Carter Nick : другие произведения.

The Red Guard

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  Annotation
  
  
  Three brutal killings.
  
  The first murder was a professional job, efficiently carried out by high-price executioners. The second was a torture death, the speciality of men who knew how to prolong agony to extract information.
  
  The third was unplanned, the knife mercifully swift to its victim. And each killing ended the life of a top spy.
  
  Two strange double agents.
  
  The man sold out for money and didn't care who knew about it. The girl was forced into betrayal; she had to choose between treason and satisfying the Red agent's insatiable lust…
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Chapter 1
  
  Chapter 2
  
  Chapter 3
  
  Chapter 4
  
  Chapter 5
  
  Chapter 6
  
  Chapter 7
  
  Chapter 8
  
  Chapter 9
  
  Chapter 10
  
  Chapter 11
  
  
  
  
  
  notes1
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Killmaster
  
  The Red Guard
  
  
  
  
  Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 1
  
  
  
  
  The thin night fog creeping in from the Bay, silent and sinister and as soft as a cat stalking, draped a muffling white shroud over the splinter of old and new China that lies in San Francisco. It had been a dull October day with leaden clouds and intermittent rain, and night had fallen early. Chinatown, seen through a filter of dank gauze, was a neon-washed stage where obscure figures hurried on mysterious errands.
  
  On this night it would have been easy for a stranger to lose his way in Chinatown. But had he elected to stand silently on a corner, wrapped in the fog, listening, he would have known where he was by the dialects of the passersby — Peking, Canton, Shanghai, Hong Kong — and most of all by the slip-slop — slip-slop of Chinese shoes on the wet pavement. This sound, this shoe sibilance, came from the old; the new generation of Chinatown passed with miniskirts swinging and transistors blaring, high heels clicking and iron-shod cowboy boots pounding on the concrete.
  
  On the fringe of Chinatown, on Bush Street near Stockton, was a smallish bookstore with two neon signs the color of blood. One sign, in English, read: Books Bought and Sold — Old and New — Incunabula. The neon sign flashed the same message in Chinese ideograms.
  
  Sun Yat, the owner of the bookstore, was in his back room having a cup of black dragon tea — oolong in the Cantonese — and riffling through the pages of his latest pornographic treasure. It was amusing, also quite stimulating, and Sun Yat was beginning to feel the need of a woman. He would, he thought, take still another opium pill before he sought out the woman. Just one more pill. This as he knew from experience, would dull his senses — but not the pleasure — and would allow his prostitute to stimulate him for an hour at least without any outflow of his life fluid. Sun Yat sipped his tea and smiled, lost in reverie, flicking through the pages of this rare copy of Chin P'ing Mei. For more amusement, and because he had an analytical mind, he tried to calculate what he would be capable of if he took just one opium pill. Suppose he took two pills?
  
  Sun Yat shook his head and smiled at his fantasies, but still trying to work out ratio and quotient and, he supposed, the law of decreasing return. Just because you took two opium pills would not necessarily mean that you would be twice as potent and long-winded. Not at all. There must be an X factor, an unknown, somewhere concealed in…
  
  The bell over the entrance tinkled. Sun Yat sighed and put the book down beside his teacup and saucer, careful not to crumple or stain the pages that had aged to the color of very old ivory. The book was worth two thousand, at least, and he already had an eager buyer. Yet he hated to part with the book. It had been smuggled out of China and through Hong Kong at great expense. The erotic prints, done by a master, were alone worth a fortune.
  
  As he left the back room Sun Yat glanced at a clock on the wall. Ten after nine. He should have locked up shop ten minutes ago, had he not been so engrossed in the Chin P'ing Mei. He straightened his tie as he pushed through green drapes leading into the store proper, wondering who his late customers could be. He never did much business this late at night. He was, in fact, a little annoyed that the bell had tinkled. He did not really need customers — he ran the bookstore as a front, having other and better sources of income — and he detested browsers who wasted his time and bought nothing. He would, he thought now, get rid of these interlopers in a hurry. Then he would call Soo-Soo and ask her to come over. Six thousand thrusts — hummm? Was such a thing really possible?
  
  There were two men in the front of the store. Both were big men, both wore dark raincoats and dark hats, both were white men. One man was standing at the counter, waiting for Sun Yat to approach. The other man was gazing at a wire rack of paperbacks near the front door.
  
  Sun Yat, a rather handsome little man in his fifties, with graying temples, was not a stupid man. Had he not been on Erotic Cloud Nine, his normally sharp mind cluttered with the joys of the coming evening, he might have sensed his danger sooner than he did. He might even have saved himself. He kept a.38 revolver in a box beneath the counter, with the petty cash and the stamps.
  
  Sun Yat faced the big man across the counter. In good, barely accented English, he said: "Yes, sir? What can I do for you this evening?"
  
  The man in the raincoat put two enormous hands on the glass counter and leaned over it. He was newly shaven and a waft of lotion came to the little Chinese. He began, in that instant, not to like the situation at all. The big man had small blue eyes, very pale blue and as cold as snow. Worst of all was the utter lack of expression in the eyes — they were like two blue mirrors glinting at Sun Yat.
  
  Without removing his stare from Sun Yat the big man said: "Okay, Nat?"
  
  The other man, no longer perusing the rack of paperbacks, was staring through the window into the foggy street. He nodded. "Okay."
  
  Instinct warned Sun Yat — too late. The man's big hand came over the counter and, with a single flexure of powerful muscles, twisted itself into Sun Yat's shirt and tie. He was dragged half across the counter. The big man said; "The breath of the dragon is sour."
  
  So that was it! If Sun Yat could have breathed at all he would have let out a sigh of relief. They were simply messengers these two big-nose toughs. But why were they acting so strangely? So rough? As if something had gone wrong — as though someone, they, knew!
  
  The little Chinese kicked and struggled valiantly. He managed to gasp, "But when the dragon loves, his breath is sweet!" Now certainly this monster round eye would let him go. This insane farce would end. And he was going to complain. Complain bitterly. He, Sun Yat, could not be treated like this!
  
  The big hand moved to his throat and tightened there. His eyes were popping now. The big man said: "You are Sun Yat?"
  
  The little man, clawing futilely at the hand on his throat, nodded frantically. He couldn't breath. The room was darkening now, spinning and swaying and full of fog.
  
  A ghost of a smile twitched on the thick lips. "You're sure you're Sun Yat? I wouldn't want to make a mistake."
  
  Sun Yat nodded again. He was aware, with his last vision, that the other man had drawn the blinds over the door and windows. He caught a flash of the CLOSED sign as the man hung it in the door.
  
  The man who had drawn the blinds now locked the front door. He turned and came toward the counter. "Okay," he muttered. "Let's get it to hell over with!"
  
  The man who was choking Sun Yat loosened his hold a trifle. He could breathe again. The man hauled him over the counter like a bundle of laundry and held him erect by his coat collar. Sun Yat, gasping, crying with pain and rage, fumbled with both hands at his throat. His voice, arid and hollow, like the last squeal of an already dead thing, came parching from his ruined throat: "Y… you crazy… what you do… I am not for this sort of… I am…"
  
  The other man kicked Sun Yat hard in the groin. The little Chinese opened his mouth wide in a silent scream, the agony so intense, so unbearable, that he could not voice it. His pain filled the store.
  
  The big man twisted Sun Yat's arms behind him and held him erect. The other man kicked him again. "Okay," he grunted. "Let him go. Let's get it over with and get outa here."
  
  The one who had been holding Sun Yat let him go. The Chinese fell to the floor, his slight body coiling into a womboid position, his hands clawing at his groin. His mouth was open. From it poured foam and saliva and sounds that had nothing human about them.
  
  The man who had done the kicking reached under his raincoat and brought out two hatchets. They were old-style tong hatchets, spiked at one end, razor sharp at the other, with a short, weighted handle to give them the proper balance for throwing.
  
  He handed one of the hatchets to the bigger man. The man took it with a hint of reluctance. "This part I don't like," he grumbled. "Too damned messy. Why can't we do it clean, the way we do back East? A couple bullets, a barrel of cement, maybe a little gasoline fire? This crap don't make sense."
  
  The other man was leaning over the moaning Chinese, the hatchet raised. "Come on," he rasped. "You're in this as much as I am. You got a raincoat, ain'tcha? It'll get most of the blood. And we're getting paid damn good — so come on! They want it to look like a tong killing — so okay, it'll look like a tong killing!"
  
  "I reckon," said the bigger man. He raised his hatchet and brought it down viciously, spike end first. It smashed through Sun Yat's fragile skull and penetrated deep into the brain. The other man aimed a cutting blow at the little man's throat.
  
  Sun Yat, wandering in his pain hell, saw the hatchets glint and flash in the bright electric light and knew, in the very last second of time, who was killing him. And why. They had found him out.
  
  His brain, even with the steel in it, functioned for another micro-second. He thought of the girl, the lovely Chinese girl, to whom he had spoken that very evening. She had betrayed him, then? No. He did not think so. She had been straight, that girl. Sun Yat hoped that she would somehow manage to break her trail, so this would not happen to her. But she was straight. She was what she had claimed to be. He had bet his life on it. And lost.
  
  Both men were wearing thin, flesh-colored rubber gloves. These they did not remove as they tossed the hatchets to the floor beside the mutilated body. The bigger man was grumbling again. "We got to leave the weapons for the cops to find, huh? Whyn't we just leave our fingerprints, too, and make it easier for the bulls?"
  
  The other, the one called Nat, gave his companion a look of disgust. He was a Chicago hood and he did not like anything about the New York killer. Even the Brooklyn accent grated on his none too sensitive nerves.
  
  "Why don't you stop bitching?" he snarled. "We do a job, we do it right! The way they want it done. You should oughta try working out of Chi for awhile, buddy. Biggest thing I been wondering ever since we took this job — how come you're still alive or not in the can? Now cut the crap and let's get cleaned up and blow."
  
  They went into the back room and found the bathroom. They washed their rubber-gloved hands and soaked towels in hot water to clean their shoes and trouser legs. When they had finished each inspected the other for blood stains.
  
  At last the Chicago man was satisfied. "Okay," he said. "Let's beat it"
  
  Carefully avoiding the bloody mess that had been Sun Yat, they walked to the front door. The New York man turned off the lights. The Chicago man said: "Leave the night light, stupid! A prowl car or a beat man sees it dark in here, he'll come looking. We ain't made no mistakes up to now, so let's not start. This is Saturday — with luck they won't find him till Monday morning. Maybe not then. By that time well be long gone."
  
  The single, dim night light was on now, a feeble yellow glim in the gloom that enveloped the little shop and the corpse. There were no sounds from the street. A solitary fly, granted an extension of October life, buzzed down from the ceiling and lit in the blood near Sun Yat's head.
  
  The Chicago man opened the front door and peered out. A tendril of white mist leaked into the room. The Chicago man tested the lock and nodded to the other. "Okay, New York. I'll go left, you go right. We never met, remember? S'long."
  
  He held the door open for the New York man to slip through, then tested the lock again and closed the door. Without a word the New York man turned right and stalked away into the fog. The Chicago man turned left, pulled down his hat brim and snuggled into the collar of his raincoat. He strolled slowly through the writhing gray smoke, trying to orient himself. Shouldn't be too hard — all he had to do was get farther into Chinatown, find Grant Avenue and follow it back to where it crossed Market Street. From there on he would know his way.
  
  He passed a big cop in a shiny black raincape. The cop was testing doors on the block and he gave the stroller a cursory glance. They were near a street light, its aura both amber and rainbow shot in the mist. The man from Chicago nodded and said pleasantly, "Good evening, Officer. Nasty night."
  
  The cop grunted an unintelligible reply. The stroller strolled on, lighting a cigarette with a handsome leather and silver lighter, his thin mouth smiling in the brief flick of flame.
  
  He came to Grant Avenue and turned south. Here the fog was thinner, diluted by a blaze of neon tubes twisted into Chinese characters. From a doorway a skinny, slant-eyed whore muttered at him. She was wearing stilt heels and a cheongsam, shivering under a ratty-looking jacket of Jap mink. He shook his head and stalked on. Ruthie was waiting for him in Chicago, and he was saving it all for her. An image of Ruthie flashed into his brain for a moment — Ruthie naked on the bed, waiting impatiently, staring at him and wetting her lips the way she did. His loins stirred at the image and the thoughts and he increased his pace. Work was over — now the pleasure. He'd check out about eight in the morning and get a flight back to CM. No sweat. No problem. None of the airport dicks had made him coming in; none would make him going out. That was the great thing about not having a record. It made it so easy. He had always been very careful, very cautious, and it had paid off. Ten thousand for this job alone — ten big ones for knocking off an old Chinaman with a hatchet.
  
  For a moment, as the Chicago killer walked beneath a street light, his long face itself resembled a hatchet — an intelligent, merciless hatchet.
  
  Funny, he thought, as he turned into Market Street, that they had insisted on hatchets. Make it look like a tong killing, the typed instructions had said. His grin was hard. Any dumb sonofabitch knew there hadn't been a tong killing in Frisco in thirty years, maybe longer. The tongs were as dead as the Purple Gang.
  
  So who cared? For ten thousand dollars, who cared? And who asked questions? Not this boy. He was way too smart for that. He decided to ride the rest of the way to his hotel and stepped off the curb to hail a cab. No, he thought again as a cab pulled up, you sure as hell didn't ask questions about a job like this. As he settled back in the leathery-smelling cab and told the driver where to take him, another faint smile touched his cold mouth. One thing it wasn't — a Cosa Nostra job! The techniques were entirely different. Cosa Nostra usually tried to hide their killings, tried to bury the remains where they would never be found, even maintained certain very secret «cemeteries» around the country.
  
  But they, his current employers, wanted publicity for this murder. They wanted the old Chinese to be found with the hatchets beside him. They were, he thought, trying to get a message to someone, somewhere. For a brief moment the Chicago man wondered who it was that they were trying to reach and just what the message was; then he forgot it.
  
  He had better forget it, he told himself grimly as the cab pulled up before his hotel. Because he was no dummy, this lad, and he knew what the stupid New York punk had not even guessed at — he knew who his employers were! He had served in the infantry in Korea and he had killed a lot of them. The irony of it struck him as he paid off the cab. Then he had been killing them — now he was working for them. He shrugged. That was life. And he would go on living just so long as they didn't know that he knew.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 2
  
  
  
  
  Nick Carter, highest ranking killmaster for AXE, could feel the evening slipping away from him, sliding into ruin and chaos and God only knew what He was like a man alone on a sinking ship, standing numbly on the bridge as the water crept steadily up to engulf him. Yet not quite alone. She was there. She was sweet and lovely and tiny and she smelled simply delicious. She had golden hair and a mouth like a wet crushed rosebud and knowing, very knowing, gray eyes. Her name was Debbie Hunt and she was up from her school, Sweet Briar, to spend the weekend in New York. She said she was twenty-one and Nick knew that she lied in her teeth. He gave her eighteen — nineteen at the most.
  
  Nick was just back from an assignment in Israel — it had turned out to be a bloody mess, with far more than the usual number of killings — and he had wanted a week or so of rest and relaxation before Hawk could think up a new way of putting Nick's head in another noose. It was not to be.
  
  First had come the letter, followed by a telegram. Both from a very old friend of Nick's, a Meredith Hunt who was a gentleman farmer in Indiana and very proud of his hogs — Poland Chinas — and of his daughter, though not necessarily in that order. Both telegram and letter entreated Nick to look after Debbie on this, her first, trip to Sin City. Nick, between the lines, could detect the fine hand of Mrs. Hunt, whom he remembered as once having been the most beautiful girl in Indianapolis. She wanted her darling looked after by a man of good repute. As Nick read the letter and telegram for the nth time, desperately seeking a way out, it occurred to him that Meredith had not fully confided in Faith, his wife. Certainly not to the extent of telling her about that weekend in the Village. It was, even now, all that Nick could do to think about it!
  
  The Hunts, of course, had no idea of Nick's real job. To them he was just an old friend who had enough money to live in New York, in a penthouse, without ever seeming to work. That wasn't important. What was important was that he was a nice guy they could trust. Their lamb would be safe with him. It would never have occurred to either of them that Nick Carter might not be safe with their lamb.
  
  Nick had time to make few arrangements. He reserved a room for the girl at the Barbizon for Women and wired Debbie at Sweet Briar to that effect. He would, he said in the telegram, get in touch with her at the hotel.
  
  She did not even go to the hotel. A little after six that evening, a fine mild October evening with a harvest moon impaled on the Empire State building, there came a rapping and a tapping at the door. Pok, Nick's Korean houseboy, answered it. Nick was lounging on a sofa in the study, a bell half-full of Remy Martin balanced on his big chest, puffing on a cigarette and staring at the ceiling. He was, in fact, and with no little dismay, thinking about the Hunt daughter. Why had he been chosen for this honor, for Pete's sake? He, of all people. He had even had to break a date with Lucia, a lovely Basque creature who sang at the Chez Madrid and who was, right now and perhaps never again, at the melting point. Nick took another sip of the brandy and cursed softly. Old friends could be a pain in the behind! This Debbie, he thought, was probably fat, knock-kneed and had a spotty skin. Or she was skinny, wore horned-rims and was a brain. No matter. She was a kid, just a kid, and they were both in for a hell of a boring time. He drank more brandy and cursed again. He wouldn't get high, of course, but he had better drink now. After their evening out, whatever it turned out to be, he would probably have to take her to a milk bar.
  
  Pok came into the study. He had been with Nick for some time now, was going to school, and his English was much improved. He made a neat little figure in his dark trousers and starched white jacket, but the moment he spoke Nick knew something was wrong. Nick had become very attuned to Pok's moods. When he went all bland and Oriental, formal, very Mysterious East, it was because he did not approve of something.
  
  Pok was adopting that tone now. Nick was at a loss. He had been a good boy of late and, as far as he knew, was in pretty good with Pok.
  
  "Is young girl to see you," Pok said. "Very young girl. Most pretty. She say she is expected and is staying here." Pok crossed his white-clad arms and squeezed his epicanthic folds until his eyes were only obsidian slits glinting at Nick. The perfect picture, Nick thought, of the patient and disapproving servitor.
  
  "I don't know any young girls," Nick said, knowing damned well who it was, who it had to be. He had checked the Barbizon half an hour ago, to be told that Miss Debbie Hunt had not yet checked in.
  
  "She know you," Pok said. His expression was inscrutable. "She say old friend of family. Most insistent."
  
  Nick swung his feet off the sofa. "It's all right. But she wasn't supposed to come here. I got a room for her at a hotel. But send her in, Pok. And Pok…"
  
  The boy turned at the door, waiting. "Yis, sar?"
  
  "What is she like? Fat? Skinny? Pimples?" Might as well know the worst.
  
  For a moment Pok's stiffness melted. He grinned and with his hands outlined a coke bottle in the air. "Is Number One. Most lovely. Also most young! Too young for you, sar. For me, yis. For you, no!"
  
  It occurred to Nick that Pok, of late, had developed a tendency to prejudge — the boy automatically leaped to the conclusion that any woman who came to the penthouse was there for reasons of sex. You could, the AXE agent admitted, hardly fault the boy for that. It was usually the case. But Killmaster knew his Orientals, knew also that there was a time for kidding and a time for snapping the whip a bit. Pok had, of late, been getting a bit above himself. To Nick it was simply a matter of discipline — you were either Number One or you weren't.
  
  Now he frowned at the boy and spoke very quietly. "That will be all of that, Pok. When I want your comment on my personal affairs I'll ask for it. Now show the young lady in."
  
  His face a café au lait mask, the boy bowed, hissed a bit and walked from the room. He had gotten the message. A grin twitched at the corner of Nick Carter's mouth. Pok was a good kid. It was just that every now and then he needed a firm rein.
  
  Pok came back with the girl. He said: "Missy Hunt, masta!" He vanished. The Parthian shot was not wasted on Nick. Pok was having the last word.
  
  The girl came halfway into the study and stood looking around her. Nick tried not to stare as he went forward and extended a hand. She was tiny and exceedingly lovely. And a child. His big hand smothered her little one and he felt as if he had touched a flower. He caught a waft of her scent — that was not juvenile!
  
  Debbie Hunt squeezed his hand. She clung to it She stepped closer to him and looked up into his eyes. Her own eyes were gray, with clear white corneas. They were as enormous as saucers in a piquant triangular face. Her golden cap of hair was cut short, in what Nick vaguely recognized as a Twiggy hairdo.
  
  She was still holding Nick's hand. Now she gave it a gentle pressure and stepped back, her huge eyes still riveted on him. "I hope you don't mind me coming here, Mr. Carter. I hate and despise hotels. Especially the sort you picked, Mr. Carter. I checked with some of the girls at school — the Barbizon is a terrible place, Mr. Carter. Really grue. I really couldn't stay there, don't you see? Sweet Briar is a girls' school, Mr. Carter, in case you didn't know!" Debbie placed a well-manicured finger on her slim throat. "I have girls up to here, Mr. Carter, all day and every day. I came to New York to have fun."
  
  Nick Carter felt, absurdly felt, that he was standing there with egg on his face. He was conscious that he had a bell of Remy Martin in one hand and a cigarette in the other, that he was staring and that he probably looked pretty damned silly doing it.
  
  There was a short silence, which the girl solved by walking to a leather chair and falling into it. "I'm pretty beat," she told him. "I had hell's hectic time getting away from school. I'd like a drink and a cigarette, please."
  
  Debbie Hunt crossed her legs with a slither of nylon. She was wearing a miniskirt and long, long beige stockings that were still not long enough. Nick had a brief view of stocking welt and garter before she tugged the brief skirt into some semblance of concealment. Her legs were slim, bordering on thin, but in perfect proportion to the rest of her slight body.
  
  She saw him looking at her legs and smiled. Her teeth were small and white. She said: "Not very good legs, are they? I know — I'm too skinny. I hope I fill out one day. But please don't stare, Mr. Carter. I like older men, but I hate dirty old men. I hope you're not going to turn out to be one, because I think I like you already."
  
  Nick cleared his throat. He felt a little foolish, like a stranger in his own house, and it was beginning to make him angry. He frowned at the girl. "Do your parents allow you to drink? And smoke?"
  
  The smile she gave him was radiant — and full of pity. Her mouth was just a trifle wide for the short, straight nose, but it saved her face from mere prettiness, helped mold the flawless young wax into proleptic character. She leaned forward in her chair. "Of course they do, Mr. Carter. I am twenty-one, you know. I have Martinis every evening with Dad and Mother, when I'm home, and I smoke when I please. Really!"
  
  Nick got the message. The «really» was not a buttressing of truth. It was an exclamation, nearly an epithet.
  
  Nick Carter surrendered. He went to the bar for another cognac bell, thinking that if she was twenty-one he was an agent for KGB.
  
  He gave her a drink and one of his long, gold-tipped cigarettes. She inhaled deeply, blew smoke through her pert nostrils and rubbed the glass bell appreciatively between small hands, sniffing at it. She shrugged out of her mink jacket and dropped it beside her chair, revealing breasts that, compared to the rest of her, were surprisingly large and firm.
  
  Debbie caught his glance and guessed his thoughts. She smiled and patted her chest. "It's really all me," she said. "Not the bra."
  
  By now the AXE agent was just irritated enough to fight fire with fire, candor with candor. He was out of his depth and knew it. He had a most ominous prescience that this whole thing was going to be a mess — and sensed that the real struggle was going to be within himself — yet he was not going to let this pretty little pip-squeak just walk in and take over. He didn't want her here. She didn't belong here. And if he had any brains at all he would call Pok and…
  
  Debbie was a counter-puncher. She caught him off balance again. She stared at him with those huge eyes, over the rim of the brandy bell, and said: "Now you're angry with me, Mr. Carter. Why? Because I speak frankly? Because I'm not ashamed of my body?"
  
  The answer came to Nick Carter then. How to handle this little smart-alecky bitch. What she really needed, he thought, was a good brush applied to those neat buttocks. But he wasn't her father! Neither was he a gnat-assed college boy with long hair and pimples.
  
  He had the answer. She wanted to be so pseudosophisticated, so damned grown-up, then treat her that way! She'd back down soon enough.
  
  His glance was cold as he said, "I'm not angry, Miss Hunt. Amused, I think. For some reason you seem to think that every glance, every gesture of mine, is related to your body. It isn't, Miss Hunt It's a very nice body, I'm sure, but I'm not interested. Go away and grow up, Miss Hunt. Come back in ten years. Then maybe I'll be interested."
  
  Debbie leaned back in her chair. She recrossed her legs and this time did not bother to arrange the miniskirt. She leaned back and caressed the brandy bell and smiled at him. "I won't be interested in ten years, Mr. Carter. By then I'll be married and have babies, But let's be friends, shall we? I'm sorry. I know it was rude to barge in on you like this, but I simply couldn't stand the thought of that hotel! And as for the way I talk — you'll just have to forgive that, or anyway overlook it. It's just me. The way I am. I guess I do think about sex a lot and talk about it too much. I can't help that, either. I think sex is the most precious and delicious thing in the whole world. And we girls get damned little of it at Sweet Briar — apart from the Lesbians, and I detest them!"
  
  Nick knew his mouth was hanging open. He put the brandy bell to it and gulped. In his career as a licensed killer he had been maced a great many times. He felt maced now, as though an expert enemy had laid a rubber truncheon or a sap across the nape of his neck. He glanced at his watch. She had been in the room ten minutes, and already the conversation was completely out of hand.
  
  Debbie had curled up in the big chair, her slim legs under her, the miniskirt high on her thighs. Her smile was taunting. "Do you want me to go, Mr. Carter? There are plenty of other hotels besides the Barbizon. We can always think up some story for Dad and Mother."
  
  That did it. Meredith and Faith Hunt expected him to look after their child. She was a smart little teenybopper — whatever that was — and something of a brat, and she talked too big and too much, but he couldn't let her go running around the New York jungle by herself. No telling where she would end up — dead in the East River was a possibility, or in a vacant lot in Queens. Maybe a pot party in the Village.
  
  Nick almost groaned aloud. Damn Meredith and Faith, anyway. They couldn't have the faintest idea what their daughter was really like. Meredith, especially, couldn't know. He was a roughhewn character, a former Merchant Marine officer who, in his prime, had demolished most of the bars along the North African coast. He was, as Nick well knew, an exponent of the razor strop and woodshed school for children. But something had gone sorely amiss here. Nick sighed, lit a new cigarette and looked at the girl. You couldn't blame the Hunts, he supposed. It was happening to all parents today. It was 1967, and the age of permissiveness and the teen-agers were taking over the world. Only not his world!
  
  He tried not to glare at her. "You stay here," he said. "I'll have Pok get your room ready. I suppose you've got bags? Luggage?"
  
  Debbie wriggled in the big chair. "Two huge ones. Bags, I mean. In your foyer."
  
  She was again showing an enormous reach of slim leg, and Nick averted his eyes. He went to the mantel over the fireplace and picked up a small white envelope. "You'd better start getting ready, then. I've got tickets for a concert tonight at little Carnegie Hall. A pianoforte recital."
  
  Debbie made some sort of strangled noise. "A what?"
  
  Nick fixed her with a cold eye. "A pianoforte recital. Herman Gross. A very fine young pianist. Later, if you behave yourself, I may take you to 21."
  
  Debbie got up and smoothed her skirt. It came a good six inches above her knees. "Another thing," Nick said. "Wear a gown tonight, a real dress. I suppose you've got one?"
  
  She nodded. "I have. An evening gown, I mean. But it's mini, too. Sorry."
  
  She came to him and patted his cheek with a small hand. She was, he reckoned, not quite five feet tall. She stood only a little above his chest. Again he was aware of the very grown-up, very female, very sexy perfume. Debbie patted his cheek again — he needed a shave — and looked at him with those huge eyes.
  
  "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I'm sorry I'm such a brat. I'll try not to be. I think I like you, Nick. I can call you that? Dad always does." When he nodded brusquely she went on. "I do like you, Nick. And you're not a dirty old man. I'm sure of that now. You're just an older man, and that's fine. I, we, won't have to worry about the sex thing, will we? We can be good friends and talk. We'll have a wonderful time. Tell each other things." She drew her soft fingers down his cheek. "It will be just like talking to an uncle, or an older brother. We can be honest with each other!"
  
  There was something wrong with the picture she was drawing. Nick knew it, and resented it, but there wasn't a damned thing he could do, or say, without shattering the image he had just started to build. Uncle! Brother! He found himself wishing, with complete illogic, that she was a few years older and not the daughter of friends. He would show her something about older men! This — this junior Jezebel.
  
  Debbie turned away from him. She smiled and pirouetted on one toe. She was wearing scuffed tan flats. "There is one thing," she told him. "About tonight, I mean. The recital, I mean. I really get enough music at Sweet Briar, Nick darling. My minor is music. I'd much rather do something else, if you don't mind."
  
  He regarded her with suspicion. "Such as?"
  
