CHAPTER ELEVEN
St. Hilaire had gone. The taxi that had brought him re-
turned to pick him up two hours after it had first shown
up.
"You'll hear from me in about a week, Mr. Harding,"
i, he called out and then settled back in his seat. The cab
turned in the circular drive and disappeared.
i I went back into the villa in time to answer the tele-
phone. It was Franqois. The conversation was brief.
I put down the telephone to see Brenna standing in the
doorway of the study. She was dressed in white slacks, a
red-and-white striped jersey pullover and thin sandals.
i Her hair was brushed so that it shone, but her eyes held
the puffiness of lack of sleep.
"Who was that?"
' 'On the telephone? Frangois."
"No. Who was here? I saw someone drive off in a
taxi."
"With Dieter out of the picture, I've had to make other
arrangements to purchase the arms. You want the man's
name?"
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"No." She seemed listless. 'S You let me oversleep," she
accused me.
S' You needed it. Last night was exhausting for you."
"I'm supposed to be with you every minute."
I said. "I told you Gallagher will
"That's ridiculous,"
get what he wants. How and where and from whom I ob-
tain the arms is none of his business."
She had lost the fire of the day before. Dieter's death
had had a strong impact on her. It's one thing to talk
about killing and torture and another to actually see the
burnt flesh, blistered and blackened, of your victim.
"I'm going into Marseilles," I said. "I'll be back in a
few hours."
Brenna began to protest weakly. I cut her off.
"You're not coming with me whether Gallagher likes it
or not."
"To complete your arrangements?"
I evaded the question. "I have business there."
"Will you be long?"
"About two hours," I said reassuringly. "Go tell Mme.
Giraud what you'd like for brunch."
I caught the fear in her eyes. "You needn't worry about
being alone, I' Ve arranged for protection. You probably
won't see him, but if you do, his name's Jean-Louis."
"A bodyguard?"
"He's very good," I said. "Go tell Mme. Giraud,"
Brenna started to turn away, hesitated and then said,
C 'Quinn, about Dieter Hoffman. I'm sorry. I really am."
"I'm sure you are," I said, not giving a damn if she did.
"Gallagher wasn't involved, was he?" she asked almost
pleadingly.
I could have told her what I thought but there wasn't
any reason to. I still wasn't sure myself.
"It doesn't make any difference," I said and left her.
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I drove back to Marseilles the same way I'd driven out
the night before. I came into town on the Avenue du
Prado, around the circle at Place Castellane, headed north
on Rue de Rome and turned west onto Rue Drogon. Be-
cause the streets are one-way, I took Rue Breteuil, turned
right onto Boulevard Vauban and right again onto Rue
Fort-du-Sanctuaire, ending up in the auto park on the
Plateaux de la Croix'. Below me, the streets of Marseilles
spread out in a tangled pattern to the north and to the
east.
There were not too many other vehicles in the parking
area. I could see no one as T shut and locked the door of
the Citroön, but I knew that I was being observed. Fran-
cois had told me to meet the man here,
I walked across the parking lot and up to the espla-
nade. Here on the broad sweep of the walk, there were a
number of tourists strolling along with cameras, taking
pictures of the enormous cathedral and of the port below.
The view spread out magnificently in front of me. The
waters of the old port pushed into the land mass of the
city like a square thumb with a narrow base, guarded at
its entrance by Fort St. Jean to the north and Fort St.
Nicholas to the south. I could see the docks and the fish-
ing vessels tied up alongside, their masts and booms look-
ing like so many black toothpicks from this distance, their
sails hanging slackly to dry:
I recognized the burly figure walking toward me. There
was no attempt at a clandestine meeting. Shimon ben-
Dror was only an inch or so shorter than my own six feet
in height but he was heavier. The Israeli's face was broad
andftanned and his nose had been broken at one time so
that the bridge was thickened. He held out a hand to me
as he came up.
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"Francois said I'd find you here," he said in the way of
both a greeting and a password.
He fell into step, strolling along with me.
"Loring had me tell you in New York about the wire-
guided missiles that my government lost. You also know
that Mavropoulos has them."
"We want them back."
"What's that got to do with me?" I asked. "You know
I work for The Company. My assignment is to rescue the
Marat girl."
"But not at our expense," ben-Dror said. "We want
your help in getting back the five hundred SS-II missiles
that Mavropoulos has. Our agents are having trouble in
locating the man. We know he's going to have to contact
you. When he does, let us know. We'll handle the rest.
We want those missiles."
"So does Gallagher."
"We're aware of that."
"If Gallaghpr doesn't get them, the girl dies," I said.
Ben-Dror smiled at me engagingly and threw one arm
around my shoulders in a gesture of comradeship. I could
feel the weight of his heavy, muscled arm across my back.
"I think I will have to tell you a few things, my friend,"
he said confidentially. "From the time our intelligence
service learned that Mavropoulos had the missiles, we've
kept a watch on him. We knew he approached Gallagher,
even before the kidnaping took place. We think it was
Mavropoulos who planted the idea in Gallagher's head.
We know for a certainty that he talked to Willi Vander-
Hoven, Armand LaCoste and Dieter Hoffman. The
chances were good that he'd wind up doing business with
one of them if Gallagher succeeded in laying his hands on
the Marat girl. We bugged the offices and homes of Van-
derHoven, LaCoste and Hoffman."
I thought of the two men who'd beaten Dieter in his
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
109
apartment. Did ben-Dror have a recording of that attack?
Almost as if he'd read my thoughts, he said, "We have a
recording of two men holding Dieter at gunpoint in his
home while they extracted information from him. Would
you be interested in what we learned?"
"l know about what went on there," I said. I was giv-
ing nothing away.
"Do you know who the men were?" he asked. "I think
you plan on doing something about them. What are you
prepared to give for the information?"
"It doesn't matter any more," I told him. "Dieter's
dead."
"That's what Francois told me." Ben-Dror took his
arm away from my shoulders. "I'm sorry to hear about
last night."
"Francois told you?"
"Francois is one of us. He's a Shin Beth agent. I
thought you knew."
"l thought he worked for The Company."
"He does. Both Loring and I use him. We each know
that he works for the other. Look—about Dieter—after
what was done to him last night, I think that more than
ever you'd want to know who broke into his house in
Brussels."
s 'It was Gallagher," I said bitterly. "He speaks French
with a miserable accent. The other doesn't count."
"How could you recognize Gallagher's voice? Are you
guessing?"
"Yes, I'm guessing, but I gave it a lot of thought. I'm
right, aren't I?"
"You are. British Intelligence has a tape recording of
Gallagher in its file of Provo leaders. They compared our
recording with the one they have. A voice print analysis
shows it is the same voice, although he's speaking French
on one tape and English on the other. Gallagher wants
those missiles badly. Enough, to threaten Dieter in order
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
to get them included in the purchase of arms the old man
was to make for you. •How did Gallagher know that Die-
ter was your agent?"
"He doesn't trust me," I said. "He's had me followed
ever since I left the States. A led him to Dieter. It's the
only way I can figure it."
"Have you thought that Gallagher could be the one
who ordered Dieter tortured and killed?"
"I've thought about it,'b I said candidly. "But, it doesn't
make sense. Dieter was killed because of something he
knew that was important enough for him to fly down here
to tell me. When I figure out what it was that Dieter
learned, I'll find out who killed him. Or gave the orders."
"Whoever it was wants you dead, too."
"Not necessarily. The attack on me could have been an
accident. It could have been that I got there before Die-
ter's killer got away and he panicked."
"What if it were planned? What if you were to have
been a victim, too?"
I thought of the attack on me in New York the night I
first got involved in this mess. So far, there'd been no ex-
planation for that.
"It's something to think about," I said.
"What about Mavropoulos?" ben-Dror asked. "Will
you help us with him?"
"Mavropoulos is your problem. I'm keeping my hands
-off."
"Are you going to buy the anti-tank missiles from
him
"That's my business."
' 'No," said ben-Dror. I could hear the toughness come
into his voice. "It's our business, my friend. We think of
five hundred wire-guided anti-tank missiles in the hands
of the PLO terrorists and we shudder! We would like you
to help us, We would appreciate your cooperation in this
matter. But, if you purchase the weapons from Mavro-
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
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poulos, we would no longer be interested in Mavropoulos.
We would come after you."
"He put a hand on my arm and turned me to face him.
I saw the heavy line of ben-Dror's chin tighten, the inten-
sity of his stare, the thick eyebrows that drew down as his
eyes narrowed.
"No matter what the cost," ben-Dror said, ' 'we will get
those weapons. Don't get in our way, Harding. Do I make
myself clear?'
"lt's my job to see that Gallagher gets his arms," I
said. "That's his price. Why don't you wait until he gets
them and releases the girl?"
"We can't take a chance on waiting that long."
'Clf Gallagher gets his hands on the weapons, he'll use
them in Ireland, not Israel,"
I said. "It won't be any
concern of yours, then, will it?"
"If Gallagher can get them into Ireland," ben-Dror
Ipointed out, "it will be a miracle. The British will do their
; damnedest to prevent it. If you're involved, they'll go af-
ter you just as fast as we will. You met Thorndike. He's
no fool. He's tough and ruthless. Quinn, do yourself a fa-
vor and turn Mavropoulos over to us."
"No," I said stubbornly. "There's a girl's life to think
about. Have you thought about her?"
"We have," said ben-Dror soberly. ' 'But her life against
hundreds? From that point of view, she's just not impor-
tant. We must be realists."
"Even one life is important," I said.
Ben-Dror uttered a harsh, short laugh. "My God! You
sound like one of our Talmudic scholars. Of course one
is important. Do you have to tell that to an Israeli?
..But how many lives is this one girl worth? Who would
.byou have die for her, Quinn? A hundred Israelis? Three
Iihundred innocent people in Belfast whose only crime is
ilbeing Protestant? Fifty young British soldiers? Who„ god-
. k damit? Who?"
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The slight accent ben-Dror normally had when speak-
ing English had become thicker as the anger mounted
within him. ' 'In my country, we are only a few, and every
life is precious to us—so precious that we will do any-
thing, whatever is necessary, to save a single one of us.
Don't tell me how important one life can be! My job is to
see that none of us dies violently because of people like
Mavropoulos. Not one! Not if I can help it!"
Viciously, he threw away the remnant of the cigarette
he had been smoking. It streamed an arrowhead of sparks
as it arced through the air.
"Yes, I would like to save the girl," he went on. c 'But
not at the expense of others. It is as simple as that."
"If I can save the girl .. .," I began and broke off.
"Yes?"
"Let me think about it," I said.
"All right," benDror suddenly conceded. "l think
you've made up your mind. I hope you've decided to co-
operate with us, Quinne I won't push you any more. I'll
give you a few days. I also think you've already been in
touch with Mavropoulos and that you've set up the deal.
But, don't forget you're in danger. We think that the at-
tempt on your life last night was deliberate. If you want
our help, let us know."
"I told you I'd think about it."
"Then think about this. If you decide to go your own
way—if those weapons are ever in your hands and you
don't turn them over to us—we'll go after you without
mercy. Understand?"
"You've made yourself clear."
Ben-Dror walked solidly beside me without looking at
me. He said, "You know that if I have to, I'll kill you,
Quinn."
"I know."
I looked at the man with respect, I felt I would like to
know him better, that I would like to be his friend. It was
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a strong feeling, but I put it out of my mind because I
knew that as long as I was an AXE agent I could not be-
come friendly with anyone. As long as I bore the desig-
nation of Killmaster, the world of close friendship was
barred to me. The time might come when I would have to
kill one of them.
Someday, I thought, I would like to be able to afford
the luxury of friendship the way other people did.
Then I realized that ben-Dror had already reached that
point in his life. He could afford to like people, to become
a man's friend if he chose to, and not worry about what
would happen if he was ordered to kill him.
I had never known a man so secure in himself, so com-
plete in his own self-confidence and with inner acceptance
of himself as a person. I wondered how much ben-Dror
had suffered to have arrived at such security.
"Well," said ben-Dror, breaking the silence. "How
much longer before the shipment will be ready?"
"A week," I said truthfully. "Give or take a day or
two."
Ben-Dror made up his mind. "All right, Quinn. For the
time being, we'll leave you alone. We'll go after Mavro-•
poulos. If you need any help, call on us. Francois knows
how to reach me."
I nodded. "If I need help."
"Be careful," said ben-Dror. "l think there's more to
all this than we know about."
I glanced quickly at him, but the Shin Beth agent was
looking straight ahead without expression on his face. We
made another half-circuit of the promenade. Casually,
without shaking hands, we said goodbye. I walked back to
the car by myself.
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CHAPTER TWELVE
The black Peugot sedan would have been innocuous un-
der most circumstances, and the fact that it followed me
out of the parking area would not normally have made
me suspicious. Several other cars followed me out, too.
What made me wonder about this was the fact that in a
country where it was almost a personal affront to let an-
other car get in front of you, the driver of the Peugot al-
lowed two vehicles to cut in ahead of him. Two cars, no
more.
He remained that way as I came down the hill into the
city. When I reached the Place Castellane circle, I picked
up the Avenue de Toulon going east instead of continuing
south on Avenue du Prado toward Cassis.
As I swung onto the autoroute, the Peugot was still two
cars behind me, although the cars between us had
changed several times. Between Marseilles and Aubagne,
the highway was wide and fast. I pressed down on the ac-
celerator. The Maserati engine swept the coupe along at
high speed. I pulled away from the cars behind.
At Aubagne I'd intended turning south to cut back to
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Cassis but as I slowed down, I noticed the Peugot coming
into sight. Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps not, but I
decided to make sure. I drove on toward Gémenos. so
did the sedan.
Dusk had fallen by this time. I switched on the head-
lights and drove the few kilometres between Aubagne and
Gémenos, the Peugot not far behind me. This time, I
didn't try to outrace it.
When I turned northeast at Gémenos on the road that
would take me into the Ste. Baume massif area and found
that the sedan made the same turn, I was positive that I
was deliberately being followed. The road is a scenic
mountain route with nothing but a few small villages
along the way. It leads to the Hötellerie de la Ste. Baume,
whose main attraction is the Forét Domaniale de la Ste.
Baume and the peak of St. Pilon where tourists take
woodland walks in the daytime. No one goes there at
night.
I passed the Parc de St. Pons three kilometres from
Gémenos. It was closed. A few kilometres further on, I
swung into the first of the tight, narrow hairpin turns as
the road steepened its climb. I shifted down into third
gear and lowered the Citroen's chassis so that it huggecl
the road.
The Peugot was still behind me, its headlights on, try-
ing to close up. I increased my speed. I wasn't worried
about the Peugot catching up with me, not with the car I
was driving. Part of my mind was paying attention to the
tight, swinging curves, but another part was wondering
who it was that was following me and what they intended
to do if they caught up with me. They had long since
given up any pretense of not being on my tail.
The Ste. Baume massif is the largest and the highest of
the mountain chains in the Provencal country. The road
from Gémenos turns north between the peaks of Téte de
Roussargue and Rogue Forcade in a series of climbing
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switchbacks along the eastern slope of Téte de Roussar-
gue. Then it cuts over and around the northern slope Of
Roque Forcade. It's not a wide road, and you'd damn
well better drive it in low gear even in the daytime.
I dropped down into second gear. The Maserati engine
responded. The Citroen SM settled itself to the steady
grind, boring through the night. Only the lightest touch on
the wheel was enough. Two turns from lock to lock made
the car's steering ultra sensitive. Front-wheel drive pulled
the coupe around the tight switchbacks, At the speed I
was going, few other cars could keep up with me. There
were times when I could look directly down the side of
the slope and see the Peugot's headlights laboring up the
switchbacks after me.
It bothered me. They must have known they couldn't
catch me, not in the car they were driving. The Peugot
simply isn't in the same class as a Citroen SM. Then what
were they after? I wondered.
Once the road reached the crest, it started its descent
on the northern slope of the massif, but there were fewer
switchbacks and practically no hairpin curves, certainly
none as sharp as on the climb. I could go faster. I roared
on through the darkness that by now had completely
fallen. My headlights were on high beam; the road was
brilliantly lit far ahead of me.
