at his head. I lay silent, Wilhelmina in my hand. I saw the FBI agent getting close to the clear ground at the edge of the wooded area and realized what he was going to try to do.
"You haven't a chance that way," I whispered hoarsely at him. But he was out of earshot. He avoided two more bursts of automatic weapon fire, reached the clear ground and leaped to his feet to run. He took maybe five steps before the hail of bullets caught him and he went down.
I lay still and glanced toward the house. A black Chevy sedan was at the curb in front of the place. It had pulled up as the FBI men were being cut down. Men were entering the house to get the girl while the field men took care of things out back. I caught a glimpse of Rita Kenmore's light blue blouse through the rear window of the house.
Looking back into the woods I saw the line of killers, not more than dark shapes, fanned out and moving carefully, slowly, searching for me. They'd seen me when they opened fire, and knew there had been three men. So far they'd only accounted for two. I had to be in there someplace, and they moved in wide-apart lanes to trap me. No matter how fast I fired, I couldn't get more than half of them before the others would zero in on me. And running for it would only bring the same fate as had caught the FBI agent.
I estimated the distance to the house. One step into the clearing and I was a perfect target. But the distance wasn't that great to the rear windows. Forty-five seconds might do it, running at top speed. It was time to call on Special Effects and I reached a hand into my jacket pocket.
I always made it a practice to have something of Stewart's on me. One never knew when the products of his remarkable Advanced Weapons Lab could come in handy. The AXE Special Effects branch pioneered in esoteric weaponry, its devices always specialized, always effective, frequently lifesaving. For those that used them, that is. Others took it differently. Stewart, who ran the place, had the physician's benign attitude toward the AXE agents he served, looking on his products like cold tablets or warm gloves, good to have around. "I always like the boys to keep something of mine on them, just in case," he was fond of saying. I usually carried his stuff only when I intended using them for specific purposes on a mission. But he'd insisted one day not so long ago and now I was thanking him for it.
The line of killers with their automatic weapons was coming closer. I opened the small and very ordinary-looking box of aspirin, clearly marked as such on the metal cover. I took out two of the «aspirin» and couldn't resist a smile. He had told me that if I had to take them for a headache they'd be of some effect and no harm. But now I was going to use them for a headache of a different land.
I squeezed hard with my fingernails on the center of each pill, holding the pressure tight for thirty seconds. I could feel the soft centers give under the pressure. Inside the innocuous little pills, a triggering mechanism was activated by the pressure and a chemical process exploded into action. I waited another fifteen seconds and then tossed the two pills into the air, one to the right and one to the left as the killers drew close.
Pressing myself flat to the ground, I waited, ticking off the seconds in my mind. In precisely ten seconds the pills exploded in a twin cascade of thick, gagging blue-black smoke-like substance. The cloud of choking smoky material mushroomed up and down but not out, forming a kind of curtain.
I leaped to my feet and streaked across the clear space toward the house, safely hidden from view by the thick curtain. The stuff was choking and delaying, but not lethal, a smoke-screen in the form of a thick curtain of a heavy chemical. Once they made their way through it they'd be all right in moments except for some tearing eyes, so I didn't slow any. A rear window loomed ahead. Putting my arms across my face, I dived for it, smashing through the glass with a shattering impact, landing on the floor and somersaulting at once.
I came up on my feet with Wilhelmina in hand, but a smallish man was holding Rita Kenmore in front of him, and I pulled my finger from the trigger a fraction of a second before it would have been too late. He was backing toward the door of the living room, and I saw that I'd landed in a ground floor bedroom. I moved toward him, half-crouched, looking for a chance for a clear shot. He kept the girl well in front of him. I watched for him to come up with a gun and start blazing away from behind her, but he had both hands holding her shoulders.
Rita was wide-eyed, but more apprehensive than frightened and moving back with him without a struggle of any sort. It was clear she didn't fear him, and I swore under my breath. She had probably expected company. She was getting help in disappearing. More help than I realized. I moved after them, stepping into the living room, and the blows came at me from two sides just as I moved past the doorway.
I caught the slight movement on my right and twisted away, but the guy on the left came down with a gun butt. It grazed my temple and I saw purple pinwheels for a moment. As I slid to the floor I yanked at his legs and he went over backwards. The other one leaped on me and I tossed him over my head. I'd managed to keep hold of Wilhelmina and I fired once, at point-blank range. The first man leaped convulsively and collapsed. The second one tried to scramble away and get his own gun up. My shot caught him in the chest, and the big 9mm slug bounced him against the wall.