  She did not look at him as she swung around the big study, dancing for him, pirouetting, her brief skirt flaring up to show the fringes of black panties. "I've never been to an LSD party," she said. "Couldn't we, Nick? Please Couldn't you find one?"
  
  He let out a roar. "Pok!"
  
  Debbie stopped dancing and stared at him. "I guess we can't, huh?"
  
  "You guess right. We go to the recital."
  
  Pok came to stand just inside the door, his face a bland mask of concealed hurt. He did not look directly at Nick, who had already forgotten the disciplinary incident, but remembered it now. He scowled at the boy. "Show Deb — Miss Hunt to her room. Be sure there are plenty of towels and washcloths, you know."
  
  Pok bobbed his head and left the room and waited in the corridor for the girl.
  
  Debbie gazed after him. "He's cute. Nice. I like him."
  
  "So he is," Nick said dourly. "I'd like to keep him that way. Hands off, Debbie. Pok is not for experimenting."
  
  "You needn't worry." She danced past him toward the door. "I never sleep with the servants — only the masters. Young masters, that is."
  
  Nick Carter said, "There's something on the recital program this evening that might be very apropos — the young man is going to play a suite from the Kindertotenlieder. It's an idea."
  
  Debbie stuck out her small red tongue at him. "The Children's Death Music? Very funnee, Nick! But you won't have to kill me — the recital will probably do that. I'll die of boredom!"
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Now it was after midnight, and he had lost control of the evening and of Debbie. They had gone to the pianoforte recital — Debbie in a white minigown and gold-spangled stockings — and that had lasted exactly fifteen minutes. She waited patiently enough through some of Chopin's "Etudes in C Minor", then suddenly leaned to Nick and put her moist little mouth against his ear.
  
  "This stinks. I want to go. Right now."
  
  "You stay," he said grimly. "And keep quiet."
  
  Her mouth was still against his ear. Suddenly she ran a sharp warm tongue into his ear. She giggled. "We go. If you don't, I'll make a scene. I'll scream. I'll call you a dirty old man and scream that you're trying to feel me!"
  
  Nick felt himself go tense. He had no doubt that she would carry out her threat. He had given her another drink of cognac before they left the penthouse, and that had been a mistake. She held her booze remarkably well for a kid, but she was not exactly sober. Nor was he, for that matter. After she had left the study he had had several drinks, fast.
  
  Now he said, "Stay until he plays Kindertotenlieder. Maybe it will give me inspiration, let me cast off the shackles of inhibition. We'll give them a real show!" For a moment he allowed himself to dream — he would pull up that miniskirt, pull down her panties, and whack hell out of that pink little ass.
  
  Debbie was shrugging into her mink jacket. "Coming or staying, old Nickie? I don't really need you, you know. I can find where the action is without you!"
  
  He was afraid of just that. Again he surrendered. It was either that or use muscle on her, grab her and keep her in the box by main force. That would have been simple enough in itself, but it might just cause a little disturbance, was bound to appear a bit odd to the music lovers around them. As it was, a fat dowager — with a real lorgnette, so help him God! — had been casting suspicious glances from the adjoining box. Probably thought he was Humbert Humbert with little L.
  
  Nick stood up. "All right," he told her wearily. "You win. But I'm going to write your Dad and tell him about this whole business."
  
  The dowager lady glared at them and hissed "Shssssssss!"
  
  Nick hauled Debbie out of the box into the corridor. She patted his cheek, then kissed it with her wet rose mouth. "Thanks, old Nickie. I was perishing. And you won't write Dad, either. You may be a dirty old man, but I don't think you're a stool pigeon."
  
  She was right, of course. He had no intention of writing to the Hunts.
  
  Nick got his light Burberry from the cloakroom — he was in black tie — and they emerged into the glare of 57th Street. A fine misty rain was just beginning to darken the pavement. Debbie clung to his arm and gazed up into his face, her eyes nearly as big as the rain-streaked moon hanging over the Hudson. She squeezed his arm in ecstasy. "This is more like it! Where are we going?"
  
  With malice he said, "Just down the street The Russian Tea Room. You'll love it. Old ladies and émigrés. We may even bump into my cousin, the Archduke Petrograd.
  
  Debbie was wearing golden slippers with half-high heels. She tried to dig them into the cement now. "Like hell we are, Nickie darling. This is my first time in New York. It will probably be my last, if you squeal to my folks." She tried to pull away from him. "Maybe I will do better on my own. I've got money and I'm a big girl. You just go on home, Nickie darling, and don't worry. Ill be fine." She raised the hand with which she clutched a tiny gold mesh bag. "Taxi!"
  
  Nick Carter shrugged his big shoulders and got into the cab with her. So be it. Now he knew how to handle it. She was about half-blasted now, he figured. So he would play along, take her to some harmless spots, and get her really drunk. She would be easy enough to handle then. She would also have one hell of a hangover in the morning. He smiled. The thought pleased him.
  
  He directed the cabbie to Jack Delaney's in the Village. On the way down Seventh Avenue, Debbie nuzzled against him. "Kiss," she whispered. "Kiss for Debbie."
  
  He could see the cabbie watching them in the mirror. Probably thinks I'm a cradle-robber he thought. Nick tried to avoid Debbie's mouth, then gave it up. It was easier than trying to fight her off. He kissed her.
  
  Debbie wrapped her thin arms about his neck and glued her mouth to his. She thrust her tongue into his mouth and moved it around expertly. The big AXE agent tried to pull away, then desisted and suffered it. He admitted that «suffer» was not exactly the correct verb. A last censor in his brain — the others had all disappeared — looked on in disapproval and asked what was going to come of all this? Just at the moment Nick couldn't have said — he was enjoying it. And there was a fine dew of perspiration on his forehead.
  
  At last the girl drew away. She sighed. "You kiss very nicely — for an older man."
  
  Nick was beginning to recover from the shock of so much fragrant, milk-skinned youth. All the same he would have hated to run a sphygmometer test on his pulse at the moment. This kid — kid? — was beginning to get under his skin in a different way. Get her drunk fast. Get her home and to bed and out of harm's way!
  
  "That's nice to know," he told her with a coolness he did not feel. "Do you think I might have a few good years left?"
  
  Debbie did not laugh or giggle. She patted his cheek and leaned to look into his eyes. "It didn't really mean anything, you know. The kiss just now, I mean. I mean it wasn't an invitation or anything like that I don't expect you to do anything about it, later."
  
  He nodded and lit cigarettes for both of them. "I know. I won't presume." He intended to play it deadpan now until he got enough liquor in her to pass her out.
  
  She moved a little away from him and puffed on her cigarette. "It was just that I've never kissed an older man before. A man with, well, with real experience." She glanced at him. "You kiss as if you've had a lot of experience."
  
  Nick admitted to having been around a bit.
  
  One of the cab's windows was open, admitting a stream of cold, damp air. Debbie pulled the collar of the mink jacket around her throat. "I really haven't had much experience you know, Nickie."
  
  In the driest tone he could muster, Nick said that, considering her age, that wasn't too surprising.
  
  "I lied to you about my age," she told him. "I'm really eighteen. I won't be nineteen until January. But of course you knew — you must have known. You are my godfather, after all!"
  
  Godfather! Nick felt as if someone had punched him in his flat, muscle-corded belly. So he was her godfather! He had completely forgotten it. It had never entered his mind. Godfather! And he had allowed, permitted, even enjoyed, a kiss like that. It was — it was damned close to incest!
  
  "I'm not a virgin," Debbie said. "Ralph and I — Ralph Forbes, he's my boy friend at home in Indianapolis, the one I'm going to marry — he and I talked it over and we decided that as long as we're sure we're going to marry and that we love each other, well — you know. We've been doing it for a couple of years now. Of course Mother and Dad would die if they knew, and…"
  
  They were in Sheridan Square then, and the garish fights of Jack Delaney's bar were like a blessed beacon to a confused seafarer. Nick hustled Debbie out of the cab and paid the man. The cabbie, a mean-looking little Irishman, winked at Nick and muttered something about "young quiff." Nick almost hit him.
  
  As Debbie perched on the stool, the fat bartender gave her a rather startled glance, then looked at Nick, but asked no questions. To Nick he simply said: "Good evening. You look like you need a drink!"
  
  Nick Carter nodded. "My friend, you can say that again! Better yet — don't waste time saying it Just give me the drink."
  
  "And the young lady?"
  
  Nick nodded again. "Give her a drink. Give her all the drinks she wants. I know she doesn't look it, but take my word for it. She's of age. Believe me, she's of age!"
  
  The bartender was busy mixing drinks. "If you say so."
  
  Debbie was gazing around. She picked up one of the postcards from the bar. Delaney's, as Nick well knew, was a tourist spot, and a great many out-of-towners filled in the postcards and the bar would mail them. The food was great, the piano-player superb, but it was not a young generation spot.
  
  Debbie dropped the postcard on the bar and made a face. "This must be an awfully square joint, Carter."
  
  Nick pushed the glass toward her. "It is. A real cube of a place. Here. Drink up. Well have a couple here, then we'll go someplace else and eat."
  
  Debbie drank, then squinted at him. "Are you trying to get me drunk, you dirty old man? So you can take advantage of me?" She changed moods, he thought, as fast as a chameleon changed colors.
  
  Nick smiled at her. "That's the idea, girl. That kiss got me all fired up. So drink up. Maybe we won't bother to eat. We'll go back to the penthouse and make mad love. You want to know about older men? I'll show you."
  
  Her gray eyes were enormous over the rim of the glass. He detected a trace of doubt in them. "You wouldn't, really. Would you?"
  
  Nick finished his drink and ordered another for both of them. He did not look at her. "Why not? Who has a better right than a godfather? And you're such a worldly young woman — I'm sure nothing I can do or say will shock you."
  
  Doubt still lingered in her eyes. "You're just trying to put me in my place now. You're trying to scare me, Carter."
  
  He made his grin a little wolfish. "How did we get on this 'Carter' bit? You're not very respectful of your elders."
  
  Debbie traced a finger on the bar. "Because I want to, that's all. Anyway I've stopped thinking of you as an older man. I don't think you're all that much older, anyway. I'm not thinking of you as a godfather, either, or as a friend of my parents. I'm just thinking of you as you — a big handsome chunk of man." Debbie leaned closer to him and whispered. "You dig me, Carter?"
  
  Nick heaved an inward sigh of relief. The booze was working at last, beginning to get to her. He had been beginning to think that she was the only teen-ager in the world with a hollow leg.
  
  The piano player was magnificent. Debbie did not like him. Nick took her to Peter's Back Yard. She ate a huge steak, had three more drinks, and was still on her feet She insisted on walking down Fifth Avenue to the Arch, in the rain. Once in the Park she wanted to go east, seeming to know instinctively where the trouble was, but Nick steered her west. Even so, he lost his bearings in the Village maze and they ended up in a Lesbian bar on Third Street. He was caught off guard for a moment. Debbie was insisting on another drink — she was walking unsteadily now, and he had to support her — so they entered the little bar. It was spattered here and there by candles and smelled of strong disinfectant. A juke box moaned somewhere off in the gloom. As soon as his eyes adjusted, Nick made out the tiny dance floor and the couples shuffling about it Butches and ferns, whispering and caressing, or dancing silently pelvis to pelvis.
  
  Nick started to get to his feet, to leave, but it was already too late. A butch loomed at the side of the booth. She ignored Nick and looked at Debbie. "Wanta dance, honey?"
  
  "No," Nick snapped. "Beat it!"
  
  "Of course I'll dance," said Debbie. She stood up, swaying a Utile. Her eyes were shining in the candlelight. She stuck out her tongue at Nick. "You are a terribly rude man! I want to dance with this nice lady."
  
  He watched her being led back to the tiny dance floor. Lady! Nick lit a cigarette and rubbed his forehead. Just between his eyes an ache was beginning. Hell! Wasn't the kid ever going to pass out?
  
  Nick turned in his seat so he could keep an eye on the dance floor and Debbie. Maybe she wasn't drunk enough to pass out, but she was capable of almost anything else. When he spotted her she was dancing normally enough, an old-fashioned two-step, with enough distance between her slim body and the Dutch's thick one. Nick watched and cursed all teen-agers. And admitted that he had never been meant for baby-sitting!
  
  There were four or five butches at the bar and they were watching him. He pretended not to notice them. Most of them were real stomping butches, diesels, and wore jeans and leather jackets over sport or sweat shirts. One was in full drag, wearing a man's suit, shirt, and tie, with close-cropped hair.
  
  If it weren't for the flabby breasts, Nick thought, he could have been in a longshoreman's bar. He avoided their eyes. He wanted no trouble with a gaggle of butches. They were tough and they usually carried knives or razors. The fact that he could have killed them all in a few minutes with his bare hands changed nothing. There was Debbie to look after. Pretty little, screwy little, nutty little Debbie. Nick fought down anger and disgust — partly disgust at his own ambivalence toward the child? — and made himself wait for the record to end. He wanted no trouble, no scene, but they were leaving after this dance!
  
  It was with a bit of surprise that he realized that he, himself, was not exactly cold sober. The thought itself had a sobering effect. For a moment he tried to imagine Hawk's words, his whole reaction, on hearing that his Number One boy had been involved in a brawl in a queer joint! He couldn't imagine it Even Hawk, who could and did cope with everything, would have no words for that.
  
  The music stopped. Debbie came back. Nick, carrying her mink jacket, tossed a bill on the Formica and took the girl firmly by the arm. He steered her for the door. Debbie protested, trying to tug her arm away from him. "I haven't had my drink, Carter!"
  
  "That's only half the story," he told her. "You're not having it. You're what the bartenders call an Eighty-six. You've had enough. Plenty. Too much. We're going home. As of now!"
  
  A cab stopped and he bundled her in, gave the cabbie instructions, went about getting her into the jacket. While he was doing it, she fell against him, mouth open, eyes closed, breathing gently, and went to sleep.
  
  Debbie slumbered with her head on his shoulder. The cab stopped for a signal, in the glow of a street light, and Nick gazed down at her. Her small red mouth was still open, a glistening thread of moisture leaking from one corner. He put a finger under her chin and gently closed her mouth. She stirred and mumbled something. Again he felt the strange, almost frightening, ambivalence; desire for her young flesh coupled with a protective tenderness. What an insane situation! Killmaster, long on a first-name basis with Death, could not recall a more confused and subtly terrifying evening. There was no external enemy to strike. Only himself.
  
  The cabbie went over to Fifth and turned north. As they approached 46th Street and the penthouse Nick studied the face on his shoulder. She was pouting a bit now, her lips moving, showing now and again the tip of a pink tongue. He became aware of the clean girl smell of her through the heavier, adult perfume. His brain, aided by all the cognac he had consumed, began to play a few fantastic tricks. He thought of Debbie as a perfect little package of American girlhood. A hundred pounds of sweet, unblemished girl flesh as yet not marred by worry or time. A luscious little plum, soft as velvet, and so ready — so too ready — for the plucking. Virgin she might not be — had she been only trying to shock him? — but in any case it did not matter. Child she still was. Sensual child, perhaps, but with her sensuality only as deep as the nerve endings in that lovely skin. Knowing nothing, suspecting nothing, of the real and feral nature of this thing called Life into which she had stumbled, and in which she must make her way.
  
  His mind took another strange turn. He had been in many countries, bad killed many men, had made love to many women. He knew a great deal about wealth and arrogance, poverty and pride, jealousy and power lust and cruelty and madness. And Death. He was a connoisseur of Death. For many years now Death, if she was a woman, had been his mistress. If Death was male — he did not profess to know — then they were very nearly friends.
  
  Yet now, gazing down at the sleeping girl — how easy, in that moment, to whisk away the mink jacket and miniskirt, the painted mouth, and replace them with sweater, rumpled tweed skirt, scuffed saddle oxfords — gazing at her now Nick Carter found that it was hard to think of Death. Death had receded for now; this youth, this unafraid and unknowing lovely girl had pushed Death away. For now. And yet, somewhere out in the city, he could hear laughter.
  
  "Here we are, buddy." The cabbie was staring back at him, rudely jolting Nick from his reverie.
  
  "Sure." he fumbled in his pocket for a bill and passed it to the man. He shook Debbie gently. She mumbled and clung to him. Okay. He'd carry her up. The apartment had a side entrance and a private elevator to his penthouse.
  
  The driver got out to hold the door while Nick scooped her into his arms and crossed the pavement. The man said good night in a pleasant voice, and Nick answered.
  
  There was a light burning in the foyer and one in the kitchen. Pok's door was closed. The electric clock in the kitchen said a quarter of three. He carried the girl into the guest room and put her on the bed, pulled down the miniskirt as far as it would go — not far — and covered her with a quilt. He flicked on a dim night light so she would not wake up in the dark and be frightened.
  
  Nick turned out the lights in the kitchen and foyer and went to his own huge bedroom and closed the door. He smoked a last cigarette as he undressed, arranging his clothes neatly on a chair as was his habit. His thoughts had hardened now — no more fantasy — and he thought that tomorrow he would call a very old friend and ask her for help. Louise and he had been fine bedmates for a time, and when mutual desire had waned a miracle had come to pass — they had remained friends. Louise, he knew, would be glad to help with Debbie. There was not going to be any more of this unchaperoned business! Nick smiled sourly as he tossed back the covers. If that made him an old fuddy and a square to end all squares, then it would just have to be! Debbie wouldn't like Louise, would probably consider her as an interfering «older» woman. That would have to be, too.
  
  He rolled naked between the cool, clean-smelling sheets. He was cold sober now, and more than a little tired. He drifted off to sleep still trying to think of ways in which he could reasonably absent himself tomorrow. Let Louise take over the kid. It was only one more day. Then she would be gone, back to Sweet Briar, and there would remain only a tantalizing memory. In all honesty, there in the dark room, alone with himself and whatever gods there were, Nick had to admit to the tantalizing bit. So sweet, so young, so malleable — a hundred pounds of ravishing essence one could never buy and never recapture. Youth, and… He slept.
  
  Not for long. His instinct and long training brought him instantly awake at her first touch. Even that was failure and, in different circumstances, could have killed him. She had managed to open the door, cross the room, and get into bed before he was aware of her presence. Blame it on the booze. This time it would not be fatal.
  
  He lay unmoving, feeling the warmth of her young body against his back. She was naked. He felt the tips of her firm little breasts on his flesh, just between his shoulder blades. He shivered, a convulsion of his flesh that he could not control. Neither could he control the essentially male part of him that could only lust and probe for fulfillment. It was now filling the bedroom with a silent screaming: What are you waiting for, fool?
  
  He did not dare turn to face her.
  
  She put her little teeth against his ear and nibbled. "Nickie, darling? Come on now. I know you're awake." She was still drank.
  
  He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut. "Go back to your room, Debbie! Right now. That's an order!"
  
  She giggled and bit his ear. "I don't take orders. Not now. I get enough of that at school. Come on, now. Please? Turn over and treat me nice."
  
  Nick stuffed a corner of the pillow into his mouth. Why, he never knew. "Beat it," he said, "before I whale the hell out of you."
  
  Debbie kissed the back of his neck. Her mouth was soft and wet and he could smell the alcohol on her breath. She reached over him, without warning, and grabbed him with her small hand. She gasped, "Oh, my God!"
  
  Nick hauled her hand away and held her wrist. He put on a little pressure. She half screamed. "Ohhhh — you're hurting me, Nickie!"
  
  He wanted to laugh and he wanted to cry. It was all so God-damned ridiculous — and so tempting. And so dangerous.
  
  He loosed his grip on her wrist. Debbie began to lick his ear with her tongue.
  
  "Cut that out!"
  
  She laughed. "I won't. Not until you turn over. Please, Nickie. Please? It's all right, you know. I came into your bed — you didn't try to get in mine. I want to! I want to a lot. I've decided that I like dirty old men after all — especially this dirty old man." She bit his ear.
  
  Nick Carter groaned aloud. "I should do it," he told her. "I really should teach you a lesson. I ought to tear you apart!"
  
  Nick reached for the bedside lamp and switched it on. He slid out of bed and stalked to a closet, not looking back at the bed. He threw on a robe, belted it, then swung to face the bed.
  
  Debbie was staring at him, blinking her huge eyes against the light. She was naked on the sheet, slim legs outflung, firm breasts spiked with pink, a bare smudge of gold showing between her legs.
  
  Nick stalked toward the bed. "All right, Debbie! Now you're going to get it. I'm not your father or your godfather or your uncle or a nice older man! I'm not Ralphie boy, either! Or Nickie. I'm just a man that's angry. And you're a little teen-age whore who needs a lesson. Now you're going to get it!"
  
  She put out her tongue and started to laugh. Then she saw the look in his eye, squealed in sudden terror, and tried to scramble off the bed. He caught her ankle in one big hand and lifted her high, dangling her over the bed like a chained lamb on a conveyor belt, going to the slaughter. She let out a scream.
  
  With his free, open hand he smacked her across the buttocks as hard as he could. Her scream died in a wail of real pain. His hand left a stark red imprint on the creamy flesh.
  
  He held her aloft as easily as an obstetrician holds a baby and he smacked her again and again. Until her lovely little ass was a mass of angry weals. She sobbed and cried and begged. Nick kept flogging her with his open hand. A dozen times in all. When he had finished he tossed her over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes and carried her back to the guest room. He flung her on the bed, where she buried her wet face in the pillow and began to scream: "I hate you… I h… hate y… you!"
  
  He closed the door and left her without speaking.
  
  Down the corridor a shard of light was leaking under Pok's door. Nick halted outside and said, "It's all right, Pok. Nothing that concerns you. Go back to bed."
  
  "Yis, sar." In a moment the light went out.
  
  Nick went back to his own bedroom, got back in bed and turned out the light, knowing he would not sleep. He could smell her fragrance on the bedclothes.
  
  He was right about not sleeping. After an hour he gave it up and turned on the light. Nearly five o'clock. He went into the study for a smoke and a drink. He would call Louise first thing in the morning and tell her to come over and bail him out. He couldn't just toss Debbie out into the street. The whole messy episode would gradually fade into memory, as such matters did, and in time…
  
  Behind Nick Carter, in one corner of the study, was an exquisitely graven and lacquered Chinese screen in triptych. Behind the screen was a small pier table beneath its narrow, accompanying mirror. A red phone stood on the little table.
  
  The phone buzzed softly now. Again. And again. It buzzed three times before Nick Carter stood up, crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray, and went to answer it. It would be Hawk, of course. Either Hawk or his secretary, Delia Stokes. At this hour, a quarter after five, it was more likely Hawk. That meant only one thing. Killmaster was going back to work.
  
  He picked up the phone and, cautiously, because he was already working again, said "Yes?" He spoke in a neutral tone that no one could have positively identified as the voice of Nick Carter. It was a routine precaution, something he did without conscious thought, but it was routine and precaution that kept an agent alive.
  
  David Hawk's harsh voice was oddly reassuring to the AXEman. Here he was in his own element again, on safe ground; the conversation, the summons, he was about to hear could only lead to dangers which he knew and understood.
  
  Hawk told him to scramble. Nick pressed a button on the base of the red phone. "Scrambling, sir."
  
  "I've just come from an all-night session of the Joint Intelligence Committee," Hawk said. "There's another one tomorrow. Starts at one o'clock over at State. I want you there. I think this is going to be your pigeon, boy, and it's going to be a tough one. Maybe an impossible one. We'll have to see. Anyway be at State at one tomorrow. I mean today, of course. Got it?"
  
  "Got it, sir. Ill be there."
  
  "You'd better. Oh, yes, another thing — you've been awarded the Gold Cross, first class, for that Israel job. What do you want me to do with it?"
  
  "Do you really want me to tell you, sir?"
  
  His boss chuckled, not a usual thing with him. "You'd better not. I'd have to court-martial you. So I'll lock it up with the others — you get them all when you retire. It's something to look forward to, son. When you're old and gray and retired you can go to balls and wear all your decorations — thirteen by last count This makes fourteen."
  
  "I feel old and tired and gray right now," Nick said.
  
  "What the hell are you talking about?" Hawk demanded. "You are in shape?"
  
  Killmaster glanced at himself in the long pier glass, at the wide shoulders, the muscular throat and flat belly and narrow waist, the long hard leg columns. Even when not working or taking special courses, he did special exercises, swam, golfed, played tennis and did two hours daily of handball or squash at the NYAC.
  
  "I'm in good shape," he told his boss. "But at times I feel that I'm getting on a bit. I hope this job is something that an older man can handle?"
  
  There was a long pause. Hawk was suspicious. Nick Carter was the only agent who could pull his leg with impunity, and that not always, but Nick did it often enough to keep the old man on his guard.
  
  Finally Hawk said, "I don't know what the hell you're talking about and I don't want to know. But this job is definitely not for an old man. If it was, for Christ's sake, I'd do it myself! I think we're going to have to send you into China. Good night, Nick."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 3
  
  
  
  
  Hawk met Nick Carter at the Washington National Airport with a chauffeured black Cadillac. The chauffeur was a tall, blocky man with his shoulder holster showing under an ill-fitting jacket. Nick remarked on it.
  
  "Not ours," said Hawk tartly. "He's CIA. The meeting of JIC has been changed to Langley. We're going there now. A lot has happened since I talked to you this morning — some good, some bad, all of it complex. I'll try to zero you in before we get to Langley — the high points, at least, so I'll talk and you listen. Okay?"
  
  "Okay." Nick crossed his long legs, lit a gold-tipped cigarette, and watched his chief's face. Hawk was looking haggard, with dark brown circles under his eyes. He was wearing a salt-and-pepper tweed that looked slept in, a shirt that was not fresh, and a loud, badly knotted tie. Now he took off a battered slouch hat and rubbed his scalp tiredly. His thinning hair, Killmaster noted, was going from gray to white. Hawk was long past retirement age. Nick wondered if he would be able to drive himself the way Hawk did when he reached the man's age. If? Not to worry. Nick flicked ashes on the floor of the Cadillac and thought there was very little chance he would ever have to worry about getting old.
  
  Hawk spoke around the unlit cigar in his mouth. "You knew a Chinese girl in Hong Kong? Fan Su? You worked with her in smuggling an old Chinese general out of China into Hong Kong?"[1]
  
  "Yes. I remember her well. Fan Su wasn't her milk name. I never knew her real name." He was not likely to forget the girl who had called herself Fan Su. After the mission, which had been a rough and bloody one, they had spent a few days together. In bed, and out, it had been marvelous.
  
  Hawk nodded. "And there was something about an organization called Undertong? An organization she was trying to get started — a Chinese underground movement?"
  
  "There was. I think it was pretty hopeless. At the time she had only a few cadres, and the ChiComs had already liquidated some of these. I don't know what ever came of it. Probably not much. China is probably the only country in the world where it is impossible to form any real underground. Too many factors against it. Chiang Kaishek has been trying for years and he hasn't gotten anywhere."
  
  Hawk shot him a slightly malevolent look. The dry cigar crackled between his false teeth. "You're starting to sound like one of those China experts over at State! This can be done — that can't be done. Mao's bowels didn't move this morning, so we'll all have to recast our thinking. Sometimes I think they use incense and chicken entrails!"
  
  Nick stared out the window, careful not to smile. So Hawk was in one of those moods! He flipped his cigarette out the window. They were getting into Georgetown now.
  
  "I've got news for you," Hawk said. "Your Fan Su has been in touch. She wants you. I can't go into all of it now, but the gist is that things have changed in China. This Red Guard upheaval is beginning to backfire, in a lot of ways, and this girl claims that her outfit, this Undertong, has been infiltrating the Guards with a lot of success. She's got a brother who is in the Red Guard, a fanatic. Or he was. Now he's seen the light and is helping her recruit for Undertong. She got a long message through to me, by a one-in-a-million chance — I'll explain all that later — and she thinks that now, right now, is the time to start organizing a real, viable underground in China. That's one of the things we're going to talk about at this meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Just one of 'em. There's a lot more."
  
  They were doing a good eighty on the Georgetown Pike. Nick Carter was silent, trying to digest what he had just heard. Finally he asked the question that bothered him most. The glass partition was closed and the intercom button was off.
  
  "How in hell did Fan Su ever manage to get in touch with you?"
  
  Hawk shrugged his skinny shoulders, looking more like a scarecrow than ever. "Luck, accident, miracle — call it any of those. She used an old CIA code that's been extinct, compromised, for years. How she got it God only knows — all they'll tell me is that they left a few agents, Chinese, scattered around the country back in the fifties. They had given them this old code, a guard channel, and some beat-up old transmitters." His thin mouth moved in what was almost a smile. "Crystal sets, I wouldn't doubt. But she didn't have a transmission problem. She's in this country. Right now."
  
  Killmaster sat up straight. "Fan Su is here?"
  
  "Not in Washington," Hawk said. "In San Francisco at the moment, I think. Things are a little bit fluid right now. Of course," he added thoughtfully, "she may be dead by now. The chances are about fifty-fifty. I lost a live drop in San Francisco yesterday. Man by the name of Sun Yat. Ran a bookstore in Chinatown, and the ChiComs were using him for a drop, too.
  