I passed the Hotellerie and, in another kilometre or so,
swung sharply left toward Nan-Ies-Pins. And then I delib-
erately let my speed drop off, idling along, waiting. There
were no other cars on the road behind me, but in a mo-
ment or two I saw through my rear-view mirror the lights
ota car as it turned north to follow me.
I was irritated. It was almost as if they "knew where I
was going. I let the Citroän go flat out, the car hurtling
along in the blackness like a low-slung, gray ghost, fol-
lowing the twisting track of the country road. I roared
through Nan-les-Pins, swung over to pick up D280, and
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then, when it made a junction with N560, I turned west.
St. Zacharie came and went. The Peugot was now no
longer in sight. My rear-view mirror showed only the soft
blackness of the might behind me, but I did not slow
down. I passed through Autiol, turned south along the
upper Huveaune valley, through Roquevaine and Pont de
l'ÉtoiIe, back to Aubagne.
More than two and a half hours had passed, I'd driven
a grand circle of the Ste. Baume area, and I was tired. At
Aubagne, I turned south. Minutes later, I came to the
junction of the coast road to Toulon, a few kilometres
east of Cassis, near where the turnoff lay to the lane that
led to my villa.
I was angry at the time I'd wasted, puzzled by what
had happened because it made no sense to me, and the
tenseness I'd felt when I'd been driving at high speed
along the dark, narrow country roads was still with me.
Perhaps that's what accounted for my carelessness. Be-
cause I'd lost the Peugot, I thought I was no longer in
danger as I drove slowly along the lane that twisted
through the wooded escarpment. It came when I braked
to make the first of the sharp turns to the left.
I saw the movement of the darker shadow within the
shadows. It was movement that alerted me because the
night was too dark and the contrast between the area
brilliantly lit by my headlights and the darkness at each
side of the lane was too great for me to have made out
anything distinctly.
It was the movement and the fact that there should
have been no movement that made me throw myself to
my right, flat along the seat.
The window on my left exploded inward in a stream of
flying glass and leaden pellets. Tiny slivers of glass sliced
into my back. The Citroen left the road, ploughing into
the brush. There came• a second blast. The glass of the
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
rear window blew in. Flying pellets starred the windshield
with the third shot.
My hand was on the latch of the passenger door. I
flung it open and pushed myself through the open door at
the same instant that the car slewed around to a
jolting stop. Momentum flung me clear of the coupe.
I landed on my right shoulder, L rolling in a tight ball,
knees against my chest, chin tucked in, arms wrapped
around my head to protect my eyes. I crawled away from
the car as fast as I could. Then I stopped, pressing myself
full length into the dirt.
The Citroen was at an angle to me. Its engine had
stalled. The right door of the car was jammed tightly up
against a tree. The interior light that had gone on briefly
was now off. There was no sound. There were only the
twin, bright beams lighting up the area away from me. I
lay in the shadows, trying to control my breathing, trying
not to make the slightest noise. I felt blood running down
my back inside my shirt where I'd been cut by the glass
splinters when the window shattered. The back of my
neck bled.
I heard a rustle of sound. A foot was set down. Leaves
crackled under its weight. I heard quick, heavy breathing.
The sounds came from the far side of the Citroén. The
footsteps were louder now. I heard the far door of the
coupe being opened and an exclamation that could have
been a curse as the interior light went on. I caught a mo-
mentary glimpse of a dark face that was pulled hastily
back into the shadows as the man leaped away from the
car and slammed shut the door. The light went off again.
I used the sound of the man's movements to cover my
own. I scuttled backward into the brush, pausing every
once in awhile, moving only when I heard the man move.
I saw him move quickly around the back of the
Citroen. He was carrying a shotgun at the ready. By now,
I was some thirty yards away and in comparative safety,
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
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but I was unarmed. Wilhelmina and Hugo were at the
post-offce in a package I'd addressed to myself. The
Browning automatic was locked away in the desk in the
study. I swore at myself for having left it behind, until I
remembered I'd scrambled out of the Citroen too fast to
have taken it with me even if it had been clipped to its
usual place beneath my seat.
The man began casting around in the brush, making a
wide circle around the car. He was nervous. His head
whipped from side to side as if he were afraid that I
would leap on him out of the shadows. I remained where
I was.
The man made a quick semi-circle of the coupe, never
walking in front of the headlights. Then he swung around
behind the car, almost at a trot, and headed back up the
lane toward the highway.
I didn't move. They'd pulled one trick on me that made
me ashamed of myself. You push a man and you let him
know he's being pushed. You follow him closely while he
tries to outrun you or lose you. Finally, you let him lose
you so that he thinks he's outsmarted you. But no matter
wherehe runs, you know where he's finally going to head
for, and that's where you've set up your ambush ahead of
time. By the time he gets there, he's relaxed his guard.
at's when you hit him. Fast and hard and it's all over
with inside of seconds.
Ben-Dror was right. I was a target. They had been af-
ter both Dieter Hoffman and me. Dieter's killer had not
panicked. He had deliberately waited for me.
I continued to lie flat on my stomach, not moving at
all. I was not about to be lured into the trap of thinking I
was. safe because I'd seen the man go off. There could al-
ways be a back-up man waiting. I doubted it, but, un-
ed as I was, I took no chances. Time was on my side,
f I had the patience. The blood on my back had stopped
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
flowing. I could feel my shirt sticking to my skin as it be-
gan to coagulate. I made no move. I remained lying on
the ground in the brush and, this time, as long as I didn't
move; the darkness was my ally instead of my enemy.
Jean-Louis was waiting for me. He looked at my
stained slacks and my bloodstained shirt, and he lifted his
eyes to my face, noticing the streaks of ground-in dirt.
"You had trouble, hein?"
C' You heard the shots." I brushed past him, heading for
the study to get myself a drink. Jean-Louis followed me.
"Of course I heard the shots. I didn't think you'd need
my help. What if they came here? You think that girl can
take care of herself? She's like a child."
"You did the right thing," I assured him. I poured
scotch over ice cubes, added soda and swirled the cubes
around, I tasted it. I took the drink over to an armchair
and sank tiredly into it.
"How close did they come?" asked Jean-Louis.
"They shot up the Citroen. Left door and window,
windshield. The whole damn rear deck. All the uphol-
stery, too."
Jean-Louis shook his head sadly. "Francois is going to
be unhappy, I can tell you that. That car was his special
pride."
"Better the car than me."
"Three shots did all that damage?'
"They used a shotgun again," I said uncomfortably. I
couldn't lean back in the chair because of the splinters of
glass in my back.
"You left the car there?"
"It's jammed against a tree," I said. c 'The battery's
probably dead, too. The headlights were pretty -weak
when I left it. I didn't dare take a chance on getting close
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to it. I cut through the woods to get here. They could still
have a man on stake-out."
"Not for so long," observed Jean-Louis. "Fifteen,
twenty minutes, yes. Not for two hours."
"What about the girl?"
Jean-Louis shrugged. "At first she was worried because
you did not come back when you said you would. Then,
after a long time, she became angry. Finally, we heard the
shots, and it was all I could do to keep her from running
up the road to find you. And then, after more than an
hour, when you still hadn't shown up, she was convinced
that they'd killed you. She was almost hysterical."
'CIs she all right now?"
"She's upstairs. I think she's crying. You might want to
go up and let her know that nothing has happened to
you."
"In a minute," I said. "Let me finish my drink." I took
out a cigarette.
"Your hands are steady enough," Jean-Louis noted.
"Are we going after them?"
'Clf I knew who they were, we would." I saw the disap-
pointment in Jean-Louis' face. "There'll be time enough.
We'll get them, whoever they are."
I told Jean-Louis about being followed by the Peugot.
Jean-Louis nodded agreement. "lt's an old trick. But that
means there are several of them. At least one, if not two,
in the Peugot. One waiting in ambush for you. And one
to give them orders."
"Only one counts," I said. "The one who's giving the
orders. "
Jean-Louis let a tiny smile touch his lips. "And that
one you are saving for yourself, eh, mon ami?"
I shook my head. "If you can find him, he's all yours. I
don't 'care who gets him."
"We'll see when the time comes," said Jean-Louis eas-
ily. He looked at his watch. "It's after midnight. I'll call
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
Francois about the car, then I'm going to bed. I suggest
you do the same."
"Make your call," I said. "I'm going to stay up for
awhile,"
After Jean-Louis left, I got up and made a second
highball and had another cigarette. I put in a call to the
States. It took an interminable length of time to get
through and the connection wasn't the best, but I finally
got my party. Preston Graham's voice kept fading, and I
could hear him shouting at the operator, but he finally un-
derstood what I was telling him
"I'll be there tomorrow," Graham shouted. "Every-
thing's set up. All we need is your signature. What time
do you want to make it?"
I told him. Graham had to repeat the address several
times before I could make it out. I wrote it down on a slip
of paper.
"Is it possible for you to bring the papers to where I
am?" I asked.
"Can't be done," said Graham. "Too many legal for-
malities if we do it outside the country. You come up
there."
"All right," I said. "Now, I want you to do another fa-
vor for me. Get in touch with your friend, Joey Marat. I
want the name of a contact in Marseilles. Someone he
does business with. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
There was a long pause at the other end of the line.
C 'Dammit," I shouted into the telephone, "did you hear
what I said?"
"I heard you," Graham replied. "Are you running into
trouble?"
"Nothing I can't handle. I just want insurance. You
bring along the name of that contact, understand?"
"Right," said Graham. "Anything else?'
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"That's it," I said. "I'll see you in Vaduz tomorrow."
I hung up and went upstairs to take off my clothes and
shower and to get Brenna to pick the glass splinters out of
the flesh of my back.
C] [D 88 a P P
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Francois was at the villa at six-thirty in the morning to
drive me to the airport. We had time for croissants and
coffee and a cigarette before the 8:30 Air Inter flight to
Paris.
"It'll be two or three weeks before the Citroön is re-
paired," Francois told me. "The body work isn't the prob-
lem, it's getting the new seats. They blew the hell out of
the leather. The whole front end is shot, too."
"How soon can you get me another like it?"
Francois thought a moment. "There's a dealer in Nice
who has one. Brand new. Same model, same color, identi-
cal. But, it's a week's work getting it run in and tuned up
the way you like it."
'61 need transportation," I said. "What can you do for
me in the meantime?"
"I'll •have something for you," Francois promised.
"When will you be back?"
"Maybe tonight. Possibly tomorrow."
"It'll be waiting. What about the Citroen?"
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"Get the new one," I said. "And when it arrives,
change the windows. I want bullet-proof glass."
Frangois whistled. "That will be a job to put in. You
know how long it'll take? And the cost?"
"How much is it worth to stay alive?"
"Yes," Francois admitted. "That's one way of looking
at it."
"Do something else, too," I said. "See what you can
find out about who's been hired to do this assignment.
Jean-Louis must have some contacts that you don't have.
He can ask a few questions, too. But be discreet."
"How much will you pay for the information?"
'"Whatever it takes."
"And when we find out?"
"We'll turn Jean-Louis loose on them."
"He comes high."
"If he does the job properly, he'll be worth it. I want
the men found. I want them killed. And I want word to
get out that the same thing will happen to anyone else
who even thinks of coming after me."
"And the one who gave the orders? If these men are
killed, how do you expect to find him?"
"Not through them. I don't think they'd be able to lead
me back to him. Whoever he is, he's smart enough to
have covered his tracks. I'll find him my own way."
Francois shrugged. "You always do things your own
way."
I smiled at him and got to my feet. "I'll call you from
Paris on my way back," I said. "Meet me here at the air-
port."
"Have a nice flight," said Frangois, making no move to
get up from his chair. "What do you want me to tell the
girl
C Nothing," I said. "She was asleep when I left. If
necessary, Jean-Louis can tell her I'll see her on my re-
turn, and for her not to worry."
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I walked away, carrying a small overnight bag in my
left hand, heading for the gate and the waiting Caravelle.
We landed at Orly-Oest at 9:50 a.m. promptly. The
Swissair flight to Zurich didn't depart until 11:20 a.m.„
but it gave me no more than a bare margin of time be-
cause of the delay in taxiing to the gate. Fifteen minutes
after landing in Zurich, I was in a rented Mercedes 230 SL
headed for Liechtenstein and Vaduz.
The office was small and it smelled of age. Not that it
was dusty. On the contrary, it was scrubbed and clean
and the wood panelling was waxed and oiled. It was just
that everything in the offce and about the offce was old.
The building in which it was housed was ancient. The
stairs were wooden and the bannister was worn. The of-
fice was on the second floor. Outside, the dark brick of
the building seemed to shrink from the sunlight, and the
double oaken doors had a deep coat of varnish. Fastened
to the side of the building beside the doors were a series
of small brass plaques, each bearing the name of one of
the firms occupying offices in the building.
Graham was waiting for me when I entered the inner
offce, seated in a leather chair near the window. The
ashtray beside him was half full of cigarette stubs. As I
came into the room, the man behind the large cherrywood
desk rose to his feet and came around the desk to meet
me. He was of medium height, slim, middle aged and
wore round, rimless glasses. Like the office and the build-
ing, he gave off an aura of being older than he was.
Graham got to his feet. ' 'Everything's okay, isn't it?" he
asked anxiously, without preamble.
"No problem," I said. I introduced myself to the law-
yer. We shook hands in a quick up and down movement.
"I have all the papers ready, Mr. Harding," the lawyer
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127
said. His English was almost without accent,
"If you'd
care to read them.... " He gestured to the desk.
"Just tell me about them."
"What we have done," said Herr Doktor Bauer, 'Cis to
make you an officer of the corporation. To save time, we
are using an already existing corporate shell. That is this
first set of papers. The second is your letter of resignation.
As you see, we've left the date blank. We will fill it in
when you are finished with your—" He hesitated, search-
ing for the right word.
"—Chore," I said.
Bauer smiled briefly and went on. "Now, as for the Iet-
ter of credit, we need some information." He sat down
behind the desk and pulled a form over to him.
"In whose favor is it to be made out?"
"St. Hilaire InterEuropean Enterprises," I said.
Bauer wrote down the name in his small, precise hand-
writing.
"And the exact amount?"
"Two million, five hundred thousand dollars, or its
equivalent in Swiss francs."
I heard Graham whistle
softly.
"And the documentation that must be presented for its
release?"
C'A receipt bearing my signature that I have custody of
the shipment of merchandise."
Bauer lifted his head and stared at me in surprise.
"Most unusual," he said. "Are there no other documents?
Bills of lading? Shipping receipts?"
I shook my head. "No, only this." I took a sheet of pa-
per from my pocket and handed it to Bauer. "But it must
bear my signature in exactly the same manner it is written
Bauer took the paper and shrugged. He bent over the
desk.
"And a description of the merchandise?"
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For a moment, I was tempted to say, "Illegal arms,"
just to see if Bauer's expression would change, but I
resisted the temptation.
"Miscellaneous machine tools."
The lawyer completed the form. He rose from his desk.
'Clf you'll excuse me for a moment," he said. "I'll have
my secretary type up the application for your signature.
In the meantime, you can put your name to the other
documents." He indicated the pen he had left lying on
the desk and left the office. I began signing the forms in
quadruplicate.
When I put the pen down, Graham said nervously,
"You're sure there'll be no hitch? Christ, if anything goes
wrong, Marat will go out of his mind. My life won't be
worth ten cents. Neither will yours."
"Nothing will go wrong," I assured him. "Did you
bring what I asked for?"
"You mean the name of someone in Marseilles?"
"Yes."
Graham nodded. He reached into his pocket and took
out a slip of paper. He handed it to me.
"That's what had Marat worried. He thinks you're
asking for help. Harding, if you've run into trouble, you'd
better let us know right now."
"Nothing I can't handle," I said easily. I looked at the
paper. "Only a name and telephone number?"
"Marat says that's enough. I had a hell of a time per-
suading him to give me even that much. He wants to
know what the hell you want from this guy."
"I might throw some business his way," I said.
