by Nick Carter
“Carter’s a little busy at the moment,” said the voice. “This is his assistant. Name of Hawk.”
At the other end of the line Hawk smiled faintly to himself. It amused him, for the moment, to play second fiddle to Carter.
But his amusement fled as he heard Hakim’s story.
About D5. About the face that Hakim had remembered. About the pictures, contact prints, found in a secret drawer in von Kluge’s house.
About the artificial hands.
“Any more threats on your own life?” asked Hawk at last.
“Intermittent,” Hakim said. “Sometimes I am able to work in disguise, sometimes not. Whenever I appear as myself things come flying through the air and people skulk on corners. They are after me, all right.”
“A pity. And no chance of turning tables on them?”
“But regrettably, no. They have the trick of instant suicide. Also they are more cautious now, operating always from a distance. Perhaps they are running low on personnel.”
“Perhaps. I hope so. And you say you have no picture of the tenth man?”
“No. Nothing. Nothing at all. I have no evidence at all that he is connected with the others. Only a little circumstantial pattern that I have built up in my head. And a memory of the way he looked.”
“Then you had better come here at once,” said Hawk. “Are you available?”
“I am packed,” said Hakim. He heard Hawk chuckle briefly.
“Then stay where you are. I’ll arrange transport. Give me Garvey for a moment, you’ll hear from me again within the hour.”
Hakim gave the hot line back to Garvey and went back to the other room to wait.
Ten minutes ticked by slowly.
There was a screaming in his ears that was as acute as a physical pain and a leadenness in his chest that weighed him down and choked him as if he had been buried alive.
Then through a wave of nausea he heard the running footsteps and the shouts, and he suddenly remembered.
Nick opened his eyes and pulled himself to his feet. He swayed as he clutched the stair rail and looked downward through a sea of mist. Guards were pouring through the passages toward the nightmare scene below. The sprawled figures still lay where they had dropped. Julia alone was getting up from the floor and gazing unsteadily upward at Valentina’s cage.
Nick turned dazedly and looked at it, too.
It was a little higher than when he had seen it last, but it was there, hanging immobile in its gantry midway between the floor and ceiling.
And it was empty.
He groaned involuntarily and swung toward the watchtower. Its cage, too, was pretty much where he had seen it last, and it also was still. But it was enclosed, and there was no way of telling what its occupant was doing.
Now the others were stirring — guards on platforms and civilians on the floor — and his eyes raked through them as if by some miracle he would see Valentina’s great bulk rising up among them. But no; she wasn’t there.
He turned and raced up the spiral stairway to the roof.
From far below he heard a voice cry, “Haiti” and Parry’s voice yelling, “Let him go — it’s Carter — oh, my God, she’s gone!”
Then he was on the landing and the big door slid open as he neared it. He stumbled out into the bright cold light of the autumn afternoon and sucked in his breath at the sudden shock of what he saw.
Johnny Thunder lay motionless a few feet in front of him. The blood clotting the back of his head was no longer flowing; the big heart had stopped beating.
And two uniformed guards lay sprawled face downward on the observation deck.
The first one was stone-cold-dead with a small hole in his gut and a big one through his back. The other one was stirring.
Nick raced toward him, running past a great double shed with one door open. Through it he glimpsed the shadowy form of a helicopter with an empty space beside it where the other one should have been.
That was the answer, then — or part of it. But what about those cages, still hanging down below . . .?
He flung himself down beside the second fallen guard. The man was shattered, dying, but still there was a spark. He groped feebly for the gun beside him and the eyes that peered dazedly at Nick were hard and hating.
“Carter of AXE,” Nick said rapidly. “I’m on your side. What happened?”
The dying expression changed and the fingers slid away from the gun.
“Hu . . . Hu . . . Hughes,” the man said faintly. “Cage.” He waved feebly at the watchtower. “Mad. Must be mad. Shot . . . us Ran . . . I tried to . . .” He drew a deep, shuddering breath and his eyes fluttered to a close.
“The woman!” Nick said urgently. “Have you seen the Russian woman?”
The head bobbed vaguely.
“When?” said Nick urgently. “Where? Did she come up here?”
Then it seemed to him that the man’s head shook from side to side; but he could not be sure, because the wobbling movement ended in a slump upon the deck, and the man was dead.
Nick leaped to his feet and ran. He was just about certain it was too late for running, but at the same time he had to make sure of the exact conditions on the multileveled rooftop.