  Hawk bit his cigar in two, looked at the ends in disgust, then tossed them out a window. "God damn it," he said with feeling. "It took me three years to get Sun Yat set up. He was doubling, of course, but doubling on our side. He sold very high-class dirty books, and I put on a little pressure, kept the local cops off his back. He made copies of all the ChiCom mail and left it for me at another live drop, a Chinese pharmacy."
  
  Hawk sighed and stripped cellophane from a fresh cigar. "He won't be much good to me from now on. Somebody chopped him to pieces with hatchets last night — if his girl friend hadn't gone to find him I still wouldn't know it. When I talked to San Francisco — we've got a man planted on Homicide there — he said the killers tried to make it look like a tong killing. There were probably two of them — out-of-towners brought in for the job, I suppose — and they left the hatchets behind. Not too subtle, was it? Not for the ChiComs."
  
  Nick Carter realized, once again, how little he knew of the total AXE operation. It had to be that way, of course. An agent, even a top man like himself, was allowed to know only what he needed to do his job. That way, if caught and tortured, he could do little harm to the organization as a whole. Only Hawk — alone — carried the complete picture in his cunning old brain.
  
  "Not subtle," he agreed now, "but to the point. AXE — hatchets. They just wanted you to know that they knew. But what about your other drop? The pharmacy? They haven't hit that one yet?"
  
  Hawk shook his head. "Not that I've heard. I'm keeping my fingers crossed there. I can't have it watched or protected, naturally, because that would blow it. And your girl, this Fan Su, got her message to me through the pharmacy, not through Sun Yat. That I don't understand at all. Maybe you can find out when you see her."
  
  "I'm going to see her?"
  
  Hawk blew his nose into a clean handkerchief, and put the handkerchief away. "This lousy cold. Can't get rid of it. Yes, at least I hope you're going to see her. I said the chance was fifty-fifty that she's still alive. As soon as this meeting is over you're catching a plane for San Francisco."
  
  They were in Virginia now. Nick could see the Potomac sparkling a cold October blue in the distance.
  
  He turned back to Hawk. "Fan Su sent you a message in an old CIA code? That's got me a little baffled, sir. How did you read it?"
  
  "I didn't. We didn't. We didn't have a single damned clue. So I gave it to the Brain Boys and they couldn't do anything with it either — until one of them, who used to work for the CIA before he came to us, thought he recognized it from years back. It wasn't much, but it was all we had. So I rushed it down to Langley. They had to dig an old code machine out of the vaults to decipher it." Hawk frowned. "And very damned condescending about it, too!" His frown deepened to a scowl, and Nick turned away to hide his grin. Hawk was always feuding with the CIA. Not because of any lack of mutual respect or cooperation. It was a question of seniority and money, and CIA had a great deal more of both than did AXE. Hawk was always fighting his budget.
  
  Now the old man seemed to pick up Nick's thought. "I said this thing is complex, remember. Part of the deal is that CIA is interested, very definitely interested, in building an underground in China. Only they don't think it can be done. They don't want to waste a lot of money and effort, and agents, on a flop effort. But there is also another angle to it — they've got a dirty little job they want done in China! If we play along and do it for them, then maybe they'll spend a little money helping us get the underground started."
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Nick Carter skipped lightly over the "dirty little job" bit. That was routine. Life in AXE was just one dirty little job after another.
  
  He put his finger at once or the fallacy. "But CIA wants the underground, not us. That's not our line of work."
  
  Hawk's eyes were like flint and his smile was cold. "Ummm — no. That's not exactly true, son. I want an underground in China almost as much as they do, but for different reasons. They want it mainly for information — I want it — well, you understand."
  
  Nick Carter did understand. Hawk could make even Killmaster feel a little cold when he looked like that. Hawk wanted an underground in China for the sole and inexorable purpose of putting the opposition leaders down in the real sense of the word. Putting down, to Hawk, meant just that. Six feet down.
  
  The Cadillac slowed and turned off the parkway, past a sign that said BPR. Bureau of Public Roads. Nick smiled faintly. Until just recently the sign had said: Central Intelligence Agency. Some brain had finally got around to taking that one down.
  
  They were checked through a gate and started up a long winding drive to the massive gray-white building with its two stubby U wings. The area was heavily forested, some of the trees already barren of leaves, but many still waving brilliant panaches of October color.
  
  "This JIC meeting," Hawk said, "is going to be a continuation of last night's rat race. You're just an onlooker, remember. You'll have to answer direct questions, of course, but otherwise stay out of it. I know how to handle these donkeys. They've all got more money than we have, but we've got what it takes to do their dirty work." He ruined another cigar with a savage snap. "Everything is going to be damned quid pro quo!"
  
  Nick Carter was content to play the role of onlooker. He had been to Langley only once before, and he had never attended a meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Making policy, squabbling over priorities and money was not in his line. From time to time the thought came that one day, in the natural course of events, Hawk would be gone and Nick would have to take his place. He tried not to think about it.
  
  They were put through the smooth routine of fingerprinting and photographing — all this automated now — and an armed guard conducted them to a large room on an upper floor of the right wing. It was windowless and air-conditioned. A little group of men waited around a U-shaped table. The chair in the mouth of the U was vacant, and Hawk went straight to it. Nick understood then that Hawk was chairing the meeting. The old man had not mentioned it.
  
  Hawk did not introduce Nick. No one appeared to think this strange. They were all birds of a breed, this gathering, and the less they knew about each other, the better. Nick took a chair against the wall, with an ashtray handy, and watched.
  
  He knew most of the men by sight. With some he had exchanged an occasional word. All were seconds in command, either deputy directors or some such title, of their respective services. Only Hawk, as chairman, was top dog in his kennel.
  
  Nick Carter lit a cigarette and checked them off: CIC, FBI, Naval Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, Treasury, Secret Service and CIA. The DD of the latter was a smallish, red-haired, foxy-looking little man with intelligent, cold eyes. He wasted no time. As soon as Hawk called the meeting to order, the CIA man stood up.
  
  "Everybody here has been familiarized with the problems, sir. I took that liberty while we were waiting for you."
  
  Nick saw his Chief's mouth tighten. They had been about ten minutes late. But Hawk merely nodded.
  
  "And," the CIA man went on, "I've conferred with the Director himself since we broke up last night." He smiled around the table. "This morning, rather. I don't know about you other people, but I had a hell of a lot of explaining to do at home!" There was subdued laughter, joined in by all except Hawk. He merely nodded again, looking gray and worn, with flaccid lines around his mouth. The CIA man, in flagrant contrast to Hawk, wore a freshly pressed suit and a clean, starched white shirt. He looked showered and shaven. He would, Nick thought, have an apartment right here in the building. AXE had no such luxuries.
  
  The CIA DD stopped noodling around. He picked up a long pointer, went to a wall map and pulled it down. Without looking at Hawk for permission, he flicked off the overhead lights. The room was in gloom now except for a glow on the map. The CIA man raised his pointer, brought it to rest within a blue-crayoned circle on the map.
  
  "Tibet," the CIA man said. The pointer moved and stopped on a red crayon dot. "The Chumbi Valley. On the north we've got China or Tibet, same thing now; to the west Sikkim, to the east Bhutan, to the south India. The Chinese Reds, gentlemen, are building a five-hundred-mile tunnel complex out of Tibet and south toward India. Our best information, as of now, says it is about half-completed."
  
  "We know all about it," said Army Intelligence. "We've extrapolated and planned for it with the Indian General Staff. When they finish that tunnel the ChiComs could funnel troops through it in a hurry. They could drive south through Sikkim, turn east and across the north of India to cut off New Delhi. Right there they would have all the rice, tea, jute and oil from Assam Nefa and Nagaland. We're keeping a very sharp eye on the bastards."
  
  "Stop sweating," said Air Force Intelligence. He was very young for his position and rank. He was in civvies now, but Nick knew that he wore two stars.
  
  "No sweat," Air Force went on. "Screw their tunnel. We drop a few sticks in there and they haven't got a tunnel. We've done at least twenty overflights with U2's in that area. Yes, gentlemen, we're still using them. The point is that we can blow their tunnel to hell any time we feel like it."
  
  "Sure we can," Hawk said harshly. "We can get into a war with China, too. And would, if you fly boys had your way. But that isn't the point at the moment, either." Hawk fixed the CIA man with a hard glare. "Just what is the point, Charles? You didn't mention this tunnel business earlier. Why now?" Hawk swept the table with a gesture. "All those concerned know about it and are making plans accordingly. So?"
  
  The foxy look of the CIA man grew more pronounced. He let the map roll up with a clatter and switched on the overhead lights. He went back to his place at the table. He pointed to something on the table before him. No one had paid it any attention before. It looked like a pencil box, the sort used by school children. The CIA man picked up the box and let it fall on the table. It struck the wood with a dull, heavy thud, and the table trembled slightly.
  
  "Lead," said the CIA man. "Inside are a few ounces of dirt from Tibet, from the Chumbi Valley. In short, gentlemen, from the tunnel diggings! The dirt is radioactive! Not dangerously so — the lead is just an extra precaution — but it is definitely and freshly, radioactive. There is no evidence of decay yet. One of our agents in Tibet managed to get it to our people in Nepal. It was flown in last night."
  
  For a moment there was silence around the U-shaped table. Nick fumbled for his fighter without taking his eyes off the tableau. The FBI man started to stand up to speak, but Hawk waved him down. "Go on," he told the CIA man. "Give us the rest of it."
  
  The CIA man nodded. He looked at Air Force. "Your U2's are good, very good. But our satellites are better. NASA did a beautiful job for us on this — God knows how they do it, but they do — and they managed to re-orbit one of our satellites so that it crosses the area in question a dozen times a day. It's been sending back a steady stream of high-grade pictures. The ChiComs, gentlemen, are building something besides a tunnel. The tunnel is important, sure, but they're using it as a cover for something else. We think they're building a bomb. One bomb!"
  
  There was an instant buzz around the table. Hawk rapped with his fist on the wood. "Calm it down, please. Go on, Charles. Why are the Chinese making only one bomb? By bomb I suppose you mean a nuclear device?"
  
  "Yes. I do." The CIA man put a finger on the flat lead box before him. "We've had an inkling — not much, but a bare smell — of what has been going on in Tibet for some time now. We started paying close attention, of course, the minute they started digging the tunnel. Since then we've put a few hundred odds and ends into the computers. The end result, to make it brief, is that the ChiComs are capable, even while carrying on their normal atomic research in Sinkiang Province, of building at least one other bomb elsewhere. We think that Tibet, using the tunnel as cover, is that elsewhere. We think they're trying to build the biggest bomb the world has ever known — a hydrogen bomb. A bomb a hell of a lot bigger, and with a louder bang, than we or the Russians have ever exploded!"
  
  Both Air Force and Army Intelligence stood up and looked at Hawk for permission. The old man nodded at Army. The CIA man, looking still more like a fox, stood waiting for questions. He was, Nick Carter thought, damned sure of himself.
  
  Army cleared his throat. He also was in civilian clothes — they all were — but Nick could almost see the three stars glittering.
  
  "I'll admit," said Army, as though the words hurt him, "that you seem to have more, and better, intelligence than we have. But you fellows make plenty of mistakes, just the same. I think you're making one now. Oh, your raw intelligence is probably straight enough, but I think your interpretation is wrong. I'm no amateur at this game myself. I've got most of the basic, prime knowledge that you have. Leaving out the dirt in your lead box, of course, and the satellite pictures. Has it occurred to you that the ChiComs might be running another one of their bluffs? They're pretty cute, you know. This whole thing might be a plant, a paper bomb, to draw us away from the real thing in Sinkiang. It might even be a gambit to get us to bomb their tunnel — give them a valid excuse for going to war and sending troops into North Vietnam.
  
  "And on top of all that — my experts tell me that the ChiComs just aren't capable of making a hydrogen bomb now. Not even a small one, much less this monster bomb you're talking about! And last, not least, why would they strain their guts, use every last bit of their resources, to make this monster bomb? Just having it wouldn't get them anything! They would have to explode it to prove that it works — and when they do that they're right back where they started, with an empty arsenal. No bomb. What would they gain?"
  
  Killmaster's thinking had been racing ahead of the Army man. He had the answer already and now he expected the CIA to pounce. But the foxy little man only nodded quietly, rubbed his pointed chin with a finger, and waited for Hawk's nod. It came.
  
  The CIA man stared across the table at Army. Then: "To understand this as I understand it, sir, you would have to spend a few days talking to our mainland China desk. Unfortunately I don't think that is feasible or possible. But I am convinced that building such a bomb, a massive hydrogen bomb — not a paper bomb — and then wasting it on the desert air, as you might say, is entirely within the Chinese character." He stopped, took a drink of water from a frosted carafe at his side, then looked up and down the table.
  
  "Think it out carefully, gentlemen. The ChiComs have lost a lot of face recently. We all know that face is a matter of life and death in the Orient. They need new face. So they explode this monster, bigger than anything we've done, or the Russians have done, and in a few hours the whole world knows about it. They can't conceal it, even if they tried, and they don't want to conceal it. That's the whole idea. They set off this baby with a yield of lord knows how many megatons — and headlines scream all over the world. The Chinese have made a bigger bomb than we or the Sovs can make!
  
  "They follow it up with a propaganda barrage even bigger than the bomb itself. They've got plenty more bombs where that one came from! We know it's a lie, sure, but a lot of the little, neutral, uncommitted — and scared — peoples won't know that! Believe me, gentlemen, if the ChiComs can bring this thing off they're going to get their money's worth in propaganda and face. It's up to us to see that it doesn't happen. We here at CIA…" his glance flickered at Hawk and past the old man to Nick Carter — "we intend to see that it doesn't happen. We and, er, certain other of the combined services. For those of you not directly concerned with this matter, but who are to be kept informed consistent with the President's latest directive, the code name of this operation will be Prop B. I hardly need tell you that it stands for Propaganda Bomb." The CIA man sat down.
  
  Hawk rubbed his eyes. "The rest is mostly routine, gentlemen. I suggest that we hold it over for another time. If you're all as dead-beat as I am, you'll understand why. Bed. Alone, I might add. In fact I will add — bed, alone!"
  
  Amid a general titter, the meeting broke up. Hawk motioned to Nick to keep his seat. Nick nodded and watched the CIA Deputy Director. The foxy man waited until all the others had filed out, then he went to a door opening off the left of the conference chamber. He crooked a finger at them. "Okay, David. Let's have a drink or two and talk a little turkey."
  
  Nick and Hawk followed him into a small, lavishly furnished private office. The CIA man pressed a button on his intercom and spoke into it. "Gladys, hold everything for me until further notice. No calls except the Director."
  
  The female voice, cool and impersonal, said: "Yes, Mr. Donnellen."
  
  The CIA man went to a bar in a corner and started pulling out bottles and glasses. Hawk sank into a comfortable leather chair and motioned for Nick to do the same. Hawk pulled his tie askew and unbuttoned his collar. He winked at Nick.
  
  "Now," he told the CIA man, "we can get down to brass tacks. Do a little horsetrading. And I might as well warn you, Charles, that one of my ancestors was David Harum."
  
  The CIA man handed a glass to Nick. He still looked like a fox, Nick thought, but now a more amiable vulpine air was discernable. The stiff, rather prissy attitude had vanished. The man studied Nick Carter for a moment with gray-green eyes, then stuck out his hand. "You're Carter?"
  
  Nick shook hands. "Yes." The other man's hand was small in his own, but dry and firm.
  
  The CIA man turned to smile at Hawk. "I think we can do business, you old pirate. You want this setup in China as much as I do or you wouldn't be sending your top man."
  
  Hawk's face was impassive. "Am I sending him?"
  
  The CIA man took a pull at his drink. "Forget it, David. I don't want to know."
  
  "Well, there's something I want to know." Hawk leaned forward in his chair and stared at the red-haired man. He gestured toward the door leading into the conference room.
  
  "How much of that in there was the ungarbled McCoy and how much of it was look-see pidgin?" Hawk had served his time in the Orient and he picked the exact phrase for bluffing and four-flush. He also knew — he should — that any government agency, at times, had to put up a front, had to pretend they knew what they were doing, justify their existence, even when they didn't know their tail from second base. Hawk, in his wisdom, did not think that such was the case now, but he had to be sure.
  
  The CIA Deputy Director went to his desk, carrying his drink. Nick thought that all of a sudden he looked as weary as Hawk.
  
  "It's true," the CIA man said. "No crapping. Those bastards are building that monster and they're going to set it off and scare the hell out of the world unless we stop them." His glance flicked from Hawk to Nick, then back again to the old man.
  
  "From what you've told me, you think you can get Carter into China. That's a hell of a job in itself just now. And you know how I, and the Director, feel about the underground matter. We don't think it can be done and we won't risk any of our own men trying it. But if you want to try it we'll give you one-hundred-percent support, everything short of personnel. In return, you…" he looked directly at Nick — "you find that damned bomb and blow it up before they can! The odds against you, roughly, are about seven hundred million to one." He smiled tightly. "That's our latest figure on the Chinese population, but I'm not making a joke."
  
  Hawk was staring at the ceiling. He said: "A few days ago I read something in the paper — happened in England. Four people were playing bridge and all of them drew perfect hands. Each one had thirteen cards in the same suit. Two days later the same thing happened in Australia. I looked it up. The odds against that are somewhere in the octillions."
  
  Nick had to laugh. "I can't say that I like the odds, sir, but you make your point. There is a chance."
  
  Hawk pointed a finger at him. "Go. Do whatever you have to do and meet me at the office in two hours. I want you in San Francisco tonight."
  
  When Nick had gone, there was a little time of silence in the office. The CIA man freshened the drinks. Then he said, "So that's Nick Carter. You know, David, really meeting him makes me feel a little strange."
  
  "How is that?"
  
  The red-haired man shrugged. "It's a bit hard to put in words. Awe, maybe, because of what I've heard about him. Sort of like finding out that Superman really does exist. And yet he doesn't exactly look the part — I mean all that polish and the good clothes over the muscles. The brain under the crew cut. He — well, he looks more like an Ivy League Phi Beta Kappa, who considers pro football a nice game for babies. God — I don't know! But he sure makes an impression."
  
  Hawk nodded. His tone was dry. "I know. Especially on the ladies. I have problems there at times."
  
  "I can see how you would. But David…" the CIA man stared at the older man for a moment. "Are you really going to send him in there? You know — we know, just between us — that he hasn't got a prayer."
  
  Hawk's smile was enigmatic. "Don't worry about it. He knows and he takes the chance. Nick Carter has been in, and out, of hell more times than you've got years."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 4
  
  
  
  
  When Nick Carter left the plane in San Francisco, he rented a car from Number Two and drove to a small hotel on Powell Street. By the time he had showered and changed his shirt it was after nine in the evening. Fog — which the desk clerk informed him was not as bad as the night before — hung in gray streamers and wrapped itself around the street lights. From the Bay came the anguished moan of horns, answered now and then by a hoarse blast from a groping steamer.
  
  A little smile played over Killmaster's lean face as he opened the false bottom of his suitcase and took out the Luger and the stiletto, the FBI type belt holster and the chamois arm sheath. He was officially on mission now. His hazardous-duty pay — AXE called it danger money — had started when he boarded the plane in Washington. From now on until the mission was completed, or blown, or he was dead, he got triple pay. If he died, the money went to his heirs. In Nick's case, since he had no heirs, the money was to go into a special fund for recruiting and educating promising young men for AXE. Hawk had dreamed up and set up, the fund.
  
  As Nick adjusted the chamois sheath on his right forearm and snapped the stiletto down into his palm a couple of times, he thought that neither he, nor Hawk, were doing the kids any favor. How much better to use the money to provide them with degrees in engineering, lawyering or doctoring! The only trouble was the world — it still needed men to do black and dirty work in dark alleys.
  
  He got his car from the hotel parking lot and drove to Chinatown. It was Sunday night, and the streets were relatively quiet and free of traffic.
  
  He was, actually, on two missions. Prop B for CIA, and the exploratory job for Hawk and AXE. His boss, for some arbitrary reason known only to himself, had called the second mission Yellow Venus. His penultimate words, before Nick left the little office on Dupont Circle, had contained a slight clue to his thinking.
  
  "Sooner or later," he'd said with a half-smile, "you'll have to go to ground on this mission. Hide and relax. Yellow Venus might turn out to be a 'luck name, as we Chinese always say. And since we don't know what the hell it means there is no chance that they will!" Hawk had long known about Killmaster's penchant for bed as a means of relaxation, and though he was a strait-laced old gentleman himself — married to the same woman for forty years — he now confined himself to an occasional sarcastic remark. He knew, of course, that Nick's bed play never interfered with his work, and often helped it.
  
  Hawk's last words had been the usual: "So long, son. Good luck. I'll see you when I see you."
  
  It was going to be a long, difficult, and terribly dangerous mission. Just how long, and how dangerous, Killmaster had no way of knowing at the moment. Perhaps this was just as well. Meantime he was remembering an old Chinese proverb: The longest journey begins with the first step."
  
  Nick parked the car on a side street off Grant Avenue. He was in Chinatown now. His instructions were to find the Thousand Lotus Pharmacy — Chinese type — and ask for an acupuncture treatment for the bursitis in his right shoulder. This traditional therapy was called «Chung-i» and consisted of sticking a number of long, sharp needles into the patient. An alternative treatment was called mox-abustion, in which wormwood and incense were burnt on the skin over the affected area.
  
  Killmaster was not prepared to undergo either of the treatments. The pharmacist, or "doctor," was working as an AXE drop, well paid, and had been forwarding the ChiCom mail from the bookstore of the murdered Sun Yat. Nick did not know the man's name. He would have a countersign and, if all went well, he would take Nick to Fan Su or bring her to him.
  
  There was always the chance that the Thousand Lotus was blown, too. Nick could be walking into a trap. He smiled grimly now as he glanced at the street numbers. He was getting triple pay, wasn't he?
  
  The Thousand Lotus Pharmacy was a dingy, narrow-fronted little shop wedged between an Army & Navy Store and the Won Ton Beauty Shoppe. Both of these were shuttered and dark. A dim light glowed in the showcase of the pharmacy. A hand-lettered sign, in Chinese, advertised an elixir concocted of toads, snake skin, roses and a human placenta.
  
  "No thanks," said Nick to himself. "I'll stick to Geritol." He noticed a wide-mouthed gallon jug in which floated a perfectly formed fetus. Nick Carter smiled and pushed open the door of the shop. He was greeted by an odor which he remembered well — herbs and decaying tiger bones, wormwood and incense and scallions. The shop was deserted. There was no bell over the door. The dim light revealed a wooden counter and stacks of glass cases. A single door at the rear of the shop was closed.
  
  Somewhere a clock was ticking. He could not see it and the tick-tock only emphasized the silence. Nick slapped the counter lightly with his palm. "Anybody around?"
  
  There was a sound at the rear of the shop. He watched as the door opened slowly. The man who stood there was Chinese or Korean — too big for a Japanese — and he wore a starched white jacket and a round white surgeon's cap. He took three steps into the room and halted, staring at Nick through slitted eyes. He was a strongly built man with a moon face the color of old leather and a sullen mouth. He made a little bow. "Yes, please?" His English was good.
  
  Killmaster crooked his right elbow a trifle, to snap down the stiletto if he needed it, and approached the man slowly. There was something about this place that just didn't smell right, and it wasn't any of the horrible medicines they brewed. He told himself not to be such an old woman. It was too early to know.
  
  "My name is Hunt," he said. "Jerry Hunt. I've got bursitis in my right shoulder. I want a Chung-i treatment." When choosing his cover name for San Francisco he had picked Debbie's name without thinking. Later he had wondered if there was anything Freudian about it.
  
  The Chinese bowed again. This time he smiled. "That is most unusual, sir. In October it is usually the left shoulder that is affected."
  
  The AXE agent breathed a little more freely. The countersign was right. He drew closer to the man. "Where is she? I want to get this over with."
  
  "There have been complications." The Chinese turned away toward the rear. "Back here will be safer. If you will take off your coat and shirt, please? It will look better if I am actually giving you a treatment, in case someone should come in. I remain open late and customers wander in at all hours."
  
  Nick Carter didn't like it. Not at all. But he followed the man into the back room. What the hell — the guy had known the countersign. But an edge of nervousness moved in him. In his work eternal vigilance was the price you paid for life.
  
  The door closed behind them. "What complications?" Nick demanded. "Where is she? Has something gone wrong?"
  
  The Chinese pointed to a long narrow table in the center of the room. It had a padded head rest. Over it a powerful bulb burned in a large green glass shade.
  
  "If you will remove your coat and shirt and get on the table, please. It will be better, I think. The truth is, Mr. Hunt, that I do not know exactly where the lady is. She thought it best that way. All I know is that she is staying at a motel on the outskirts of town. She called an hour ago. She will call again in half an hour." He pointed to an ancient rolltop desk in one corner of the room. It was closed. On top of the desk was a phone.
  
  The Chinese pointed to the table again. "Please, sir. It is better. I must not be suspected. I do not wish to die by the hatchets, the way Sun Yat did."
  
  There seemed no help for it. Nick Carter began to take off his coat. "You know about that, eh?" Naturally, he thought. It would have been in the papers.
  
  The man was working at a narrow zinc bench across one side of the room. He was swishing a dozen long needles around in a tall glass jar probably containing alcohol. His back was to Nick. Then the AXEman saw the mirror over the bench. The man was watching him.
  
  "All Chinatown knows about it," the man said. "I do not mind telling you that I am very frightened, Mr. Hunt. If it were not for the money I would give the whole thing up. It is becoming very much dangerous." It was the first time his English had slipped.
  
  "We pay very well," Nick said coldly. He felt no sympathy. The man was bought and paid for and knew the risks. Nick's glance slipped again to the phone, wishing it to ring. It didn't.
  
  No use in trying to conceal his weapons. The Chinese turned, his face bland and uninterested, as Nick took the Luger from the belt holster and put it in his left trouser pocket. It was an old cop trick. The stiletto he left in the sheath. It was locked in unless he crooked his elbow in a certain manner.
  
  Now he was naked to the waist. The Chinese, smiling, came toward him with a handful of needles. They were longer than knitting needles, with a point smaller than a hypodermic.
  
  Nick scowled. "Do we have to go that far? Stick those things in me?"
  
  The man nodded. "I think it best, sir. Make everything look real. There is very little pain."
  
  Killmaster, who could, and had, withstood a great deal of pain in the line of duty, still didn't like it. But he nodded. He glanced at the phone again. Ring, damn you. Ring!
  
  The Chinese held up the needles. They glinted in the brilliant light. The sharp eyes of the AXEman noted a slight discoloration, a small brownish residue, around the point of each needle. Medication, he supposed.
  
  The man put the bundle of needles down on the table. He selected one and held it up. "These are yang needles," he said. "Naturally, since you are a man. You understand the procedure, sir?"
  
  "Enough." Nick grunted. "Get on with it, if you must."
  
  "Of course." The man put his hand on Nick's right shoulder and pinched the flesh together. He raised the needle.
  
  At that moment the front door of the shop was thrown open with a crash. A man, or it could have been a woman, wailed something in high-pitched Chinese. There was another crashing sound and a tinkle of broken glass, then the sliding thud of a body falling. This was followed by a string of curses in Cantonese, some of which Nick could understand. Whoever it was was good and drunk and they wanted some tiger balm.
  
  The Chinese still hovered over Nick, the needle poised. His muddy brown eyes glinted at Nick. Nick moved away on the table and grinned. "Better go get rid of him. He'll attract attention."
  
  For a moment the man hesitated, indecisive. Nick had the sudden idea that, more than anything else in the world, the man wanted to put the needle in Nick's flesh. He moved farther away.
  
  The man spun on his heels. He started for the zinc counter to put the needles down, then changed his mind and took them with him. That did it for Nick. Why take the needles with him?
  
  The AXEman was working on instinct now. Something was wrong. He slid off the table and tiptoed rapidly to the door that had just closed behind the Chinese.
  
  He cracked the door and peered out. A very old Chinese man in slacks and a dirty flowered sport shirt was lolling over the counter, supporting himself with one hand while he shook his fist at the man in the white coat. Nick grimaced. The old man was a D and D if he had ever seen one! The Chinese are normally a sober race, but when they do hang one on they do it with completeness which even the Irish cannot match.
  
  The old Chinese stopped shaking his fist and pointed at something on one of the shelves. He was still cursing and screaming in Cantonese. His knees bucked again and he began a slow glissade to the floor, oozing down the front of the counter. The other Chinese was cursing now, too, and he came around the counter with the firm intent of tossing grandpa out.
  