Bauer came back into the room, walking in quick, pre-
cise steps.
"The forms will be ready in a few minutes," he said,
peering at the desk. 'CAh, very good, you've signed the
others." He smiled at me. Graham turned back to the
window and nervously lit a cigarette.
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"How long will it be before the money is in Zurich?"
Bauer straightened the piles of paper in front of him.
"Rready to be drawn upon? Within forty-eight hours at
the most. Mr. Graham tells me there is considerable ar-
gency connected with this transaction. I, personally, will
be in Zurich tomorrow morning. Transfer of funds to the
corporate shell we are using will be completed by tomor-
row evening together with the letter of credit. I could say,
actually, within twenty-four hours, but I'd prefer to allow
a little time for contingencies. Forty-eight hours, let's say,
to be on the safe side. Is that fast enough."
"Yes," I said. "Thank you." I looked at my watch.
There was just enough time to drive back to Zurich to
catch the Swissair flight to Paris and connect with an
early evening plane to Marseilles.
Francois was waiting for me at the airport when I de-
planed. We walked out to the parking lot together.
"I got you a Renault Gordini," he said to me as we
came up to the bright red sports car. "Nothing to com-
pare with your Citroen SM, but nice enough in its own
way."
I slid behind the wheel. Frangois got in the other side.
"The girl was furious," Frangois said on the way into
town. "Jean-Louis had all he could do to keep her from
flying at him. She's a tigress, that one!"
"She's out of her depth. I should never have brought
her down here," I said.
Francois nudged me in the ribs. There was a knowing
smile on his face. "I would have done the same thing. To
o to bed with that one—" He put his thumb and two fin-
ers together and kissed the tips with his lips, flipping his
fingers away from his mouth as he did so often. "Quelle
emme."
We came into town, and I swung off into the side
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
streets. I dropped Francois off in one of the narrow,
cobbled streets of the Vieux Port and then turned and
drove to the L'Hotel de la Mer hotel on the Avenue de
Marzargues.
I used the telephone in the lobby to make my call to
the name on the paper that Graham had given me in
Vaduz.
The voice that answered was guarded. "Oui •
oui,
this is Edouard Girard."
"Quinn Harding. We have a mutual friend—Joseph
Marat."
"Ah, yes, Monsieur Harding. I have been expecting
you to call. I talked with Joseph earlier today. Would you
like to dine with me tonight?"
"That would be fine. Any particular place?"
"The Calypso, perhaps? You know it?"
"l know it."
"Shall we say in about three-quarters of an hour?"
"I have a few things to do first," I said. "Would two
hours from now be too late?"
There was a slight pause. Then, "No, of course not. In
two hours. I shall reserve a table for us. A bientöt."
I hung up and went over to the registration desk to
check in. Fifteen minutes later, I was ensconced in a suite
on the fourth floor with a Michelin guide in front of me
and the telephone on the table beside me. I began with
the better class hotels. On my fourth attempt, I found the
hotel that Marius St. Hilaire was registered in. The clerk
gave me St. Hilaire's room number and then asked me if
I'd like to be connected. I hung up on him.
I really wasn't too surprised that it had been that easy
to find St. Hilaire. A man of St. Hilaire's tastes wouldn't
stay in any but the best hotels. And he was vain enough
to use his real name. I wondered if he knew about the Is-
raeli agents looking for him. I wrote down the hotel tele-
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131
)hone number on a scrap of paper together with St. Hi-
aire's room number and pushed it into my pocket.
I was in the bathroom, my coat off, my sleeves rolled
rp, lathering my face to shave, when a thought struck me.
washed the lather off my face and dried my hands and
vent back to the telephone.
This time I found my man on the first try. I simply
:alled St. Hilaire's hotel and asked for Monsieur Galla-
I had to spell out the name for the clerk, but after
hat there was no diffculty. Unfortunately, the clerk told
ne, his voice deep with regret, Monsieur Gallagher had
one out for the evening, therefore, would I be kind
mough to leave my name? I said I'd call back later and
tsked for Gallagher's room number. I wrote it down on
he slip of paper beside St. Hilaire's suite number, notic-
ng without much surprise that the suites adjoined each
)ther. Nor was I really too surprised that they'd used
heir real names; French hotels require that you show ei-
her a passport or a carte didentité when you register.
I called Girard again. Girard had no objections to
eeting within the half hour. He would call the Calypso
nd move up our reservations. I went back to the
athroom, finished shaving, put on my suit jacket and
vent out to meet Girard.
Edouard Girard was stocky, middle-aged, expensively
Iressed, and smelled of eau de cologne splashed on too
leavily. He carried himself with the strong assurance of
man who was accustomed to success and to giving
rders. There was a knife scar on his left jaw, a pale
elt along his chin. I was waiting for him at the table when
Jirard arrived.
We shook hands perfunctorily as Girard sat down. I
oticed that two other men who had arrived with him
ere being seated at a table close to ours.
Girard ordered an aperitif for himself.
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
"Well, now," he said, "what is it that you would like
me to do for you?"
"For Marat," I corrected him.
Girard nodded. "Ah, yes, for my friend, Joseph. What
is it that fran do for him?"
"I want a boat," I said.
Girard shrugged. "That encompasses everything from a
skiff to a freighter. What kind?"
"I want it to be able to do better than thirty-five knots
with a low silhouette and with a reinforced deck. I think
you know what I have in mind."
Girard raised his eyebrows.
"What you're talking about is a converted MTB," he
said. "There aren't many of them. It's been almost thirty
years since the war. You realize they take a crew of four-
teen."
' They can be handled with fewer men."
"Four," said Girard. "That is the minimum."
"Then I want a crew of four. Men you can trust. Can
you get the MB and crew for me?"
"Let's say that I can," replied Girard. "What else?"
I pushed a piece of paper across the table. "Willi Van-
derHoven in Amsterdam. Get in touch with him- He has
surplus 20 mm aircraft cannon. I want a pair of them,
plus half a dozen drums of fresh ammunition for each."
"Will there be any problems with this VanderHoven?"
' 'Not if you use my name," I said.
"And the MTB—when do you want that?"
"I want everything—the MTB, the cannons mounted
on it—the whole works in not more than five days from
now."
E'lmpossible."
"No," 1 said. "Just difficult."
"Is it that important?"
"It is to Marat. He'll be in debt to you for the rest of
his life."
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' 'In that case," said Girard, ' 'it'll be a pleasure."
133
' 'One more thing," I said. "About the ammunition—the
drums are to be loaded with alternate rounds of armor-
piercing and high explosive. One tracer every fourth
round."
"You sound as you are about to start a war," Girard
observed calmly.
"It's already started," I said.
"Who pays for all this?"
"Marat."
"Good enough."
Girard finished his aperitif. The waiter approached us.
Girard said to me, "Allow me to suggest the Poissons
flambés aux Fenouil. I think you'll like it."
We were half way through the meal when Girard
asked, "Where would you like me to have this vessel de-
livered?"
"At sea," I said. "I'll let you know the details later."
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As I walked into the lobby of L'HoteI de Ia Mer and
headed for the elevators, a slender young man, black-
haired and deeply tanned, turned away from the house
phones and followed me. We were the only two occupants
of the elevator; when it stopped at my floor, the young
man got off with me. The elevator doors closed. I waited
deliberately, taking time to crush out my cigarette in the
ash tray by the doors, hesitating until I saw the young
man move down the corridor in the direction opposite to
my rooms. Then, as I turned and started down the hall, I
heard my name called softly.
I turned to find the young man aiming a .38 calibre
revolver at me. We were about fifteen feet apart, too far
for me to jump him. The corridor walls revented me
from moving sideways more than a foot or two, and the
muzzle of the .38 had the obscenely fat cylinder of a
silencer screwed onto the end of it.
"S'il vous plait,"
said the young man politely. "Turn
around and walk to your room. I will be behind you all
134
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135
the way. We do not want to harm you, so I would appre-
ciate it if you did nothing foolish."
I stared at the young man for a second, noticing his
gun hand was steady and that he was balanced to move
quickly if I tried to leap at him. I turned my back and be-
gan walking to my suite.
As we came to the door, the young man said, "There's
no need for you to reach for your keys. The door is un-
locked. Open it and go in. If you have any ideas in your
mind, let me tell you that there is someone waiting in-
side."
I turned the doorknob and walked in. The living room
lights were on; across the room, seated in an armchair,
was Marius St. Hilaire. He held a small pistol casually in
one plump hand.
St. Hilaire smiled pleasantly at me. "Good evening, Mr.
Harding. Forgive me for intruding, but it seemed neces-
sary for me to meet with you again, and I thought it
prudent on my part to take these precautions."
"Is he necessary?" I asked, gesturing over my shoulder
at the young man who had closed the door behind us.
"Nikos? I'm afraid so. I'm really not a man of violence.
But, Nikos is. Nikos is a very nasty person. Do sit down."
"I'll do my talking from here," I said, and before I
could move Nikos slammed the barrel of the .38 against
the side of my head from behind. I staggere&. Nikos
raised the gun again.
"No!" St. Hilaire's voice cracked authoritatively across
the room. Nikos lowered his hand, the gun pressing hard
into my spine.
I felt the blood running down the side of my face. My
cheekbone was numb, the flesh puffed and split where the
silencer had struck it. Pain came and went in waves
through the entire side of my head. I took out my hand-
kerchief and pressed it to my cheek to stem the flow of
blood.
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"l told you that Nikos is violent," St. Hilaire said
reprovingly. "Sometimes he can be almost impossible to
control. Do as you're told, Mr. Harding."
I moved across the room to sit on the couch. Nikos re-
mained by the door, his gun pointed at me.
"All right, Mavropoulos, what's up?"
"Please," admonished the fat man, "St. Hilaire, or
Marius. I don't like the name Mavropoulos."
"What's it about?"
"Have you completed the arrangements for the pay-
"Have you made the arrangements for the delivery of
the merchandise?" I countered.
St. Hilaire smiled his fat man's smile at me. "Oh, yes.
That was done yesterday. My people in Athens have re-
ceived their instructions and have begun to assemble the
shipment. The ship is scheduled to depart shortly after
midnight tonight."
"And when does it arrive in Marseilles?"
St. Hilaire held up a cautionary finger.
"In the Marseilles area," he said. "Our arrangements
called for delivery to be made at sea. Now, have you
taken care of the matter of paying for it?"
' 'Two million, five hundred thousand," I said, ' Cvia a
letter of credit. Yes, it's set up."
"And the documents of receipt?"
"There'll be a set at our bank in Zurich by tomorrow
for you to pick up or have sent to you—whichever you
prefer. I'll sign them when I take over the cargo."
'Tm sure," said St. Hilaire, "you brought a set of cop-
ies with you. Yes?"
I nodded. "Yes. In my pocket."
St. Hilaire beamed. "Then we can save a great deal of
time by having you sign them now."
"No," I said.
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"My dear Mr: Harding," St. Hilaire sighed. "Must I
turn Nikos loose?"
"It wouldn't do you a damn bit of good " I informed
him. "The bank has instructions only to honor my signa-
ture on the original documents. Duplicates aren't worth
the paper they're printed on."
C' You're not a trusting person, Mr. Harding."
"I've no reason to trust you."
St. Hilaire was not offended. "Quite true."
"Did you really expect me to take a chance on paying
out two and a half million and not get the goods?" I
asked.
"Of course not," St. Hilaire conceded. He took a paper
from inside his suit jacket. "However, if you could have
signed the documents of receipt, I would have transferred
ownership of the goods to you as of this moment."
He leaned forward ponderously and handed me the pa-
per.
"All in perfectly legal order," said St. Hilaire. "You
see, I've even appended my signature. The goods would
have been yours. I am not a thief, Mr. Harding. As I told
you the other day, my prime concern is transferring
ownership of—i' he glanced at Nikos, C '—of certain goods
as rapidly as possible. I thought we might do that this
evening."
"Not until I have physical possession of them," I said.
The pain had subsided to a dull throbbing ache. I took
the bloodied handkerchief away from the side of my face,
refolded it and pressed it back again. "Why the big rush?"
"Because I received word this afternoon that two of my
warehouses were broken into last night," St. Hilaire told
me. "Under extremely strange circumstances. Nothing
was stolen, but almost every crate was broken open. For-
tunately, the goods were elsewhere. Does that suggeSt
anything to you?"
"One, the Israelis; two, the IRA; three, the British." I
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
ticked off the alternatives on my fingers. "You want
more?"
"That's enough. Do you blame me for feeling a con-
siderable amount of anxiety?"
"There's not a damn thing I can do about it," I said.
C' You can sign the papers as soon as I get them from
Zurich. Tomorrow, I think you said?"
"l thought you said you didn't underestimate me," I re-
plied.
St. Hilaire stared at me uncomprehendingly.
"Well?" he finally asked. "What else have you done?"
"I took a precaution that might help keep me alive.
Not only do I have to sign the documents, but I have to
countersign them in the presence of a bank official no
sooner than twenty-four hours after you get them and no
later than ten days. Otherwise the bank will not pay out
the money."
St. Hilaire did not take his eyes off my face.
"I see," he said thoughtfully. "A bank official."
"He'll be in Marseilles a week from today," I said.
'That's about the time the shipment will arrive, right?"
St. Hilaire nodded, still without speaking.
"When I get the goods, I'll sign the papers and be glad
to be done with you. You're a tricky bastard, Marius. In
the meantime, take your little playmate and get the hell
out of here!"
St. Hilaire flushed and shot a glance at Nikos. Nikos
moved into the room, his eyes suddenly filled with hatred.
St. Hilaire said, hurriedly, "No, no, Nikos ... he didn't
mean it that way. Be still."
He pushed himself out of the chair. "Very well then,
Mr. Harding. Shall we now settle how you're going to get
to the freighter that's bringing the merchandise? Have you
any thoughts on that matter?"
"When your ship arrives, I'll meet you here in town.
We'll go out to the freighter together. You won't have to
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139
tell me where the ship is, and I won't have to worry about
surprises until I get to it."
"Ingenious," murmured St. Hilaire, "Except I'm not at
all sure I would like to be at sea with you in a small boat,
especially when you're bringing your own crew with you."
"There won't be any crew," I said. "Just you and
-me—and Gallagher."
St. Hilaire's thin brows arched in surprise.
"Gallagher?"
"Yes. Gallagher. I'll sign the papers for you. YouSII be
paid off. Gallagher can take delivery right then and be on
his way—ship, cargo and all. You and I will then come
back to Marseilles together and I'll countersign the pa-
"Your insurance policy ... yes, indeed."
' 'Exactly," I said. "I'd like to remain alive after the
transaction."
"Quite," said St. Hilaire. He paused and then asked,
"About Gallagher—you'll see to it that he comes with
"If I can get in touch with him."
"Do try."
"It would be easier for you."
"He's in the suite next to yours," I told him, watching
St. Hilaire's jowled face. "Just knock on his door and tell
him you'd like to talk to him."
There was no change of expression on St. Hilaire's face
as he said, "I told Gallagher he was taking a chance. He's
much too reckless for my taste."
"Tell him I want to see him," I said.
St. Hilaire nodded. His chins trembled over his collar.
c 'I shall do that. Where is he to meet you?"
"Here. Tonight."
St. Hilaire put his small pistol away, tucking it into a
back pocket of his trousers. He straightened and rebut-
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
toned his suit jacket, pulling down his cuffs and flicking at
a piece of lint on his sleeve.
"How did you know I was registered here?" I asked.
St. Hilaire smiled, a superior twist of his lips. c swe used
your trick of phoning around until we located you. The
desk clerk at my hotel alerted me immediately after you'd
called."
"I left no word."
' 'That's what alerted me," he said. ' 'No one else knew I
was in Marseilles."
St. Hilaire walked to the doorway. He turned as he
came abreast of Nikos in the small foyer.
"I trust there'll be no trouble between you and Galla-
gher."
"Not on my part," I said, and smiled at him.
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Gallagher never showed up. It was past two in the morn-
ing when my telephone rang.
