by Nick Carter
Annotation
THE FIRST MAN knew too much. So they shattered his body in a thousand pieces before he could give a shred of information.
THE SECOND MAN lived in terror. Death had pursued him through a lifetime devoted to espionage; when they pumped a bullet through his throat, he was not even surprised.
THE THIRD MAN was a lot tougher to knock off. His name was Nick Carter and he was ordered to pursue the assignment that had killed the other two.
This time around, Nick has to destroy the fanatic leader of Germany's neo-Nazi underground; a man wearing a known and trusted face — and hell-bent on becoming the next Fuehrer.
For Nick, the assignment begins with a blonde doing a strip-tease in a bedroom of an ancient castle on the Rhine…
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Nick Carter
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Nick Carter
Killmaster
Berlin
Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
OCR Mysuli: [email protected]
I
Waiting is something I've never been particularly good at. They say that's a characteristic of people who are essentially action people. I guess that's me then. Oh, I've sat for hours on hours waiting for a Chinese Communist agent to show himself or to get my hands on a particular sadist. But that's a different land of waiting. I'm not sure it's waiting, at all, but only a quiet form of action. But the kind of waiting I was doing now, just sitting, was definitely not for me.
The middle Rhineland is unquestionably a lovely, lush, verdant country. The hillsides are green. Alpine flowers of violet, rose and gold roll down the mountainsides to the very edge of the river. The road is winding, interesting at every turn. Little storybook farms and wide-beamed houses pop up unexpectedly. The huge castles that line both banks, the great Schlosses of the medieval Teutonic knights, are truly wunderbar, magnificent and striking. The mädchens are maddeningly friendly and full-bodied, almost eager. Most of them show the result of a little too much "würst" to be my ideal, but I found myself wishing for time to investigate the scene properly.
Maybe it's because it is all so very opulent and breathtaking, but it's even more of a pain when you're in a sweat to catch a boat and your damned rented Opel breaks down. You want to look at it all, you want to enjoy it all, you want to revel in it, but you can't. All you can do is wait and grow impatient and feel frustrated and think of how much worse you'll feel when the Chief learns you didn't show.
My German is more than fair, and I'd flagged a passing motorist and asked him to send some help. From where my rented chariot had broken down I could see the Rhine below and looking north the roofs and church spire of Marksburg. Beyond, just out of range, was Koblenz where I was to meet the Rhine excursion boat, the popular Ausflugschiffe. As there was absolutely nothing to do but wait, I opened the car door, let in some air and thought back to the fun I was having in Lucerne only this morning.
After my relatively small part in the Martinique-Montreal affair, I'd gone up to Switzerland to see Charley Treadwell and the ski-and-sun chalet he owned just outside Lucerne itself. It was a grand and proper reunion of old friends, full of boozing and reminiscing. It was Charley who introduced me to Anne-Marie. French and Swiss, with a little Kraut tossed in for leavening, Anne-Marie was pert and fun to be with. Medium height with short, cropped hair and dancing brown eyes, she was a terror on the ski runs and a dream in bed. We tried to divide the days up evenly.
Of course, like every AXE agent, I had to call headquarters and let Hawk know where I could be reached. It was a part of the AXE instant-action network that allowed Hawk to put his finger on a man s t all times and all places. It was also a sure-fire way to louse up a good time, I'd found out long ago. I found it out again in Lucerne with Anne-Marie. It was six o'clock in the morning when the phone in my room jangled and I heard Hawk's flat, dry voice. Anne-Marie's lovely arm was casually tossed across my chest, her breasts a soft blanket pressing into me.
"This is the Amalgamated Press and Wire Services," Hawk's voice said crisply. It was a wide-open line, of course, and he was using the usual cover. "Is that you, Nick?"
"It's me," I said. "I'm just thrilled at hearing from you."
"You're not alone," he said at once. The old fox knew me like the proverbial book. Too well, I often thought. "How close is she?" he asked.
"Pretty close."