  Nick went quickly to the zinc bench. He picked up the jar that had held the needles and sniffed at it. Alcohol. Nothing wrong there. He saw the shot glass then, an ordinary whisky glass pushed back behind some retorts and a rack of test tubes. It was half-full of thick brown liquid. Nick sniffed at it.
  
  Curare! South American arrow poison that brought on paralysis and stopped a man's breathing. You died, slowly and painfully, for lack of air.
  
  He put down the shot glass and scanned the walls of the room, thinking hard and fast, looking for another way out. Out in the shop the old Chinese appeared to be putting up a hell of a scrap — he didn't want to leave without his tiger balm. Nick blessed him and all his ancestors for the diversion.
  
  There seemed no other way out. He would have preferred to go quietly, without a fight that might lead to complications, but it was not to be. He pulled the Luger from his trouser pocket and snapped the stiletto down into his right hand. They had been damned sure of themselves, he thought coldly; using curare was an old gambit, an old and well-known poison, almost a cliché, much too easy to detect. That mattered not to them. It had very nearly worked! Nick was aware of sweat running into his eyes. It had been damned close.
  
  He saw the tiny hole in the wall. Round, dark, finger-size. He put a finger into the hole, on blind intuition, and pulled. A small door, cleverly painted over, swung open to reveal a room that was little more than a large closet. A dim yellow 15-watter dangled from the ceiling.
  
  Nick did not step into the room. He didn't have to. The body of the man was naked and bloody, and parts of him were missing. He was Chinese, and had not been dead very long. Across from the body, in a corner lay what looked like an old lady. She was fat and shapeless and wearing a gray wig that had slipped askew. She was cruelly bound with wire, and gagged. Over the gag a pair of dark brown eyes were blinking furiously at Nick in desperate optic code. It was Fan Su.
  
  He heard the front door slam and the sound of it being locked. He raised a hand to the girl, closed the concealed door, and raced for the table. He put the stiletto back in the sheath and the Luger in his trouser pocket. There was bound to be another one of them — at least one. Hiding somewhere close by, waiting. He couldn't blast the bastard and he couldn't give him a chance to scream. It would have to be done quickly and silently. Then they would be only halfway out of the woods.
  
  He was back on the table, relaxed and grinning, when the man came into the room. "The old boy was pretty loaded," Nick bantered. He grinned again. "He think you were running a saloon here?"
  
  The Chinese had recovered some of his composure Nick saw that he was sweating slightly. "An old fool," he said. "His wife is sick and he wished some medicine. As I told you, sir, I have customers at all hours. I am most sorry for the delay."
  
  Nick sighed and looked pointedly at the phone on the desk. "No matter. She hasn't called yet. I'm not going anywhere until she does."
  
  The man turned from the zinc bench, where he had been doing something which his body concealed from Nick. Checking, the AXEman thought; he had left everything exactly as he had found it.
  
  The Chinese approached the table, the single needle glinting in his hand. "Now we can get on with it, sir." His sullen mouth twitched in a smile and he said, "As you put it — you are not going anywhere!"
  
  He pinched the flesh of Nick's right shoulder. Nick rolled to his right. He caught the man's right wrist in his left hand and put on tremendous pressure. His right hand closed like a steel claw on the man's throat, stifling any outcry. Nick rolled back to his left, off the table, bringing the Chinese over him in an arching loop. The man had not dropped the needle. Now he began to fight back furiously. He was agile and strong. They struck the floor with a thud, and the man tried to squirm out from under Nick, straining to bring the needle up and into the AXEman's flesh.
  
  Gradually Killmaster's great strength began to tell. He felt the man's vocal cords disintegrating and he tightened his right hand even more. The Chinese's eyes were popping from his head now. Nick deftly twisted the man's right wrist, increasing the pressure until the point of the needle was aimed at the man's right eye. He tried to drop the needle then, but his hand was lifeless, crushed beyond sensation by Nick's terrible grip. The fingers did go lax, and for a second the needle slipped, but Nick moved his hand down from wrist to fingers and went on crushing. Nick heard a twig-breaking sound as one of the fingers went.
  
  They were face to face on the floor, grunting, squirming and heaving in a pretzel of sweaty flesh. The bright light over the table was like a spotlight on the oily Chinese mask beneath Nick. Slowly, without pity, Nick began to force the needle toward the man's eye. The man's eyes slid from Nick's face to the needle. He tried to scream, the sound lost in his ruined throat. The opaque eyes watched the approach of the needle with a horrid fascination. The man tried to shake his head — no — no — no — and a long rope of spittle drooled from his mouth.
  
  The eyes were begging Nick Carter now. This bland murderer was asking for pity, for mercy. Killmaster snarled, a wolf sound deep in his throat, and pushed the long sharp needle through the man's right eye and deep into his brain. There was a gasping convulsion, a tattoo of feet on the floor, and that was all.
  
  Nick rolled away from the body and got up. He went to the door leading into the front part of the shop and locked it. He put on his shirt and coat and turned off the glaring light over the table. With the light off he could see the faint yellow dot of the concealed door. He reholstered the Luger, but kept the stiletto ready in his right hand. Then, and only then, did he head for the little hidden room. Before entering he stood for a full minute, listening. Turning off the overhead light could be a mistake, but it was a chance he had to take.
  
  At last he pushed into the secret room again. Nothing had changed. Killmaster stepped over the dead man without so much as glancing at him — he would be, of course, the real Chinese doctor — and knelt beside Fan Su. Her eyes, huge brown ovals over the gag, showed a spark of hope now. He slashed away the gag with the stiletto, but still she sputtered. He explored with his fingers. The bastards had stuffed her mouth with cotton. He pulled it out. Her little cry was parched. "Nick! Oh, Nick, darling! You did come!"
  
  "Keep your voice down," he commanded. "Talk while I work on this wire. Are there any more of them?"
  
  "At least two. I saw two. Both Chinese, with machine guns."
  
  He was working on her ankles. The wire was cutting deeply into the tender flesh. He had no wire cutters, no pliers, nothing but the stiletto. He began to saw away with the razor-sharp blade, trying not to gash her flesh. The first strand of wire parted.
  
  "Do you know where they are?" He was working on the second strand of wire now. It gave, and she moved her ankles apart and stifled a moan as the circulation came back. "I'm not sure. Maybe next door. It's some sort of military-goods store. There is a connecting door leading from this room into it." Fan Su nodded to her left.
  
  Nick glanced at the wall. No door was apparent in the dim light. He pulled the Luger from its holster and put it on the floor beside him. So they had Tommy guns! If they decided to come investigating now, things were apt to get a little hot.
  
  He got the wire off her wrists and she began to chafe them. He tossed the gray wig away. Her close-cropped head, sleek and dark and boyish in the poor light, was suddenly dear and familiar. For the space of a breath he remembered the wild and tender Hong Kong nights, then pushed the thought away.
  
  He pulled her to her feet and she winced and clung to him for support. Nick laughed and ripped off the tentlike dress she was wearing. He kissed her ear. "You don't make a very convincing grandmother, even in this fight. And what in hell are these?"
  
  Under the dress, but over a neat, tight-fitting pants suit, she had been wearing an enormous inflated bra. Nick put the point of the stiletto into one of the huge rubber breasts. Ssssssssshhhhhhhh!
  
  The urgency, the very real danger of their situation, could not keep Fan Su from giggling. "You fool, Nick! But they did help a little. I had to do something. I've been terribly frightened — and too many people know me in this country."
  
  He handed her the stiletto. "Here. Just in case. Now show me this door in the wall. Very quietly. Don't touch the wall."
  
  The girl was moving well again now. She tiptoed to the wall and made an oblong with her finger. "Just about in here. It slides and is very tightly fitted." She was whispering.
  
  Nick moved toward the wall as stealthy as a big cat. He stepped on something soft and squishy and glanced down. He kicked away the dead man's hand. He saw the girl staring down in terror and disgust. He wrapped a big paw around her slim arm and shook her, not too gently. She tried to smile, then nodded. She would be all right.
  
  Nick knelt by the wall and ran his fingers over it. He felt a minute crack. It was a good door. He remembered that the Army & Navy store had been dark when he had passed it. The more he thought about it the less he liked it. Even if they could get in there without starting a fire fight, they would be like two blind bulls in a china shop. He decided against it.
  
  He put his ear against Fan Su's soft, fragrant ear, and began to give his instructions.
  
  "I'm going out the way I came in. One of them is probably in there now, but the other is sure to be covering the front, from either right next door or across the street. They've got us in a sort of bind, honey. They can afford a little noise; we can't. They can afford to get arrested — they won't talk anyway — but we sure as hell can't. It would blow the whole mission before we get started.
  
  "I'm going out the front door and try to start a diversion. Now get this — you turn out the light as soon as I've gone. Stay absolutely quiet and off to one side of the door. If one of them comes through here, let him go, don't try to stop him — unless he turns on the light and sees you. Then you'll have to use the stiletto.
  
  "Wait one minute after you hear shooting start. Count to sixty from the first shot. If nobody comes in through that door, then you turn on the fight and find it and you go out. Head toward the street — that will be to your right — and try to let yourself out the front door. Be careful there's not one of them in there with you. And don't silhouette yourself against this light! Turn it off. Once you're in there, there should be enough light from the street to let you see what you're doing. When I go out and start this fight I'll draw them away down the street, to the right. When you leave you turn to the left, and run like hell! I'll catch up with you. If you run into anything you can't handle, like police, you'll just have to play it by ear. You've got a cover, of course?"
  
  She nodded. "Yes. I think I can fool the police."
  
  Nick put a great thewed arm about her slim shoulders and gave her a careful squeeze. "Okay. If we get separated, meet me back at my hotel." He gave her the name of the hotel on Powell Street. "Don't sit around the lobby. Ask them to let you stay in my room. It will be all right. It's that kind of a hotel."
  
  She nodded and slid her cool lips across his cheek. "Be very careful, Nick. I have just found you — I don't want to lose you again so soon."
  
  Killmaster patted her taut little behind. "Not to worry, honey. These people are amateurs. They've already bungled this thing badly — at least someone has — and I think their luck is running out!" He patted her again. "See you soon. Remember to count to sixty." He was gone.
  
  Nick went back into the outer room — the momentary shard of weak light revealing the body of the man he had just killed — and closed the door. The light through the finger hole winked out. Fan Su was obeying orders.
  
  He unlocked the door to the outer shop and crawled through it on his hands and knees. There was no light out here now. Nick crawled for the front entrance, the Luger jammed into his waistband. He reached the front door and lifted himself enough to peer out through the half glass. The street outside was dark but for the light of a single street lamp some thirty feet to his right. No one passed. Nothing moved. A line of small shops across the street was dark except for an occasional night light. Where were they?
  
  One of them was in a doorway across the street, and now he made a mistake. He turned his back and cupped his hands, but Killmaster saw the tiny flicker of the lighter as the man lit a cigarette. The AXEman's lips curled in professional contempt. Once, on a stalk, he had stood for five hours without moving, his breathing controlled by Yoga, until the enemy had given up in despair and come to him. And had died. It made all the difference.
  
  So now he knew. There was at least one of them out there. He felt around for the door knob, found it and the lock, and clicked the door open an inch. There was no glow from across the street now. The man was cupping the cigarette in his palm.
  
  Killmaster had not counted on the street light to his right — he chided himself for forgetting the detail — and it meant that the gunner over there was going to get at least one good shot at him. No help for it.
  
  The Luger was in his right hand. Nick launched a terrific kick at the door. It smashed open and back against the store-front glass. The sound was like a bomb in the quiet street. The front window fell in bell-tinkling shards to the pavement. Nick went out the door in a running crouch.
  
  He had gone ten feet before the Tommy gun across the street opened up. The gunner's shooting was poor; he had been taken by surprise and forgot to lead the AXEman's crouching, zigzagging, sprinting figure. Lead hammered on the pavement at Nick's heels.
  
  Nick snapped three fast shots across his body at the doorway as he made for a tall barricade of garbage cans on the pavement just ahead. More slugs spattered off the sidewalk, whanged off an iron railing, ricocheted in high whining screams off the old brick fronts. Nick went diving into the shelter of the pyramid of garbage cans, found a hole, and began firing back at the scarlet stutter coming from the doorway. He had a couple of extra clips, as always, but they were not a factor. He would not get to use them. This had to be gotten over with fast. It already sounded like the Battle of the Bulge — there would be cops swarming around in a very few minutes. He wedged the Luger into the hole between the garbage cans, holding it with both hands, and took careful aim at the doorway. He kept his eye on the door of the Army & Navy store for a split second, saw nothing, then began firing at the gunner over there.
  
  More lead came hosing back at him. The man was desperate now, knowing as well as Nick did about the police and time, and machine-gun lead ate into the cans in a steady, probing stream, up, down and across. The din was terrific as the heavily loaded cans absorbed the rain of lead.
  
  Nick was firing back carefully now, aiming with great care, a shot and then a glance at the door of the Army & Navy store. He snapped off a shot. The clip would be nearly out now.
  
  He saw Fan Su's slim figure dash from the front of the store and turn left, running as though hell yawned behind her. The gunner across the way was disconcerted for a moment; then he sent a hail of lead after the fleeing girl. He stepped out of the shelter of the doorway in his anxiety and bewilderment, and Nick drew a careful bead on the blobby shadow with the spurting gun. He was not much of a praying man, Nick Carter, but he muttered a little one now. And pulled the trigger of the Luger.
  
  The shadow lurched and sprawled toward the gutter. In the sudden silence, Nick heard the clatter of the Tommy gun as it went skittering across the pavement. He was on his feet then and racing after the girl. As he passed the door of the Army & Navy store he saw another dark figure lying in the entrance. So the other bastard had been in there. Fan Su, and the stiletto, had taken care of him. Good girl!
  
  Lights were popping on all around now. The ominous wail of a siren began in the distance. More than time, Killmaster thought, to make our departure for good.
  
  Fan Su was waiting for him in the mouth of a narrow alley a block and a half down the street. He very nearly missed her. She hissed at him as he went pounding past. A light went on just over her head, back a way in the alley, and he saw her, spent and shaken, leaning against the wall. Her lovely face was drawn and there was a wild look in her eyes. Without a word she held out the stiletto.
  
  "It… it's all bloody! I killed him from behind."
  
  Nick snatched the weapon from her. There was a tiny verge of dead grass at the alley mouth. He plunged the stiletto into the soft, fog-damp earth to clean it, then grabbed her and began to pull her through the alley.
  
  "Run," he commanded savagely. "Run! This damned alley has to come out someplace."
  
  She clung to his arm as they sped down the alley. Nick sheathed the stiletto, holstered the Luger, and thought that it was a pretty good alley. A fine and lovely alley. It had come along just in time. He glanced back once, in time to see a police car slash across the alley mouth, its fed light flashing. They would be searching the neighborhood in a matter of minutes.
  
  There were four corpses back there that he would just as soon not have to explain.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 5
  
  
  
  
  Killmaster decided to break trail then and there. He did not even go back to the rented car. He and Fan Su emerged from the alley half a block from an all-night cab stand. They took a cab to the Ferry Building, then another back to the Mark. They took a third cab to a low bar on Kearny Street that Nick had used before. Nick dismissed the cab a block from the bar and they waited until it vanished before entering the place.
  
  They had a couple of drinks, some bad food, and cleaned up a bit in the washrooms. Fan Su had a little blood on her, but managed to get most of it off. Nick's suit was presentable enough after a good brushing. Later they took another taxi to an outlying bus station and caught a late bus to Los Angeles. The bus station was in a shopping center, and Nick bought a cheap plastic raincoat for each of them. His money was beginning to run low.
  
  The bus was only half-filled, and they found a pair of seats away from the others where they could talk. Fan Su, her slim body close to his, her head on his shoulder, filled him in on a few matters that had been puzzling him.
  
  When she had decided that AXE, and Nick Carter, were the only ones who could, or would, help her carry on with Undertong, she had decided to come to the States to plead in person. She had stumbled into the old CIA code but had no way of using it, no pipeline into CIA. CIA had used her, and Undertong, for its own purposes — Nick well remembered the affair of smuggling a defecting Red general out of China — but CIA had no real faith that a viable underground could be established in China.
  
  Fan Su had never forgotten Nick Carter. It was he, and AXE, who had bailed out both the CIA and Undertong and gotten the general out of China through Hong Kong. But she had no means of contacting Nick, either. They had said goodbye after that week together, never expecting to see each other again. Then the miracle!
  
  "I have a brother," she told him now. "A half-brother, really. His name is Po-Choy — that is not his milk name, any more than mine is Fan Su, but it will do — and for a long time he has been in the Red Guards. He still is, but he has become very disillusioned with the Reds and I have managed to recruit him for Undertong. It was not easy, I have been working on him for a long time. He is a very serious and sincere person, Nick. Much younger than I am."
  
  Nick smiled down at her in the dim bus. They were well south of San Francisco by now, running fast along the coastal highway. "Okay, Grandmother. Go on."
  
  She squeezed his arm. "It was a bit of a problem, you see. When Po-Choy finally did decide to come over to Undertong, he came over all the way. I had a terrible time making him stay in the Red Guard — he was a Commander and very valuable to us, to Undertong. I finally convinced him and he went back to Peking, but to work for our side now. And that was the miracle — in Peking he recruited a file clerk in the office of Yee Ling!"
  
  Fan Su paused and Nick knew it was for dramatic effect, but the name meant nothing to him. He told her so.
  
  He saw her smile. "Maybe not, but this Yee Ling is very interested in you. He is a very high officer in their Counter-intelligence and he keeps a special file on you, darling. The Carter file. There is a standing reward of one hundred thousand dollars on your head."
  
  "I'm flattered." He was also a trifle vexed. He wondered if Hawk knew about the Carter File and the reward, and was sending him into China anyway. Probably. To his boss a job was a job and the best, the sharpest, instrument must be used.
  
  "Po-Choy also found out, through the clerk, about a bookstore in San Francisco that the Reds have been using as a drop. A store owned by a man named Sun Yat. At the time I speak of he was already under suspicion of being a double — this was a little over two weeks ago."
  
  "They were right," Nick said grimly. "He was working for us, indirectly and through another five drop. He's dead now!"
  
  A faint shiver ran through her slim body. "I know. I read about it. I–I must have been in his store about an hour before it happened. I went straight to Chinatown from the airport. I took a terrible chance, but I was desperate. I had to get in touch with you, Nick! I had the old CIA code, you see. I was gambling that if I could get a message through to your people in that old code, eventually it would be deciphered and you would contact me."
  
  His admiration was genuine. "You're a gambler, all right. But the real gambler is, or was Sun Yat. I don't understand that at all. He actually told you about the second drop, the acupuncture doctor? Gave you a recognition signal? Was he drunk, crazy, or what?"
  
  "He was frightened to death," she said. "But he was also high on opium. I could smell it on him. But for that I don't think he would have spoken a word to me — he would have thrown me out or killed me! And I must have acted, and looked, pretty genuine. He finally gave me the address of the doctor and a signal — lung huo. Dragon fire. But I was to speak in Pia Hua, in Mandarin. Then he pushed me out the door. He must have been killed not long afterward, by the story in the papers."
  
  Killmaster nodded without speaking. It was like that at times in his profession: an hour, a minute, a split second made all the difference.
  
  "I went straight to the needle doctor," she went on. "He was still open. Since I had the password, he was not too concerned. I gave him the coded message — I had it already written out — and he said it would be in Washington the next morning. I was to return the following afternoon, late. I did and, well, you know what happened. Two of them were waiting on each side of the door when I walked in. I never had a chance. They took me back to that little room and showed me what was left of the doctor — I never knew his name — and of course they had tortured everything out of him. They knew that I had sent a message to Washington and that someone would probably contact me. So they waited, very patiently."
  
  "I walked right into it," said Nick. He wondered now about the curare on the needles. Had it been curare after all? At this distance he thought not. He was not really much of a toxicologist. They would have used a drug to knock him out, not kill him. He would not have been killed until he was squeezed dry. It had been a very narrow thing.
  
  "The needle doctor didn't die easily," he said now. "He gave them my recognition signal, too. Poor bastard."
  
  Fan Su huddled closer against him. "They do terrible things. We do terrible things. We are all so insane, so mad, Nick, that at times even the most terrible and irrational acts seem right and sane. And to live with death so constantly, always to know that we are only a heartbeat away from it, I wonder how any of us remain sane? If we do! I am not always sure about myself."
  
  "Only one answer to that," said Killmaster. "Tell yourself that you're in a bloody fight for survival — then don't think about it anymore." Then, because he wanted to lighten her mood and because he remembered, he said: "And cheer up — you sound like a first-year course in philosophy at Bennington."
  
  Fan Su put up a hand to stroke his cheek. "You remembered that — that I went to school in this country? Even the college!"
  
  "There is very little about you that I have forgotten," he said. He began to remember other things, then, but pushed them out of his mind. Not now, not yet.
  
  Something had been bothering him and now he knew what it was.
  
  "You knew that Sun Yat was suspected, was marked. Your Peking contact told you that. You could have warned him. Why didn't you?"
  
  It was a little time before she answered. When she did it was with a sigh. "I know. I thought about it. Then I remembered that he was a double agent — and you know you can never really trust a double. I decided to say nothing. To let them kill him, if that was what they intended. I didn't consider it as losing one of ours, Nick, but as killing one of theirs!"
  
  It was a side of her character, a flinty side, that he had not seen before. He thought about it for a time. When he looked down at her again she was asleep against his shoulder.
  
  When they got into Los Angeles Nick made a phone call from the bus station. They waited in the coffee shop for an hour. At the end of that time a Blue Star taxi pulled in at the curb and sat there with its Off Duty sign on.
  
  Nick winked at Fan Su, who was having her third cup of coffee. "Just like New York."
  
  "I don't understand."
  
  "Don't worry about it — it's an in joke." He went out to the taxi. The driver was a surly young man with a stubble of beard and wearing a plaid sport shirt. He scowled as Nick approached. "You can't read, Mister? The sign says I ain't working."
  
  Nick grinned. "I can read. But my wife and I have always wanted to see the oil wells on Signal Hill. I'm a triple-tipper."
  
  The driver nodded. "I'm Wells, sir. Washington alerted us that you might possibly be dropping in for a visit. Is it an emergency, sir? You need a smoke screen?"
  
  Nick Carter shook his head. "Nothing as drastic at that. I'm clean. But I'll need a safe house for a couple of days — for two."
  
  The man who called himself Wells did not blink. "Yes, sir. That's easy. We've got two here. One of them is empty now."
  
  "I'll need money," said Nick. "And clothes for both of us, and a direct safe line to Washington."
  
  "That's all routine, sir. Already installed. Nothing else, sir?"
  
  "Not for the moment."
  
  The driver did not speak again until Nick was paying him. They had halted near the foot of Angel's Flight in the Bunker Hill section. With his change the man handed Nick a key. "Take the car to the top, sir. Half a block to your right you'll find the Ormsby Arms, new apartment house. Top floor is all ours. You'll be 9C. There'll be two phones. One to local depot here, one to Washington. They're marked — but you'll know all that, sir."
  
  Nick smiled and tipped him. Standard procedure. All charades to be played straight through. "Yes," he said quietly. "I'll know about that."
  
  The driver tipped his cap. "Thanks, sir. Call us if you need anything. Anything at all."
  
  Nick winked at him. "I hope I never see you again, son." He assisted Fan Su out of the cab and they walked toward the little funicular. One of the orange cars was about to leave on its one-minute journey up the 33-degree grade.
  
  There was only one other passenger in the car, a Negro. Nick, with the ease and caution of long practice, looked the man over and dismissed him. No sweat.
  
  Fan Su was staring out the window. "This city has changed a lot since I was here last. That was a long time ago. This was all a slum area then."
  
  The AXEman nodded silently. Yes. Everything changed. And yet everything remained the same. Especially Death. It was always there — walking tippy-toe behind you.
  
  As they left the car at the top of the hill she said, with a sad little laugh, "I'm destitute, Nick. No clothes, no money, not anything. All I've got is what I stand in."
  
  They started to the right. "That's the story of my life," he told her. "I've left enough clothes, and laundry, around the world to start a haberdashery. Don't worry about it. As of now you are the guest of Uncle Sam. You know how generous he is."
  
  She clung to his arm and stared up into his face, her deep-brown eyes pleading. She had dark fatigue circles under them.
  
  "Oh, Nick! You are going to help me, us? Help us get a real underground started in China? So we'll have a chance — at least a hope?"
  
  He glanced around. Nobody was near. "Not now," he said. "Later. I'll tell you all about it later."
  
  Nine-C was an exquisitely furnished three-and-a-half-room apartment. From the picture window Nick could see the snow-capped San Gabriel mountains. While Fan Su took first shower — they were both grimy — he made a swift inspection.
  
  There were two enormous closets. One contained a complete stock of women's clothing, in various sizes; the Other was filled with men's clothing, everything from hats to shoes. On a separate shelf was a box of ammo for hand-guns: 9mm for the Luger; Colt.45; other types from the South American Mendoza to the Russian Tokarev. There were saps and knucks and trench knives. Spare holsters. Pen lights and batteries. A cardboard box of various «bugs» and other electronic gimmicks. In a corner was a pile of luggage ranging from Gladstones to lightweight one-suiters and steel-lined attaché cases. Nick took all this in with a silent whistle of appreciation. He worked out of the States most of the time and was not accustomed to such luxury. Logistics, he had to admit, was on the ball.
  
  Set into one pale-green wall was a small safe. Nick opened it with a combination that every top AXE agent knew. The interior of the safe was much larger than the small circle of steel indicated. Inside were neat stacks of currency of many types and denominations. Affixed to the inside of the safe door was a typed notice: Please sign for amount of currency taken and date. There was a rubber-stamped facsimile signature: DH. David Hawk.
  
  Nick smiled. He wondered how many times, and in what ways, his Chief's signature was taken in the name of red tape?
  
  There was a long slip of paper lying atop the money. It looked like a laundry slip, except that it was lined and marked for types and amounts of currency. Nick studied it for a moment. There was one signature — N7. The amount was half a million in lire. Nick tossed it back and closed the safe. The slip had been dated a week before.
  
  Killmaster was N3, a coding he rarely used since he had been working so close to Hawk. The N code was just another designation for the rank of Killmaster and he knew, and kept to himself, that N1 and N2 were dead. He went into the fully stocked kitchen, thinking that it would make N7 now N5 — if the man was still alive. The chit had been signed a week ago.
  
  He gazed around the immaculate little kitchen without much interest, wondering if Fan Su knew how to cook. She'd be a very odd Chinese girl if she didn't. There was a dialless phone on the sink with a card that read: For Service and Valet.
  
  Nick went back into the living room and mixed himself a heavy Scotch from the console bar in one corner. He heard the shower still running and a soft smile quirked the corners of his mouth. He was content for now. This was a safe house and he could let down — a thing every agent must do now and then, or go mad — and in the immediate future there was only rest, and planning, and Fan Su. Tender Fan Su. Passionate Fan Su. Wanton Fan Su. Fan Su of the thirty-six celestial tricks!
  
  Drink in hand, now frowning slightly, he wandered to a low table near the picture window. There were two phones on the table, one red and one blue. The red phone was marked W, the blue was marked L. Nick reached for the red instrument, then drew back his hand. To hell with it! He'd earned a brief respite of security and relaxation. Yellow Venus was not so urgent as all that. China had been there a long time. China would still be there when he, and Hawk, and Fan Su — and Mao and his clique and all others who now lived and breathed and killed and sexed — when they were all bone dust seeped into the earth.
  
  The treadmill of time.
  
  Nick went into the bedroom and started to undress, after taking a robe from the male closet. He was seated on the bed, smoking a cigarette and finishing his drink, when Fan Su came into the room. Her wet dark hair, which was shorter than it had been in Hong Kong, gave her a glistening, phocine look. She had taken a robe with her, but she was not wearing it. She had a large towel twisted around her slim middle. She was, he thought, too thin.
  
  She fell across his lap and stared up at him, her eyes half closed. "Nick. Oh, Nick! Woti shinkan!" The soft dialect of south China. My heart!
  
  Nick gazed down at her, feeling at the moment only tenderness. He could detect on her heart-shaped face the ravages of her work, of the dangers she lived with day and night, and for a moment he felt sadness instead of desire. Not a common mood with him, and one that would soon pass.
  
  He kissed her lightly. "And my heart also, Fan Su." He brushed his lips across her straight little nose and smiled.
  
  She shivered against him. She whispered, "We are really safe here?"
  
  "We are really safe." The security on this floor, and around the building, would be heavy. You would never see them unless there was trouble.
  
  "And we will have a little time — for each other?"
  
  "A little. Not too much, but a little. For us — and for talking, planning. There is much to decide."
  
  Fan Su shrugged, her smooth pelt moving like velvet against his own flesh. "That can all wait." She pulled a little away so she could look into his face. He saw the glint of mischief in the dark eyes. "If we are going to have this time together, then I am sorry I lost my things. I brought along the Jade Box of a Thousand Joys — just because I thought I might be seeing you."
  