"l can't get in touch with Gallagher." St. Hilaire's voice
Iwas tired, frustrated and plaintive. "He's not in the hotel.
God only knows where he's gone to."
"All right."
"I tried."
After I hung up, I threw my stuff into the small over-
night bag and went down to check out. I drove the twenty
;odd kilometres back to the villa near Cassis.
I left the Renault in the gravel circle in front of the ga-
rage and came in the back door. I dropped the overnight
hag in the kitchen and used the servants' stairs to the sec-
.ond story. For a moment, more out of habit than anything
else, I almost went into the master bedroom before I
•remembered that Brenna would be asleep and I didn't
.want to wake her, so I went down the hall to one of the
guest rooms.
I'd hardly taken off my jacket when the door to the
bedroom opened.
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I spun around, pulling my gun out of my belt, to find
Brenna standing in the doorway. She was wearing one of
my shirts as a night gown, the sleeves rolled back to her
elbows, but her long, slender legs were bare from mid-
thigh and the shirt was opened in a wide vee over her full
breasts.
She looked at the gun in my hand and then up at my
face with a horrified expression.
I put the gun away. "Why are you still awake?"
"l can't sleep by myself," she said, simply. "Not since
the other night."
"Jean-Louis is here."
"l know. I'm still frightened."
She sat down on the bed, curling her legs under her. I
got up and stripped off my shirt. I finished undressing in
the bathroom, washed and came out to find Brenna lying
under the top sheet. The shirt she had worn lay on the
floor beside her. The lights were off, except for a night
lamp.
"What's happening, Quinn?" she asked. "It's about
time you told me, isn't it?"
I lay down on the far side of the bed. In the pale light
of the bed lamp, I saw Brenna examine my body. She
touched the old scars along my rib cage and on my right
thigh.
"Last I patched up your back. Tonight, you
greet me with a gun. When is it going to end? Who's try-
ing to kill you?"
There was nothing I could say to that. I remembered
the first attack on me in New York. But that had come
before Hawk had told me about this assignment, before
I'd met Gallagher. I really couldn't figure out why "they"
were trying to kill me, whoever they were. It didn't make
sense.
Brenna said, "Get under the covers, Quinn," reaching
over to turn out the lamp. In the darkness, I slid into bed.
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renna moved closer to me until her body was touching
nine. She was naked. Her arm came up and went across
my chest.
"Hold me," she said, in a soft whisper.
I lifted my arm and Brenna put her head on my shoul-
Her skin had the smoothness and life of a fresh petal
-still on the flower, ripe with sun. It was cool in places,
Ind warm in others where the heat of her breasts and
ubic arch pressed against me. The delicate scent of her
nair, where her face lay against my shoulder, came into
my nostrils. I felt the tiny tremors of fright that ran
:hrough her body. We lay like that for a few minutes
without talking, and finally the tremors went away.
Brenna pressed closer to me, her hand moving in gentle
-circles across my chest.
I felt her head move. Her hand came up and touched
me on the chin, gently pressing my face toward hers. The
:ouch of her lips came as a surprise because they were so
•soft. She kissed me on the chin and then our lips were
glued together, her mouth opening greedily to mine; our
:ongues searching each other in gentle, slow probings.
She turned so that her breasts pressed heavily on my
chest, their heat warming me. My left hand came up,
nolding the back of her head, stroking the softness of her
[ong hair, moving under the heavy fall of it to grasp her
oy the softness of the back of her neck, and my fingers
*pread out to trace the fine musculature of her shoulders
nnd along the length of her spine. She shivered in my
arms. I turned slightly to face her, one hand now cupping
-a buttock, the other under a breast, feeling its weight and
heat and softness in the palm of my hand.
The tremors came back again, but this time they were
not from fear. This time, the tremors grew stronger, and I
knew that she was enjoying them, losing herself in the
rhythm that our bodies had fallen into. We explored each
3ther, not knowing what we were seeking, until we found
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all the privately moist places, trembling as each of us was
touched by the other, hunting for the ultimate pleasure
and unconsciously giving to the other what each sought so
selfishly.
Brenna's arms were around me. She moved onto me,
mounting me as she would a horse, guiding me into her,
sitting erect on me as if she were in a saddle and then
she began to ride.
I grasped her breasts with both hands and her move-
ments grew more frantic. She was at a gallop now, her
long black hair swinging violently from side to side in
great sweeps that brushed my face, uttering cries of ex-
citement, urging me to greater efforts as I bucked and
heaved beneath her.
She was lost in a world of her own, her eyes were
closed, her hands gripping my shoulders as she would the
withers of a great stallion, sliding up and down my length
in a rhythm that grew faster and faster and more uncon-
trolléd, until finally our world was one of sensation alone
and the moistness of our bodies and the cries that came
out of her mouth turned into one great scream that came
ripping out of her throat.
The week passed lazily. We awoke late in the morn-
ings, had coffee and croissants in bed served by an impas-
Sive Mme. Renaud who did not indicate in the slightest
whether or not she approved or disapproved of our ar-
rangement. Jean-Louis kept pretty much out of sight.
In the afternoons, we'd drive into Cassis and stroll
along its narrow streets and along the dock area. Twice I
saw ben-Dror there. The big Israeli made no attempt to
hide himself, nor did he make any attempt to speak to
me. He passed us once on the street and as soon as he
spotted me, he crossed to avoid a direct confrontation.
Once he was seated at a table at an outdoor cafe as we
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
145
walked past. I didn't acknowledge him any more than he
acknowledged me.
And then, early one morning at the end of the week,
Gallagher telephoned.
"I think it's about time we got together," he said. "You
should be receiving the merchandise pretty soon."
"l haven't heard from St. Hilaire yet," I pointed out.
"l have," said Gallagher. I could almost hear the
amusement in the man's voice. It irritated me. "That's
why I want to meet with you. Can you be in Cassis at
three o'clock?"
"Where?"
"The southeast corner of Place Clemenceau."
I said, "You're taking a hell of a chance, Gallagher.
I'm being tailed. They expect me to lead them to you."
Gallagher didn't ask who I meant by "they".
C 'I'm not foolhardy. I won't be there myself, Mr. Hard-
ing. You'll be met and brought to me."
"By whom?"
"He'll know you. That's all you need to know."
"Not good enough," I said.
"Then bring Brenna with you. She'll recognize the
man. Three o'clock."
"Wait a second." I stopped him from hanging up. "Is
the Marat girl all right?"
"She's healthy," said Gallagher. "And the sooner we
complete our arrangements, the sooner she can go free."
He hung up.
I put down the receiver. Jean-Louis was lounging in the
doorway of the study.
"Gallagher?" he asked.
' 'He wants me to meet him in Cassis this afternoon."
The Frenchman was puzzled. "I think he's not as intel-
ligent as you think he is," he said, finally.
"Oh, he's smart enough. He's smarter than any of us
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
have given him credit for being. That's what bothers me.
He's a tricky one."
"You want me to come along with you?"
I considered the suggestion and rejected it.
"Not with me," I said. "I don't need protection. I want
Gallagher, but I don't think he's anywhere near Cassis,
and I don't think he's going to come anywhere near it. It's
too small a town for him to hide in."
"Shall I follow you, then?"
I shook my head.
"Hell, there are enough agents following me, now. It's
a wonder they're not tripping over one another."
"Ben-Dror was one. But there had to be at least an-
other Israeli. agent, if not two, to spell him. Thorndike
probably had a couple of his British boys there. And if
Loring was running true to form, he'd have a man or two
on the scene trying to second guess me. Add one or two
from Gallagher and St. Hilaire. Christ. There were
enough of them around for a convention.
"Then what do you want me to do, mon arm?'
"I want you to contact someone for me. Do you know
Edouard Girard?"
I caught the flicker of expression in Jean-Louis' eyes.
"Oui."
"Why the surprise when I mention his name?"
"That you know such a man. He's very big, that one."
"He has a boat for me," I said. "It's time we put it to
use. Tell him I sent you. I'll be in Cassis at three o'clock.
I want that boat waiting outside the harbor by then."
Jean-Louis frowned. "What do you have in mind?"
"If Gallagher isn't going to be in Cassis, then I'm going
to be brought to him, right?"
"Daccord."
"There are only two ways out of Cassis. By road—
"Too easy to follow you. You think they will take you
by sea?"
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
"It's the only logical way. I'm betting on it."
"How do we find you?"
147
"Watch for a power boat of some-kind heading out of
the harbor shortly after three o'clock."
Jean-Louis snorted. "As well look for a particular sea
gull!"
I reached into the drawer of my desk and pulled out a
small, rectangular metal object. It fit easily into the palm
of my hand.
"Do you recognize this?"
Jean-Louis looked at the flat black box and then shook
his head.
"I took it off the Renault last night," I said. "It's a
beeper. A miniature radio transmitter. It's been on the car
from the time Francois delivered it to me so they could
keep track of my movements."
"They?"
"Come off it," I said sharply. "You know that Francois
works for The Company."
Jean-Louis let a smile touch his lips. "And do you, per-
haps, think that I, too, work for them?"
"Only at times," I said. "But I know that you also
know Edouard Girard a hell of a lot better than you let
on."
Jean-Louis gave a noncommital shrug of his shoulders.
want you to get the direction-finding equipment from
Francois and have it aboard the boat that Girard has
promised me."
"And that's how we'll be able to locate you among the
many boats coming from the harbor?"
"Exactly."
"And then what?"
"Just follow us," I told him. ' Vl)on't do anything. Don't
try to intercept us. I can promise you that Gallagher
won't be aboard when we leave Cassis. And, for God's
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
sake, keep a few miles away from us, because Girard
promised me a motor torpedo boat. You'll stand out like
a sore thumb if you come anywhere close enough for
them to put glasses on you."
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Brenna wore white flare-bottomed jeans, a faded blue
sailor's jersey and blue boating sneakers. She carried an
oversized, white leather shoulder bag. I wore a T-shirt
and brown slacks. There was no way in the world I could
have carried Wilhelmina or Hugo with me without either
of the two weapons being seen, so I left them at the villa.
We stood on the southwest corner of Place Clem-
enceau, the fishing boats bobbing gently in the oily
water that lapped against the pilings of the quays, the
smell of the harbor all around us—a composite of dried i,
salt and rotting fish scraps and tar, oil, gasoline, paint and
heat, with a breeze to blow it into our nostrils and then
away from us. Brenna recognized the little man first.
"It's Emmett Cleary," she said to me.
Cleary came up to us, a small, thin-legged man. His
hair was cut short; his face and forearms red with the to-
mato ripeness of a fresh sunburn.
He gestured at us to follow him and turned away, walk-
ing rapidly down to Quai St. Pierre and then along Quai
des Moulins. Halfway down the dock, he stopped.
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"In you go," he said, 'Sand mind your step."
The boat was a thirty-six-foot sports cruiser, about ten
years old, but its brightwork gleamed with care. Among
the sturdy work boats of the fishing fleet, its racy lines
looked out of place.
Nimbly, Cleary took in the bow and stern lines, and the
man on the flying bridge, whose face I couldn't see, eased
the throttles forward to move us out into the waters of the
small harbor. We moved down the channel toward open
sea.
I sat back in the cockpit, Brenna beside me. I was con-
scious of the weight of the beeper's rectangular, metal
housing in my hip pocket.
Once into the open sea, we put on speed. Cleary came
up to stand in front of me on his short, thin legs. He'd
smeared his face and forearms with a heavy suntan lotion,
which made him look more than ever like a cooked lob-'
ster.
I craned my neck to look behind him, past the stern of
the boat toward the harbor we'd just left.
"You looking for someone?" Cleary asked, a knowing
smile on his sharp, clever face.
"Yes," I said, and looked again at the indentation of
the bay now far behind us. The cruiser began to move
with the slight swell of the Mediterranean. Behind us a
white, wide wake streamed out like a broadening pennant
against the blue of the sea. The day was mild, the sun in
an almost cloudless sky, and there was practically no
wind. Even the waves weren't much higher than on a
fresh water lake.
"Who're you lookin' for? Who'd you think'd be fol-
lowin' us?" Cleary had to raise his voice over the sound
of the engines.
"Anyone," I replied. "Gallagher's at sea, isn't he?'
'That's your guess."
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151
"He's at sea. And if we're being followed, you're taking
them straight to Gallagher."
Cleary laughed, a sound as bright as the day, filled with
amusement and tinged with awaren•ess of his own clever-
ness.
'CSo you're watchin' to see who comes after us?"
"Yes."
"It won't make any difference," Cleary said, the smart
smile on his face and impudence dancing in his eyes. "It
won't make any difference," he repeated.
The cruiser roared on for half an hour or so. The
shoreline was no longer to be seen, nor could we be seen
from the shore. And then, catching me by surprise, the
engines were eased off, the bow settled into the
we kept just enough way under us to head into the gentle
swells and prevent us from wallowing.
I'd seen the MTB standing well out from shore when the
sports cruiser we were on first came out of the harbor.
There were two figures on its bridge. One was holding a
pair of binoculars on us.
As the cruiser made its way through the fishing vessels
just off the mouth of the .harbor, the MTB turned and
kept the same distance between us, heading out to sea.
Half an hour later when our sports fisherman cut short
its run the MTB was a distant speck on the horizon.
We lay to for about forty-five minutes. Then I heard it.
The faint persistent buzzing of an aircraft engine some-
where in the sky.
At the first sound of the engine, Cleary ran up to the
flying bridge and began to scan the sky, holding one hand
above his eyes to shade the sun. I spotted it before he did.
The seaplane came in from the southwest, flying low
above the water. As it came over us, it was less than a
hundred feet in the air.
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The plane crossed over our stern and pulled up sharp-
ly. I heard the engine throttle back as it banked into a
tight turn to head into the wind. It let down half a mile
from us, spray leaping out from its pontoons as they
touched the sea. Then the engine shut down and the
seaplane waited for us, bobbing in an ungainly way, like
an albatross fat on the water out of its element.
On the cruiser's bridge, the skipper pushed the throttles
forward and spun the wheel hard over. The cruiser heeled
around in a sharp curve, straightened out and made a run
for the seaplane.
Cleary scuttled down to the deck, dropping fenders
along the port side of the boat. The skipper cut his en-
gines, expertly losing way so that we came up to the
seaplane gently, the port bow nudging between the
wingroot and the empenage of the aircraft, a Cessna 180.
The right hand door pushed open.
"In you go," said Cleary, holding the plane to the side
of the cruiser with a boat hook caught onto a pontoon
strut.
I dropped over the bow onto the pontoon, turned and
held out my arm for Brenna. She stepped gingerly over
the low railing and jumped down onto the pontoon. The
plane tilted slightly under our weight. I helped her move
forward under the wing and in through the door to the
back seat. I climbed into the front seat alongside the pilot.
Cleary pushed us apart. The skipper reversed his props
and moved the cruiser away from the plane until he was
completely clear.
I closed and latched the door. The pilot switched on his
magnetos and engaged the starter. The prop kicked over
and caught. Weather vaning into the wind, he fed in the
throttle. The plane picked up speed, surging through the
sea, slamming against the low waves faster and faster. I
felt the familiar. hard bounce and par as the pontoons
struck and rebounded from the water, and then the plane
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
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lifted up onto the step. In a moment the pontoons broke
free and the pounding stopped abruptly as we were air-
borne.
The albatross had come back to its element and was
part of the clean, clear sky, soaring effortlessly aloft.
The pilot turned the plane onto a southwest course, still
not climbing any higher than three or four hundred feet
above the water. Behind us, the sports cruiser became a
speck, a dot that finally disappeared completely.
And then we were passing almost directly over the
MTB with its direction finding equipment, its hard-bitten
crew of tough Marseilles thugs and the two 20mm can-
none
I looked down almost directly at them as we passed
over them and flew off.
They weren't going to do me a damn bit of good.
The pilot flew a southwesterly course for almost twenty
miles before he dropped down to less than fifty feet above
the wave tops and banked the seaplane in a tight, gut-
wrenching wing-down turn. I watched the gyro compass
roll slowly through an arc of almost 1300 until we were
headed almost due east before he levelled off. The pilot
kept the plane barely mast high above the sea. No shore
based radar in the world could have tracked us.