I'd started to turn when the blow descended. I caught a glimpse of the huge leg coming at me and half-turned away, but the kick caught me in the back of the neck. It would have torn my neck muscles apart had I not been on my knees. I went flying across the room to land on top of the dead man against the wall. Wilhelmina skidded from my hand and under a table and through glazed eyes I saw a huge form, a mountain of a man, the giant Sumo wrestler who had figured in the theft from Cumberland. He was moving toward me, a house with legs, and my own legs were definitely unsteady.
I tensed my muscles, feeling them respond sluggishly as my head rang like a gong, my neck afire with pain. I came up from the floor at him, swinging out with a left, but my timing was way off as I still reeled dizzily. The blow landed high on his cheekbone, and he brushed it aside as though it were a gnat's bite. Huge hands grabbed me and I stretched out to find his face, but I felt myself being lifted and flung into the wall. I hit it so hard the plaster cracked. I sank to the floor, shaking my head, clinging desperately to consciousness and expecting another blow that would tear my head off. Dimly I heard the girl's voice calling.
"Ready," I heard her say and the answering grunt from the wrestler. His footsteps receded, and I pushed myself from against the wall, rolled over and gazed with wavy focus across the floor. I spied Wilhelmina under the table, reached out and closed my hand around the Luger. Stumbling only once, my head still ringing and my neck fierce with pain, I lurched to the front door in time to see Rita Kenmore disappear into the back seat of the Chevy.
Sumo Sam on the other side of the car saw me stumble from the house and aim a shot at him. He ducked as the slug tore a line across the roof of the car where he'd towered over it. A shot answered mine, and I hit the ground, rolled over and came up to see the black Chevy roaring away from the curb. I pegged another shot at it but only hit the trunk.
Swearing, I was on my feet, running for the blue Cougar I'd parked around the block. As I reached the end of the house I remembered the killers in the woods and dived to the ground. Peering back to the woods, I saw the column of smoke still holding at the very edge. Three of the killers had come through it, but they were turning to go back into the woods. They'd seen the black Chevy take off, and their job was over. I hadn't time to chase them. The black Chevy held all the important pieces.
I dove into the Cougar and sent it roaring in a tight circle. I caught a glimpse of the Chevy's rear as they turned a corner ahead, and I put the gas pedal on the floor. Reaching the corner, I took it on two wheels, listening to the screech. I saw their tail careen around another corner and I took after them. I could see them ahead now; they were turning onto a paved service road that paralleled the more crowded expressway. Driving with one hand, I switched on the walkie-talkie and heard Hawk's voice crackle through.
"It's me, Nick," I said. "No time to explain. Call alarm to stop black Chevy sedan, heading north on service road alongside expressway." I pressed the «off» switch.
"Got it," Hawk said. I switched on again. The Chevy had caromed around a sharp curve.
"Hold it," I said, dropping the instrument onto the seat beside me to grab the wheel with both hands as I skidded the car around the corner. The rear end drifted wide but I managed to miss the street lamp.
"Norbert Road," I yelled back into the walkie-talkie. "West on Norbert Road. Stay on the ready. Over and out."
I pressed my foot on the accelerator and felt the car leap forward. The black Chevy was hitting ninety and Norbert Road was a succession of curves. Half the time I'd lose them and knew they were there only by the scream of their tires as they took a curve. Then I'd catch sight of them for a moment, until the next curve.
The Chevy had the giant Jap, old Sumo Sam, plus the two smaller men and Rita Kenmore — over seven hundred pounds of weight to hold it down against my one-ninety. They gained a little bit at each curve because of it. I roared around a sharp one and almost went into a spin, the wheel fighting me furiously. When I pulled out of it and onto the straightaway, they weren't in sight and I frowned. But there was another curve, an easy one just ahead and I cut it beautifully hitting the straight section beyond without slowing down. The black Chevy was still nowhere in sight. I went on a few hundred yards more and hit the brakes, skidding to a halt. Reversing, I made a fast turnabout and headed back the way I'd come, cursing into the wind.