  Nick went along with the gag. He frowned. "That is bad. But maybe we can find another one." He made as if to rise. "I'll call Bullocks right now — immediate delivery, please, of one Jade Box of a Thousand Joys! Coming right up, sir."
  
  She laughed and pushed him away. "Fool! Go and bathe then, and hurry back. We shall have to do without the jade box."
  
  At the bedroom door he looked back. She was naked on the bed, the towel fallen away. Her eyes were closed.
  
  "I never needed the box anyway, Fan Su. You know that."
  
  She nodded without opening her eyes, but her voice had a curious low note of strain in it. "I know indeed! You are, as the old ones say, like a thousand demented goats. But nevertheless I wish I had it — the way I am feeling right now I am going to make you need it. Go. Hurry!"
  
  As Nick soaped his big, lean, sinewy body — never mind his jest with Hawk: he was in prime condition with no ounce of lard on him — he thought of the jade box and laughed aloud. He had known all about the jade box — but had never used, or needed one — long before he met Fan Su. You could not knock about the Orient for long and not know.
  
  Fan Su, despite her high degree of Westernization, had odd moments of truly Oriental wantonness. She had insisted that he use the jade box at least once. To please her he had. Had used the silver clasp, the red powder and the sulphur ring, the single opium pill and, at times, the studded silken sheath. The girl used the single vial of powder the jade box contained. She would never tell him what it contained, would only say that the recipe was many thousands of years old and that it increased her pleasure.
  
  Nick toweled, considered shaving and forgot it, and went back into the bedroom. She was waiting for him, her knees drawn up. She raised her arms to him. In Cantonese she said: "I was nearly asleep and dreaming — I was afraid that the jade stick would not come to see the lotus. And then, that if it did come it would be for the last time. I grew very afraid. My tongue was cold!"
  
  Nick kissed her. He had been with a great many Oriental women and he. realized immediately that she did not want tenderness at the moment. Nor did he.
  
  He had never known her so frenetic, so absolutely wanton. Or insatiable. She would not stop, or even slow, her motion. After a time the sweat was pouring from both of them, their bodies slippery and glistening and contorting. Fan Su convulsed again and again, her mouth glued to his, each time muttering soft little Cantonese obscenities which he could not always understand. There was something about the giant bamboo pole, and the jade stick and, at the very end, something about mounting the dragon.
  
  The last meant Death.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 6
  
  
  
  
  They remained in their luxurious hole for three days. During this time they ate when they pleased, slept when they pleased, made love when they pleased — and got a lot of work done. Killmaster had the feeling that if more of the world's movers and shakers, the planners of what passed for civilization, would only conduct their work in like manner they would all be much happier — and the plans better and more realistic.
  
  When he told Fan Su of the first, very tentative AXE plan — he and Hawk had worked out no details — she had laughed in disbelief. They were in bed, even she was spent at last, and the bed was littered with paper, pencils, clip boards and maps.
  
  "Mei yu fa tzu," she said scornfully. "It can't be done." "No Westerner, no round-eye, can walk around China for long without being arrested. It would be especially impossible for you, Nick. You are too big, your beard is wrong, you do not speak the right dialects — a hundred things would give you away."
  
  Nick admitted that she was right. He had known it in any case. Chinese security was very tight, a built-in security that was centuries old. It had been originated by the old Emperors, by the landlords and taxgatherers, and it still worked. It was called pao-chia. The phrase meant something like "guaranteed armor" and the general idea was that for every ten families there was a headman who was in turn responsible to the local officials. It made every man his brother's keeper — and a potential informer. No man wanted his head chopped off, or a firing squad, because of what his brother did. The Mongols and Manchus had had great success with the system, and the ChiComs had not changed it.
  
  "Not only is there the pao-chia," Fan Su said, "but things are especially dangerous now because of the Red Guards. They are everywhere, pushing their noses into everything. Everyone is terrified of them. Another thing, darling, is the sheer physical impossibility of the thing. Look again." She put a small finger on the map that lay on the bed.
  
  "Getting you safely into Shanghai and hiding you for a few days might be done. I think I can do it. That will be dangerous enough. But to go from Shanghai by land, across country, across the whole of South China to the Chumbi Valley in Tibet — that is sheer madness. Why, that's about two thousand miles — six thousand Chinese li! Bad roads or none at all, no trains to speak of, bandits perhaps, and certainly the Red Guards! Rough country, too, and with winter coming on." She leaned to kiss him and lapsed, as she did at times, into French. "Impossible, mon petit! They would have us before we got fifty miles from Shanghai."
  
  "We?"
  
  Her eyes widened. "You certainly do not think you can do it alone? You must have someone with you at all times, because you are going to have to be a deaf-mute, at least a mute, and that someone is going to be me! You came to my aid when I called, you are going to help me build Undertong — so what did you expect?"
  
  Hawk had given Nick Carter carte blanche, as he always did, but Nick had not yet told the girl the entire scheme of things. He had explained, being purposely vague, something of the deal that AXE had made with CIA. He had told her that he must get to the Chumbi Valley to do a job, in return for which CIA would supply massive aid to Undertong. If, and a big if it was, Nick's report convinced CIA that the underground existed in fact, and that it was worth supporting.
  
  He reminded her again of the bargain. "I've got to do the Chumbi job first. If I succeed, and file a favorable report on Undertong, then you'll have all the help you need."
  
  Her eyes hardened a bit as she studied him. "Then why go about it the hard way, darling? Why Shanghai and this crazy cross-China notion?" She poked at the map again. "I happen to know that you people have an airbase in Sikkim. They could drop you in and pick you up the same day."
  
  Nick decided to tell her a little more. He had trusted her with his life before. It was not that. It was simply policy — what she didn't know she couldn't tell under torture.
  
  He said, "We know that, of course. The CIA knows it. I think they do expect me to go in that way, then work out of China to the northeast, in reverse direction. They're not really concerned with how I do the job — just that I do it."
  
  The girl nodded glumly. "I know. CIA does not really think that Undertong is worth saving, or building. But it is, Nick, it is! And now is the time. All China is having a nervous breakdown, things are changing, and if we can infiltrate the Red Guards deeply enough we can start a revolution overnight."
  
  Nick was cool. He had always been suspicious of enthusiasm, of zeal. It usually got a lot of people dead.
  
  "There's still the Army," he told her, "which Mao can use to check the Red Guards any time he feels like it. Until you have the Army with you, all you can start is a civil war. One that you wouldn't have much chance of winning."
  
  "That would be a beginning," she said. "Of course there will have to be a civil war. We in Undertong know that."
  
  She went to the bathroom. She was naked, as was Nick. When she came back he said, "Bring me a scotch and soda, eh? Lots of ice."
  
  He noted, with slight surprise, that she also made a tall drink for herself. She was drinking more than he had ever known her to. But he said nothing. It was all part of a pattern which he had not figured out yet — her desperate lovemaking, her tears at night when she thought he was asleep, the drinking — this latter very slight, but still more than before — and her sullen moods and talk of death. Ordinarily it would have been all her own affair. Now it was his affair. They were going into China together.
  
  He grinned at her. "Okay. For now let's forget about the revolution, and maybe a civil war, and concentrate on getting me from Shanghai across China to Tibet. With my head still on. First things first. You say you can get me into Shanghai and hide me for a few days?" That in itself, if Undertong could really do it, would be an indication that the underground was not all on paper or in Fan Su's mind.
  
  She patted his cheek and smiled, but said fiercely: "I do not mean to be difficult, but you must understand. I can think only of the underground, of the brave people I work with. I do not care too much about the CIA."
  
  "Or about AXE?"
  
  Her eyes met his steadily. "Or about AXE." She smiled. "Except for one AXE agent I know of."
  
  "Always flattery. Now, about the Shanghai bit?"
  
  Fan Su smoothed the map between their naked bodies. She pointed to the southern tip of Korea. "It is only about five hundred miles down from Pusan to Shanghai. We have many supporters in Korea, Chinese who have gone there to escape the Reds. Sometimes they send us money and supplies. It is not too hard for junks to run the blockade in the east China Sea — the Reds are short of patrol boats there. There are beaches north of Shanghai where you could land safely at night. By morning I can have you into Shanghai and safely hidden. But not for long, you understand. Right now the city is in a turmoil — the Red Guards are still rioting and marching. There has been some shooting and torturing, too, and just before I left Hong Kong I heard of some public beheadings. I do not know whether to believe this or not, but I do know that my brother, my half-brother, Po-Choy, is in or near Shanghai now. He cannot do much recruiting in the Red Guards there — they are still too militant — but he is trying to organize the peasants around the city to go in and right them."
  
  "There has been fighting in Shanghai," said Nick. He had talked at length with Hawk that morning.
  
  She smiled. "Then perhaps Po-Choy is doing a good job." She finished her drink and put the glass by the side of the bed. She looked at Nick. "For a little while, darling, I am tired of planning. Shall we do something else?"
  
  "Such as what?"
  
  Fan Su pouted. "You see. You are tired of me. Either that or you are worn out. I knew I should have saved my Jade Box."
  
  Nick kicked the map out of the way and reached for her. "I'll show you who's tired!"
  
  Later, while she slept, he put on a robe and prowled around the apartment, smoking and thinking hard.
  
  He had never really considered crossing southern China by land. The odds were too great for a white man. You were up against the same thing that a Chinese was in any Western country — you stood out like a gorilla in Times Square. It might just be possible if he had all the time in the world to make ornate preparations, and traveled only at night. But he didn't have that kind of time. Winter was on the verge of blowing in and soon the Tibetan passes would be snow blocked. He had survived one winter march in Tibet and that was enough.
  
  Still he was determined to go to Shanghai first, then on to the Chumbi. He must see, with his own eyes, just what this Undertong was capable of accomplishing. He would have liked to have done it on his own and over a large section of the country. He glanced at the bed where Fan Su was sleeping: she was a sweet kid, a fine lover, a brave fighter — but when it came to Undertong Le put nothing past her. She was quite capable of taking him on a Potemkin tour, of lying about the strength of Undertong. It was her baby and she was dedicated. He was going to have to watch her on that. His report on the Chinese underground had to be as true and factual as he could make it. AXE, unlike many of the services, had no fine-sounding Latin motto, but the implication and the obligation was always there: Duty First.
  
  Fan Su said that his mere presence in Shanghai, the presence of a top American agent, would be a great lift for the underground. Very likely. There was also to be a first token shipment of money, arms, printing presses, some of the new small transceivers, maps and codes, electronic equipment, ammo, radar-jamming dipoles — a million and one things that an underground needed. This he knew, and Hawk and CIA knew, would be in the nature of risk capital. CIA could afford it. Hawk would have been glad enough to make the first investment, had he been forced to. Hawk was as hot on the underground as the girl was, but for different reasons. Hawk was a realist and knew that the Chinese were not going to come up with a real democracy for years yet, if ever. He didn't give a damn. Hawk wanted to use Undertong for his own ends — namely to lop off some of the more important heads. A Hydra, he had called it.
  
  Nick went to the. picture window and stood gazing out. It was dark now. The northern hemisphere of greater Los Angeles lay glittering like an intricate map of neon, crystal and shadow. Far off in the Hollywood sector a sign winked off and on: Funerals — $250 Up.
  
  Nick wondered how in hell they could bury you that cheaply today?
  
  He noted that the building was not overlooked from any direction for six blocks at least. No snipers. He ran a finger down one of the thin silver strips that ran around the window, somewhat akin to a burglar alarm, but this was a baffle against listening devices that might be beamed into the apartment. Nick drew the heavy drapes and turned away. AXE security was good, but never good enough. Never quite good enough. Perfect security was an ideal, not a fact.
  
  He had his hand on the red phone when the sleeping girl cried out. "Hai p'a!"
  
  Nick went into the bedroom and stood looking down at her. Her delicate, lemon-tinted features were glistening with sweat. A sheet half-covered her. She writhed, twisting the sheet about her like a shroud, and she cried out again: "Hai p'a… hai p'a…"
  
  I am afraid!
  
  Nick touched her wet brow lightly with his big hand. It seemed to calm her. She did not cry out again. He went back into the living room, drew up a chair near the phones, lit a cigarette, but did not immediately pick up the red phone. He wondered just how much of a problem he was going to have with the girl. She was as taut as a violin string now, stretched nearly to the breaking point. Even love did not relax her as it should, no matter how frantic she became. Nor had good food, drink, plenty of rest, and the knowledge that she was absolutely safe. Nick ran a hand through his thick, semicropped hair and frowned at his cigarette. There was something else. Had to be. The hell of it was that he'd almost had it a couple of times. Something she had said, done — or not done — since they had been in the apartment.
  
  Then, out of the back of his brain, it came to him with the hot brilliance of a 1000-watt bulb. Fan Su had been selling herself, selling that lovely body, to buy her way in and out of China! Nick stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another one. He stared at the ceiling through the blue smoke coils. She would never tell him, of course, or admit it, and he would never mention it. But that had to be it!
  
  When he had first met her, back in Hong Kong, she had been going in and out of China several times a month. Crossing the narrow bridge over the Sham Chun in the guise of a peasant woman taking produce into the city. She had said then that it could not last forever, that she was sure to be caught one day.
  
  Yet she was still using the same route. When they parted tomorrow she was going to fly to Hong Kong and go back into China. Her cover on this trip was that of a social worker for WRO — World Relief Organization — and that passport was good enough for the Hong Kong police. Then she would disappear into the teeming shack cities, or among the water people, and come out as the peasant girl.
  
  Killmaster shook his head. No. It was only his intuition but he trusted it. Fan Su had been caught. And she had bought her way out, at least temporarily, with her body. It was not a new thing in China, or in any part of the world, for that matter. In China it was just another version of the «squeeze» — the graft that made the world go round. Paid in flesh.
  
  He wondered how far she was compromised, and with whom. It would be an official, fairly high up, but what sort of an official? A fool in love? A libertine getting his fill before he hauled her in? Some cunning bastard playing it double on orders from the top?
  
  Nick got up and started pacing the floor. Damn it! He didn't even know that Undertong was involved — she might have been caught for something minor. Like smuggling ball point pens, or cigarettes, into China. At times they were better than money on the mainland.
  
  No matter. Caught she was. He was positive of it. And she didn't want him to know. He shook his head in wonderment at the oddities of all women — danger, yes, risk their pretty skins for a cause, yes. Take chances that would curl your hair. Defiant, ashamed of nothing. But when it came to a simple physical act it was different. He knew what ailed her now. She was afraid, of course. Nervous, tense, plain scared. Who wasn't in this game?
  
  The real trouble was that she now considered herself a whore. Forever a whore. And she was afraid he would find out.
  
  As he picked up the red phone and put his call through to Washington, Nick wondered if Fan Su was in love with him — really in love. For both their sakes he hoped not.
  
  The red phone was an automatic scramble. Delia Stokes, the most private of private secretaries, answered immediately.
  
  Nick said, "Hi, sweetheart. Is he there?"
  
  Delia knew his voice, but in one of her rare facetious moments she said, "Who is calling, please? And in reference to what?"
  
  Nick Carter grinned at his end of the line. "Can't catch you with your panties down, can I? Okay, martinet! In reference to Yellow Peril and Yellow Venus. All right?" Hawk, on further thought, and in the interests of clarity, had broken the mission into two parts: Yellow Venus was Undertong and Shanghai and Fan Su; Yellow Peril was the Chumbi job for the CIA. Now, as he waited for Hawk to come on the line, Nick softly whistled a tune from an old show.
  
  "Well?" Hawk sounded tired, his voice harsher than usual. It was late in Washington, and the old man hadn't been getting much sleep. "What is it this time, son? No hitches, I hope?"
  
  It would never do to let Hawk know about the emotional problem that was fretting Nick. The old man didn't understand emotional problems. He was capable of killing the mission on the spot.
  
  So Nick said, "I've got it pretty well worked out, sir. Let me give it to you in order, okay?" He picked up a sheaf of papers from the table, done in Fan Su's neat hand while Nick dictated.
  
  "Go ahead."
  
  "I'll need a few things," Nick said. He had to smile as he continued. "Like a submarine, an aircraft carrier, and an AXE plane dummied up to look like a Chinese commercial craft. That's for a starter, sir."
  
  Hawk did not make the sarcastic remark that Nick expected. He only grunted and said, "I guess we can handle that okay. In fact, there is more interest in this thing at the White House than I had expected. We can have anything we want. Any cooperation from any service."
  
  Killmaster was a little startled, but pleased. "Like that, sir?"
  
  "Like that. I sold him a bill of goods." The fatigue left the old man's voice. Nick visualized an old gray cat purring over a saucer of cream. Hawk added: "They'll try to get their licks in tomorrow, of course, and there is never enough to go around, but right now you can think big. So?"
  
  Nick Carter began to read from the papers in his hand.
  
  A quarter of an hour later Hawk said, "I'll say one thing for you, son. When you think big you really think big. But that's all right. Can do. What's a few million dollars these days!"
  
  "The timing will have to be exact," said Nick. "Split second. Dead on the nose or I'm dead. I figure a week from right now, sir, I should be in Shanghai."
  
  "Better you than me," his boss said with his usual candor. "Latest report is that the city is boiling. The Red Guards and the peasants are fighting, nobody seems to know what the People's Army is doing, and things are in a hell of a mess generally. But that should work for you — their security won't be so tight."
  
  Nick agreed that this was probably so.
  
  "The sooner the better now," Hawk told him. "CIA says that their pet satellite tells them the ChiComs are getting their tunnel ready for winter. Stopping work, that is. Could be that in a week or so they'll pull a lot of personnel and troops out and leave only a skeleton crew for the winter. That should help, boy."
  
  "I'll take all I can get, sir."
  
  "CIA has also sent me a batch of new pictures from their satellite. They've got the Prop B pretty well spotted, they think. An off-shoot of the tunnel that leads back into a mountain — but you'll see all that yourself. I'll send the blowups along with the photo interpretation."
  
  Nick picked up a card from the table. He had made a special note to himself. "Sir, I'd like you to send Charles from Makeup, too. I've got a feeling I'm going to need the best."
  
  "I'll do it." Hawk chuckled. "If he can make a Chinese out of you he will be the best!"
  
  "I'll only have to pass at night. And then only for a few hours at a time. Be sure that Charles doesn't forget to bring along the hump, sir."
  
  "Don't worry about it. Charles knows his business. You'll get your hump. Now go over it again from the start."
  
  At the end of half an hour Hawk said, "I think maybe we've got it. Things will come up, naturally, but we expect that. But I think we've got the main problems whipped. All but the base near Tibet. That worries me. Nobody in Washington seems to know much about this Teng Fa. How old did Venus say he was?"
  
  Kill master glanced into the bedroom. She was sleeping peacefully now. Fan Su — Venus, to Hawk — had come up with a rather startling answer to the worrisome, and most important, problem of a base camp near the Chumbi Valley. You could not simply drop an agent in at night on a barren mountain and expect results. Especially not in Tibet with winter coming on.
  
  He repeated to Hawk all that Fan Su had told him. "Teng is over a hundred, sir. Last of the old warlords, I take it. Back in the early days he ran southwest China as he pleased. When Chiang Kai-shek came along in the twenties, Teng joined him for a time. Later he switched over to the Commies. Then he went back over to Chiang. Typical Chinese deal, I suppose. Silver bullets, you know. Anyway, as Venus tells me, when the ChiComs took over for good they let the old man retire instead of killing him. He couldn't hurt them, so they let him save face and made a little for themselves. I imagine they keep an eye on him, but not too closely. After all the guy is over a hundred. So now he lives in a mud castle about fifty miles outside of Chungtiene — that's about as far southwest as you can get in China, and still be in China — and bothers nobody and nobody bothers him. However…" Nick laughed, knowing what Hawk's response would be. "Venus tells me that the old boy still keeps concubines! He's very old-fashioned, it seems."
  
  To his amazement Hawk also laughed. "Maybe he keeps them, yes, but what does he do with them? But never mind that — this base problem has been worrying me. It's a bastard, all right. But we don't have any alternatives. Not in China. If you were going in from the other direction, yes, but you aren't. So it looks like it will have to be this Teng. Of course he might turn you in."
  
  "That's hardly likely, sir. For one thing, he's senile, and I doubt he understands much of what is going on. Another, and most important, is that Teng is Venus's great-godfather. Or something like that. I don't really understand it myself, but it is all linked up with the Chinese ancestral and patriarchal system. So Venus can claim some relationship) — that and the laws of hospitality — I said he was old-fashioned — should be enough for a few days. All I'll need to get organized. I think, sir, that we'll just have to play it that way."
  
  Hawk sighed audibly. "I think you're right. Near Chungtiene, you say? Wait a minute, son."
  
  While his boss was consulting a map, Nick lit another cigarette and glanced into the bedroom. She was still sleeping.
  
  Hawk came back on the line. "You'll still be over five hundred miles from the Chumbi!"
  
  Killmaster said that he was only too well aware of that fact.
  
  "No help for it, sir. I can't get much closer without tipping the mission — and there just isn't another base! It has to be the old man and Chungtiene. We're really lucky to have that. If the Sikkim people do their part and pick us up and drop us just right, I should be able to bring it off. I'll give CIA their Prop B — in little pieces."
  
  It was like Hawk, and Killmaster, that neither mentioned what was in their minds — getting out after completion of mission. That timing would have to be split second, too. But working with AXE made you fatalistic — you either did or you didn't.
  
  They talked for another five minutes, during which time Nick came to a decision. He really hadn't meant to mention it to Hawk, but now decided that he'd better.
  
  "It's probably borrowing trouble," he said, "and not too important right now, but it might help in the future. Venus tells me that she, and this goes for all of Undertong, want no part of Chiang Kai-shek. They won't even accept help from him, as desperate as they are, so you can see they mean business. They consider Chiang a reactionary fascist, sir, and that he'll sell out the revolution if he gets in on it. Her words were that Chiang will 'try to put the genie back in the bottle. I thought that perhaps you'd like to pass that on to the other people."
  
  There was a long pause. Then Hawk laughed, a derisive sound. "There isn't going to be any revolution, and we know it. Don't tell Venus I said it, though. I don't want any more complications than I have to have, and there are plenty right now. But I'll pass it on to Political Section for what it's worth. We'll cross those worries when we come to them. So forget it — that all?"
  
  "That's all, sir. It's go in the morning, then?"
  
  "It is go. At eight sharp. Get Venus on the plane for Hong Kong and you get over to Korea. I'll be in constant touch until you board the submarine in Pusan. Until you're actually on the Chinese mainland the situation will be Fluid State. Goodbye, son. And watch it. This is going to be a mean one."
  
  "Goodbye, sir."
  
  Killmaster mixed himself a tall Scotch and soda at the little bar. He was remembering the girl's words: "Mei yu fa tzu." It can't be done!
  
  It could be done. Given luck, and guts and determination, it could be done. Especially the luck part. He remembered Hawk calling New York two days ago — three now? — and telling him that he had won another Gold Coss.
  
  Nick gathered up the papers and fed them into the electric shredder wastebasket. His grin was wry. The Chinese admired ingenuity and courage. If he brought this one off, maybe old Mao would award him the Order of the Brilliant Jade. Posthumously.
  
  Carrying his drink, he went into the bedroom. Dark eyes peeked at him through very slight epicanthic folds. Fan Su was as near a «round-eye» as an Oriental could get.
  
  Nick sat on the bed and began to explain matters to her. At the moment she was not interested. She curled a soft arm around his neck.
  
  "I was dreaming of the jade stick," she whispered. "Now make it real."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 7
  
  
  
  
  The eastern sector of what was formerly the International Settlement, especially around the south bend of the Whangpoo and just below the famous Bund, is a heavily industrialized part of Shanghai. It has never really recovered from the depredations of the Japanese invasion. Along both shores of Soochow Greek, where a great horde of water people exist on sampans, there are still many ruined and moldering factories. This part of Shanghai, as well as the Old City, is a welter of narrow streets and paths, a festering stew that harbors both criminals and poor alike in huge numbers. By day the police and even the Army travel in groups of not less than four; by night the sector is left to the denizens who come out of their burrows to make a living as best they can. These latter, not without logic, are known to the police as the "night people."
  
  Killmaster had been in Shanghai four days. Too long. He and Fan Su, along with a dozen members of Undertong, were living in the stinking, rat-infested basement of a ruined cotton factory. Things had gone well at first. A United States submarine, Snark II, had made the run down from Pusan without incident. Nick Carter, now in heavy disguise, and a cargo worth a million dollars had been put safely ashore on a deserted beach somewhere in the vast alluvial delta of the Yangtze. Fifty men, commanded by Fan Su, had appeared like ghosts out of the moonless night to greet him. Nick had been impressed. Fan Su, wearing the neat uniform of a Red Guard girl, had been all crisp efficiency; any resemblance to the girl who had shared his bed so recently was entirely missing.
  
  Within an hour after the Snark had submerged, Nick and the girl were on their way to Shanghai in a junk. The cargo had vanished into a dozen rattletrap trucks. Nick and the girl retained only two of the transceivers, about a hundred thousand dollars in gold cubes — actually the size of a boullion cube — and a small suitcase containing one million dollars in new yuans. This paper money, in small notes, was exquisite counterfeit, and CIA wanted to try it out.
  
  Fan Su had objected at once to the counterfeit. She was very angry. Undertong, she blazed, was trying to start a revolution — not undermine the country's economy! Killmaster could see her point. He knew that Hawk had been pressured into including the queer money in the shipment. Somewhere in the south channel of the Yangtze he consigned the counterfeit to the deep, smiling as he visualized the reactions of the Deputy Director, and others at Langley, had they seen this end to their experiment.
  
  They had gone to ground safely in the smashed cotton factory. Nick had tested the transceiver, cunningly made to resemble a transistor radio that might be carried by any affluent, or lucky, Red Guard. He had worked Snark, very briefly, and both send and reception had been Five. Loud and clear.
  
  Then luck turned all sour. Po-Choy, Fan Su's half-brother, was captured while fighting with a group of peasants in the southern suburb of Nantou. He was being tortured and he was talking. New arrests were being made almost hourly. Wall posters were screaming. Po-Choy's confession had touched off a new madness in the Red Guards. They had beaten off the peasants in the suburbs and then turned on the city itself in a frenzy of burning, looting, raping and killing.
  
  Rumors were as thick as fleas on a pariah dog. Runners were constantly arriving at the cellar with stories of new outrages: hands had been cut off, ears, noses. A merchant had been beaten to death because he could not quote correctly from Mao's little red book. There had been a beheading in Karl Marx Square and Red Guards had played football with the head. There was talk of mobilizing the People's Militia to restrain the Red Guards. There was talk of bringing in large units of the People's Army to put them both down. There was talk. And more talk.
  
  Killmaster chafed. Until now he had not given commands or interfered in any way, though he was Chief of Mission and Fan Su understood that. But four days was long enough to spend in Shanghai. He had seen what he had come to see. Fan Su, in spite of all the chaos, had made her arrangements. And an American carrier was waiting, steaming in slow circles, two hundred miles out in the China Sea. It was time to go.
  
  He glanced across the gloomy cellar at the girl. She was talking at the moment to a man called Wong Chao-tien, one of her chief lieutenants in the city. He was a skimpy little man wearing a tee shirt and black pajama pants. He had no shoes. His hair was long and greasy, held back by a dirty sweat cloth.
  
  Nick watched them talking. Bad news, he thought. Worse than anything yet. He could tell by the droop of the girl's shoulders, by the way she had seized Wong's arm and shaken him. It was, intuition told him, news that was going to prove dangerous for someone. Nick shrugged his big shoulders, feeling the artificial hump shift ever so slightly as he did so. He admired the job that Charles, of AXE makeup, had done on the hump, but it was bothersome. But it did the job — it cut the AXEman down to size, twisting and contorting his big perfect body so that he did not stand out. That and the dark stain, the glued-on wig over his shaven scalp, the few long wispy hairs implanted in his chin and upper lip — these all permitted him to get by as a Chinese. In the dark and if nobody looked too closely. He had a perfect set of papers whipped up by Documents, so old and filthy and tattered that not even the most impatient of officials would have waded through them.
  
  Best of all was the dark yellow stain. It was indelible and allowed him to shave each day.
  
  "It will just have to wear off," Charles had told Nick. "You'll have a piebald look for a time, sir. And the more dirt you let accumulate over it the better."
  
  Killmaster had managed to accumulate the dirt. And all that went with it. He was scratching incessantly. Already he had begun to look forward to the end of the mission not so much as destroying Prop B as to having a long and luxurious bath. Nick knew from experience that on a mission small things took on a new importance, like a combat soldier more concerned with keeping his feet dry than his head down.
  
  He scratched his crotch and cursed beneath his breath. Fan Su and Wong came toward him. They were speaking in Wu, the local Shanghai dialect, but as they approached Fan Su switched to English. She was still holding Wong's arm. Now she gave him a little push toward Nick.
  