I could see his gray eyes, steely behind the rimless spectacles, trying to build a quick picture of how close was close.
"Close enough to hear?" came the next question.
"Yes, but she's asleep."
"We don't want to be scooped on this story," Hawk went on, deciding to continue to play it cozy. "One of our photographers, Ted Dennison, has something really big. I believe you worked with Ted on a story once, didn't you?"
"Yes, I know him," I answered. Ted Dennison was one of the best AXE men in the European theater and years ago we had worked on an assignment together. I remembered him as being particularly good at ferreting out information.
"You'll meet Ted aboard the Rhine excursion boat which stops in at Koblenz at three-thirty," Hawk's voice droned. "As he has something really important, if you miss the Rhine excursion steamer at Koblenz, go on to the next stop and board it there. That would be at Mainz at five o'clock."
The phone clicked off and I sighed and slid out from under Anne-Marie. She didn't even stir. That was one of the first things I'd learned about her during our four glorious days together. When she skied, she skied. When she drank, she drank. When she made love, she made love and when she slept, she slept. There were no moderations with this girl. She did everything up to the hilt. I dressed, left her a note saying my boss had called me away and slipped out into the dawn light of Lucerne, cold and still and bracing. I knew that if she had the broken-heart syndrome, which I doubted she'd have, Charley Treadwell would pat her head and hold her hand. I caught a plane to Frankfurt and the glorious Rhine.
And so I was here, treading the same ground where Caesar, Attila, Charlemagne, Napoleon and all the modern-day conquerors had marched their legions, sitting in a broken-down, rented Opel. I tried not to let it all go to my head. I was about to get out and hail another passing motorist when I saw the Volkswagen breakdown van roll up, its small, round winch jutting out from the rear. The young mechanic was round faced, dark haired and polite. He went at the car with Teutonic thoroughness, for which I was grateful, and Teutonic slowness, for which I was somewhat less than grateful. From the cut of my clothes he had quickly seen that I wasn't German and when I told him I was American he made sure to erklaren each step as he went along. I finally convinced him my German was pretty good and I could do without his explaining each step. He located the trouble as being in the vergasser, the carburetor, and as he was putting in a new one, I watched with gritted teeth as the Rhine excursion boat went past down below.
The boat was out of sight when he finished. I paid him in American money, which brought an especially happy smile to his face, hopped into the little sedan and once more tried to make it believe it was a Ferrari. To its credit, I must say it tried. We took the curving mountain road full out, bouncing along past more charming houses and more forbidding castles, playing dangerously close to that edge where weight and momentum part company.
As the road lowered in a series of swoops and dips, it moved closer to the Rhine and I caught glimpses of the excursion boat up ahead, serenely chugging along. I finally caught up with it precisely at the spot where the road flattened out to run level with the river. I found myself directly opposite the boat
and I slowed down. I was going to make it to Koblenz in time. I sighed in relief. I thought of Dennison out there on the boat. At least he was relaxing, enjoying himself in the sun, while I'd spent all day trying to catch up to him. I cast another look at the excursion boat, long and low, with a small cabin amidship and the rest of her open for sightseers to crowd the rails. I was looking across at the boat when it happened, right before my eyes. It was unreal, the damnedest-looking thing I'd ever seen, almost like watching a slow-motion movie. Of course, there were the explosions first, two of them, a smaller one followed by a huge roar as the boilers went up. But it wasn't the explosions which shook me. It was the sight of the cabin section rising up into the air and coming apart. With the cabin, I saw whole sections of the boat start to go off in different directions. Bodies of people arched into the air like Roman candles at a fireworks display.