The opening was on my right, a small entranceway in a long, wooden fence which I'd shot past before without even seeing. It was the only possible spot. They must have gone in there. I turned into the entranceway and found myself going down a steep dirt grade. The car hit the bottom bouncing like a baby buggy and I burst out of the door with the walkie-talkie in my hand. I was inside a huge construction area, with big stacks of culvert pipe and steel beams, huge generators still on their wooden skids, the steel framework of a half-dozen structures and dirt roads and paths in all directions. But there was no black Chevy. They had plenty of places to hide in here.
I lifted the walkie-talkie to talk with control when the fusillade of shots rang out from three different directions. I felt the wind of the slugs tearing through the air and slamming into the metal of the Cougar. I half-slipped, half-dove for the ground just as one bullet struck the walkie-talkie in my hand. It shattered the instrument, and I closed my eyes and turned away as small slivers of metal flew into my face.
I felt the tiny trickles of blood running down my right cheek, but that wasn't anything. It was my arm, numb and tingling as though I'd been sleeping on it for hours. The walkie-talkie slipped from my numbed fingers as the second cluster of shots echoed in the recessed area. I rolled under the car and felt a bullet crease my leg. I wanted to yank out Wilhelmina and return their fire but my hand and arm were still numb. I couldn't have held a water pistol. From beneath the car I heard the sound of feet running on the earth and then I saw them, coming toward the car from both sides.
I rolled on my back and, twisting my arm, pulled at the Luger with my left hand. I'd just gotten it free when one pair of footsteps vaulted into the car and I heard the sound of the engine roar into life. Dropping the Luger, I rolled over on my stomach as the car backed up, the transmission scraping my temple. The driver twisted the wheel and I saw the frame move to the right and the rear tires dig into the earth and race at me.
I flung myself to the left and the right rear tire scraped my shoulder as it hurtled past, and then the car was no longer on top of me, but I heard the screech of brakes and the clash of gears as the driver shot it into reverse. I'd half-lifted myself from the ground as the Cougar shot at me. I dived again, flattening myself, pressing into the earth, and I cried out in pain as the transmission shaft scraped over my shoulder blades. The driver stopped before he'd gone all the way past me, shot the gears into forward again and spurted ahead. I stayed flattened and once more the car shot out from above me. This time I gathered myself and dove forward, rolling in a somersault. I'd just reached the end of it when I felt the huge hands grab my shoulders and lift me up.
I managed to plant one foot firmly enough, and half-spun around to see the giant Japanese and beyond him, my Cougar with the man getting out of it. I tried a backward blow at the huge man but he flung me down like a sack of potatoes and I landed half over a wooden crate. For all his size, the Japanese was quick as a cat, and he was on me as I hit the crate. I swung but he brushed the blow aside with an oak-like arm, and his counter-punch sent me sailing through the air.
I landed on the back of my neck, did a reverse flip and saw pretty lights of pink and yellow and red. I shook my head and pulled myself upright to find that, in reflex action, Hugo was in my hand and I was lashing out in short, vicious arcs. But I was slicing only thin air, and I heard the sound of a car engine starting up, a familiar sound.
Shaking my head to clear it further, I saw my blue Cougar starting up the dirt ramp. I ran around the edge of the crate and fell to the ground where Wilhelmina lay. I got one shot off at them, more in frustration than anything else, as they disappeared out the exit ramp. I heard the sound of the car receding, and I put the Luger back in its holster.
They were off and running, and Hawk had the cops out looking for a black Chevy. I decided to do the same and found their car behind a long generator. They'd left the keys in it. I drove it out of the construction site and down Norbert Road. A police helicopter appeared overhead and I waved at it. Minutes later I was surrounded by flashing yellow and red lights and a cordon of police cruisers. I climbed out, talked fast, and they let me contact Hawk via their radio. I straightened things out and gave them the new description of the blue Cougar.
"Hell, friend," one cop grimaced. "They could have taken off in any damn direction by now."
"Seek and ye shall find," I said. He gave me a disgusted look as he closed the door of his patrol car. I got back in the black Chevy and headed for the Carlsbad house. I'd go over every damn inch of it and see if it yielded anything. So far Rita Kenmore's idealistic, sincere, dedicated uncle, out to make the world listen, had been responsible for four deaths — the two guards at the Cumberland operation and now the two FBI agents. But that figured, too. I'd long since learned that there was nothing so calloused as the idealist who thinks he's got his hand on the true light. Nothing matters except his quest.