Ten minutes later he took up a southeasterly heading. I
realized that he was keeping a course roughly parallel to
the shoreline but well away at sea.
We turned northeast. I visualized a chart of the coast-
line. Using my wristwatch and the air-speed indicator as
guidelines, I made a rough dead reckoning that the Hy-
eres islands should be off to our portside, well over the
horizon. If so, then another three-quarters of an hour
should bring us into the area between St. Tropez and Cap
d'Antibes. I switched my attention to the clock on the in-
strument panel, watching the second hand sweep around
the dial.
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I was in error by only five minutes when the pilot
pulled up the nose of the plane, gained a thousand feet of
altitude, banked to port and began scanning the waters
ahead of us.
The Mediterranean, between St. Tropez and Cap d'An-
tibes, is filled with vessels of every descr•iption, size and
kind. Motor sailors, fishing craft, diesel-powered sports
cruisers, ketches, yawls, schooners, trawlers, inter-island
freighters, passenger ferries and pleasure craft from thirty
footers to blue-water, ocean-going yachts. It was a perfect
place in which to hide. One more vessel, of any size or
description, would become quickly merged into the mass
of other ships, just as one gull becomes lost in the flock
the moment it joins it.
Somewhere down there was Gallagher.
It was an ocean-cruising, diesel-powered yacht. I saw it
turn out of the pack and put on speed, making for the
open sea. From the air, I had a chance to examine it and
to admire its long, sleek lines. Over one hundred and
thirty feet in length, the vessel was painted a crisp, gleam-
ing white from its sharply curved bow to its rounded stern
cockpit. Abaft its bridge a stubby mast, bristling with ra-
dio antennae, raked back sharply.
This late in the afternoon the Mediterranean had taken
on a lavender color from the sinking sun that painted the
few clouds and stained the sea, and the white, turbulent
wake of the vessel, streaming from its white painted hull,
was harpoon sharp against the sea.
Throttled back, with half flaps to reduce its speed even
further, the plane swung in a long, lazy circle, first away
from the ship and then back to it, so that we finally came
together some twenty minutes later, long after the motor
yacht was by itself with no other ships around. The big
yacht lost speed; the plane banked and the pilot made an-
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155
Other smooth landing, coming to a stop less than a
hundred yards away. By the time he had swung around to
close the distance between us, a motor dinghy from the
yacht was already approaching.
Brenna and I climbed out of the plane and were helped
into the dinghy. It had hardly turned back to the yacht
when the plane took off again.
Brenna mounted the ladder first. I was close behind
her. We stepped onto the deck and a familiar voice said,
CSWelcome aboard." I turned to look at the pudgy figure
of Marius St. Hilaire. He wore a navy blue yachting
blazer, white flannels and white buckskin shoes. St. Hi-
laire's plump face wore a pleased half-smile.
"Are you surprised?" he asked.
I let him have his little victory. "In a way," I admitted.
"Come along, then," said St. Hilaire. "I'm sure you're
anxious to see Gallagher."
He turned; we followed him forward along the narrow
starboard deck. I saw that there were armed sailors at
each end of the deck. Tough, swarthy-skinned men whose
faces carried no expressions of any sort, they held their
carbines as if the weapons were familiar to them. I had
the feeling that they were more than just a crew of ordi-
nary seamen. I wondered how many of them were aboard.
From the size of the yacht, I estimated it would require a
crew of ten to twelve.
Under my feet I felt the slight vibration of the engines
through the teak decking as the yacht got under way
again.
St. Hilaire turned in at one of the stateroom doors
that opened off the main deck. Brenna and I followed him
in. I saw that we were in the owner's day cabin. It ran the
full width of the ship's beam and was twice the size of an
average stateroom. Once St. Hilaire had closed the door
behind us, it was hard to realize that we were on a ship at
sea.
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The cabin was panelled in mahogany and cypress.
Coarsely woven drapes in brown and orange concealed
the windows. Thick carpeting covered the deck from
bulkhead to bulkhead. The stateroom was air-conditioned
and lighting came from both lamps and concealed fixtures
built into the panelling. There was an enormous desk
made of refinished ship's planking; sturdy, thick oak.
Along two sides of the room ran built-in leather couches.
St. Hilaire sat himself behind the desk. Gallagher was
sitting on one of the couches. He made no move to get
up as we entered. A brief nod to Brenna was as much
as he allowed himself to acknowledge her presence. I sat
down on the other couch. Unconsciously, Brenna sat be-
side me; only her large white leather bag separated us.
"Well." St. Hilaire smiled at me almost unctuously.
Then his bottom lip came out in a mild pout. "I should
be quite angry with you Mr. Harding. You lied to me the
last time we were together. That wasn't at all nice of you."
I waited impassively.
"It took me only a day or two to find out. What did
you think to gain by telling me that story abouta bank
offcial having to come to Marseilles to accept the papers
and your counter-signature?"
"Time," I said. "What would Nikos have done to me
otherwise?"
"Nothing—if you'd signed the papers."
"And if I hadn't signed?"
St. Hilaire sighed. "Yes, of course: It would have been
unpleasant."
"Are the arms aboard?" I asked. C 'Let's look at them.
If they meet Gallagher's approval, we can get on with our
business."
I saw Gallagher and St. Hilaire exchange a quick
glance.
"The arms are not aboard," said St. Hilaire. "Not on
this vessel, The weapons are on another ihip."
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Gallagher spoke up.
157
"Did you think I'd be fool enough to bring you to the
ship itself?" he asked. "The minute you were back ashore
the British would have you describing it in detail. There'd
be an air search of every inch of the Mediterranean. Not
a vessel would get through Gibraltar into the Atlantic
without being photographed and identified, and those pro-
ceeding on a course leading anywhere toward Ireland
would be boarded at sea under one pretext or another.
No, Mr. Harding, you'll not see that freighter if I can help
it."
"l don't have to," I said easily. "My job's done the
minute you accept the arms and release the girl."
C 'Ah, yes," said Gallagher reluctantly. "The girl. Well,
Mr. Harding, I'm afraid we'll have to wait awhile longer
for that. She's the only protection I have right now."
"That wasn't the deal," I reminded him.
Gallagher smiled at me, running a stubby hand through
his coarse reddish-gray hair.
"True," he admitted in a casual tone of voice. c 'But,
circumstances change. It's not working out as easily as I'd
thought. Somehow or other the British have gotten them-
selves into this—I'
"And the Israelis," St. Hilaire added.
"—And what started out as a simple thing, isn't as
simply as I'd planned. It'll only be awhile longer, and
then we'll release the lass."
'"You're a liar," I said, quietly. "You never planned on
letting the girl go until the arms had been smuggled into
Ireland, did you?"
Brenna said nothing. She looked at me and then at
Gallagher. Gallagher dropper his pretense. His grin disap-
peared. I could see the coldness come into his face as the
tough, singlemindedness of the man came to the surface.
It was the first time that Gallagher had let me sense the
intensity of the fury that churned within him. Suddenly I
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knew that Gallagher was a driven man, not in control of
himself, using himself as harshly as he would use any one
else to gain his ends. Irish patriot. What was there about
the phrase that caught the imagination of so many Irish?
Was it that the poverty of the country extended even to
its legends—that there were so few of them that each
Irish hero had to be blown out of proportion to his deeds?
Or was it that they still thought the only road to legend-
ary deeds was through the path of martyrdom? Whatever
it was that drove Gallagher—and I wasn't even sure the
man himself knew—it was something that could only be
stopped by death. Gallagher's eyes told me he, too, had
recognized that we had suddenly reached a point where
the two of us were no longer opponents—we were ene-
mies.
"You should never call a man a liar, Mr. Harding. It
makes for ill feeling."
"Do you have the weapons?" I demanded, ignoring his
remark.
Gallagher nodded. "I have. Now, pay the gentleman."
St. Hilaire pulled open a drawer of the desk and took
out the originals of the letter of credit. He'd been busy
during the previous two days, his activities most likely in-
cluding a trip to Zurich. He stroked the crisp paper with a
thumb edge as he spread the sheets out on the desk top.
'Your signature if you please, Mr. Harding."
I stared first at St. Hilaire and then at Gallagher and
then back at the fat man again.
you really care if I don't pay him?" I asked Galla-
gher. "You've got what you want, haven't you?"
St. Hilaire froze. Then in one furious shove, he pushed
his bulk halfway to his feet.
"Sit down!" Gallagher snapped. He cocked his head to
one side. "What are you saying, Mr. Harding?"
St. Hilaire sank back into his chair, outrage showing on
every line of his face.
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I said, "If you have the weapons, what business is it of
yours whether or not I pay Mavropoulos? It's his prob-
lem, right?"
St. Hilaire opened his mouth to protest. Gallagher cut
him off. His eyes narrowed and his broad face took on a
look of appraisaL
"I think you'd better explain yourself, Mr. Harding,"
he said. "I think you have something to tell me."
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I took my time. I lit a cigarette and stared at St. Hilaire's
expectant face. He was trembling with anger and anxiety.
I matched Gallagher's hard glare with my own, breathing
out a long streamer of smoke, our eyes meeting through
the blue-gray haze. In the silence, the tension mounted.
Gallagher gave way first. "Well?"
I inclined my head toward St. Hilaire. "He knows why
I won't pay him one damned cent for what you've got.
Ask him."
Gallagher turned toward St. Hilaire. "What the hell is
he talking about?"
St. Hilaire's cheeks quivered in denial as he shook his
head. "I haven't the faintest idea. Really, old man, it's all
quite a mystery to me."
Gallagher got to his feet, a heavy, menacing figure in
the low ceilinged stateroom. Walking over to the desk, he
bent down and placed his hands flat on the surface, his
arms supporting his barrel chest. Aggressively, he pushed
his broad, pugnacious face toward St. Hilaire.
"What the hell is he talking about?"
160
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St. Hilaire shrank back. The corners of his mouth
twitched as if he were giving still-born birth to an aborted
smile.
"I—I don't know," he protested.
Without moving Gallagher said over his shoulder to
me, "Does he know what you're talking about, Mr.
Harding?"
"He knows," I said.
The Irishman straightened up and reached into his hip
pocket. He brought out a small, flat automatic pistol and
pulled back the slide.
"I haven't any time to waste," he said to St. Hilaire.
"Talk up!"
St. Hilaire cleared his throat, his eyes focusing first on
the blue steel and then on the open, deadly hole of the
barrel, finally wandering away to a point midway between
Gallagher and me.
"It—it's all a misunderstanding, I'm sure," he said. I
got the impression that St. Hilaire was hunting for the
right words and was having trouble finding them. Marius
St. Hilaire had made his devious way through life with his
wits. "It has to do with Dieter Hoffman—I think." He
paused, waiting for a reaction from me. He found none.
My face was poker-player blank.
"He's completely wrong, of course. The whole idea is
preposterous! I had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all!"
His voice rose unconsciously as he protested.
' 'What's Dieter Hoffman got to do with this?" Galla-
gher asked me. I saw that he was truly puzzled and my
last doubt left me.
"He was tortured to death," I said.
c 'By him?" He nodded at St. Hilaire.
"l had nothing to do with it!" St. Hilaire shouted.
"By him." I ignored Marius's outburst. "Dieter was a
friend of mine. He set up the arrangement with St. Hi-
laire. Under pressure. That was you, Gallagher. And then
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St. Hilaire discovered that Dieter had learned something
so important that Dieter came from Brussels down to
Cassis in person to tell me what it was. St. Hilaire ordered
him killed. He was tortured to death."
The picture of the old man's bony legs ending in burnt
flesh crawled in my mind. Beside me Brenna shivered,
remembering the scene and her own frightened reaction
and how long it had taken before she could erase that
scene from her mind.
I went on. "For a long time I thought it might have
been you, Gallagher. I finally realized that you'd have
nothing to gairi if Dieter told me what he'd learned. Only
Mavropoulos could profit by its remaining a secret. When
attempts on my life stopped right after I'd made out the
letter of credit, I was sure."
I raised my voice. "Tell me, Mavropoulos, there were
two men at my villa that night, weren't there? The one I
killed and someone else. It was the other man who did
the torturing, wasn't it?"
Sweat broke out in beads on St. Hilaire's high forehead
and ran down the sides of his cheeks. I could see the
soaked cloth of his shirt clinging under his armpits.
"Was it Nikos?" 1 asked.
St. Hilaire slowly nodded. "Yes, it was Nikos. How-
ever, he exceeded my instructions. You must believe me!
I said that I wanted him to find out if Dieter really knew.
Nothing more, I telephoned Nikos from Paris. Nikos was
waiting for Dieter at the airport when he flew into Mar-
seilles. He followed the old man to your vina."
St. Hilaire caught the merciless look on my face. It
frightened him. Words began spewing out of his mouth in
a burst of terror. "I swear I never told Nikos to do—eto
do what he did. That was his idea, nof mine! I was horri-
fied when he told me. After all, I'd known Dieter
Hoffman for many years—2'
"Cut it out!" I said sharply. "You knew how Nikos op-
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erated. You knew Dieter couldn't be left alive to tell me
what he'd discovered. It would blow all your plans to hell,
wouldn't it?"
Gallagher turned toward me.
"Now, I'll ask you," he said, his rough voice as hard as
when he'd been talking to St. Hilaire. "What the hell are
you talking about? What is it that Dieter Hoffman knew?"
"That Mavropoulos doesn't have the wire-guided anti-
tank missiles or the rocket launchers. He never did have
them."
Gallagher seemed to gather himself in. It was as if he'd
been slammed in the gut with a hard punch. If it was at
all possible, his tough, seamed face became harsher than
before.
"Say that again."
I said, "It took me a long time to put the pieces to-
gether. Mavropoulos learned that you were in the market
for arms. He knew there could be a couple of million dol-
lars in it for him if he could come up with a scheme that
would make you insist on buying exclusively from him.
He didn't have the missiles, but he knew the chances were
damned good.you'd never find out about it until it was
too late. It was Mavropoulos who contacted you first, and
not you who got in touch with him, right?"
Gallagher nodded.
"He told you that he had possession of five hundred
Soviet wire-guided, anti-tank missiles and rocket launch-
ers. He described what they could do to a British Cen-
turion tank—and you flipped!"
said Gallagher reflectively.
"I'd seen the photographs,"
"The newspapers were full of them at the time of the Oc-
tober war. British-made tanks. Wiped out. Destroyed.
Burnt out hulks on the Sinai desert. When St. Hilaire
told me that he'd got his hands on those anti-tank
weapons. . . i"
His big grizzled head moved from side to side. "l had
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to have them. I could see the picture in my mind so
clearly—my boys in Belfast, lying hidden in mi alley, the
sights of a launcher lining up a Centurion tank as it came
crawling up the street on its fat, steel treads. And them
thinkin' no one could get at them. Sittin' inside, feelin' so
safe. So much better than the rest of us. And then my
boys pull the trigger! I tell you, that picture in my mind
was glorious. It would have been a mighty blow for Irish
freedom. I could watch that tank explode in my mind's
eye. I could almost smell the cordite, the stink of burnin'
oil. And the fright. Ah, yes, the lovely fright the Black
and Tans would be in. The "way they'd be scurryin'
around at headquarters in a panic, knowin' there'd not be
a tank on the streets anywhere in Northern Ireland that'd
be safe from me!"
There was exultation on his face, fanaticism in every
line. His eyes shone with the light of an inner vision.
"And what would it cost me to get them? Not a thing!
The only price would be to deal through St. Hilaire.
That's no price to pay."
"If he had the missiles," I pointed out. "But he never
had them. That was the secret that cost Dieter Hoffman
his life and almost cost me mine. For a long time, I
couldn't figure out why someone tried to kill me in New
York the night before I met you. It couldn't have been on
your orders, Gallagher. You knew nothing about me. But
Mavropoulos did. He knew my reputation as an arms
dealer. He was afraid I'd see through his scheme, so he
tried to have me eliminated. What I couldn't figure out
was how he knewæven before I did that I was going to be
involved.