I braked hard and came to a bouncing, jouncing stop alongside the riverbank. It was still raining debris over the river as I got out of the Opel, and the excursion boat had all but disappeared. Only the bow and stern sections remained and were falling in on each other. The spot in the river looked as thought some giant hand had suddenly dumped a load of driftwood and debris there. I was struck by the strange silence over everything, following the initial explosions. There were a few cries, the soft hiss of steam meeting water, but largely there was silence. I stripped off everything but my shorts, putting Wilhelmina, my Luger, and Hugo, the pencil-thin stiletto strapped to my forearm, under my clothes. I dived into the Rhine and struck out for the scene. There'd be damned few people alive, I knew, but there was always the chance there might be someone left to save. I knew that calls to the police and to hospitals would have already started from the houses fining the river and on ahead I saw a small tug turning around in mid-river to steam back.
Sections of wood floated past me, torn, jagged, splintered pieces of hull, rail and timbers. Bodies, some equally torn and jagged, drifted by. It was then I saw an arm slowly rise out of the water, trying to swim. I moved toward the blond head attached to it. When I reached the girl, I saw her face, round and pretty with nice even features, her eyes a blue glass, dazed and staring. I got behind her, locked an arm around her neck and started for shore with her. Her body relaxed at once and she let me take over, resting her head back in the water. I glanced again at her eyes. They were on the edge of going into shock.
The Rhine, at that point, not far below the swift and dangerous gebirgsstrecke or mountain stretch, still had a swift, powerful current. We were a couple of hundred yards downriver from where I'd left the car when I finally pulled the girl ashore. Her dress, a pink cotton print, was pressed tightly against her wet skin, revealing a thoroughly lovely full figure and large breasts with a certain self-sufficient majesty to them. A long but rounded torso had just enough waistline to be curvaceous and enough abdomen to be sensuous. Her face, very German, was classic in its broad cheekbones, fair complexion and small, upturned nose. The blue eyes were still in another world, though I thought I saw signs of them coming about. I could hear the whine of sirens and the sounds of voices as people flocked down to the riverbank. The girl's full breasts rose and fell in delicious rhythm as she breathed deep, air-gulping draughts. Small boats were putting out from shore to seek survivors. It would be a fruitless search, I was convinced. It had been one helluva explosion. I could still see that cabin being launched into the air like something from Cape Kennedy.
The girl stirred and I reached out to pull her up to a sitting position, the wet dress clinging to her, outlining every curve of her young body. The glassy-eyed look had vanished and had been replaced by a moment of remembrance, a sudden return of horror flooding back into her consciousness. I saw the fear and panic leap into her eyes and I reached out for her. She tumbled into my arms, wet softness, shuddering sobs wracking her body.
"Nein, Fräulein," I murmured. "Kein mehr, Schreien sie nicht. Alles ist über."
I let her cling to me until her shaking sobs subsided and she drew back, her blue eyes searching my face.
"You saved my life. Thank you," she said.
"You probably would have made it to shore," I told her. I meant it. She might have.
"You were aboard the ship?" she half-questioned.
"No, sweetie," I answered. "I was driving alongside you when the explosion occurred. In fact, I was on my way to Koblenz to board her to meet a friend. I dived in, found you and got you to shore."
She looked around, and the fright was still very much in her eyes as she glanced out at the river, then peered up the sloping shoreline of the riverbank. She shivered in the wet cotton as a wind blew and the dress, pressed against her, outlined the small buttons of her nipples. She turned to catch my eyes on them and I saw her own blue pupils flicker ever so slightly.
"My name is Helga," she said. "Helga Ruten."
"And I'm Nick Carter," I said.
"You are not German?" she asked in surprise. "You speak a magnificent German."
"American," I said. "Did you have anyone else aboard with you, Helga?"
"No, I was alone," she said. "It was a pleasant afternoon and I'd just decided to go for the sail."
Her eyes were studying me now, flicking across my chest and shoulders. There was over six feet of me for her to examine and it took her a few moments. Now it was my turn to see approval in her eyes. She kept her eyes averted from the scene of death and destruction in mid-river and made a remarkable recovery. Her eyes were clear, bright, her voice even and controlled. She was shivering, but from the cold, wet clothes.
"You say you have a car here?" she asked and I nodded, gesturing back up the bank.