  "Tell him what you have just told me."
  
  Wong, who had been awe-stricken from the first, stared at the foreign devil hunchback. He knew only what Fan Su had told him — that Nick was here to help Undertong, that he was very important in the United States, where the president asked his advice daily, and that his word was law and his anger death. Somewhere, beneath all the rags and dirt, Wong knew there lurked a real Fire Dragon. Now he made a little bow and touched a fist to his sweat rag.
  
  "They put Po-Choy in iron cage," he said now. "Hang him on pole in place of police station. All come to see. He not have clothes, velly cold. Aso they have cut off one piece him."
  
  Nick remained squatting in his nest of filthy straw. He glanced up at Fan Su. "I get the main idea, but it doesn't make sense yet. You want to interpret?"
  
  Before she could say anything Wong spoke again. "True, I tell! Is sign tells also. They cut one piece today, one piece tomorla, one piece day after." Wong held out his hands and shrugged his emaciated shoulders. "Pletty soon Po-Choy hava no, I think!"
  
  Nick stood up. Fan Su patted Wong on the shoulder and gave him a little push. She said something in Wu. The man smiled, bobbed to Nick, and left them.
  
  Nick, remembering even then to crouch and bend his malformed back, said, "Okay, Fan Su. What's it all about?" Remembering their conversation of the day before, he added: "I haven't changed my mind, you know. I'm sorry about Po-Choy, as sorry as you are, but we can't help him. There is nothing we can do. Nothing! It would be senseless to try and we would only endanger the mission."
  
  The dark eyes stared unwaveringly into his own. Dry eyes. This did not surprise him. She might cry in her sleep, or cry for love, but he knew that she would never cry at danger. Her rigid composure, in fact, made him a little uneasy.
  
  She took his arm. "Let me talk to you a moment, Nick. Back here in private. I've got to be honest about this."
  
  He followed her, shuffling and sliding along in his worn rubber shoes, down a narrow brick passage to the wreck of a boiler room. Rusty water stood an inch deep on the floor. A cat carcass floated nearby and somewhere a rat squeaked in triumph.
  
  Nick began, "It's no use, Fan Su. We've got to get out of Shanghai. Tomorrow night at the latest. I can't keep that aircraft carrier out there forever and…"
  
  "Please, darling! Let me talk. Hear me out. I know you're in command, but there is something that I must do. I want you to know about it."
  
  Nick squatted in the nasty water, the way billions of coolies have squatted through the ages. "Okay," he said with resignation. "Spill it."
  
  "Po-Choy is talking," she said, "but he's not talking about us, about Undertong. He knows about this place, probably knows we're here — but we're still free. Don't you see — he's giving them false information. They know that now. That's why they've hung him in that cage and started to cut him to bits. He's doing it for us, Nick, for us — and I've got to help him! I'm going to help him."
  
  He stared at her. "How, for God's sake? He is in an iron cage, on a pole in front of police headquarters with thousands of Red Guards around. You can't help him! And if Wong is telling the truth, and they are really cutting him up a little at a time, then he won't hold out much longer. No man could. We've got to run for it…"
  
  She shook her head. Her face was impassive. "Not until I've killed him, put him out of his pain."
  
  It was not as bad as he had expected. He had expected her to demand that he, they, somehow take on ten thousand Red Guards and get Po-Choy out of his cage. This made sense, in a way. But it was still way out, impossible. In daylight, with a high-powered rifle, maybe. The members of Undertong were armed only with knives and an occasional pistol or revolver. Nick himself had only the Luger and the stiletto.
  
  Nick scratched — damn all lice to hell — and shook his head. "Sorry, baby, but it can't be done."
  
  "It can be done," she said stubbornly. "I'll do it. Alone, if I must. He is of. my blood, Nick, and he is letting himself be cut to pieces for me, for all of us. I must kill him!"
  
  He sensed that she meant it. Absolutely meant it. Killmaster began to examine the matter from another aspect. If she really intended to go through with this crazy thing — and she did — then he would have to go with her. He couldn't afford to lose her. He needed her. Quite apart from anything personal between them — he needed her. Yellow Peril and Yellow Venus, the missions, needed her. The fun and games were over for now, the chips were down, and the missions came first.
  
  Another thing — Po-Choy wasn't going to hold out forever! Not with those sonsofbitches taking him apart bit by bit. Sooner or later — a miracle he had held out so long — he was going to break and tell them about this place.
  
  "I'll ask you only once," Fan Su said now. "I won't beg, Nick. Help me. I'm a bad shot. None of the others can shoot any better, and our weapons are poor. But you could do it. You're the only one that will really have a chance."
  
  He nodded. "I think you're right. And knowing that — you would still try it if I said no?"
  
  "I must." The built-in Chinese fatalism. The sleek lovely surface of her was only a coat of Western lacquer; beneath she was all Oriental, as determinist as Buddha himself.
  
  Killmaster decided. "All right. I'll help you. But only if we clear out of here tonight. Not come back. Can you push up things twenty-four hours? Can your people handle it? And you had better be damned sure!"
  
  Fan Su glanced at the cheap Hong Kong watch she wore concealed high on one wrist. At times like this, among the very poor, even the possession of a watch could be dangerous.
  
  "It will be dark in an hour," she said. "It will take us half an hour to get to the Municipal Center from here, with luck. We do it — kill Po-Choy; then we can get a sampan near Woosung. It will take us north until we meet the truck that will take us to the airfield. Yes, Nick, we can do it. We can be at the airfield at midnight."
  
  He seized her arm in a grip that hurt her, but she did not flinch away from him. "You're sure, damn it? Once I put this operation into go we can't turn back. This has got to be done right the first time."
  
  "You're hurting me, Nick. Please."
  
  He released her, but instead of stepping away she went lax in his arms. "I'm sorry, Nick, but this is something I must do."
  
  Nick held her for a moment, but when he spoke his voice was harsh. "All right! Let's do it, then. Help me off with this damned hump."
  
  He stripped off his dirty black coolie jacket to reveal the flesh-colored monstrosity. Makeup had done a superb job on it, even to including warts with hair growing out of them. There was one flesh-colored strap that ran under his armpits and fastened in front. The edges were so carefully gummed and blended that the hump looked as though it grew from his own flesh. Nick had been concealing a transceiver in it.
  
  He rested the tiny radio on the hulk of a boiler, pulled out a long antenna and plugged in the key that was concealed in the base. The transceiver operated on powerful, long-life silver batteries. He looked at Fan Su.
  
  "You're sure? I'll have to transmit for quite a few minutes. And our information is that the People's Army is pretty good at DFing. As soon as I finish we're going to have to cut and run for it."
  
  She tossed the ball back to him. For the first time in a long time she smiled. "Nothing is really sure in this life, darling. Especially in lives like ours. I think we will succeed, but I do not know what is written. It is for you to decide." She shrugged with all the resignation of the Orient. "But I know what I must do."
  
  Killmaster scowled. He did not touch the key. She was right, of course. Nothing in life was sure. No guarantees. Philosophy was a very thin reed at times. He had visions of himself in an iron cage, being stoned and hooted at by the Red Guards. The Carter File. A reward of one hundred thousand dollars. God, what a field day the bastards would have! They would parade him around with a rope about his neck, torture him, cut him up a little at a time as they were doing to Po-Choy now. And when all the propaganda value had been squeezed out they would kill him. As slowly and painfully as possible.
  
  Yet the mission must be accomplished and he had not become top dog in his profession by holding back.
  
  Killmaster grinned at the girl. "Okay, here we go." He began to pound the little key, sending his call letters out across the sea to where the carrier waited.
  
  Yellow Venus calling Sawtooth — Yellow Venus calling Sawtooth…
  
  The dots and dashes came flashing back to him. Go ahead, Yellow Venus.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 8
  
  
  
  
  The sturdy hunchbacked coolie pulled the ricksha through the winding, narrow Street of The Yellow Storks. It was raining slightly, hardly more than a mist, but he wore a straw li over his big shoulders and he had raised a teng to protect his passenger. The street was dark and deserted. The big coolie could almost smell the fear behind the closed and battened shops. Mao's Red Guards had turned into a monster — and the monster was loose tonight. Not far ahead of them, where the street emptied into Karl Marx Square and vanished in a maze of municipal buildings, the Beast was shouting for blood and flesh.
  
  Behind him Fan Su said: "Remember — you're a deaf-mute. If we have any trouble let me do all the talking."
  
  Nick Carter slowed for a moment and glanced back at her from under the brim of his coolie hat. He smiled with his black teeth and nodded. A deaf-mute. He wasn't likely to forget. He went plunging on toward the blaze of light at the end of the street. He kept his head down and his legs pumped in the tireless slop-slop-slop-slop of the professional. Killmaster had pulled rickshas before.
  
  Fan Su sat primly in the ricksha, neatly clad in a quilted suit and wearing a little green cap with a red star on it. She wore sneakers and the inevitable sanitary mask of white gauze, and in her hand she carried the red book of Mao — the Bible of the Red Guard. Snugged between her slim legs she also carried a deadly little Nambu pistol.
  
  Killmaster was carrying the Luger and stiletto in their usual places beneath his baggy black coolie uniform. Now, as they drew nearer the square and could hear the raucous bellowing of sound trucks and loudspeakers over the menacing hum of the crowd, he thought that it was something like going up against an elephant with a slingshot. If they were to accomplish their task — kill Po-Choy — it would have to be done by guile. Not raw force. She understood that.
  
  To the left of where the Street of The Yellow Storks debouched on the square, there was the curving façade of a large department store. Here several street cars were hopelessly jammed in the surging, singing, shouting and howling throng. Every available light in the square and in the surrounding buildings had been turned on, and from trucks and speakers' platforms powerful searchlights prowled back and forth across the skies and over the crowd. Two of the searchlights, each beamed from a separate spot, were unmoving. They crossed, melded, on an iron cage that dangled from a steel beam affixed to a tall pole before the police station.
  
  Nick saw at once that, until he made his move, he had nothing to worry about. Nor did Fan Su. There were possibly a hundred thousand Red Guard fanatics shouting and screaming about them, pushing and shoving, cursing and laughing, and they were completely lost. Just another ricksha coolie and a neat Girl Guard.
  
  They abandoned the ricksha and made their way toward one of the stalled street cars that still had a little space atop it. Nick helped the girl up on his shoulders, then pulled himself up for a first survey of the situation. He had to decide if this thing was really possible. As he looked out over the jammed square, down into thousands of shouting angry faces, he knew that he was afraid. That was good. It was healthy fear, not bravado and fool-hardiness, that kept a man alive in his profession. This mob was a deadly weapon. One mistake, one slip of the tongue, one voice raised in spite, and they would tear you to little red pieces.
  
  He felt Fan Su's hand on his arm, squeezing hard, quivering. He did not look at her. He was seeing the same thing she was seeing.
  
  The cage was forty feet from the ground, suspended from the end of a steel arm that joined the pole at right angles. It was a cunning and merciless trap, that cage. Medieval. The Italians had once made great use of it. It was of a size, and so constructed, that the prisoner could neither stand up nor lie down.
  
  The thing in the cage moved now, as they watched. One of the hands was thrust through the bars. In the brilliance of the searchlights it was easy to see that the first two fingers of the hand were missing. The bandages were neat and clean. Nice of the bastards!
  
  The head was also bandaged. Nick guessed that an ear had been cut off. For a moment the crowd around the foot of the pole parted enough for him to see a large glass box, something like a showcase, fastened to the pole at eye level. The distance was too great for him to see what lay behind the glass, but he could guess. They were putting the parts of Po-Choy on display as a warning.
  
  Nick could feel the girl trembling. He guessed it was with rage, not fear.
  
  Again the naked thing in the cage moved, turning restlessly, trying to adjust its racked and tormented body. Nick could not make out the face even in the bright glare of the lights. He did not particularly want to see it. It was just another Oriental face.
  
  No. It was more than that. It was the face of a fellow human being. There was a man in that cage. A man. Being tormented. Nick's heritage took over. He must do what he could.
  
  It took him less than a minute to size matters up. The only possible chance was to get into the police station itself. The cage was about fifty yards from the station entrance and on a level with the fourth floor. There were no really tall buildings in Shanghai because of the marsh and silt on which it was built.
  
  Nick's practiced eye scanned the scene once more. It was the only way. Get into the police station, gain entrance to one of the offices on the fourth floor, and he would have a level shot at the cage from fifty yards. That was it. He nudged Fan Su.
  
  They found a doorway out of the crowd and he told her how he was going to do it. "There are fire escapes in front," he explained. "I'm betting there will be others in back. There should be corridors running straight through from front to back. If we can get to the fourth floor, and I can get into an office, we might have a chance. You can cover me from the corridor. In all this mob and excitement it shouldn't be hard to get in."
  
  She said what they were both thinking. "Yes. It will be easy, getting in. Even shooting him. Getting away afterward will be hard."
  
  Killmaster shrugged. "One thing — if that mob gets us it will be a quick death. Come on."
  
  They began to worm their way around the fringe of the crowd, past stalls where women were selling flags and tiny busts of Mao. Wall posters were everywhere. Death to All Decadent Bourgeois — Honor Mao's Thought — Down With Bloody Revolutionists — Death For All American Running Dogs and Turtles…
  
  "They do not love us," said Nick under his breath.
  
  Step by step they fought their way through the mass of packed humanity to the front entrance of the police station. Space around the doors and wide stairs was being kept clear by members of the People's Militia armed with rifles and Tommy guns. They wore floppy tan uniforms and red starred caps, and had red tabs on their collars. They looked alert and well disciplined, for militia, and Nick did not like it. The Tommy guns gave him a cold feeling. If the rear of the building was as well guarded as the front they were in real trouble.
  
  Fan Su hissed at him. "You are my stupid cousin who has been working in the city. Now you are sick and I am trying to help you get back to your village. Keep your head and eyes down, but don't overdo it. Look as stupid and nervous as you can."
  
  Nick showed his black teeth in a grimace. The last part wouldn't be hard. He was nervous.
  
  They approached a guard who stood beneath a great red-and-gold banner bearing a hammer and sickle. At first he paid them no attention. He was staring up at the cage and obviously did not wish to be bothered.
  
  Fan Su tugged at the guard's sleeve. He glanced at her in annoyance. "What is it, comrade?"
  
  The girl indicated Nick, who stood hunched and shuffling his feet, his mouth half-open and his eyes vacant. At the same time his hand was near the Luger — he had pulled the holster around to the front so he could get to it faster — and the stiletto was ready to snap from the sheath down into his hand. If he had to use them, of course, it would already be too late, but if he went he meant to take a few of them with him.
  
  Fan Su was explaining that her cousin was sick and needed a road pass so he could travel. Her second cousin, really, and she moved a little away from Nick. He was a moron, a deaf-mute as well, and if someone did not help him he would get lost and die in the gutter.
  
  The guard appeared to share her feelings about the big filthy hunchback. He stared at Nick, then back at the girl. "Yieee — I see what you mean, comrade. This one is an excrescence on the face of China! He should be hidden in a cave."
  
  Fan Su smiled sadly. "I know. But he is helpless and of my blood, though distantly. I cannot let him perish. So if you will please to help me…"
  
  The guard was eyeing Fan Su appreciatively now, looking her up and down, and Killmaster found himself hoping that there wouldn't be a lot of boy and girl palaver. He was tense now, but at the same time loose and ready for action. Come on, he thought furiously. Get it over with.
  
  Fan Su thrust her papers at the guard. "Please? If you could hurry matters along a bit for me I would be grateful. I know you are an important man and have your duties, but I also have duties." She cast a disdainful glance at Nick. "Besides, he offends me. I wish to be rid of him. He smells bad."
  
  The guard laughed. "You speak truth there, comrade." He gave her back the papers without glancing at them. "You are not leaving Shanghai? Then it is his papers I must see."
  
  She turned to Nick and made rapid talk with her hands. They had practiced this, just as Nick had practiced dactylology hour after wearisome hour. Every AXE agent had to be able to speak with his fingers.
  
  Fan Su was going through the entire routine, on the million-to-one chance that the guard, or a watcher, knew the sign language.
  
  Nick nodded and dug into his baggy pants for his papers. He handed them to the girl, who gave them to the guard. He took one look at the filthy wrinkled mass of paper and handed them back. "Even they smell bad. But go on in, comrade. You are fortunate that Comrade Captain Chou is working late tonight. Fourth floor at the front." He pointed over his head. "Right up there."
  
  As they started into the building the guard called after the girl. "You had better hurry, comrade, or you will miss it." He pointed to the cage. "They are going to take him down again soon. The dung turtle is going to lose another flipper."
  
  They passed through an ornate lobby that smelled of urine. Up four flights of stairs. Nick took over now and halted briefly on each landing to glance up and down the corridors. He was pleased. Most of the offices were deserted and, toward the rear of the building, the lights were out. On the third floor they heard the clicking of a solitary typewriter.
  
  The fourth floor. To their right the corridor ended in a rectangle of brilliant light overlooking the square. To their left, from the stairwell back to another window, the corridor was dark.
  
  Nick Carter had the Luger in his hand. Fan Su fumbled in her trousers and took out the little Jap pistol. If they were caught prowling they would have to fight their way out.
  
  Nick, always a man to worry about his exits, nodded to the left. "Check that back window. Hurry. I'll wait here."
  
  She went away, running on tiptoe. In a minute she was back. "There's a fire escape down to a courtyard. It's very dark."
  
  "Is there an alley? Or a passage through to the next street? A courtyard is only a trap."
  
  "There is an alley. I am certain of it. I have been in this building before."
  
  Nick touched her arm. "Okay. Wait for me. Wander aimlessly. If anybody wants to know why you're loitering stick to the same story — except that I am being questioned in private by the Comrade Captain Chou."
  
  Her eyes glittered at him. "I don't think anyone will come. They are all out there — waiting for it to happen again." The little Nambu moved in her hand. "If they do come I know what to do."
  
  Nick Carter was standing tall and straight now. The hump seemed even more grotesque than before. "Get that back window open," he told her. "And get your track shoes on, honey. When we leave this place, if we leave it, we'll be going like bats out of hell!"
  
  He moved swiftly. He went down the corridor toward the blaze of light and the roaring-surf sound of the crowd. There might be very little time left if they meant to haul Po-Choy down and cut him again.
  
  It was the last door on the right. A bright wedge of light leaked into the corridor, mingling with light from the window. Outside, a loudspeaker blared for a moment. The crowd roared on a deeper note. Nick felt the sweat break on him. If they hauled the poor guy down before he could get in a shot…
  
  He transferred the Luger to his left hand, snapped the stiletto down into his right. For a second he stared down at the light under the door. Then he turned the knob and stepped into the room, gambling that Comrade Captain Chou would be alone. If he wasn't, Nick would have to use the Luger and things could get very messy.
  
  Captain Chou was alone. He was sitting at the desk and staring out the open window at the cage. His swivel chair squeaked as he swung around. "What do you wa…"
  
  The stiletto quivered in the Captain's throat. Nick flicked off the lights and sprang like a tiger for the desk. The man was still making agony sounds and plucking at the stiletto in his flesh. Nick got one brawny arm in back of his head, found the hilt, and brought the weapon around in a nearly full circle.
  
  By the time the body hit the floor, Nick was kneeling at the window. He was just in time. At the foot of the pole two soldiers were loosening a halyard belayed around a cleat on the pole. The cage was swaying back and forth.
  
  Killmaster cursed between his teeth. A moving target was twice as tough to hit.
  
  He checked the Luger, then poked the muzzle out over the sill of the window, putting everything out of his mind but the suffering naked thing in the cage. Using two hands, as he had in the street fight in San Francisco, he tried to bring the Luger's sight to bear: He had filed the sight down until it was barely visible, to prevent it from catching on leather or cloth, and now he wished he hadn't.
  
  The cage was swaying crazily, a metronymic motion that baffled his best efforts to bring his sights into line. Once he almost squeezed off the shot, then he let his finger relax. Damn! He would have to wait. Every second he waited increased his danger in terrible geometric progression.
  
  The cage banged into the pole, a jarring banging crash that was drowned by the ceaseless roar of the crowd. The naked man moved and clutched at the bars with one hand. The cage slowly began to descend.
  
  Now! Shooting down in artificial light was tricky. You had to allow for, and correct, a tendency to shoot too low. Leading was no problem — the cage was going down slowly. Nick Carter took a deep breath and held it. In the last micro-second he remembered that the last time on the targets the Luger had been shooting a little high and to the right. He made the correction. Now!
  
  He pulled the trigger. He saw the thing in the cage lurch and roll for an instant, then subside. The cage, spinning on the halyard, came around so that at last Nick could see the face. He had seen many dead faces. This one was dead, with most of the right frontal lobe missing. The roar of the crowd went on and on. They had not heard or seen. Not yet.
  
  Killmaster went down the corridor in long strides. Fan Su was waiting a few feet from the open window and the fire escape. Nick waved her to go on. He smacked the compact rear of her quilted pants. "Here we go again. Run, baby, run!"
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  North of Shanghai, near the Chapei district, there is an emergency airfield. Long in disuse, the buildings and lights and everything of value had long ago been removed. The asphalt runway is full of potholes and the only close neighbors are peasants who till a mou or two of land and mind their own business. A rutted track leads from the airfield to the main Shanghai-Nanking highway some two miles distant.
  
  The four old trucks that bounced along the track were running without lights. Nick Carter and Fan Su were riding in the cab of the first truck and Nick was wondering how the driver of the truck, a kid not yet out of his teens, could stand it. He and Fan Su didn't mind each other because they had both made the trip in the «honey» sampan. It had been loaded to the rails with fetid kegs of the stuff, night soil gathered from Shanghai and being shipped to the outlying districts to be spread on the paddies. By now both the AXEman and the girl were aromatic to a degree that had to be smelled to be believed.
  
  When they reached the field the truck deployed according to a prearranged plan. This was a crucial point in the operation. The plan from now on depended on brashness, on pure and unalloyed brass. If boldness could do it — then Yellow Venus had a right to succeed.
  
  The trucks parked two at each end of the narrow runway. The drivers waited for their signal. There were just the six of them, four drivers and Nick and the girl. To risk more of Undertong's slender cadre would have been foolish.
  
  They waited in darkness and, for the most part, silence. Nick and the girl withdrew to stand beneath an ancient ginkgo tree, its fan-shaped leaves already frost-tainted. Nick badly wanted a smoke, even the butts in his tin coolie box would have tasted good, but he had forbidden smoking.
  
  The girl was worried about the weather. The rain had stopped now, there was no hint of moon, and a light cloud layer muffled the glare of central Shanghai in the distance. Nick smiled in the gloom. There was going to be a hot time in that old town tonight The Provost would be tearing his hair.
  
  He glanced at the clouds again. "Stop worrying," he told her. "I don't know who's flying this mission, but he'll be the best. Just hold tight." He knew her nerves were jumping. His own were a little frayed around the edges.
  
  "Hold your hat down, Nick."
  
  He shielded her pen light with the coolie hat as she consulted her watch. "Five after midnight. He's late."
  
  "So he's la…" They heard it then. The drone of an old piston plane somewhere in the clouds and off to the east.
  
  "There he is!"
  
  They ran to the edge of the runway. Fan Su handed Nick a cigarette lighter. He clicked it into flame and waved it slowly back and forth three times.
  
  The truck lights blazed on. Two at each end of the runway and at the edges, limning the parallelogram for the pilot overhead. Fan Su clutched Nick's arm. "It doesn't seem like much, does it? How can he possibly see it and get a big plane down." Her voice was shaky.
  
  "He'll make it," said Killmaster. He, whoever he was, had better make it. Red radar would have picked him up by now. Nick wondered if the Chinese had any night fighters worthy of the name. The question had never come up. You always overlooked something!
  
  The pilot made two passes over the field and then circled away. The sound of the engines died. They waited, time stretching into infinity like a great rubber band that must soon snap. Waiting… stretching… waiting…
  
  The sudden swoosh of the plane startled even Nick. It came out of the night like a sudden hawk, talons down, gliding in just over the trucks nearest the two. The plane had no lights. It glinted a dull silver in the truck beams. It hit and bounced, hit again and stayed down, running hard for the far end of the runway. There was a squeal of brakes and the faint odor of scorched rubber.
  
  "Come on," shouted Nick. He took her hand and they ran for the plane, already beginning to turn at the far end. As they approached he saw red and gold Chinese lettering on the silver sides: Southwest China Airlines. It was a DC3, an old and reliable type much used by the small commercial lines in the country. It would be authentic to the last detail, Nick knew. Pilots, papers, the works.
  
  The door of the plane opened as they panted up. A ladder came down. A flashlight was beamed on Nick. "Yellow Venus?"
  
  "Yes," he snapped. "Sawtooth? And get that damned light off!"
  
  "Yes, sir." The light flicked out. A hand helped them aboard. The owner of the hand was a young Chinese wearing the insignia of a radio officer. He slammed the door behind them. Nick said: "Tell your pilot to use his lights on take off. Potholes. You're lucky you missed them coming in."
  
  "Yes, sir." The radio officer left them. Nick sank into a comfortable seat beside the girl. He grinned at her. "Fasten your seat belt, honey. Regulations."
  
  She did not answer. She was sitting very quietly, her eyes closed, her fists clenched. He was silent. Like a great many women, she was superb in a crisis, but when it was over she needed a letdown. He found himself almost wishing she would have a small case of hysterics. Might do her good. He needed her as much as ever to bring off Yellow Peril — he was going to report that Yellow Venus, Undertong, was certainly worth aiding in every way possible — and they were just now getting into the really tough part. His grin was hard. They had, in the words of the song, come a long way from St. Louis. They still had a hell of a long way to go!
  
  They took off. He glanced down and back and saw the lights of the trucks go off. He wished them luck as he made his way up to the cabin.
  
  Nick recognized the pilot at once. His name was Dze Shen-peng, but for some reason he was called Johnny Cool. Nick did not know why. The man was a Colonel in the Nationalist Air Force, and a living legend — in his own way, and field, as much of a legend as Nick himself. He had been around a long time, was crisply graying, and was the only man who had ever outflown Earthquake McGoon back in the CAT days. Hawk had picked the best.
  
  All three of the men in the cabin stared as Nick entered. He could not blame them. He did not even blame the radio officer for sniffing so audibly. He must smell pretty bad.
  
  Johnny Cool did not recognize him, which was not at all surprising. Nick gave them all his black-toothed smile and said, "Thank you, gentleman. That was damned well done. We were beginning to sweat a little."
  
  Johnny Cool gave the plane to the copilot. He and Nick consulted a sheaf of maps on the radio officers' tiny desk. Nick restrained a smile as he noticed that the pilot stayed as far from him as possible.
  
  The pilot took a sheet of typed flimsy from his breastpocket. He glanced at the AXEman. "For a check-off, sir, and the sake of clarity I'd like to run through this."
  
  "Go ahead."
  
  "Yes, sir." If there was anything incongruous about the neatly uniformed, clean-shaven veteran flyer deferring to this evil-smelling, filthy, villainous-appearing coolie, he did not seem to notice or resent it. Johnny Cool was following orders. For a moment Nick was tempted to remind Johnny of the last time they had had a drink together in Hubie's Bar in Hong Kong. He didn't.
  
  Johnny Cool read from his list. "Two packs, Class A. They are back in the lav, sir. I'll have to ask you to sign for them, sir."
  
  Of course. If you wanted a rope to hang yourself you would have to sign for it.
  
  "My orders, sir, are to set you down as near as possible to the village of Meinyang, roughly fifty miles south of Chungtiene. There's a lot of desert around there — we shouldn't have any trouble getting down. If there is trouble, or questions, our cover is that we lost an engine and had to make an emergency landing. Jibe so far, sir?"
  
  Nick Carter nodded. "We'll have to land in daylight? This old crate can't do more than three hundred, can she?" He was accustomed to jets.
  
  The pilot's finger traced a line on the map. "Broad daylight, sir. That doesn't worry us too much. As I said, we've got good cover for a little while. Planes from the carrier made an anti-radar sweep before we took off, and we're dropping dipoles automatically as we go. The chances are good that they won't pick us up at all. We've got extra tanks, of course, that we'll jettison as we use them. After we leave you we'll go on to Nepal or Sikkim, depending on gas and weather."
  
  "That's great for you," said the AXEman a bit sardonically, "but I'm more concerned with our ETA?"
  
  The pilot scratched a pencil over a pad. "Well be bucking headwinds. I figure, roughly, about eight hours' flying time. Maybe a bit less." He glanced at his watch. "We should get you down about eight-thirty or nine."
  
  "Not too close to Meinyang," Nick told him. "We want to walk into the village, with no tie in with the plane if that is at all possible."
  
  Johnny Cool looked dubious for a moment, then said, "We'll do the best we can, sir. It might be possible, at that. It's rough country around there, with a lot of valleys and mountains and dry lakes. And desert, of course. We'll try our best, sir, but we won't be able to stray too far from the Yangtse. The river is our guideline in."
  