* * *
I was thinking about the girl as I approached the Carlsbad house, fairly certain she didn't know how deeply her uncle had dug himself in. Maybe she wouldn't really find out until it was too late. Or maybe she'd find out and look the other way.
I pulled up in front of the house and got out slowly. My body cried out in protest, every muscle of it. It made me remember that I not only had a deadly virus to find but a score to settle. The front door was open and I started with the girl's bedroom where I'd seen the open traveling bag on the bed. She'd obviously just tossed a few things into it because most of her clothes were still in the closet with a few pieces lying on the floor. I was about to leave the room when my eye caught a glitter of silver, and I reached down to pick up a small object, not unlike something from a locket or a key chain. A few links hung loosely from the circular piece of silver. Set into the metal was a piece of something that looked like either ivory or bone. Someone had torn it loose and dropped it in the haste to get Rita Kenmore's stuff together. I put it in my pocket and started through the rest of the house.
It revealed absolutely nothing until I reached a little room, hardly more than a cubbyhole, with a tiny, desk in it and a few shelves. On the shelves were large, fastened-together bundles of check stubs; in the desk drawer I found a checkbook of the three-hole business variety. As I pored over the check stubs, it suddenly became clear why Carlsbad had been living in this ramshackle old house.
His monthly pay was carefully entered each time and following the entry came a random assortment of checks in varying amounts all made out to an account in a bank in Hokkaido, Japan. Some of the stubs bore cryptic notes: payment; cars; food. Most of them bore no explanation whatever. But as I did a rapid count, I saw that over the past few years it had involved a helluva lot of money. To say he'd merely been salting it away was too simple an explanation. The whole thing smelled of preparation, funds sent to someone or someplace to be used for a certain event or time.
I'd just gathered all the stubs under my arm to take them and dump them in Hawk's lap when it happened. The whole goddamned house blew up under me. It's funny, when things like that happen, what you remember and note first I heard the roar of the explosion, like a volcano erupting, and I heard myself swearing as I was catapulted upwards and out of the little room.
"The bastards!" I yelled as I hit the side of the doorjamb and went sailing across the hallway. "They left a time bomb." I was conscious enough to recognize that one thing for a brief, flashing moment, and then the stairs rose up to meet me as I landed on them. There was a second explosion as the furnace blew. I felt my lungs closing down as the rush of turbulent, poisoned air hit me. I half-recall large chunks of plaster and wood descending on me and trying to cover my head with my arms, and then the blackness closed in on me as a sharp pain flashed through my head.
I came to, probably not more than a few minutes later, and my blurred eyes finally focused on a scene of wreckage and debris. But worse than that, as I lay there, my mind slowly orienting itself as to who I was and why I was lying amid all this rubble, I felt the hot air and saw the orange flaring of the flames. It was very hot, terribly hot, and as I pulled myself up to my hands and knees I saw that the place was a sheet of flame. I'd fallen down to the first floor as the second floor collapsed, which had saved my life. The roof was now the second floor with tongues of fire licking out through openings in the debris. I was surrounded by towering flames, which were working their way toward the middle of the rubble and me.
I tied my handkerchief around my face as I started to cough. It was a small, almost useless gesture, but seconds become terribly precious when life seems to be slipping away. A wind from somewhere, probably created by the vacuum of the fire itself, shot a long tongue of flame across the rubble directly at me. I scrambled backward and felt myself crashing through the shattered floorboards. I grabbed at them, caught one splintered edge for a moment and then it gave way, too. But it had held long enough to break my fall and I landed unhurt on the cellar floor.
The place was choking with smoke and dust from the exploded furnace, but I managed to glimpse light in a far corner. I climbed over twisted pipes and blocks of concrete toward it and felt a movement in the air. It was like the sight of water to a parched man and I pressed on, tearing my leg on a piece of jagged metal. It was suddenly before me, sunlight and air, still filled with the choking dust, but nonetheless air from a back cellar entrance, and I stumbled out into the open, still feeling the heat of the flames behind me. I fell down on the grass and lay there, gasping in great gobs of air as I heard the fire truck sirens approaching. I was getting to my feet with the handkerchief still hanging from my face when they rolled up to the front of the house, now nothing but a roaring tower of flames.