"I have an uncle who has a home nearby," she said. "In fact, I was just admiring it when… when it happened. I know where the key is kept. We could go there and dry out."
"Fine with me," I said, helping her to her feet. She swayed, came against me and her breasts were soft and exciting against my skin, even through the wet cotton dress. This was a helluva lot of girl, I decided. I was never more right. I went back to the car with her, threw my things in the back seat and took a final look at the rescuers now crowding the river. Most of what they had to do would come under the name of classifying and recovering. It had been a thoroughly nasty piece of business, and I thought about Ted Dennison. Maybe he had survived, but it was unlikely. I rather thought Helga was just about the only survivor or damn near it. I'd check the police and the hospitals when I got to a phone and get in touch with Hawk later. Poor Ted, to live a lifetime with death and danger and then get it because the boiler of an excursion boat blows up.
Helga was shaking from the wet and the cold now. She pointed to the top of an old schloss rising majestically out of the mountains not far ahead.
"Turn off here at the first exit and take the small road at the end of it… Zauber Gasschen," she said.
"Enchanted Lane," I repeated. "Nice name."
"It is a private road," she went on. "It leads to the door of my uncle's castle. The castle grounds run right to the river. Uncle has a landing there but he only uses the place on weekends really. He's not one of these broken-down nobility who have to turn their places into sight-seeing stops or museums. He's an industrialist."
I found the little road marked Enchanted Lane, followed it up through thickly wooded terrain. As the road wound its way steeply, I caught glimpses of huge, open expanses of green lawn enclosed by heavy woods. Helga was shivering almost continuously now, and as we moved upwards I felt the change in the air, felt my own skin growing cold and rough. I was glad when I found myself staring at the drawbridge of the huge moated castle, grim and forbidding as it was. Helga told me I could drive across the drawbridge and I did so, halting before the huge wooden door. She hopped out and hunted around some of the big blocks of stone at the corner of the high wall surrounding the castle. She came up with a set of large, heavy, iron keys, inserted one into the lock and the huge door swung slowly open just as I was getting out to help her.
Hopping back into the car, she said, "Drive right into the court and let's get out of these wet things."
"Right," I answered, tooling the little Opel into the huge, empty stone courtyard where once rows of knights and their squires lined up.
"Does your uncle happen to have a telephone?" I asked Helga.
"Oh, yes," she said, running both hands through her shock of very blond hair, tossing her head to shake the wetness out. "There are phones all over the place."
"Good," I said. "I told you I was boarding the excursion boat to meet an old business acquaintance. I want to find out what happened to him."
There was an eerie quiet to the huge castle as I stood in my shorts in the courtyard, looking up at the turreted walls, the ancient stone battlements.
"No servants?" I asked Helga.
"Uncle has them come only on the weekends when he's here," she said. "There's a gardener somewhere about and a wine cellar man, but that's all. Come, I'll show you to a room where you can dry out."
She led me past the huge main hall where I glimpsed two long oak tables and medieval banners hanging from the ceiling, stone walls and a huge fireplace. The room she led me into was a tremendous place in itself with a king-size canopied bed, rich draperies and tapestries and high-backed, sturdy chairs of wood with thick brocade pillows. A tall credenza stood at one end and from it, Helga tossed me a towel.
"It's a kind of guest room," she said, gesturing to the walls. "I've stayed in it myself. I'll be down the corridor, changing. See you in five minutes."
I watched her go, wet dress still pressed tightly against a round, slightly plump rear. Helga, I'd decided, was a big girl on a big frame, but she carried it all off exceedingly well. I dried myself thoroughly, put back on everything but my jacket and stretched out on the huge bed. I had just about concluded that I was living in the wrong century when Helga reappeared in tight tan jeans and a deep-brown blouse tucked up and tied in front to give her a bare midriff. I was astounded at her appearance. I've known babes who would've been in bed with the shakes for a week after having gone through what she had just lived through. Helga, blond hair combed out in thick yellow cascades, blue eyes sparkling, bore no trace of the ordeal.