Gallagher growled, c 'I told him. We'd kept in touch
since our first meeting. When it came to giving me the list
of acceptable arms dealers, I asked for his advice. That's
how he knew you were the final choice."
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Gallagher spun around to face St. Hilaire. The look on
his face was one of cold anger.
"Is it true what he's sayin'? Are there no anti-tank mis-
Siles in the shipment?"
Gallagher's finger tightened on the trigger of the auto-
matic pistol. He held it so that the muzzle pointed straight
at St. Hilaire's forehead. His voice was a hoarse rasp of
sound, filled with the fury of a man cheated of his dream.
St. Hilaire pushed himself away from the center of the
desk, his eyes fixed on the pistol.
"Is it true?" Gallagher shouted, his face red-mottled,
his eyes glaring.
St. Hilaire threw himself toward one corner of the desk,
his fingers jabbing frantically at the buttons of the inter-
com box sitting there. Gallagher fired at him and missed.
He fired again. Desperately, St. Hilaire went on pressing
the buttons again and again.
I heard sound of bells clamoring on the deck. There
was the pound of running feet. The door burst open. Two
of the crewmen raced into the stateroom, their carbines
aimed at Gallagher and me.
St. Hilaire fell back into his chair, his face and fore-
head so wet With the perspiration of fear that his few lank
strands of hair were plastered to the bald dome- of his
head. His breath came in tight, hard, shallow gasps. He
pointed his finger at Gallagher's pistol.
"Put ... put it down," he gasped. "They'll kill you if
. if I give give the word."
Gallagher stared at the two men in the doorway. One
of them lifted his carbine to his shoulder, aiming at Galla-
gher's head.
"For the love of God, Gallagher," Brenna implored.
"Do as the man says! There're more important things to
do with your life than to throw it away on scum like this.
Ireland needs you."
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Slowly, like a man waking from a dream, Gallagher put
his pistol down on the desk top.
"Sit down." St. Hilaire's voice still had a strange high-
pitched tone in it. Contemptuously, Gallagher turned his
back on the armed crewmen and walked back to the
couch.
St. Hilaire took out his handkerchief and wiped his
forehead and his face and his neck. He folded the linen
and put it back into his pocket. He took a deep breath.
"It's all true, I'm afraid. But you haven't been cheated.
You've got fuu delivery of all the armament you originally
requested."
'S You lied to me," Gallagher said accusingly.
St. Hilaire shrugged. "Merely business, my friend. You
should have no complaints. What difference does it make
to you if the arms were purchased from one source or a
dozen. You have them. They're on the freighter now, en-
route to Ireland with your own crew aboard. So we're
even. The only reason for your presence here was to reas-
sure Mr• Harding that you had received delivery. Now
that that's done with, my business is with him."
"1'11 kill you for this!"
St. Hilaire shrugged. s 'I've been threatened before," he
said. "However, I don't think you will. It's England that
wm occupy your thoughts of revenge, not me."
Gallagher swore. "You British! You bloody double-
crossing British!"
St. Hilaire looked at his wristwatch. "Your pilot is due
back any minute, Mr. Gallagher. Let's not have any un-
pleasantness."
While St. Hilaire talked, I reached into my hip pocket
and slid out the small rectangular box that housed the
miniature radio transmitter. It now lay between my right
thigh and Brenna's carryall shoulder bag. I'd planned to
shove it beneath the cushions so it wouldn't be found on
me if I were searched, but the mention of Gallagher's pi-
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lot and Gallagher's imminent departure triggered a wild
thought in my mind. It was a long shot. The odds were
that it wouldn't work. But there was nothing to lose.
Slowly I unfastened the catch of her shoulder bag and
pushed back the flap.
Gallagher said to St. Hilaire, ' 'I'll not rest until I've
evened the score. Be assured of that."
He got to his feet, and as he moved the muzzles of the
crewmen followed him. St. Hilaire seemed to inch back in
his chair. Without taking my eyes from the two of them, I
slid the beeper deep into the miscellany of Brenna's bag.
It weighed so little I knew she wouldn't notice it.
"You're being foolish," said St. Hilaire placatingly. He
looked at me.
"Am I not right, Mr. Harding? You've been quiet.
What's your opinion?"
'GI think Gallagher means what he says. For your own
sake, kill him now while you have the chance." I heard
Brenna gasp and felt her recoil from me.
St. Hilaire smiled for the first time, a superior, smug
tremor of the lips.
"And have his Provos come after me? I'm not that stu-
pid, Mr. Harding. No, Mr. Gallagher will come to his
senses by and by. He'll realize that I haven't done him out
of anything. He has the weapons he wanted. He'll hate
me, but he'll not waste time or effort in sending men after
me. Correct, Mr. Gallagher?"
Gallagher's gaze iced over the fat man. He got to his
feet, holding out a hand to Brenna. Brenna stood up and
then looked at me.
"Quinn?"
It was a long unspoken sentence, a plea asking me to
understand that she had no choice, that her loyalties lay
with Ireland and with Gallagher, that no matter how she
would have preferred things to be, she was as bound by
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her vows as if they were steel links, a chain around her
heart and body.
"Goodbye." For a moment our eyes met. I had the
feeling that Brenna was taking in every line, every angle,
every feature of my face, photographing me so that she
would be able to recall me for the rest of her life.
"Goodbye, Quinn."
She picked up her purse and slung its strap over her
shoulder. Gallagher went to the door, pushing the armed
crewmen out of his way and went out onto the deck.
Brenna did not turn her head as she followed him.
St. Hilaire reached across the desk and picked up Gal-
lagher's pistol. He placed it in the center drawer of the
desk, locking the drawer.
' 'If you sign the papers, you could go with them, Mr.
Harding."
' 'That's a lie and you know it. You don't dare let me
St. Hilaire pursed his lips, amused. "No, no. Once you
sign the papers, we'll have concluded our business."
I shook my head. "I'm not a fool, Mavropoulos.
You've more than one reason to have me killed. So long
as I don't sign, you can't collect the money. You've got to
keep me alive."
St. Hilaire laughed amiably. If I hadn't known how su-
perb an actor St. Hilaire was, I would have felt that he
was truly sincere in his offer to let me go.
"Oh, come now, Mr. Harding. It's only dollars—and
not yours at that. Why on earth should I have you killed?
What gives you that idea?"
"Dieter," I replied. "What you did to Dieter—if you
don't kill me, I'm going to kill you. We both know that,
Mavropoulos, don't we?"
"Please—not Mavropoulos. St. Hilaire or even Marius.
I've mentioned it before."
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"You're still Mavropoulos, with his sly tricks," I said.
"If I sign, how long will you wait to kill me?"
The actor's mask slipped away from St. Hilaire's face.
For the first time; he let me see him as he really was.
"Do you know how I got the name Mavropoulos?" he
asked. "I was a major in the Commandos during World
War IL Quite young to have so high a rank, I might add.
When we evacuated Crete, I was left behind to set up
guerilla actions because I spoke both classical and demot-
ic Greek. And I was successful. Mavropoulos became my
code name. It was a name the Germans came to hate be-
cause I was so completely ruthless. I had to be. There
was no other way. And I learned that it's the only way if
one wants to succeed in life." He sighed. "It's an attitude
that has continued the rest of my life, I'm afraid," he
added.
"How long?" I asked again.
"Only until Gallagher's gone," St. Hilaire said brutally.
"Not a minute longer."
I settled back in the leather couch. "Well," I said, "I
told you I'll be damned if I sign away two million, five
hundred thousand dollars to you. How do you plan on
making me change my mind?"
St. Hilaire tapped the edge of the desk with his fingers.
"Nikos is aboard, Mr. Harding," he said. "I think I'll
let him try to convince you."
St. Hilaire waited until Gallagher and Brenna had been
ferried out to-the returning seaplane and the motor dinghy
had come back to the yacht. He left me in the saloon
guarded by two armed sailors. It was more than twenty
minutes before he came into the stateroom again.
He looked at me.
"Last chance, Mr. Harding. You can save usboth con-
siderable trouble if you sign the letter of credit now."
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I made no answer.
"Take him to the aft cabin."
The taller of the two crewmen moved to my side, prod-
ding me with the barrel of the carbine. I got to my feet.
St. Hilaire opened a door that gave onto a passageway,
stepping out of the way as the sailors pushed me ahead of
them. The passageway was narrow. Doors on either side
led to guest cabins. There was another door at the far end
of the passageway and it was through this that they
shoved me.
Nikos was sitting on the bed. His eyes glared at me.
"Tie him up!"
As one of the crewmen started to put down his rifle, I
dove at Nikos, my right arm sweeping across in a flat-
handed chop aimed for the bridge of his nose where only
a thin shard of bone, separates that point from the brain
itself. The blow would have killed him if it had landed.
The second crewman thrust up his rifle, catching me
alongside the head, stunning me momentarily and knock-
ing me off balance.
My blow landed off target. It struck Nikos on the side
of his face and he groaned.
As I stumbled, the sailor struck at me again. He
missed, but the first crewman had turned back. Out of the
corner of my eye I saw his carbine barrel descending
toward my skull—and that was all. There wasn't even the
feeling of dropping into blackness.
I came back to consciousness slowly. An immense
throbbing of pain surged in waves at the back of my neck
and on the side of my head. The pain in my side was
sharper:and more excruciating than I remember pain ever
having been. And in this half state of consciousness the
sharp, knife-edge of pain in my rib cage came like a great,
driving blow from a pole-axe, smashing the air from my
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lungs and sending fresh agonies through my chest.. I
sensed rather than heard the moan come out of my
throat.
"That's enough, Nikos! We don't want to kill him just
yet."
My eyes opened in time to see a foot swing back and
then at me. I tried to roll out of the way but found that I
could not move. My wrists. were tied behind my back,
lashed securely to my drawn up ankles so that I lay
helpless on my side on the cabin carpeting. The kick
caught me just above the sternum, driving the breath
from me.
"I said enough!" St. Hilaire's voice was sharp.
Blurrily, I saw Nikos step away from me. I needed air,
yet each breath I took thrust long blades of sharp steel
into my ribs. I wondered how long Nikos had been kick-
ing me.
St. Hilaire did not bother to bend down. see you are
awake, Mr. Harding." His voice came to me as if from a
great distance away.
Waves of blackness surged through my mind. I knew
St. Hilaire was talking to me, but I couldn't hold on to the
words in my head. And then I Was drifting off, hearing St.
Hilaire's voice clearly one moment and then not hearing it
at all. ...
Hours later I came to again. This time, I found myself
lying on my back on the bed. My ankles were still lashed
together as were my wrists, but now my wrists were tied
in front and my hands lay heavily across my groin.
I opened my eyes slowly and turned my head. St. Hi-
laire was standing by the bed. Nikos was a pace behind
him. The -shorter of the two sailors, swarthy and scar-
faced, was by the far bulkhead, his carbine in his hands.
The other crewman was gone.
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SCAwake, Mr. Harding?"
I said nothing. The pain in my chest was so great I felt
I would scream if I opened my mouth to speak.
"That was just the beginning," St. Hilaire went on.
' 'Nikos is eager to get on with his work. Sign the papers. I
give you my word that you'll be set free."
The tone and aura of honesty was in St. Hilaire's voice.
It made me want to believe him. I had to remind myself
that the man was not only an actor but a consummate
liar.
"Believe me, Mr. Harding, once the papers are signed
it would do me no good to have you killed. Nikos will be
satisfied with what he's already done to you. Sign the pa-
pers. I'll have you put ashore at once."
I closed my eyes. I forced all thought from my mind,
driving myself mercilessly into a state of complete uncon-
sciousness where I could feel nothing. My heartbeat
slowed, first to a gentle pulsing and then the pulses came
slower and slOwer until, finally, it was almost undetecta-
ble.
The pain receded and became nothing. The sound Of
St. Hilaire's voice faded and came back. I felt nothing.
For a time I would be able to hear and to see but not to
feel. I retreated deep into the unreachable vastness of my
inner mind and suspended myself there.
St. Hilaire prodded at my inert figure.
"Come now, Mr. Harding—
He put his hand against my mouth and nose. There
was no breath coming from them, He snatched at my
wrist, pressing his fingertips deeply into the inner surface
just above the tendons, searching for a pulse. There was
none. He bent his head and touched his ear to my chest.
There was no heartbeat.
Completely puzzled he straightened up. Ruthlessly he
jabbed his knuckles into my ribs where Nikos had so bru-
tally kicked me again and again. He twisted his knuckles
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
173
hard. The broken ribs grated under my skin, but I felt no
pain.
Not the slightest tremor or sign showed on my face.
There was absolutely no response from my body.
St. Hilaire turned furiously on Nikos. "You've killed
him!" he screamed. G' You bloody fool! You've thrown
away more than two million dollars!"
He reached out to slap Nikos' face and then stopped
himself with a tremendous effort of will. Nikos cringed in-
voluntarily. St. Hilaire glared at him with hatred. Bitterly,
he turned away, his lips trembling in rage so intense he
couldn't bring himself to utter the words he wanted to
scream out loud.
The dark-faced crewman walked over to the bed. He
reached out and touched my face. He bent down and put
his own nose up against mine.
"What the hell are you doing, you bloody Lascar!"
The sailor straightened up.
' "He alive," the crewman said. "l see this one time in
Bombay. All up here." He tapped his forehead with one
dark finger. "Hindu sadhu. Holy man. He close eyes. Stop
breathe. Like dead."
"Trance? Is that what you mean? He's put himself in a
trance?"
The Lascar nodded soberly. "Just like dead. You put in
him pins knife no matter. He no feel nothing. He
no bleed. Like dead. Big mystery."
"How long does this go on?" St. Hilaire asked.
maybe four
The Lascar shrugged. "Maybe t'ree . . .
hours. Maybe more."
St. Hilaire looked at his wristwatch. "Well time's one
thing we have," he said finally, more to himself than to
S•likos or the crewman. "We can wait him out. He'll gain
nothing by this trick."
"Let's go on deck," he said to Nikos. Nikos went out
he door. The Lascar looked expectantly at St. Hilaire.
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"Guard the door," St. Hilaire ordered.
"Inside here?" asked the crewman.
"Of course, you bloody fool. I don't trust him. I want
you to watch bim closely. Call me as soon as he comes
out of it."
The Lascar pulled a chair against the bulkhead and sat
down, his carbine in his lap.
For one long moment St. Hilaire stared curiously at my
recumbent body before he turned and left the stateroom.
Then the last of my consciousness faded away from me. I
knew no more.
Consciousness drifted back in waves, like an ebb tide
exposing more and more of the sand flats of an estuary,
until at last I was fully aware of myself and where I was.
Still, I did not open my eyes. I was aware of pain, but it
was remote from me—as if it were attacking another
body. I didn't know how much time had passed; I only
knew it must have been hours.
I lay on the bed controlling my breathing, waiting with
infinite patience, not one muscle stirring.
I heard the door open. Someone came into the state-
room.
Nikos's voice, tight almost muffed by his bandages,
asked: "Has he moved yet?"
"No. No move."
That would be the crewman, I thought, trying to place
the strange accent.
"AII right. I'll take over for awhile. You can go."
"Boss say so?"
Nikos swore angrily. "I say so! Get the hell out!"
I heard sounds of the cabin door opening and Closing. I
heard footsteps approach the bed and knew it was Nikos.
The feeling of someone standing over me was palpable.
I heard Nikos murmuring to himself more than to me,
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
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auttering imprecations in French and in Greek. I heard
-nough to realize what Nikos was planning. I suddenly re-
li7,ed that St. Hilaire had not sent Nikos to relieve the
ailor.
Nikos was going to kill me. I knew that with certainty.
NIikos didn't give a damn about the two million dollars al-
nost within St. Hilaire's grasp---onvhat St. Hilaire would
do to bim when he found out.
It was then that I heard the click. A switchblade knife
nas a distinctive sound when it flicks open. A sound once
leard, never forgotten. I allowed my eyelids to drift open
fraction of an inch.