  "Okay." Nick grinned at the pilot. "Well want to sleep now, after we clean up and eat. Can do?"
  
  Johnny Cool recognized his voice then. His eyes flickered for a moment and a smile touched his lips, but he only said, gravely, "Can do, sir. It's all back there. They worked on this baby for a week, like beavers. You want me to show you things?"
  
  "Never mind. We'll find what we need. Wake us up an hour before landing time. I'll want a last-minute check with you."
  
  "Yes, sir."
  
  When Killmaster had left the cabin there was a little period of silence. Johnny Cool took the plane back from the copilot.
  
  The radio officer sniffed loudly and said, "Who in the hell is that. Must be VIP, Johnny, the way you were sirring him."
  
  The pilot nodded. "Big shot. Bigger than you'll ever be, my friend."
  
  The radio officer sniffed again. "Maybe so. But big shot or not — he still smells like shit."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 9
  
  
  
  
  It had been like stepping through a magic mirror, from the new China to the old. Teng Fa, the old warlord, still ruled this desolate corner of the country with a medieval hand. None of the comrade nonsense, t'ung chih, about Teng Fa. He was a hundred years old and death held no terrors for him. He held himself aloof, with his eunuchs and his concubines in their chastity belts, and the lao pai hsing, the peasants, paid their taxes to him and not to Peking.
  
  Fan Su explained all this to Nick on their first night in the rambling adobe-and-tile castle that stood on a hill overlooking the village of Meinyang. From the window of their spacious room he could look eastward and see a thin white glimmer along the horizon — the very first low hills of Tibet. They were still five hundred miles from their goal, the Chumbi Valley.
  
  The landing had gone well. There had been eyes, of course, but for now Killmaster thought he could discount them. In country like this, with its lack of roads and communications, it might be days before they were brought to the attention of the authorities in Chungtiene. By that time it would be too late, either way you looked at it.
  
  After taking a careful fix on the landing site — for they would have to use it again — Nick and Fan Su walked twenty miles to the village of Meinyang. They were clean now, and dressed simply as travelers. They carried long sticks of ash against wild dogs, and were man and wife. Nick had discarded the hump and the wig, covering his shaven head with a dogskin cap. The packs were heavy — the AXE people had not forgotten anything — and a certain death warrant if they were caught.
  
  The weather was brisk, the far-off mountains wreathed in mist, and they trudged through dun-colored fields of rice stubble framed in autumn's sere yellows and browns. As they went Nick kept glancing at the sky; it could not be long now until the first heavy snow.
  
  Teng Fa welcomed them without question. Their cover story, for the old man's ears alone, was that they were escaping from China by way of Tibet. He made no sign of disbelief — or belief. Fan Su was the great-granddaughter of a very old friend, long dead, and that appeared to be enough for Teng.
  
  It was the second night of their stay. When they finished dinner, a simple meal of roast pig, eggs, cabbage and boiled millet, the old man beckoned to Nick. "I would speak with you, young man. Alone."
  
  Nick glanced across the table at the girl. She raised her slim shoulders slightly and nodded. Go with him. Humor him. I do not understand either. They were both playing it by ear, feeling their way. Nick had his bearings now, his fixes, and one more day should do it Then they could be on their way.
  
  He followed the old man through a labyrinth of narrow passages. Teng was a little over five feet tall and as straight as an arrow. He always dressed the same — a khaki uniform with a high choker collar, a Sam Browne belt, a row of decorations over his left breast. He was living in a world of fifty years ago. Nick wondered, as he followed that ramrod back now, just how senile, how crazy, the old man really was. He had not seen enough of the old boy to really know. Until now Teng had left them pretty much alone. Nick had seen a eunuch or two, going about their business in long brocade robes. At least Fan Su said they were eunuchs. He had seen none of the concubines, though once he had heard giggles from behind a screened balcony while walking in one of the several courtyards.
  
  Now, walking behind Teng, he remembered Hawk's remark: "What does he do with them?" This was an extraordinary old man. He might just be doing what one did do with concubines!
  
  They crossed a patio where a tiny bridge arched over a pool. Dead lilies floated in the water. It was nearly dark, but a last beam of sunset arched the walls and lay like a cold golden bar on the black water. Somewhere along the edge of the pool a bullfrog let go a bass note.
  
  Teng, all this while unspeaking, led the AXEman through a gate in a wall. They were in another court now. In the center was a solidly built little pagoda of fired brick and painted a dead black. The place reminded Nick unpleasantly of a tomb. Teng unlocked the single door, a massive affair of oak, and stood aside for Nick to enter.
  
  He stood in darkness while Teng went around lighting candles. As the room gradually filled with mellow light, the man from AXE gazed about in wonder and appreciation. The room was circular and floored with marble. On one wall hung a great scroll painting which he recognized as a Tao-chi. Seventeenth Century.
  
  On a pedestal was a bust which could only be Wang Hsiao. Ming dynasty. Nick made appreciative sounds in Cantonese, which they had been speaking.
  
  Teng Fa bowed and, switching to English, said: "A few things which I treasure." He gestured toward a tall screen that stood across one corner of the room. "Later, sir, I may show you my greatest treasure of all. But first I think we must talk. Sit down, please."
  
  Teng had seated himself behind a small desk. He opened a drawer and took out an old Mauser pistol. He pointed it at Nick Carter. His gnarled old hand was steady and the eyes regarded Nick shrewdly from his wrinkled parchment face.
  
  "Now, sir, what is your true name and nationality? What do you want here? And do not make the mistake they have made in Peking — I am neither senile or crazy. At least not as much so as they think. And as you and the girl seem to think. Well, sir? The truth."
  
  Killmaster knew he had been had. Nothing to do but fence, spar a little, and put the best face on it. It could be, he thought, that he had found an ally.
  
  He admitted to being a United States agent, telling as much of the truth as he dared. The old man listened without interruption, the pistol steady on Nick's belly.
  
  When the AXEman paused, Teng said: "You are not after the airfield, then?"
  
  Nick shook his head. "I won't tell you what I'm after, sir, but it is not an airfield. I know nothing of any airfield."
  
  Teng nodded. "I think I believe you. It must be the tunnel then. The tunnel in the Chumbi Valley. There is something very mysterious going on there."
  
  Nick kept his face impassive. "You seem very well informed, sir."
  
  The pistol moved an inch. "It is a game with me. An old man's game. It gives me the illusion that it will still be a little time before I go to join my ancestors. But that is not important — there is an airfield, near Chungtiene. A most secret airfield where they are training pilots for the North Vietnamese."
  
  Teng took a bit of paper from the pages of a book on the desk and glanced at it. "They have Mig 15s and Mig 17s, also a few Ilyushin-28 bombers. I hope I have those names correctly?" He looked at Nick.
  
  Nick Carter smiled and nodded. He was impressed, CIA would be, too, at this serendipity. Maybe they knew about the airfield already. If not, they had recovered their investment. If, of course, he made it out.
  
  He said: "You have them correctly, sir. But why tell me, an enemy agent?"
  
  The papier mâché face cracked in a faint smile. "Not necessarily my enemy. That remains to be seen. I do not like the government in Peking, nor do they care for me. They leave me alone because they believe me to be harmless and insane. Also they know I am not afraid of them. When you are as old as I am you are not afraid of anything. Nothing, that is, but dishonor and loss of face." He moved the pistol and glanced down at it. "I can always see to it that that does not happen."
  
  Before Nick could say anything the old man continued: "I would appreciate it if you would call me General Teng from now on."
  
  The AXE agent's eyes narrowed a bit, but nodded. It was the first slight indication that the old man might be a little around the bend.
  
  "Yes, General. Of course. I take it, then, that we are not enemies? You will help me if you can?"
  
  In the last minute or so a subtle change had come over Teng. He sat straighter in his chair and his eyes held a glitter they had not had before. Paranoia? Nick wondered. At his great age there was almost certain to be some trace of it, and it was a condition that came and went.
  
  Teng nodded. "I may help you. Not out of charity, or because I love Americans, but because it will also help me. A mutual arrangement. You understand?"
  
  "I understand," said Nick. And he did understand. Teng was a little nuts, more than a little dangerous when in the wrong mood — and just might be of enormous help. He played along.
  
  Teng put the pistol on the desk beside him. He opened a drawer, then halted the motion and looked at Nick. "You are armed?"
  
  Killmaster flicked the stiletto into his hand and held it out. "I have a Luger, too, General. I could have killed you at any time."
  
  The old man smiled faintly. He pushed the Mauser away with his finger. "Perhaps… perhaps. I am not as fast as I was."
  
  He took a bulging manila file from the desk and placed it before him. He tapped it with a finger. "My plans. In great detail. After you have done your work, whatever it is, I want your promise that you will deliver this to the proper people in Washington. Promise me this and I will help you all I can."
  
  Nick promised. It seemed harmless enough.
  
  General Teng cocked his head to one side like a crafty old bird. "You are not interested in the details? You do not wish to know my plans?"
  
  Nick winced inwardly, staring at the thick file. "Perhaps later, General. Tonight I'll read it. It really isn't my province, you know. That file will have to go directly to the General Staff. In anything as big as that I'm only small potatoes."
  
  Teng frowned, but did not appear really displeased. "I think I understand the allusions. And you are right, of course. This file must go to the very top. But I will tell you, very briefly, what I am planning."
  
  Nick Carter sighed.
  
  The General explained carefully that he had the nucleus of an army already. Nick sighed again and feigned attention. He had seen the «army» drilling — twenty ragtag soldiers. Peasants who were «soldiers» in their spare time. The General, he thought now, must be in a worse mental state than showed on the surface — that was why Peking did not worry about him.
  
  "I also have good intelligence," the General was saying. He tapped the bit of paper on his desk. "As I have just proven to you. If your country will only send me supplies and money, especially money, I will raise an army and take over this province in six months. I guarantee it! Then, after I have consolidated, I will take over all China. Millions will flock to my banner."
  
  Nick made a mistake. He said: "You will work with Chiang Kai-shek, of course? I understand that you were once friends."
  
  Silence. The General picked up the Mauser and pointed it at Nick again. His seamed face was white, his eyes bulging. "That bandit!" It was nearly a scream. "Never! I said that I will rule. I alone. General Teng Fa!"
  
  Nick sat very still. The old man's finger was curled white on the trigger of the pistol. Nick smiled. "Of course, General. It is just that I misunderstood. I will certainly deliver your file with my best recommendations. But in the meantime, sir, I can't do either of us any good until I am out of China."
  
  The pistol was laid on the desk again. The storm had passed as suddenly as it had risen. Nick got the clue then. The old man was probably sane enough on matters not relating to his own ambitions.
  
  "Taxes," said General Teng.
  
  "Sir?"
  
  "Taxes," repeated the old man. "I'll show them something about taxes." His false teeth glinted at Nick. "Why, I once imposed twenty-seven taxes on salt alone!"
  
  Before Nick could say anything to that — what was there to say? — the General continued in a normal tone of voice. "We must get you and the girl out of here at once. The airfield, don't you see? They are sure to think you are after it. Word travels slowly in these parts, but it will travel. I cannot be sure of everyone in my own house."
  
  The thought had occurred to Nick before and now it returned. It was more than probable that one of the servants had already spoken to the Village head man of the strangers staying with General Teng. He had reckoned on that.
  
  General Teng was spreading a frayed and much-folded map on the desk. He beckoned to Nick. "Come. I will show you how I am going to help you. This is a map of the country around the Chumbi Valley, where they are digging the tunnel. I know it well because I hunted there as a boy, and I know something about it that very few people know. Certainly they do not know about it Look."
  
  The map was old and out of date, but Nick had been studying his own maps, fine specimens pieced together from the satellite pictures, so now it was easy to visualize the terrain.
  
  "Just here," said the General, "there is another valley running parallel to the Chumbi. They know about it, of course, but they do not even bother to guard it. They think it is inaccessible. And so it is — to one who does not know the secret. The valley is completely surrounded by sheer cliffs three to four hundred feet high. It is about twenty miles long and a mile wide at the widest point. Nothing lives there. Or so they say. I have never been quite sure."
  
  Something in his tone made Nick glance up quickly. The old man was staring down at the map, his finger trembling a bit, but he was not seeing the yellowed paper. Where was he? Nick nudged him gently out of reverie.
  
  "You seem to know the valley well, General."
  
  A slow nod. "I do. Or I did. I hunted there as a young man. Seventy-five years ago. That is a long time, I know, but the stairs will still be there."
  
  "Stairs, sir?"
  
  "Crude stairs carved in the cliffs on both sides of the valley. They must have been centuries old when I found them. And there were caves all around the valley, running into the foot of the cliffs. Someone, or something, once lived in that valley."
  
  Killmaster cursed under his breath. This lonely and forsaken valley, paralleling as it did the narrowest part of the Chumbi, might be the answer to his prayers. Especially if the part about the stairs was true. But how much of the old man's story to believe? Someone or something?
  
  "The place," said the old man, "is known locally as the Valley of the Yeti."
  
  Oh, brother! The Abominable Snowman! He remained respectfully silent.
  
  General Teng said, "You do not laugh?"
  
  Nick said, slightly misquoting the Bard: "There are more things than are dreamt of in my philosophy, sir." The old boy was being helpful. Best to coddle him along.
  
  General Teng nodded. He seemed pleased. "Ah, yes. Your Shakespeare. It has been a long time since I read him."
  
  He tapped the map again with his finger. He appeared crisp and alert now. "It is nonsense, of course. Peking thinks so, at least. They do not even show the valley on their maps. I am not so sure. As I say, I have been there and…"
  
  Nick Carter jolted him out of it again. "Thank you, sir, for showing me this. If my people can drop me into this valley, and I can find those stairs you mention, I will be in a position overlooking the Chumbi. There should be plenty of good cover. From there on — well, I have my plans, and my orders."
  
  The General was folding the map. "Yes. And I will not inquire into that. Our chief concern now must be to get you and the girl out of here as soon as possible. You cannot go tonight, I suppose?"
  
  Nick glanced at his watch. A little after seven. In Sikkim an AXE team was standing a round-the-clock watch. It might just be possible. There was still the problem of getting back to the strip of desert where they had landed. It would have to be that spot. It had been proved safe, it was the only one Nick knew about, and by now Johnny Cool would have fed the coordinates to the chief of the AXE team in Sikkim. They would have an almost perfect fix on the field. Flares could guide them in.
  
  He explained this to the old man.
  
  "I have fast horses," said Teng. "And I will give you six men I can trust." He stiffened, his back straight, once more the complete General. "You will get in touch with your people at once!"
  
  "Yes, sir." Nick was tempted to salute.
  
  He started to leave, but the General put a detaining hand on his arm. "For a young man, you are not very curious." He pointed to the tall screen that shielded a corner of the room. "I said that I would show you my greatest treasure. I will keep my word now. Come."
  
  What now? Nick followed the stiff old back across the marbled floor to the screen. He had little time to humor the old fellow now — he had to get on the transceiver and start the machinery humming.
  
  General Teng folded back a section of the screen. "I am doing you a great honor, sir. I do not allow many people to meet my wife."
  
  Wife? Something began to crawl under the AXEman's skin.
  
  "This is Porphyry," said General Teng. "My first and my only love. There are fools who say that she has been dead for fifty years, but not so. Is she not beautiful?"
  
  She was reclining on a divan, a pillow beneath her head, a little fan in her hand. An exquisite Chinese doll with tiny feet, the «lily» foot of old China, and a carefully pointed mouth scarlet against stark white rice powder. A lace cap topped the glistening dark hair. The eyes, limpid and deep brown, stared at Nick.
  
  He very nearly bowed and spoke, then caught himself. At first he thought it was a dummy. He took a step nearer, conscious of the General's eyes on him. His skin crawled again and he felt the moisture turning cold on him. It was not a dummy.
  
  There are fools that say she has been dead for fifty years!
  
  This was a mummy.
  
  Nick Carter turned away, feeling that he was going to be sick. The old man paid him no attention. He went to the divan and stood over the figure. He adjusted the fan, the little lace cap, moved the feet to a pillow.
  
  Over his shoulder the General spoke to Nick: "I will remain with her for a little time. We have not had our talk today. Go and make your preparations. You will be at the main gate in an hour. Make sure that you leave no trace of your presence here. Go!"
  
  Nick turned away, fighting down nausea. He was nearly to the door when the old man called. "The file! You must take the file with you. See that it gets into the proper hands in Washington as soon as possible."
  
  "Yes, sir." He went back to the desk and picked up the bulky file.
  
  Skirting the lily pond on his way back to the main house, Nick remembered that there were carp in the pond. Fan Su had told him that carp lived to a great age, and that some Chinese ate a mash of grain and carp guts to ensure their own longevity.
  
  Nick grimaced. General Teng had overdone it. He had lived too long!
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  When he told Fan Su about the experience she merely shrugged. "He is quite mad," she said. "I have been talking to some of the servants. Some love him, all are afraid of him, and all agree that he is insane. It does not really matter in this wilderness."
  
  "Maybe not." He was busy rigging the aerial for the transceiver. "The point is — how far can we trust his information? And will he really come up with those men and horses to help us get out of here tonight?"
  
  Fan Su was naked, about to pull on a suit of heavy woolen underwear she had taken from the packs. Her lemony skin glowed in the soft candlelight. Nick gazed with appreciation, if not present desire, at the slim flanks, the flat belly, the good firm breasts. Hawk, he realized suddenly, had had a sort of prescience when he named this mission Yellow Venus. The old man had never seen Fan Su, probably never would.
  
  The girl had been unusually silent and moody since their arrival. But her eyes were dreamy now and her voice soft as she stared back at Nick.
  
  "Do you want to?"
  
  "I want to," said Nick. "But there is no time. The General said an hour." He plugged in his key and started to send. The girl turned her back on him and began to dress.
  
  They were at the main gate in plenty of time. Nick was carrying the heavy pack with his explosives and rock-climbing gear, the transceiver, the emergency food and water, spare ammo, a dozen other things that might be needed. Fan Su was carrying the sleeping bags, additional food and ammo, and the rifles. The guns were new Mannlichers, bolt action, throwing a.458 magnum, and they had telescopic sights. In addition Nick was carrying a trench knife, a sawed-off shotgun for close quarters, and the Luger and stiletto. Both wore double-quilted suits and heavy mittens and fur boots. On their heads were fur caps of Sherpa style.
  
  As they waited for the General to appear, Nick could feel the wind from distant Tibet on his face. Like a cold razor. They were going to freeze their behinds up there in the passes. Yet he could not wear more clothing — he was really too bulky now, and he had climbing to do. He could not carry a machine gun, which he would have preferred, for the same reason. It would interfere with his climbing.
  
  The General did not come. The six men were there, huddled to one side and talking among themselves. The horses were saddled and ready, full of spirit and anxious to go.
  
  Killmaster began to fret. What was keeping the old man? They were on a very tight schedule. The plane from Sikkim would be at the landing field at 2:00 A.M. — it would wait exactly ten minutes, no longer.
  
  The General did not come.
  
  Nick waited another five minutes. Then he told the girl, "I'll go see what's keeping him."
  
  He knew where the old man's quarters were and he was nearly there when a thought struck him. He did not like the thought, but the pull of it, the intuition, was so strong that he changed course and retraced his earlier steps. Past the carp and lily pond to the court of the black pagoda. He had to feel his way across the court, but the door of the pagoda opened easily to his touch. It was filled with soft light, some of the candles burned low, guttering in the chill wind as he entered.
  
  He went at once to the divan, knowing that he had been right. The General was dead.
  
  The old man lay on the divan with the mummy of his wife. As close to her in death, Nick thought, as he must have been in life. Fifty years ago.
  
  General Teng's eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. Nick closed them, guessing what had happened. The old man had lain down for a «talk», as he must have done so many times before. This time his heart had stopped. Just like that.
  
  Nick went back to the gate, wondering what in hell he was going to do now.
  
  But it was all right. The General, it appeared, had summoned a servant to the pagoda and had given orders.
  
  The leader of the little group bowed to Nick. "We go now, sar?"
  
  He did not tell them the General was dead. He took out his compass, the needle glowing in the dark, and said: "We go now."
  
  The plane from Sikkhn would set down at two. They were on the last leg.
  
  When they were well away he and the girl dropped back. He told her that Teng was dead.
  
  Fan Su did not look at him. She stared straight ahead, over her mount's head, and said: "Life is only a procession toward death."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 10
  
  
  
  
  The dawn came clear and cold into the valley. Here they were shielded from the wind, snug in a cave against the western side. It had been snowing a little as the plane dumped them, in black chutes, into the long slit in the massive plateau. Now the snow had stopped, leaving only a thin silt of sugar coating on the gray, barren rock.
  
  Fan Su was curled in her sleeping bag, watching as Nick studied the mosiac maps with a flashlight By now he knew them by heart. He saw, with pleasure, that the old General had known what he was talking about The valley they were now in was roughly parallel to the narrow entrance of the Chumbi. A half-mile inside the Chumbi entrance, according to the satellite pictures, a gallery ran from an open cut into the solid rock of the west façade. It was in that gallery, or so said both CIA and AXE experts, that the monkey business was going on. Here the ChiComs were building what the CIA chose to call Prop B… the biggest hydrogen bomb in the world.
  
  Killmaster was smoking one of his gold tips now. There had been a carton in the pack along with two bottles of Scotch. The booze would have to wait until the mission was completed, but never had a cigarette tasted so good. He hummed to himself as he went over the maps again and again, hardly daring to believe his luck. If his calculations were right, all he had to do now was go two hundred feet up — straight up — then a quarter of a mile over rough terrain with good cover. Then another two or three hundred feet down — straight down — and he would be in the Chumbi, within a few hundred yards of that gallery entrance.
  
  His glance strayed to his explosives kit, a small neat package of polyethylene. It contained conventional dynamite, detonators and timing devices, a ball of plastique this all for targets of opportunity. The real murder was a single little bomb that looked like a grenade: It was a miniature atomic bomb. Hawk believed in fighting atoms with atoms.
  
  Killmaster stared at the kit with great respect The bomb was miniature only in a relative sense — when it went it was going to take most of the Chumbi with it. That was the idea: They didn't want to accidentally detonate the ChiComs' bomb; all they wanted was to bury the tunnel, and the bomb or bombs, and the scientists and technicians and Red Army men. Bury them under a few billion tons of dirt and rock.
  
  Nick tore his eyes away from the kit and back to the map. If their bomb went — if they were so far along with it that it could go — it would take half of Tibet with it Nobody, but nobody, would get out.
  
  The girl said, "Nick."
  
  "Umm?"
  
  "Have you noticed the smell?"
  
  He had He had noticed it from the very first but had not mentioned it. She had turned sullen and withdrawn again, jittery, and he did not want to make it worse. The smell was bad. It was everywhere. It was here in the cave now.
  
  He could not exactly place the smell, or describe it, except that it was foul and somehow frightening. It was a dung smell, yet it was more than that. A death-and-dung smell was closer, he thought and yet that did not exactly describe it.
  
  "I smell it" he said. "Forget it. Smells can't hurt us."
  
  "But what can it be?" Her face twisted in disgust. "It's horrible! Like — like some terrible corruption. And it's all over the valley — did you notice that?"
  
  Nick had noticed that also, and in a way it pleased him. He had an idea that the natives hereabouts, and that would include Chinese soldiers, avoided this place like the plague. He couldn't blame them. The odor was enough to make you believe in demons.
  
  He stood up, stretched, and began to assemble gear. "Come on," he snapped at her. "Let's go find that stair up the cliff — before you start believing in Yetis. So it isn't exactly Shangri-La. So what? Let's get on with the job. We might as well black up now, faces, metal, everything." He was gruff and meant to be. Her moods were becoming more and more difficult She had, he thought now, lost a lot of her old fire.
  
  She blacked his face and then he worked on hers. While she was blacking any metal that might glint and betray them, Nick went to the mouth of the shallow cave and studied the valley with powerful binoculars. He did not think this valley was overlooked — the plateau was high and towered over the Chumbi Pass to the west — but he flattened himself among the massive slabs of rock around the cave entrance.
  
  The valley was forbidding enough, even without the foul odor that hung over it. Nothing more than a rock-filled gash that had been scooped out of the massif. There was a moonscape bleakness about it relieved only by a small, meadowlike patch of lichen and stunted grass near the middle of the long slot Nick breathed a little easier when he saw that A helicopter could get down. Otherwise it would have been a hover pickup, and that was tricky in the dark. As it was, he could plant his flares, four of them to make a square, and guide the pilot in. That would happen exactly at midnight — if it happened at all.
  
  Nick began a slow and meticulous sweep with the glasses. The sheer cliffs were forbidding. There had better be stairs — it would take hours to climb any of the rock faces. He alone. He would never get the girl up.
  
  He spotted a number of cave openings across the valley, dark spots in the base of the cliffs. This place was honeycombed with them. At one time, he supposed, the valley had been inhabited by primitive man. An archeologist could have a ball in here. The Chinese scientists were missing a bet. Maybe they could find out what caused the smell. Nick wrinkled his nose. Ugh! That whiff had smelled like animal excreta that refused to decay, that lay ripe and stinking in the sun.
  
  He moved the glasses around to study the northern rim. Here, through a shallow scallop, a little saddle in the rock, he could see a faint, peekaboo glimmer on the far high horizon. Sunlight glinted on a silver spike. He knew it was Mount Makalu. Everest was just beyond. With the superb glasses and in pellucid air he was seeing nearly a hundred miles.
  
  On one of the nearer mountain slopes he could make out a tiny village hanging like a bird's nest. There was smoke and the flutter of what must be prayer flags. Near the village brown dots moved in a field — yaks plowing?
  
  The village did not worry him. There was not much chance of anyone there having powerful glasses. It was possible to move about in the valley without much fear of detection. Nick put the glasses away, rolled over on his back, stared at the sky and lit a cigarette. The smoke helped a little against the smell.
  
  Their luck, he considered, had been phenomenal. Too good! By the law of averages something had to go wrong soon. Meantime, though, they were in clover. The General was dead and couldn't be made to talk. The servants and the villagers, the "soldiers," they could be made to talk but they didn't know anything. The authorities would find out about the planes, of course, and about the two strangers who had come and vanished, but there too the luck was holding. Chances were good that the Chinese would think the two were after the secret airfield the General had mentioned.
  
  Fan Su came out of the cave carrying the two rifles. She smiled at him and he smiled back. Her mood had switched again. She kicked his foot. "Daydreaming? That won't find the stairs — if there are any stairs."
  
  Killmaster flipped away his cigarette and got up. He took a rifle from her. "Let's see. And you might pray a little, because if the old boy was lying I'm going to have to leave you here while I do the job." He pointed at the cliff overhanging them and added wryly, "Unless you're a good rock-climber?"
  
  The girl glanced around. Her smile faded. "I'll get up the cliff somehow. I'm not going to be left in this place alone!"
  
  Nick went into the cave for his climbing gear. They began a slow, careful search of the cliff base, making their way through heaps of huge rocks and boulders that might have been strewn by a careless giant hand. They passed another cave mouth.
  
  Behind him she said, "That smell — have you noticed? It's stronger when we get close to a cave."
  
  Nick had the glasses out again, minutely searching the rock face ahead of them. "Forget it," he said. "Probably just bad plumbing. The cave dwellers weren't much for sanitation."
  
  He heard her mutter — "Hai p'a." I am afraid. The. words she had uttered during the nightmare in Los Angeles. Anger flared in him, not so much at the girl as at circumstance. God damn it! Things were tough enough without this sudden, inexplicable breakdown of a girl who…
  
  The stairs.
  
  There they were, beginning in a crevice notched out of the rock face. Nick hastened forward. "They're here, baby. By God, they're here!"
  
  The first faint groove in the stone was about waist high. Nick stared at it. It was shallow, roughhewn, a bare six inches wide and an inch deep, but beyond doubt the work of men. Centuries had eroded the chisel marks into smoothness, but they were still discernible.
  
  Nick traced them upward. They marched straight up the cliff face for about a hundred feet, then sidled to the right to avoid an overhang. He could not see beyond that point. He turned to Fan Su. "Ill go up and scout a little. I think it's going to be fairly easy. For me, anyway, and I'll fix up the rough spots for you. You ever do any rock-climbing?"
  
  "Never."
  
  "Nothing to it," he said with an assurance that was not altogether genuine. "The big thing is to keep your nose against the rock face, don't look down and only look up as far as the next hold. And keep moving — don't freeze."
  
  Fan Su was gazing up the cliff. "It looks impossible," she said. "Like the side of a building — the Empire State. Maybe I can't do it, Nick."
  
  "You'll do it, honey." He laughed at her. "I'm talking about real rock-climbing — this is practically an escalator."
  
  On this first trip he took only his climbing gear, the Luger and the stiletto. He slung the thick coil of nylon rope over his shoulder and put a rock hammer in his belt, from which dangled a pouch containing various types of pitons. The fur boots were not the best for climbing, but that could not be helped.
  