"There's nobody inside," I told the men, erasing the fear in their eyes. As they started to hose water on the inferno I climbed into the Chevy, torn and aching and bleeding from dozens of cuts and bruises and mad as all hell.
I stopped to phone Hawk from a roadside phone booth. He told me to go to my place, get feed up and then come to the office.
"I'll be here," he said. "I've had a cot brought in and I'm staying here until everything is over and done with, this World Leadership Conference and now this blasted business."
I hung up and drove slowly back to my apartment A long, hot bath followed by a long, cold martini did wonders for the body and the soul. It was just after dinner time when I reached Hawk's office at AXE headquarters. He was standing by the bay window, looking down on the circling lines of traffic below and he gestured to me as I entered. I went over to stand beside him, glancing at the deep, tired lines etched in his face.
"We're like that traffic down there, Nick," he said. "Going around in circles, with no end, only more and more circles." He turned and sat down. I took the chair across from him. "You wouldn't believe the stuff we've been into involving the World Leadership Conference. We've uncovered plots against six different presidents and world figures to prevent their attending the Conference. The Conference has triggered every crackpot and professional group into action. And now this Carlsbad and his damned deadly strain. That's the topper of them all, Nick, because it involves the whole world and it was our virus, from our stockpile"
"Anyone dig up anything on the checkstub information I gave you over the phone?" I asked.
"Our people in Tokyo got on it," he said. "The account was closed out three days ago. It had been used by a Mr. Kiyishi — described as a huge man."
"That figures," I muttered.
"As Carlsbad has been planning this with international contacts and may be planning to strike anyone anywhere, the President has ordered me to make certain contacts. I've made them, but I can only keep my fingers crossed."
"You've lost me, Chief," I admitted.
"We've opened this up to the top people of every major intelligence service on the basis of international cooperation and enlightened self-interest" Hawk said. "I want you at a meeting scheduled for eight A.M. at the White House tomorrow morning. Ardsley of British Intelligence is coming. Nutashi of Japan will be there. Claude Mainon of the French Service des Renseignements, Manouchi of Italian Counter-intelligence, Adams of Canadian Security and, get this, the Russians are sending Ostrov of Soviet Special Intelligence."
"Quite an imposing array," I commented. "I've saved the best of all," Hawk said. "The Chinese Reds are sending Chung Li."
I whistled through my teeth. "How the hell did you work that?"
"With Chairman Mao attending the World Conference at the United Nations, they can't afford to have something go wrong," Hawk said. "They don't know, and neither do we, that Carlsbad might not try to loose X–V77 against the Chinese leadership. If his plan is to put America on a spot, that'd sure be the way to do it."
"And so crafty old Mr. Big of the Chinese Reds is stepping out of his hole and into the daylight," I mused aloud. "This must be some kind of first." I'd met and beaten many of Chung Li's specialists, but the grand master of Red Chinese intelligence was always a shadowy figure in the background, unreachable, almost invisible it seemed.
"Do you think it will work?" I asked Hawk. "Do you think we can all cooperate, with everybody suspicious and on guard about letting his own classified stuff slip out?"
"On this one thing, I think yes," Hawk said. "Chung Li has already taken steps to protect himself. We've learned that our Consul in Hong Kong has been taken into protective custody at some hidden estate. Of course they've said nothing to us, but they know we got the message."
I reached into my pocket and brought out the little object I'd found at Carlsbad house before the explosion. I tossed it to Hawk.
"Let's see if any of them can help us with that," I said.
Hawk examined it. "Looks like a fragment of bone to me," he said of the material imbedded in the silver circle. "Well see if they can clue us in on it tomorrow."
I stood up. "Eight a.m., the White House," I said and the old fox nodded, his eyes weary.
"And no trace of Carlsbad and the others?" I asked, starting toward the door. "They've just up and vanished into thin air."
"By God, it seems like it," Hawk said crisply, angrily. "We've got every major highway watched, every train and bus depot, every major airport. Maybe they're holed up somewhere. If not, they've slipped through. Either way, it spells trouble."
III
All during the night and into the dawn they came winging toward the shores of the continental United States. Each one was monitored constantly by radio-radar contact and given clearance at pre-arranged check points. Each one was met by a U.S. Phantom jet and escorted to Andrews Field outside Washington.