I saw Nikos holding out the knife in his right hand. Its
;harp edge was outw.ard, its point aimed down. One driv-
ng blow downward was all he needed to kill me.
Nikos's eyes were fastened on my chest, measuring the
"Oint of impact. As Nikos bent over me, I reacted. My
egs snapped up, bending at the knees, catching Nikos on
lis left shoulder and arm. Simultaneously both of my
)ound hands swept up and crashed down, my locked fin-
ters forming a double fist that struck the right side of Ni-
Eos's head with tremendous power.
The two blows, each in an opposite direction, struck
{ikos powerfully at exactly the same instant with a shear-
ng effect. There was only his neck to take the frill brunt
f the impact. It could only give to a certain degree be-
e the spinal cord could bend no more. The snap of the
'ertebra in his neck as it broke was like the cracking of
knuckle. There was not even the smallest outcry from
lim. Death was instantaneous.
Nikos sprawled across the bed, inert across my legs, his
rm to one side, the knife still clenched firmly in his fin-
ers.
I squirmed to one side, moving down until I positioned
e blade bebveen my wrists so that its razor edge was
ressing against the cords that bound them. In half a
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
dozen up-and-down movements of my forearms, I cut
through the fastenings.
Sitting up, I pried the knife out of Nikos' hand. I
pushed the body off the bed and bent forward, slashing
through the cords at my ankles.
Then, gathering a deep breath, I swung myself to a sit-
ting position. Pain lanced through the left side of my rib
cage as I inhaled. Gently I probed with my fingers despite
the agony. Three of my ribs were broken.
I looked down dispassionately at Nikos' limp form
sprawled on the floor. I turned my eyes away and began
to think.
There was an alarm clock on top of the bedside table.
Idly, I noted it was three o'clock and that the lamp as
well as the overhead lights had been turned on. But the
stateroom was so heavily curtained I didn't know if it
were daytime or night. With effort I got to my feet and
walked stiffy to the portholes. I moved the curtain back a
cautious half inch. It was dark outside. I let the curtain
fall back into place and returned to the bed.
Three o'clock in the morning. My mind began to func-
tion. No wonder Nikos hadn't worried about the possibil-
ity of St. Hilaire walking in on him. St. Hilaire most likely
was sound asleep in his cabin.
And now came the question of what I was going to do.
If the passageways were deserted, I could make my
way undetected topside; if no one spotted me and if I
could get to the railing—the chances were that I might
possibly slip overboard.
But suppose I did make it away from the yacht, then
what? I didn't know how far at sea we were. Or where in
the Mediterranean we were. Nor did I know how close to
the shipping lanes we were.
A man can float just as dead in the warm Mediter-
ranean as he can in the cold North Atlantic.
If I was going to die, then I was going to make sure
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
177
that St. Hilaire died before I did. I knew that no matter
what happened to me my sole purpose now. was to
destroy St. Hilaire. The man who'd ordered Dieter
Hoffman's torture and death couldn't be allowed to live.
I got down behind the bedside table and disconnected
the lamp cord from the electrical outlet. Some eight feet
of insulated wire ran from the base of the lamp to the
plug, Using the switchblade I cut through the cord as if
there was no copper wire center. Hastily I rolled the cord
and plug into a tight coil and stowed it in my pocket.
Next, I disconnected the alarm clock and pried off its
plastic face. I scraped at the clock's hands and was re-
lieved to find they were made of metal, not plastic.
I went to the door and opened it a hair. Peering into
the dimly lit passageway, I saw no one. The Lascar had
followed Nikos's orders. He was gone.
Knife in my right hand, clock in my left, I moved
silently out of the stateroom.
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The engine room was amidships, one deck down from
where I was. I could hear the quiet throb of its diesels.
Alert for troublea made my way along the passageways,
the knife poised for instant use.
I knew there had to be at least one crewman on duty in
the engine room. At this time of night, and with the
yacht's big Mercedes-Benz diesels almost completely trou-
ble-free, the chances of a second crewman being there
would be slim: From the _vibrations under my feet, I
guessed that the ship was moving at no more than eight or
nine knots.
There was only one sailor in the engine room. Making
sure there was no one else in sight, I dropped down the
companionway in a single leap.
The jar as my feet struck the deck brought searing pain
to my ribs. The crewman turned at the noise, a wrench in
his hand. But before he could act, my forearm sent the
switchblade whipping through the air, striking him in the
center of his chest.
He dropped the wrench. Both hands went to the shaft
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
179
of the knife as he staggered forward. I leaped toward him,
sweeping the wrench off the floor and in one continuous
motion I brought it across the side of his head. The
scream that was on the verge of bursting from his throat
never got started. As his knees buckled, I grabbed him
under the arms and eased his body to the metal plating of
the engine room deck.
I looked around. Diesel fuel wouldn't do for my pur-
pose. It wasn't explosive enough. Gasoline was what I
needed.
I knew a yacht would carry a store of gas. They had to
run the dinghy's outboard motor and the standby electric
generators. I found the ship's stores just off the engine
room. As I suspected, two fifty-five gallon drums of gaso-
line stood in one corner. I loosened the bunghole cap on
each drum, keeping it tight enough to keep the gas from
running out, but needing only a twist of my wrist to open
it fully.
I found a screwdriver and used it to unfasten the wire
cage around the overhead bulb. A quick search of the
ship's supplies unearthed a socket plug in a par•ts bin
which I screwed in place of the light bulb. I took the elec-
trical cord from my pocket, scraped the ends of the wires
until the copper shone clean and twisted each of the leads
around one of the hands of the alarm clock. When the
hands came together, the copper wires of the cord would
make contact with each other. I set the hands ten minutes
apart, just time enough for me to get away.
I went back into the engine room. Using the wrench I
loosened the fuel lines so that the heavy diesel oil began
to pour out onto the deck plating in a steady stream, yet
leaving enough to continue to feed the engines.
Back at the ship's stores I plugged the clock into the
outlet and checked and reset the time exactly. In just ten
minutes, the minute hand would contact the hour hand,
bringing the copper wires together and closing the circuit.
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
I turned to the gas drums. With a quick twist of my
wrist I undid each of the lower spigot hole caps. The pun-
gent odor of raw gasoline struck my nostrils as the fuel
began to gush out. Swiftly, I left the stores closet, shutting
the hatchway almost completely to confine the fumes as
much as possible and yet allow the flame of the explosion
to escape. The blast would be more devastating than set-
ting off a case of dynamite.
Now I had less than ten minutes to make my way to
the deck, to get off the yacht and to swim as far away as I
could in the remaining time.
I wondered just how far I'd be able to swim with three
broken ribs.
I made it to the deck without being spotted. The motor
dinghy was suspended in davits over the stern. But I real-
ized that the first sound of the boat being lowered—the
first squeal of block and tackle—would bring half the
crew running to investigate.
I gave up the thought.
Carefully, keeping to the shadows as much as possible,
I made my way slowly aft.
I was almost to the stern when the call came. Someone
amidship had seen me. He shouted in Greek, "Who's
that?"
I kept moving, trying not to run.
This time the hail was a challenge.
"Goddam you! Answer when I call! Who the hell is
I kept on walking as if he weren't talking to me.
His first shot was a warning. The bullet slammed the
metal of the stateroom bulkheads not more than a foot
from my head and went screaming off into the night.
I broke into a run.
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
181
His second shot was aimed. It gouged splinters from
the teak deck only inches from my pounding feet.
I don't know where the third shot went, because by
then I was within three feet of the stern rail and leaping
over it in a flat racing dive. The night closed in around
me as I bent my body in mid-air. I wanted to dive deep.
And then the water was all around me, white water
churned up by the ship's propellers deep under its fantail.
I stretched the dive as long as I could, ignoring the shock
of pain that engulfed my rib cage as I hit the water.
Now I was into the maelstrom of churning, turbulent
waters, twisted and turned and spun around by the vortex
created by the twin screws. Sucked down and then thrown
up and then caught again and sucked down, I held my
breath desperately, fighting to prevent myself from
screaming at the flashes of pain that made my ribs an ag-
ony Of fire. Underwater, I struck out at an angle to the
ship's wake. I didn't want to bob up to the surface
directly astern. They'd spot me easily in the whiteness of
the water.
One minute went by, then another thirty seconds. Fi-
nally, my breath running out, I fought desperately for the
surface. Only at the last second, as my head began to
break through, did I check my drive, turning my body so
that it floated in the waves.
I was more than two hundred yards from the ship when
I surfaced. I hadn't swum that far. The forward motion of
the yacht had contributed most of the distance. I saw the
churning of the propellers. They'd been thrown into re-
verse to slow the vessel but the yacht had too much mass
and momentum to be stopped as quickly as a small boat.
It was still moving slowly forward.
Taking a deep breath I dove underwater and began to
swim a clumsy, one-armed scissors-kick stroke. It was too
painful for me to use my left arm. Each time I tried to lift
it over my head, agony burned into my rib cage.
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
Time became a blur. I swam until my breath gave out
and then surfaced to gulp in more air. Then underwater
again. I forced myself not to think about the pain as I
stroked. Up again. Another breath of air. Down. I had to
get as far away as I could.
Once when I surfaced, I saw the crew trying to lower
the motor dinghy. It had jammed in the davits so that one
end was almost touching the water and the Other was still
high in the air.
I wondered how long it had been since I'd left the en-
gine room. Surely, the ten minutes should be up. I went
under water again and once more began that slow, ex-
hausting stroke.
The next time I surfaced for air the sight greeted me.
First there was a sheet of flame soaring silently and blind-
ingly up into the night sky—yellow, whites blue, red,
against the velvet blackness. In slow motion I saw the
center of the yacht disintegrate. Bridge, radar mast and
deck. Amidships, the entire section went up in flames.
And then came the noise of heavy, thick 'blasting.
Almost simultaneously my body felt the impact through
the water, a hard smashing compression against my al-
ready aching rib cage.
There came a second explosion and then there were
flames leaping from the torn hulk, sweeping it from bow
to stern. I was too far away to hear any cries, but close
enough to feel the heat wave that surged through the air
at me.
All told, the explosions took less than a minute. Within
five minutes, the yacht had sunk, settling rapidly and
turning, heeling over to starboard as it sank, exposing its
keel obscenely as it completely turned turtle. Huge air
bubbles surfaced as it went down, and then the sea be-
came calm.
I was all alone.
I rested then, turning over onto my back in a dead
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
183
man's float, letting the sea cradle me in its softness. I had
patience, but I wondered how long my broken and bruised
body could hold out. I let the tiredness run through me. It
was nearly dawn. I figured if I were in a sea lane, I'd be
sighted soon enough. If not, St. Hilaire had set course
through the more deserted areas of the Mediterranean
and I'd drown. I wished I'd had time enough to find and
take a life jacket with me. It was all beyond anything I
could do now, so I floated and thought about my situation
as little as possible. I took whatever satisfaction there was
to be had in the fact that St. Hilaire had finally and irrev-
ocably paid for Dieter's torture and death. It was ironic, I
thought, that Dieter had died by fire—and so had St. Hi-
laire.
I wondered if I would die by water.
Each time I slipped into unconsciousness the sea
slapped at my face, washing into my nostrils, and I'd
come awake, coughing. Each cough sent spearheads of in-
tense pain into my ribs. I'd float until the pain subsided to
an almost tolerable level, then the tiredness would again
take over and I'd find myself drifting in the soft, danger-
ous embrace of the water, rising and falling on the waves,
drifting into the darkness of unconsciousness and slipping
once more deeper into the sea until it brought me sputter-
ingly awake.
Each cycle exhausted me more and more. At one time,
I felt a nudge against my legs and kicked instinctively at
it. It nudged me again. I turned and grasped for it with
my hand to push it away. Dimly, I realized it was flotsam
from the wreckage of the yacht. It took a moment for the
idea to come to me that it floated and. therefore might
help to support me.
Whatever it was, it was large, and I struggled to get my
torso and head on it. It seemed like hours before I man-
aged to get my body onto it before I passed out from the
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
pain and the exertion. This time, the sea didn't awaken
me.
It was the sun.
It burned down on my face, trying to push through my
eyelids with its intense heat and light that forced me into
wakefulness. My mouth was parched. Dried salt caked my
lips. My tongue felt thick. Pain was all I could think
about. When I tried to open my lids, I found they were
stuck together and I had to pull them gently apart. The
light was blinding. I turned away from it. I didn't have
energy enough to lift myself. All I could see was the blue
water and the blue sky, and somewhere in the blue sky,
the center of a huge crystal was on fire and its rays were
concentrated on me.
The salt I'd swallowed and the bobbing of the flotsam
raft under me began to make me sick. And then the sky
began to wheel around in a great, slow revolution, spin-
ning me hazily into unconsciousness.
The Italian freighter was old, rust-flaked and slow.
Later I found out that the able-bodied seaman who'd
sighted me had been leaning over the railing enjoying a
smoke. He hadn't been sure of what he saw, but he had
nothing else to do, and he was curious, so he borrowed
the third mate's binoculars for a closer look.
It was just past five o'clock in the afternoon when he
put the glasses to his eyes, focused them, and made out
the shape of a man's body lying motionless across some
indeterminate shape of broken wreckage. Less than fifteen
minutes later, I was being lifted aboard the freighter.
In the sick bay, stripped of my clothes, my ribs tem-
porarily taped by the first mate, sipping at a mug of thick
black coffee laced heavily with brandy, I was visited by
the ship's captain.
It took ten minutes of urging before the ship's master
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
185
reluctantly agreed to let me send a message to Marseilles.
The objection was because the message was in code, and
the captain had great reservations about getting involved
in matters he knew little about but was sure could lead to
trouble for him.
Two hours after the message was sent, a helicopter
came beating its clumsy way over the horizon, a dragonfly
in the clear blue sky of the Mediterranean. Whipping the
air with its long rotor blades, it set down on the aft cargo
hatch. I was helped into it.
I had time only to wave my thanks to the captain and
the mate, and to press whatever cash I had in my wallet
,into the hands of the seaman who'd spotted me. Then the
awkward craft flapped its way into the air and turned
back toward land.
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CHAPTER NINETEEN
Loring and ben-Dror and Thorndike were all in the hospi-
tal room while the doctor gave me a shot of morphine
and taped up my ribs. The morphine eased me out of the
pain of the beating that Nikos had given me, the broken
ribs and the hours in the water.
Thorndike's first question was blunt.
"Where are the arms?"
"On a freighter heading for the Gibraltar straits." My
voice was a hoarse croak from sea water and salt and
dryness from the sun.
"Christ! That's a lot of help! D'you know how many
ships are out there? Can't you give me a name? Give me
a description of the bloody vessel!"
"l don't know any more than that. I never saw the
Thorndike swore under his breath. Ben-Dror let out a
sigh of relief. Thorndike turned on him.
"What the devil are you so pleased about?"
' 'That the missiles aren't headed for the Middle East,"
the Israeli replied. "It's not my problem any more."
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
"You're mistaken," I informed him.
187
Ben-Dror was startled. S 'What the hell do you mean?"
"Mavropoulos never had them. He'd only heard about
them being lost. He made up a story that he had them
just to con Gallagher into buying the rest of the arms
shipment from him alone. There was two and a half mil-
lion dollars riding on that deal, and you know how devi-
ous Mavropoulos was."
It took a moment for the implication of my words to
sink in. Ben-Dror uttered a curse and bolted from the
room.
"And the rest of the arms? Did Gallagher get them?"
"I told you. They're on a freighter headed for Gibraltar
and then into the North Atlantic. Gallagher's aboard. So's
a young woman by the name of Brenna Kiernan. They'll
be no trouble to find."
Thorndike exploded. "No trouble to find! Dyou think
we can stop and search every vessel out there? British
gunboats engaged in stop and search operations on the
high seas? That's piracy! We can't do that! Every country
in the world would be up in arms against us! You're out
of your mind!"
"l can help you find them," I said. "Thanks to Loring."
Loring frowned and said, ' 'What the hell's this got to
do with me?"
"You had Francois plant a radio transmitter in that
Renault he delivered to me, right?"