  It was easy going to the first overhang. He glanced down. She was staring up at him, not shielding her eyes from the rock glare, and he realized with a little shock that there was no glare. The sun had gone. The wind seemed a little suffer. They might be in for a little bad weather. That was all he needed.
  
  Just above the overhang the steps had eroded into mere scratches in the stone. She would never get past this stretch. He hammered a piton into a crack beside the last full step, cut the line to an estimate, and began to inch up the cliff toward the next good step about a dozen feet above. This was very nearly the real thing, and for the last hand-hold he had to take off his mittens and hold them in his teeth while he searched for a crevice. As he found it his foot slipped, and for the space of a second he hung dangling by his finger tips. He sought with his toes again, cursing. That had been too close. He was out of practice.
  
  He reached the next good step and hammered in another piton, belaying and knotting the line and dropping it. He would tie it into the lower piton on his way down.
  
  Nick was now about halfway up the cliff face. The steps began to slant, to sidle crosswise over the cliff. Whatever primitive man had cut them had been intelligent enough to chose the easiest going. It would, he thought, have taken them years to cut these steps with their primitive tools.
  
  The going was fairly easy now. As he climbed, Nick began to think ahead. Timing was going to be important They must come up the face he was now climbing and cross a quarter of a mile of rough terrain to the Chumbi. He planned to do it just at dusk, when the light would be in their favor. They would have to reach the rim of the Chumbi before it was completely dark. Going back — if they did — would be easier because they would have some knowledge of the terrain and they could use flashlights. He did not care much if the enemy discovered him after he had planted the explosives.
  
  He glanced at the sky. It was a dull battleship gray, and tiny flecks of snow were dancing in the rising wind. Hell! Nothing to do but hope the storm held off until he had done his job.
  
  As he neared the top he grew increasingly conscious of fatigue. When he finally pulled himself over the rim he was gasping. Even here, at this comparatively low altitude, the Tibetan air was thin. You did not notice it until some violent exertion. He rolled over on his back, breathing hard. Two snowflakes clung to his face, melting. Directly over him an eagle circled on great pinions. I hope, he thought with a sour little grin, that you are not a Chinese eagle.
  
  When he was breathing normally again he wriggled to a buttress of rock and scanned with the binoculars. He nodded. The CIA maps and scaling were pretty damned accurate. Give them that. The distance from where he lay to the far rim of the table, where it dropped into the Chumbi, was just about a quarter of a mile. Far enough, considering that they must crawl it on their hands and knees.
  
  The terrain slanted gradually downward, away from him. It was rough, much like the floor of the valley, but with occasional stretches of smooth snow. Hidden crevasses? Nick shrugged. Just have to chance that He began to work out the best way over the expanse, using all the available cover but still making as straight a line as possible.
  
  The wind was getting up now. It was blowing directly in his face, from the west, and he could hear a low humming sound coming from the direction of the Chumbi. The wind fell, and the sound stopped. The wind came back and he heard it again. Finally he identified it. A generator. It must be a whopper. He couldn't have asked for a better beacon to home in on.
  
  Nick went back down the cliff. When he got to the overhang he stopped to consider. The girl could get up by the line and the pitons, with him to help her. Going down might be trickier. They just might be in a hell of a hurry.
  
  Nick found a crack and drove in a ring piton. He fastened a line to it, then worked his way out to the overhang, put in another ring piton and led the line through it. She was watching him from below, her quilted coat dotted with snow.
  
  He tossed the line down to her. "Catch."
  
  When he got down he belayed the end of the line around a tall slab of rock jutting some twenty feet away from the cliff. He explained. "Going up you do it the hard way. Following me. Coming down should be easy until you get to that overhang. You'll be leading me down. When you get to the overhang you can cut loose and rappel down. Just wrap your arms and legs around the line and slide. Okay?"
  
  She did not smile. "Okay, Nick. If you say so. What is it like up there?"
  
  He told her as they went back to the cave. She listened, nodding now and then, her eyes somber. The stench was worse, if anything. Nick lit a cigarette against it and offered her one, but she refused. Her dark eyes roved constantly up and down the valley. The snow was beginning to thicken now.
  
  As they entered the cave she said, "I think we're in for a storm. They can be very bad up here, even this early in the season."
  
  He was taking flares out of the pack. "I know. A little storm is all right, might even help us. I can do without a blizzard."
  
  Fan Su made tea, scalding hot, on the little pressure stove. They ate from cans and Nick had a slug of Scotch. One drink. She did not join him.
  
  After he had eaten, Nick took his flares and went to the little barren spot in the center of the valley. He planted them to make a square, a landing pad for the big helicopter that would pick them up. He hoped. The 'copter would be belly-riding in under a B52 and would have fuel enough to make it back to Sikkim. He glanced at the sky and listened to the rising howl of the wind. Again hoping. A lot of things could go wrong.
  
  When he got back to the cave, she was in her sleeping bag. He was headed for his own when she said, "Nick. Please. Come in with me. No — I do not want lovemaking. I just want to be near you. I want you to hold me."
  
  He squeezed his big body into the bag with her. He held her and whispered, "Get some sleep. And stop worrying — it's going to be all right. We've caught them with their trousers down — they don't know we're within a thousand miles."
  
  She nodded and clung to him. "I know — it isn't that. It's just that I feel so funny, Nick. I'm frightened and I don't really know why. This isn't like me — this really isn't me at all. I'm so nervous and tense I feel like screaming. I think it's that awful smell, mostly. It… it's like…"
  
  She stopped speaking. He said, "It's like what, baby?"
  
  "Never mind. You get some sleep, darling. You're the one that has to do all the real work."
  
  "One of us has to stay awake."
  
  "I will. I can't sleep anyway. Go on, now. Sleep."
  
  They checked their watches. "We've got three hundred feet of line to knot," he said. A few moments later he was sleeping. He would, she thought fondly, be able to sleep if he faced a firing squad in an hour. What a man he was!
  
  Fan Su stroked his face with her fingers. It was his dear face still, beneath the stain and the blacking and the stubble. He badly needed a shave. She knew now, really knew, that she loved him. Why had she never told him in so many words? Because of the lack of tenderness between them, perhaps? They had not had much tenderness. But she did love him. She would always love him.
  
  She shivered and pressed closer to him as the smell came back. Thick and cloying, unspeakable. She had almost told him what the smell meant to her — it was the odor of Death…
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The last of the light went just as they reached the far rim of the table between their valley and the Chumbi. They had made the ascent without too much difficulty, roped together, and crawled over a quarter of a mile of rock and snow.
  
  Nick was on the very rim, craning up and down the valley below. He twisted a dial on the binoculars, converting them to night glasses, and began a thorough search of the dark slot beneath them. The generator hum, louder now, was coming from their left. He waited patiently, shielding his face from the bite of the wind. Slowly twisting snow fell past him into the gorge below. The fall was light so far, and the wind not too bad. If the storm held off for a few hours longer it would work for them.
  
  Everything was go. Now it was a question of patience. He planned to wait an hour or so, not more than two hours, for some clue from below. If it didn't come he would have to go down anyway and start searching.
  
  Nearly an hour passed. Nothing. They lay side by side on the rocks, snow covering them, and spoke very little.
  
  Then a spark in the night. A single yellow flash from the direction of the generator sound. Someone had opened and closed a door.
  
  "That's it," he said. He ran the maps, the satellite pictures, through his head like a film. There would be a half-moon carved out of the rock, a car park off to one side, Nissen huts nearby. This was an open stretch, a narrow macadam road connecting sections of the tunnel. Somewhere in that half-moon was a door, an entrance of some sort, into the cliffs forming the other side of the Chumbi Pass. Find it.
  
  Three hundred feet of nylon line had been knotted and belayed through ring pitons hammered into the rock close to the rim. Nick picked up the coil and tossed it down into the pit. Should be more than enough. He stood up, chafing his hands and stomping on half-frozen feet. He ran a last-minute check on himself: explosive pouch, Luger and stiletto in their usual places, the trench knife in his belt, the sawed-off shotgun dangling from a lanyard down his back. He took off his mittens and tossed them on the snow, his hands protected now by only thin inner gloves. Mittens were too clumsy.
  
  The girl was keeping both rifles, with sniperscopes on both for night shooting. She wasn't going to hit much, he knew, but if he ran into trouble on the way out she could put up a diversion, make the ChiComs think they were being attacked in some force.
  
  Nick cradled her chin in his big hand. "If you have to shoot, keep moving up and down the rim. Blast away. Throw all the lead you can, give me a chance to get back up the line."
  
  She clung to his hand. "Nick! Oh, Nick…"
  
  He patted her cheek. "Steady now. You know what to do. We've worked it all out. Do it. I'm depending on you. See you."
  
  Killmaster picked up the line, braced his feet on the rim, and dropped out of sight. He walked his way down a few feet, until the line was clear over him; then he let his legs dangle free and went down swiftly, using the knots. There were no overhangs and the line fell free to the floor of the pass. He counted the knots as he went. When his toes struck solid earth he had come a little over two hundred feet.
  
  He gathered in the extra line and coiled it. From his pocket he took a small cylinder with a rubber suction cup on one end. The other end was recessed. Nick pressed a small switch and a tiny red light glowed in the recess. He jammed the suction cup against the rock face where the line dangled. The red light could be seen only from direct front. He reached into another pocket and took out a black metal box the size of a cigarette case and held it to his ear. The beep-beep-beep came loud and clear, nearly deafening him. He would be able to find the line again. He put the metal box back in his pocket.
  
  The darkness was total. He got his bearings by facing the cliff, the glimmer of red light, then turning right. The road bent a little here. He made his way cautiously until he felt the macadam beneath his feet, under the snow. He took off a glove and thrust a finger into the white film to make sure. He was on the road.
  
  As he went cautiously forward he reconstructed the terrain from the maps, and as he had seen it from above in last light. The half-moon carved in the mountain was about five hundred yards from where he now was. He should, before much longer, encounter a counterweighted drop barrier. It should be down now. He snapped the stiletto down into his right hand and with his left drew the trench knife from its scabbard. The killing — there was sure to be killing — must be silent!
  
  He walked now with the trench knife extended before him. The wind, in the narrow mouth of the pass, took on new force and shrieked at him. It gusted a mixture of sleet and snow into his face that stung like BB pellets.
  
  The barrier was down, as it should be. There had been no traffic on the road all the time they had watched from above. No guard on the barrier.
  
  Killmaster slogged on for another hundred yards, then stopped abruptly. He sniffed at the air and smiled. What he had been looking for, expecting. The fresh pungent odor of wood smoke. There was a guard hut up somewhere ahead and the guard was keeping warm. He hoped there was only one man. He could kill two easily enough, but that was tricky and always dangerous. Always the chance that one of them could shout or fire a shot.
  
  The smoke got thicker, the wind slapping it into his face. He fell to his hands and knees and began to crawl. And now, because his keen eyes were perfectly adjusted, he spotted the little shack a dozen yards away. A faint reddish glow was leaking from it. A window, and a stove going in there.
  
  But how many? He crawled toward the glow, a black-faced silent thing in the snow. How many?
  
  One man. One shadow in the hut, hunched over the red-hot Sibley stove. Killmaster dropped below the window. Wind howled at him. His face was a slab of cold marble, his hands stiff and congealing rapidly. That fire would feel good.
  
  He tapped gently on the door with the trench knife. Movement in the hut. The guard called in a querulous voice, a young voice. "Who?" The voice of a kid, Killmaster thought. Unlucky kid, to be on duty this night. He rapped on the door again.
  
  Nick got him from behind, one arm choking off his yell, the other hand slashing down at the rifle. The soldier dropped the rifle and squirmed helplessly in the AXEman's grip. Nick put the point of the stiletto to the man's throat and whispered in soft Chinese: "Be quiet. If you obey and are quiet I will not kill you." You had to lie sometimes.
  
  He hauled the man inside. He had been right, he was little more than a boy. A shivering boy gazing with distended eyes at this black-faced demon out of the night. Nick dragged him to the red-hot stove and thrust him to his knees, his face six inches from the scarlet metal. A little closer. The odor of scorching hair began to fill the little shack.
  
  Killmaster held him as easily as he would hold a newborn babe. He asked questions. He got answers. Truthful answers born of abject terror.
  
  It was time to kill him then and get on with the job. He had all the information he needed. He could not do it. The stiletto would not fall. The AXEman cursed himself. Why couldn't it have been a man? But a kid, a beardless kid! He couldn't do it.
  
  In the end he sent the boy into the darkness with a karate chop and bound him with rope from a coil hanging on a nail. Weak, maybe. Even dangerous, maybe. He couldn't kill the kid.
  
  Time was now more important than ever. He had gagged the boy, but gags could be spit out and ropes broken. Get on with it.
  
  He came to where the road scalloped out to the right to form the half-circle. Dim lights glowed in the Nissen huts and he saw the silhouettes of trucks in the car park. He was halfway around the circle, approaching the entrance cut into the rock, when the door of one of the Nissen huts opened. Nick froze against a rock.
  
  A man came a few steps outside the door and relieved himself. Past him Nick could see lights, smoke writhing in the air, and a huddle of soldiers around a card game. When the man had finished he went back into the hut. The door slammed. Nick breathed again and went on.
  
  He found it easily enough, the iron door set back into the rock front. To the right, the kid had said. Nick felt and his fingers touched the panel. They found a button. He pressed it. Now for the big bluff.
  
  A loudspeaker rasped somewhere over his head. It demanded his name and business. Nick put his mouth close to the panel, his fingers had found the fine mesh, and answered. He made himself a general in the People's Army, a very impatient and profane general. There was big trouble. He demanded entrance and if the turtle in there was slow about it there would be a firing squad.
  
  The iron door began to slide back. Nick was through the opening and into the anteroom before the surprised lieutenant had taken his finger off the button.
  
  The black-faced devil frightened the lieutenant just long enough. Nick got him in the heart with the stiletto. He hauled the body out of the chair, the heart still beating, and hauled it back into a gloomy corner. No one else around. A corridor led from the anteroom back into the bowels of the mountain. Back there, somewhere, was Prop B. He wasn't going to look for it. If the iron door closed behind him while he was back there he was a gone duck. He had other plans, better plans.
  
  Nick ran back to the desk. He had the little grenade out now, a handful of hell. He fitted the timing device into a slot, twisted it, then pulled the pin. It was lethal now. Ticking. At twelve-thirty, half an hour after they were picked up, this mountain was going by-by forever. The mountain and everything within a radius of ten miles.
  
  He got on his knees and crawled into the kneehole of the desk. He taped the ticking grenade to the wood far back in a corner where no one was likely to touch it with his leg or knee.
  
  Five minutes had passed. Nick took a fast look at the buttons on the desk. Three of them. One to open, one to close, one undoubtedly an alarm. His finger hovered. They were all black buttons, no way of telling. He glanced at the iron door. It was still open, letting light seep out into the falling snow. If one of the soldiers in the huts saw it and got curious…
  
  He dared not risk it. He turned and ran down the corridor, pulling things out of the explosives pouch as he ran. Decoys had to be planted. He began to roll out fuse as he ran. Let them find one decoy, let them find two, so long as they did not find the grenade under the desk.
  
  The corridor opened on a deep circular pit drilled into the living rock. And there it was. Prop B! It dangled from a high tripod of steel beams, an outsize torpedo. Part of it was openwork and he could see light shining from the far side. The thing had no guts as yet. Fine. It wasn't likely to have any after twelve-thirty.
  
  There was an iron-railed gallery around the pit with corridors leading off from it. To the labs, no doubt. A steep iron ladder led down to the floor of the pit. Nick was tempted. A ball of plastique in the thing itself would make a splendid decoy. If they found it in time they would stop looking, think they were home free.
  
  No deal. He heard voices from the pit. Two men, both wearing white coats, had emerged from a passage somewhere below and were walking toward the huge tripod.
  
  Nick had a wad of plastique the size of a tennis ball. He retreated into the shadows and considered for a micro-second. His nerves were beginning to hum now. Time to get out — get out.
  
  He crept forward to the iron railing of the gallery. The men were standing directly beneath the tripod, staring up at the torpedo-shaped shell, talking and gesticulating. Nick glanced over his shoulder. Corridor empty, iron door still open. This kind of luck couldn't last much longer. Something had to break soon.
  
  He rammed a detonator into the plastique, twisted the timer, then pasted it gently on one of the rail stanchions down near the floor. Maybe they would find it, maybe not. No harm if they did. If they didn't — well, the plastique was set for the same time as the atomic grenade.
  
  One of the men under the tripod looked up and saw Nick. There was a shout, an excited babble. Nick walked into the full light and stood grinning horribly down at them, his teeth flashing like a shark's in the black face. He held up a stick of dynamite, let them see it, then flung it down into the pit. It wouldn't explode. It wasn't prepared. He didn't want it to explode. It just might jar the thing under the desk.
  
  The men had turned and fled, shouting and falling over each other. Frantic. Buttons were going to be pushed, and soon. Nick ran.
  
  As he sprinted past the iron door, an alarm began to clang somewhere inside the mountain. Nick flung the explosives pouch away and ran. He hit the road, the small metal box to his ear now, and he ran. The beeps, faint at first began to come in stronger. He followed them, sliding and skidding in the snow, and running as fast as ever in his life.
  
  Behind him lights came on and a siren began to moan. Nick ran. He forgot about the barrier and slammed into it, slid off, fell on his face, got up and kept running. The beep-beeping was strong now. He was nearly there.
  
  He slowed, searching anxiously to his right for the tiny red dot that would lead him to the line. There it was, a little beacon of safety in the windy night.
  
  "Baby," said Nick Carter into the wind. "Baby, am I glad to see you!"
  
  Five seconds of groping, and his fingers brushed the line. He tossed away the sawed-off shotgun, threw the trench knife into a snow bank. He tested the line. It was good and taut, just as he had left it. Fan Su was up there, waiting. This should settle her nerves, he thought. It was just a sweet piece of cake. Nothing to it. He plucked off the red light and crushed it underfoot.
  
  He began to climb hand over hand, legs dangling, going up the line like Tarzan after Jane.
  
  He was halfway up when he heard the first shot. He recognized the pettish snap of the Mannlicher. Then another shot. Then silence.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 11
  
  
  
  
  Killmaster hung on the line, just below the cliff rim, and listened. Nothing but the howl of the wind, rising now and buffeting him back and forth on the fragile nylon. After the last shot, absolutely nothing. He pulled himself over the rim, belly-flopped and rolled over a few paces, came up with the Luger in his hand. Still nothing. The wind brought him the wail of the siren from below; up here there was only the sob of wind and dark emptiness. He called out, "Fan Su?" The wind answered.
  
  Futile. In this rising gale she would not hear him. What in hell was going on? She would never have fired without good cause.
  
  He decided to risk the flashlight. He flicked it, still on his belly, holding it at arm's length, and drew a semicircle with the beam on the snow.
  
  The rifle. One of the Mannlichers lying in the snow. He turned off the light, crawled to the rifle and picked it up, trying to fight down a first touch of crazy panic. The Goddamned rifle had been bent! The barrel twisted, bent, into almost a full circle.
  
  Nick didn't, couldn't, quite believe it. Yet there it was, the black metal cold under his fingers. What in God's name could have done that?
  
  He dropped the ruined weapon and crawled a few paces away. He used the light again, casting it back over their trail across the tableland. The way they had come. He saw the first blood splotch, staining the snow a gaudy crimson. It was fast being covered by new snow. Fan Su had wounded the enemy, at least. Or had she? Was it her blood or his? His? Nick fought against the insane thoughts that were rapping at his mind. There had to be a rational explanation for all this.
  
  He crawled to the blood splotch, using the flashlight sparingly. A blood trail ran away from the dark gout, running back over the plateau toward the valley.
  
  The old General had said: The place is known as the Valley of the Yeti."
  
  Cut it out, Killmaster told himself. Cut it out now! You'll be as crazy as the General.
  
  He stood up, careless now, fighting against the mad, unspeakable thoughts beginning to batter at him. He cupped his hands and called into the wind: "Fan Su — Fan Su…"
  
  Only the wind answered. Snow spit in his face. And he saw the other rifle.
  
  Nick followed the beam of the flashlight and picked up the rifle. It was undamaged, lying a great distance from the blood splotch, as though it had been flung with tremendous force. He checked the gun, jacked a cartridge into the chamber, put away the Luger. He let the flashlight prowl around the area. No one had shot at him yet. He did not admit it, even then, to himself, but he had a sick feeling that nobody was going to shoot at him!
  
  He saw the track. He bent over it, the flesh crawling on his neck and his backbone turning cold. He had seen the track of a gorilla once, and this was something like it Yet not quite. A snow bear? The single print was a foot wide and a little more than that long. It lay in the shelter of a boulder overhang or he would not have found it at all — the wind was scouring the snow like a fine brush.
  
  Using the flashlight at random, he began to backtrack across the flat tableland. There was blood here and there, and one of the grotesque tracks now and then where the wind had not gotten at it. It took him a minute or so to realize where the thing was heading — back to the stairs leading up the valley wall.
  
  The thing. Something! By now he admitted it was not human, at least not completely so. And, whatever it was, it had Fan Su.
  
  Nick Carter began to run as fast as he could over the rough terrain, the beam of the flash picking up the blood spoor now and again. He had the rifle ready and his face was grim and cold — and he knew that he was frightened as never before in his life. For the girl and for himself. What was it?
  
  He came to the valley rim. Here he had put in a piton and a short length of line to help the girl back down the cliff. He fell to his belly and crawled to the rim, put the powerful beam of the light down the side of the cliff. Nothing but drifting snow. And the smell! That putrid odor floating up out of the valley. And a little blood on the snow near the piton.
  
  Killmaster slung the rifle and went over the side of the cliff. If the thing, whatever it was, came at him now he would be helpless. As be felt his way down the perilous sheer façade, flattened, fighting to keep from being blown off the surface like a fly off a wall, he understood that the creature must have come down this same way. Carrying the girl!
  
  A snow gorilla? Wild stories floated around Tibet about such creatures. Yeti? Abominable Snowman? How crazy could you get! But something had taken the girl, had curled a steel barrel like a pretzel, and had gone down a sheer wall with over a hundred pounds' burden as easily as in an elevator. And there was always the smell — like thousands of pounds of fresh dung!
  
  He came to the overhang where he had rigged a line so Fan Su could rappel down. It was faster. He hooked an arm and leg over the swaying nylon and slid down, rifle extended in one hand and finger on the trigger. His fur-booted feet hit the rock below and he dropped off, sweeping the area with the flashlight.
  
  She was lying huddled on the snow a dozen feet away from the edge of the cliff. He ran to her, sweeping the light around, seeing nothing but tracks leading away. And blood. She had wounded the thing, at least.
  
  He knelt, knowing what he was going to see, and put the light on the quiet body. She was dead. Her quilted suit was torn to ribbons — she must have put up a hell of a fight — and her delicate features had been swept away with a slash of feral claws. Her slender throat was torn to bits, and beneath the torn jacket he could see terrible bites on her arms and shoulders.
  
  Nick could not bring himself to look at her ruined face for long. God knew that he had seen enough of bloody death, but this was too much even for his staunch heart. He pulled the ripped coat over her face and weighted it with rocks against the wind.
  
  He picked up the rifle and went to the first track, half a dozen feet away. The wind down here in the shelter of the narrow valley was not so fierce, and he could follow the spoor with no difficulty. In the protected lee of a rearing slab of basalt he found the first perfect, complete, footprint of the creature. He knelt to study it.
  
  It was all backward, reversed. The paw, foot, claw? of the thing had two toes in front and three behind. He did not really want to believe it yet, but his eyes were seeing it now. Sweat trickled icily on him, and at the same time he felt as cold as he had ever felt.
  
  He followed the tracks to a cave entrance near the stairs. The hole leading into the cave was low and narrow; he had to double over to put the beam of light into the opening. He saw more blood spots and, on the dry rock inside the cave, another of the smudged prints. After that no prints, only blood leading across the arching cavern to another dark hole on the far side. The odor was almost overpowering, sickening Nick, nearly defeating his will to enter the place.
  
  Come on, he told himself. Come on, you cowardly sonofabitch, come on! Get it. Kill it. Whatever it is — kill it!
  
  He went into the cave on his belly, using the light sparingly now — the batteries were beginning to go — and following the trail of blood.
  
  The hole on the opposite side of the cave led into a narrow rock tube that twisted and turned like a tunnel in a primitive mine. At places he could hardly raise his head, and his big shoulders, made bigger by the padding he wore, would barely slide through. But the blood spots led him on. It was in here somewhere.
  
  There was a subtle difference in the smell now. It was still a terrible stench — he had vomited already without stopping his crawl — but now the smell was fresher. Closer and stronger. And, somehow, infinitely more evil.
  
  Killmaster first began to realize what he was up against when the tube led him into another cavern. The blood spoor crossed the floor of this cave and disappeared into another hole, another passage, on the far side. The damned caves were all connected!
  
  He lay panting and sweating, shaking now and again with fear and fury, and looked at the snow being blown past the entrance on the gale. Would they fly in this weather? Could the B52 drop the helicopter successfully in a storm like this?
  
  At this moment Nick didn't give a damn. He crossed the cave, flopped to his belly, checked the rifle, and wedged himself into the tube. The thing had to stop sometime. To fight. Or perhaps to die. Maybe it was bleeding to death even now.
  
  It turned into a nightmare. A ghoul-haunted dream in which he pursued the blood and the smell through endless rocky tubes and corridors and never caught up. Once he saw a glint of red in the darkness ahead of him. Eyes staring in the ink. The light was nearly gone now and he could not see what belonged to the eyes — only a hulking thing in shadow. He fired, and knew he had missed even as the echoes crashed in his ears. The thing moved on, out of his view. Only the smell was left, that terrible retch-making odor. Nick Carter crawled on, the flashlight only a feeble yellow glimmer.
  
  He began to understand that the creature could think, at least to a degree. It had been hurt and it had connected the source of hurt with the gun in Nick's hand; either that, or the flash and report of the rifle had warned it. He never caught sight of it again and the smell began, by degrees, to grow fainter.
  
  When at last he came to another open cave he was stunned to see gear lying around. It was their cavern, the one they had been hiding in all that day. A rock hole led off to the rear, shielded by rocks, so he had not spotted it before. He had not really explored the cave anyway.
  
  Nick Carter glanced at his watch. It was a quarter of twelve! He glanced at the passage leading back into the cave, then to another, and another, and he knew he was beaten. His lean face worked and he growled deep in his throat and, for that instant, there was something of the beast about the AXEman.
  
  But he was beaten. He knew it. He accepted it.
  
  He paused in the cave only long enough to replace the batteries in the flashlight; then he made his way to the flares in the middle of the valley. He had to bend and fight his way against the wind, but the snow had lessened. He lit the flares, saw them splash scarlet torches in the night, outlining the pad for the helicopter. If they came at all. He did not really care — if they didn't come, couldn't get down, he knew what he was going to do. Hunt the thing again — hunt it until one of them died.
  
  He went back to where Fan Su lay. Snow had half covered her body. He did not look at the face, just picked her up and carried her back to the blood-red flares. Then he waited, staring up into the swirling storm.
  
  The big double-fanned helicopter, buffeted and tossed by the wind, came dropping out of the clouds at 12:13 on the nose. Thirteen minutes late.
  
  Nick ran to the 'copter as a door opened cautiously. They were showing no lights.
  
  Someone said: "Yellow Venus?"
  
  "Yes." He handed up the girl's body. "Put a blanket over her."
  
  Killmaster remained in the rear of the big helicopter with the girl. The sergeant went back to the lieutenant who was piloting the chopper.
  
  "He says to get out fast," the sergeant told his superior. "He says all hell is going to break loose around here in a few minutes."
  
  The lieutenant nodded. After a moment the sergeant said: "I got one good look at the guy's face back there. He looks like he's been through hell already. I never saw anything like it. I dunno — maybe it's the stiff with him! Must be bad. He wouldn't let me see the face. They hand us some sweet jobs these days!"
  
  The lieutenant only nodded again. He was grim. It was going to be a long, tough flight to Sikkim and they were only just going to make it on their fuel. He concentrated on his own worries.
  
  Suddenly the big helicopter lurched, swung and dipped, dropped and started to flip on her side. The pilot righted it. The sergeant was staring at a growing red and yellow burst of flame below and far behind them. More blasts shook the 'copter as a terrier shakes a rat.
  
  "Jesus!" said the sergeant. "The guy wasn't kidding."
  
  Nick Carter watched the unholy blast break and shimmer along the horizon. The 'copter fell like an elevator. He reached to pat the covered face.
  
  "I'm sorry, honey. At least we gave you one hell of a funeral pyre."
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  notes
  
  
  
  
  
  Примечания
  
  
  
  
  
  1
  
  
  
  
  See Nick Carter — Dragon Flame.
  
  
  
  
  
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