The first to come was Ardsley, of Britain, in a Lightning F.MK-3, moving in low and fast but picked up by our boys about four hundred miles east of Nova Scotia. Mainon, the Frenchman, came in on a Dassault Mystere-4A and was met some three hundred miles over the Atlantic proper. The Japanese came into Hawaii on a Fuji Jet Trainer T1F2 and was transferred to a big Boeing Jet for the rest of the trip.
Ostrov, the Russian, made a series of short hops in an MIG-19, specially built for him and a pilot, and was escorted most of the way by Russian long-distance fighters. We picked him up after he'd been cleared for landing at Goose Bay, Newfoundland. The Chinese Red, Chung Li, was cleared through to land at Fairbanks, Alaska, in a big Russian Ilyushin transport. From there we escorted his big plane to Andrews.
Me, I took a cab and got stuck in traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue. They were all there when I arrived, and the climate was something all its own, sort of polite distaste. Ostrov I'd seen before, burly, thick-necked with hard, blue-quartz eyes. He was known as a tough man in every respect and he looked the part. My glance swept over the others: Ardsley relaxed, casual as only the British can be and yet appear crisp; Claude Mainon, the Frenchman, foxy, with quick-moving eyes; our two men from Army Intelligence. I zeroed in on Chung Li.
The Chinese Red seemed to be waiting to meet my glance, and he nodded to me. He had a round, bland face, almost pudgy, very much like that of his boss, Mao Tse-tung. He didn't look the part of a wily, clever espionage chief but then, as I thought about it, neither did Hawk, standing to one side with his New England Baptist minister's countenance. Hawk had made a blanket introduction as I entered the room, but it was only Chung Li who spoke.
"My pleasure indeed, Carter," he said, his voice soft, almost with a hiss in it. "I have often wondered what you looked like. One wonders about a man who has given one so much trouble."
He smiled a Buddha-like smile, charming yet deadly.
"I hope you're not disappointed," I said, returning his charm. "Not in the slightest," Chung Li answered and I saw his small, dark eyes take in every facet of my face. As he looked at me I had the feeling I was being visually computerized and catalogued. The soft roundness of his own face was, I knew, a natural mask for the brutal hardness behind it.
"Gentlemen," Hawk said, "I'll be brief. There is no point in pretending we all meet here as friends. We are here only because, in this instance, our interests happen to dovetail."
"We are here because of the danger your apparently very poor security measures have put the world in," Ostrov growled. Hawk didn't bat an eye.
"I'm sure you have often wished they were poorer than they are," he said blandly. Ostrov's blue-quartz eyes grew even colder.
"The vial from our Bacteriological Warfare stockpile known as X–V77," Hawk went on, "is a deadly strain derived from a series of botulisms. It will infect by air and grow in any kind of climatic conditions, needing only a host organism to attach itself to. Therefore merely preventive measures around your country's top men will not suffice.
"Agent N3, here, has been given the task of finding Dr. Carlsbad and the virus. I think you'll all agree there is no better field agent in the world. But time is all-important. Any help you can give will help us all. Until X–V77 is returned intact to us, we are all in this together. No one here expects anyone else to give away secrets, yet within that framework, we must cooperate. I will tell you all that we know up to now."
As Hawk briefed the room I thought to myself what a concentration of high-powered espionage information was gathered here in this room in the White House. When Hawk finished, he picked up a sheet of notepaper.
"This was received by the President of the United States this morning," he said. He glanced at me for a moment. "It was postmarked in a small town in Iowa." I nodded and he returned to the letter.
"Mr. President," he read, "by now I hope you have contacted the leaders of every major power and told them that together you must destroy all stocks of bacteriological warfare. If you have not done so, you only have a short time before I will demonstrate the full effect of the horror you would inflict upon the world. I will expect action and I will listen to the public communication systems and the press for your answer. Joseph Carlsbad."
Hawk passed the letter around, handing it first to Manouchi, the Italian, standing nearest to him.
"Perhaps we ought to make a public show of doing what he says," Ardsley of British Intelligence volunteered. "All our governments announce that we're destroying our germ warfare branches and materials."
"He is no fool, this Carlsbad " Ostrov said. "He will want more than words."
"I'm afraid I agree with General Ostrov on that," Hawk said. "He's obviously planned carefully and with help. He can probably stay wherever he's holed up and wait for us to furnish proof."