Loring had grace enough to flush. "It was for your own
good," he protested. "One way or another we had to keep
track of you."
"Forget the reason. I put that beeper into Brenna Kier-
nan's shoulder bag. If she hasn't lost it, or dumped out its
contents, or changed bags—then that device is aboard the
freighter with her right now. And it's still turning out sig-
nals."
Thorndike was beginning to catch on.
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
"What's the range of that beeper?" he asked Loring.
"Six to ten miles," Loring answered. "Something like
that."
I turned to Loring, "Give Thorndike its broadcasting
frequency. An air search at fifteen to twenty thousand feet
will cover several hundred miles at a time. Thorndike?"
"Yes?"
"Can you geÜthe RAF to cooperate?"
c 'No trouble at all, old boy. Right out of the RAF base
at Gibraltar."
"Use half a dozen aircraft. You should be able to find
it and triangulate its position within a couple of hours at
the most."
Thorndike was almost beaming at me.
"But don't pick them up," I cautioned. "Just find the
freighter and follow it. Gallagher still has to get those
arms ashore. Let the Irish Republic forces do the job
when Gallagher tries to smuggle them in. If the Garda ar-
rest him, there'll be no stink. If you English do it, every
Irishman in the world will sympathize with the man. You'll
make a damn martyr out of him."
Thorndike pulled at his moustache. "Makes sense," he
admitted. "All right, we'll stay in the background."
"There's another reason," I said. "Everyone seems to
have forgotten that Gallagher still has his hands on the
Marat girl. He's threatened to kih her if he doesn't get
those arms into the country."
Thorndike eyed me carefully.
"What are you asking for?"
I told him. Thorndike shook his head.
"I'm not sure I can arrange it."
"Make a deal with them," I told him. "You give them
the arms—they give me Gallagher. They'll cooperate."
'CAII right,"
said Thorndike, dubiously. "I'll give it a
try. But the final word will have to come from the Garda.
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And now—if you'll excuse me----l'll see about getting the
RAF to do a little flying."
Loring gave him the beeper frequency and the English-
man left us. The drugs and the exhaustion were taking
their toll of me. I needed sleep. A lot of it.
Loring said, "I just want you to know that Marat is go-
ing to appreciate your efforts to rescue his daughter. The
girl means a lot to him."
"Sure," I said. "You mean he feels like a parent. Tell
me something, Loring If Marat wasn't so big with the
Mob, would you have made a Company assignment out of
his daughter's kidnapping?"
Loring flushed. "It wasn't my doing. I'm just following
orders."
"You're near the top," I said. "You think the way' your
bosses do."
"Well," said Loring defensively, "they can be of great
help to us. They've got contacts in a lot of places we can't
get our men into. They're quite valuable to us for a lot Of
things, you know."
"Like hit men," I said sarcastically. "They trade you a
few favors so you'll let them alone on stuff like narcotics,
gambling and prostitution. Good American businessmen is
what they are, right?"
Loring began a long winded protest, but his voice kept
getting fainter in my ears. I fell asleep while he was still
talking.
The night was damp and drizzling with the faint mist
that covers Ireland on so many nights of the year. The
lane was narrow. Because of the high hedges on either
side it was almost pitch black. The quarter moon did little
to light it up.
I was hidden in the brush about halfway down the lane,
soaked with the moisture that penetrated to my skin and
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NICK CARTER: KJLLMASTER
left me chilled. I had Hugo strapped to my right forearm,
where a flick of my wrist would send the keen blade
whipping into my hand. Wilhelmina, my 9mm Luger, was
tucked away neatly in a holster under my left armpit. For
the first time in a long time I felt complete, ready to take
on whatever came my way.
I kept my eyes on the far end of the lane. There was a
cottage there. Low walls made of stone and heavy thatch
on its steeply sloping roof.
Gallagher was in that cottage. He'd been in there about
half an hour now. I'd followed him from the Dublin
docks.
Five nights after I'd talked with Thorndike, I was flown
from Marseilles to Dublin. Gallagher's freighter was due
in port that night.
At the docks the rusty tramp streamer was nudged into
the pier by three small tugs. The lines went out, heavy
hausers were snubbed over the black, iron bollards. The
gangplanks came down.
And then, suddenly, the portable searchlights went on,
flooding the entire dock area with blindingly brilliant
light. Police cars roared out of the warehouses, con-
verging on the dock edge. Behind the freighter, two police
launches added their searchlights to the blaze.
On the deck of the freighter there was sudden conster-
nation. Men ran frantically from one end of the ship to
the other, ducking into the holds, scurrying out of Sight.
An amplified voice boomed out.
"This is the Garda. All men on the ship are to come
down the gangway one at a time with their hands in the
The voice had a rich Irish brogue.
The message was repeated. "All men on the ship are to
come down the gangway one at a time with their hands in
the air."
Half an hour later there wasn't a soul on the vessel.
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
191
Man after man had come down and had been taken into
custody.
All except Gallagher and Brenna Kiernan.
I waited with the Garda offcer in charge in the small
watchman's shed.
"They're all accounted for," he told me. "Except for
Gallagher and the young lady."
"Did they get away?"
The police officer smiled conspiratorally at me. "They
got away—just as you requested."
"You haven't lost them, have you?"
"NO, sir. We've got a tail on them. They're on their
way out of the city now. We've got three cars on them."
We had two cups of coffee before word came back to
us via the police radio network.
"He's holed up," the Garda offcer gold me as we got
into his car. "We can take you there now."
The drive took almost thirty minutes. They dropped me
off about three hundred yards before the entrance to the
lane.
"The other cars are just up the road," said the Garda
offcer. "We'll close in as soon as you have a chance to
get to him
I made my way through the fields, around the lookout
that Gallagher had posted near the road. He wasn't a very
good sentry. He made too damn much noise crashing
around.
Now, wet through, I waited in the shrubbery a few
yards from the cottage that Gallagher had holed up in. I
was betting that it was the rone in which the Marat girl
had been held captive all this time.
And I was gambling on another thing—that Gallagher
didn't dare stay in the cottage for too long. He had to get
out of the country fast.
They came out of the cottage. Three of them, Galla-
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NICK CARTER:• KTLLMASTER
gher in the middle. The other two were shorter than he.
The light spilling out of the doorway as they left illumi-
nated them fully. I got a good look at them.
There was no mistaking Gallagher's face or his thatch
of reddish hair going gray on his bare head. The man on
his right wore a tweed overcoat a size too large for him
and a gray tweed cap, the brim pulled far down over his
sharp featured face. The second man looked like a coun-
try lout.
It was the smaller of the two men who interested me
the most. He kept his right hand in the pocket of his
overcoat, and he kept peering around like a weasel sniff-
ing the air for trouble. Gallagher's gunman.
I let them get a dozen steps away from the cottage be-
fore I stepped out into the lane. The heavy butt of my
Luger was comfortable in my hand. The: gun was cocked
and the safety was off.
"Gallagher!"
They stopped—but only for a fraction of a second. The
smaller man threw himself to one side, his hand coming
out of his pocket, the gun in his hand blasting off at me.
He got away two shots before I fired at him—a careful,
aimed shot that slammed into his chest. My second shot
took him in the knee.
He crumpled to the ground.
Gallagher tensed to run.
"Don't move!" I shouted.
He froze.
The man on the ground was squirming his body
around. His gun was still in his hand and he was desper-
ately trying to bring it up to fire at me when I shot it out
of his grip.
"You don't have to kill the lad!" Gallagher shouted at
me. "Let the man live!"
"Kick the gun away from him!" I ordered.
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THE GALLAGHER PLOT
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Gallagher stepped to one side and hit the, gun with the
toe of his shoe. It skittered a few feet away.
"Turn around. Put your hands on top of your head."
Gallagher turned. The lout beside him was paralyzed.
"Turn around!"
Gallagher said, almost calmly, to the man, "Best do as
he says, bucko. You'll not be wantin' to get a bullet in
your gut."
The man turned his back to me.
They stood there, their hands on top of their heads as I
came up behind them.
I ran my hands over the lout's body, keeping the
muzzle of the Luger pressed into the small of his back.
He was clean except for a small leather bag filled with
sand tied with a thong to loop his wrist. As I took the sap
out of his pocket, he tried to make a move, but he was too
thick and muscle bound to move swiftly enough.
I hit him with the sap just under the ear. It was avery
efficient weapon. Quiet. Solid. It would leave no mark on
him, but it knocked him out as quickly as if I'd slugged
him with a baseball bat.
"Don't go too hard on the lad," Gallagher said to me
over his shoulder. C'He doesn't mean you any harm."
"No more than you do," I said. S' You've come close to
getting me killed more than once."
"It's all in the game," Gallagher shrugged. "l suppose
you've come to get the girl?"
"That's right."
"She's not here," said Gallagher bold as v brass. "I'll
trade you, bucko. The girl for me."
"Shut up," I told him, jabbing the Luger into his back
and running my hands over him,
"I'm not armed," he protested.
He wasn't, but I didn't trust him.
"Is Brenna in there?"
He hesitated.
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
"You were followed by the Garda," I told him.
"Brenna was with you when they let you slip through
their hands at the docks."
"It was deliberate, was it?" Gallagher asked over his
shoulder. "It was no accident we got away?"
"We knew where you were every inch of the way," I
said bluntly. "You walked into a trap. We led you by the
nose."
"How?" he asked, and for the first time the cockiness
was gone from him.
I told him about the beeper I'd planted on Brenna. I
told him how the RAF had maintained an air cover on
the freighter all the way to Dublin. •I told him how the
Garda had been informed and how the docks had been
covered by the police, and how they'd let him and Brenna
escape because they'd be able to follow him right to this
very cottage.
As I talked, I could see the man wilt. He shriveled to
ordinary size. The man had prided himself on his clever-
ness. He'd gotten to the top in the IRA Provos and then
broke with them to set up his own radical splinter group
because his overweening ego demanded that he be the
leader. Because he thought himself to be a cut above ev-
eryone else.
Now he suddenly found he wasn't .as good or as smart
as he'd thought himself to be. Heid been outfoxed every
step of the way. Dieter Hoffman had fooled him. Mavro-,
poulos had cheated him and gotten away with it and, at
the very end, I'd caught up with him in a trap so simple
that any fool should have watched for it.
I cut him down with words. I broke through the com-
placency of his egocentric shell. In less than two minutes,'
Gallagher's self-image lay shattered like a crystal bowl
dropped on a stone ffoor.
I asked again, "Is Brenna in there?'
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195
It was a different, almost completely subdued, Galla-
gher who answered. "Yes, she's in there."
"Call her out."
Gallagher raised his voice. "Come out, Brenna! It's all
right, lass. Come on out!"
The door opened. Brenna slipped out into the night.
She looked at the two bodies lying on the ground, and
then she looked up at Gallagher. For a moment, because
Of the darkness and because she hadn't expected to see
me there, she didn't recognize me.
"He's got _a gun in my back," said Gallagher. "Do what
the man says."
She looked at me then.
' 'Hello, Quinn."
"Is the Marat girl inside?"
Brenna nodded. "She is."
"How many others are there in there?"
"Three," she said.
' 'Tell them to come out," I told her. "No guns and
their hands in the air."
Brenna hesitated.
"Do what he tells you," said Gallagher dispiritedly.
"It's all gone wrong, lass. There's a sour taste in my
mouth."
Brenna went into the cottage. I moved Gallagher off to
one side, my gun still in his back.
In less than a minute the three men came out in single
file, each of them with his hands folded on hop of his
head. Brenna was behind them.
"The girl's in the first bedroom," she said to me. "She's
safe and unharmed if that's what you'd like to know."
Gallagher said, "What do you plan on doing?"
' 'The police are waiting at the end of the lane. I'm
turning you in."
Brenna let out a gasp. Gallagher said, almost as if he
were talking about someone else, "I'm a wanted man, you
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NICK CARTER: 'KILLMASTER
know. The charge is murder. Of a police officer," he
added. "They'll hang me for it."
Strangely I was sorry for the man, but there wasn't a
damn thing I could do. I told him so.
"Well," he said, as if he'd come to a decision while I
was talking. s 'If you can't do anything, I'll have to do it
myself."
Without haste, he turned and began walking away from
me. Involuntarily, I raised my gun.
Brenna cried out, "No!" and leaped for my arm. I held
her off easily.
Gallagher's back was the biggest target I'd aimed at in
years. He was no more than ten feet away from me—
walking slowly, as if he expected to hear the blast of the
Luger and feel the tearing impact of a bullet in his spine.
The gun rose of its own volition. The barrel leveled off.
The vee of the rear sight lined up with the blade of the
front sight and the point of aim was Gallagher's spine,
right between his shoulder blades.
I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger. It wasn't
Brenna or the cries that came out of her pleading with me
not to shoot.
It was something else.
I just couldn't bring myself to shoot a man in the back
in cold blood, with him offering himself to me as a target.
It was like Gallagher was asking me to be his execu-
tioner and that was a role that I wasn't going to play.
He kept on walking as I lowered the gun to my side.
In that moment, as if he knew that I wasn't going to
pull the trigger, he began to run down the lane.
He ran. with a big, awkward, loping off-balance stride.
As he ran, he began to shout defiantly at the top of his
lungs.
Brenna slipped away from. me. She was a shadow
crouched over the gravel of the lane. Out of the corner of
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THE -GALLAGHER PLOT
197
ay eye, I saw her pick up a glittering object. It took me a
noment to recognize it as the gun that I'd had Gallagher
fick away from his henchman.
I spun around, my Luger swinging toward her, hoping
rantically that I wouldn't have to shoot her.
Brenna raised the gun over her head, pointing its
nuzzle into the sky, and pulled the trigger.
Once! ... Twice! Three times! ,
The gun clicked on an empty shell.
Gallagher was almost to the end of 'the lane when the
hots were fired. He was still running, still shouting defi-
ence at the top of his lungs.
The sound of the shots that Brenna fired cracked
hrough the night air.
From the end of the lane where the police line was sta-
ioned along the road, came a single murderous burst of
ubmachine gun fire.
Gallagher's body was hurled off its feet. One second
here had been a man running hard and awkwardly—and
he next, there was a lurching, stumbling, twisting, dis-
Dinted mass of arms and legs that crashed to the ground.
The sudden silence as the burst ended was palpable
nough to feel as well as to hear.
Brenna looked at me, straight in the face. The gun
ung down by her side. She relaxed her hand and the
evolver fell to the ground.
"You did that deliberately," I said.
"l couldn't let you be his killer. His fight was with
hem."
"They'd have taken him alive."
"He couldn't stand being in jail," she said. "Nor the in-
ignity of a trial He couldn't have faced walking up the
allows' steps and having a hangman place a noose
round his neck."
She let out her breath in a long, trembling, tired ex-
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
halation. The faint moonlight glinted on the moisture in
her eyes.
"l saved him all that," she said.
She turned away from me and said, "The girl's in the
house. Go and get her."
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CHAPTER TWENTY
We lay close together on the wide bed in the master bed-
room of the Manhattan townhouse. Michelle had thrown
the covers back so that we lay on the sheets. In the semi-
darkness of the room, lit only by a dim nightlight, I could
see the long stretch of her slim, nude body lying next to
mine.
"Quinn?"
"Yes?"
"You were gone for a long time, chéri. What did you
do in Europe all that time?"
"Business," I said.
Idly, I thought of the letter that had awaited my return.
It was a half sheet of notepaper with just one word
scrawled on it in a bold hand. Thanks. The signature was
a simple Marat.
And I thought of my meeting with David Hawk at
AXE headquarters in Washington and. the angry ex-
pression on his face when I'd told him how tight the ties
were between The Company and the Mob.
199
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'We're watching them," he said grimly. "Especially
Loring. You've done a fine job, Nick."
"I'm still a little beat up," I reminded him.
"Is that French girl still waiting for you in New York?"
he asked abruptly.
"Yes, sir."
"She still think of you as Quinn Harding?"
C 'Yes, sir."
"Well, don't tell her any differently. Let her go on
thinking that."
'Yes, sir."
"Three weeks," he growled. "Not a day longer."
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