"And showing him proof would be impossible for you gentlemen, eh?" Claude Mainon said, a sly smile on his face. "That would mean actually doing away with your bacteriological warfare weapons."
Nobody said anything, neither Hawk nor Ostrov. I couldn't help smiling inwardly. The Frenchman had touched on one of the tender spots.
"For the moment let us concentrate on recovering X–V77," Hawk said finally. He tossed the little round silver object with the ivory or bone set into it on the table.
"This is the one material lead Agent N3 has found," he said. "Can any of you help us with it?"
I watched the men move closer to the table and look at the piece. Ardsley, Mainon, the Italian and Ostrov shook their heads. Nutashi, the Japanese, picked it up and studied it closely. I saw Chung Li watching him through mere slits of eyes, a patient, almost amused expression on his face.
"It is an identification piece," Nutashi said. "Used by a small secret society, semireligious, practicing human sacrifices, we understand. The material in the center is human bone from a victim of the Hiroshima bombing, no doubt still slightly radioactive. The religious aspects of the society center around the Hiroshima catastrophe."
"Certainly the land of a group Carlsbad could get material help from," I said. "Such as a place to hide."
Nutashi laid the silver piece back on the table and Chung Li reached out and picked it up, dangling it from the few remaining links attached to it. "Major Nutashi is generally correct about this group," he said in his soft, sibilant voice. "We had contacted them once to evaluate their possible use for our own purposes."
I saw Nutashi's jaw muscles flex, but he maintained his outer calm. Chung Li went on, his soft, gentle tones clear in the silence of the room. "However we found them too few in number and badly disorganized. But during the past year we have heard that their numbers have increased and that they seem to have taken on a new strength. Strangely enough, this has resulted in their going deeper underground."
I saw all those check stubs of Carlsbad's in my mind. If this group had got themselves new strength, at least part of it was due to Carlsbad's funds.
"You say they've gone deeper underground?" I asked. "Do you mean you don't know where they are anymore?"
"Only that they are somewhere in the Kurile Islands," Chung Li answered. "In some ancient Buddhist temple»
"Then that's our next move," Hawk said. "Carter will go there and try to find them. Everything points to Carlsbad working with this group. Anyway, it's all we've got and so well run with it."
"We will make you into one of the Japanese fishermen who fish off the Kuriles every day," Nutashi volunteered. "That will ensure your entry without suspicion."
"And if I do get Carlsbad and need some backup muscle?" I asked.
Ostrov cleared his throat, and I could see it took some effort for him to say his piece. "We have a… er… number of undersea craft in that area," he admitted. "We could have them standing by for action upon instruction from you."
Hawk was actually beaming. "That sounds very good, gentlemen." He smiled. "Of course, we agree that everyone shall be given immediate reports of any and all developments. We shall work out procedural operations. Meanwhile, Nick, you'd best get over to Special Effects. Stewart is waiting for you."
I took them all in with a nod and paused for a moment to meet Chung Li's eyes. Perhaps he was thinking of the number of times I'd wrecked his schemes and destroyed his top men. Perhaps he was thinking of how he'd like to get rid of me right then and there. In any case, his small, dark eyes held an air of deadly amusement, and I knew that to Chung Li, this cooperation was no more than a passing moment. His eyes seemed to say that he was looking forward to a speedy resumption of our running battle. Anytime you're ready, I let my own eyes reply, and turned on my heel.
I looked back at the stately lines of the White House as I got outside. The venerable structure had seen many history-making meetings since 1800, but none more vital and unusual than the one I'd just left. At AXE offices, Stewart greeted me at the doorway of the cavernous laboratories of Special Effects. "Nothing terribly unusual for you this time, Nick" he said in his usual professorial monotone, "The Chief said that communications would be the problem."
"One of the problems," I corrected him. "Got anything in the line of germ repellants?"
Stewart ignored me, which is what he usually did. He was always like a mother hen, protectively fussing over his products of highly specialized destruction, and I knew he thought me irreverent I didn't really deprecate his fantastically clever concoctions. Hell, they'd saved my life more than once. I just thought he ought to be less holy about them, especially since they were as unholy as hell.
Stewart halted at one of the white-topped tables where a belt and a pair of socks were set neatly side by side.