Apart from himself there was no living being on it. But in the helicopter hangar there was a sense of warmth and a smell of fumes, and it was as clear as a printed message that one of the choppers had taken off within the last few minutes. He glanced at his watch as he made his rapid search of the observation deck and aircraft shed. It would be twelve, thirteen, maybe fifteen minutes since he had first started to climb the stairs and the gas had hit him. Hard to tell exactly, because he hadn’t been looking at his watch when the curtain fell, but anyway there would have been time enough for a chopper to have taken off and be out of sight by now. Time enough, too, for the operator of the watchtower cage to have pulled the switch or whatever it was that sent the gas pouring through the work area; then ascend, do his shooting — no doubt with a silenced gun — latch onto Valentina as she emerged from her cage; send both cages back down again to maybe gain an extra few seconds; take off with his captive in the helicopter. Captive, or corpse? Dead or alive, Valentina would be an uncooperative burden. Maybe there had been two men involved, the one from the cage and an accomplice on the roof, maybe waiting in the hangar out of sight.
He realized suddenly that he was taking it for granted that the watchtower-cage operator was also missing, was definitely involved. Yet, even if he was not missing, he had to be involved. Unless he, too, was going to turn up dead somewhere. . . .
The roof erupted with activity as he stood staring down at a smear of blood near the open hangar door and talking into a tiny microphone in his breast pocket. “Fisher — up here on the roof as quickly as you can. Davis and Alston — get to your car, flash word to Hawk, Sichikova missing, apparently abducted by helicopter, request all-aircraft alert, then stay in car for further orders. Hammond and Julia — stay where you arc, keep your eyes and ears open for anything out of the way — anything!”
And then Pauling was at his side, face ashen and lips trembling. Guards poured out through the open door behind him, another three tumbled out of the cage so recently occupied by Valentina.
“Calamity, calamity!” moaned Pauling, and stared into the dimness of the hangar. “Oh, Christ, it is gone. The grounds guards said they’d seen it take off, thought at first we’d sent it up. Then the alarm signal went off in Control Center B and the emergency squad arrived to find we were sealed in. Out cold, the lot of us, when they came in, gassed like a bunch of —”
“They turned the gas off, did they?” said Nick. The watchtower cage, he saw, had arrived at roof level and was disgorging three more figures. Pretty soon there would be hardly anyone left below.
Pauling gazed blankly at him. “They—? Why, no, I don’t think so. Seems to me the ventilation system was already working by the time they called down the cage. By remote, of course. Because there wasn’t anybod
y in it. Wasn’t anybody in either of the cages!” He shook his head in utter bewilderment. “I don’t understand how — I mean, what could have happened to Hughes?”
“Hughes — that’s the cage operator, right?” said Nick.
Pauling nodded. “Top security man, one of the best. Why, he must have been snatched right out of the cage! Somebody must have been waiting on the roof — somebody must have —”
“Impossible,” I said Parry, coming up behind him. His neatly bearded face looked rock-hard, slit-eyed, angry. “Unless Hughes himself managed to smuggle an accomplice into the hangar, which seems extremely unlikely. Hughes must have set this thing up himself, for some unthinkable reason.” The second hangar door slid back as he spoke and he gestured to a man in pilot’s overalls. “You, Hunter — get that thing out of there and get going — fast! Guards reported seeing the craft heading north by northeast,” he added for Nick’s benefit. “We’ll chase. I’ve also sent out a State Police and border alert. You got any ideas?”
“Hold that craft for a minute,” said Nick. “I want my own man to go along. And I want a thorough search of all buildings, grounds and adjacent areas in case that business of the “copter is a decoy.”
“Some decoy,” said Parry. “Three men dead and one of our aircraft missing. But as you say. Where’s that man of yours? For God’s sake, let’s not waste more time. That a thing like this should happen in my plant—!”
“Incredible,” Nick said mildly. “Ah, Fisher — into the “copter and on your way. Come on Parry, let’s clear the decks and get down to business at this end. I want a complete roll call of all men who are supposed to be on the premises. And I want absolute security coverage of this place so that nobody — but nobody — leaves here until I authorize it. Incidentally, that other “copter of yours — was it exactly the same as this?”
“It’s twin,” said Parry. “Identical to the last detail.”
“Fine,” said Nick. “That helps.” But he didn’t explain how it helped as he worked with Parry to set the search plan into operation.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” said the dry, crisp voice of the head of AXE. “But something came up that I had to attend to. Something that may make it even more urgent for you to be here.”
Hakim looked at his watch as he listened. A bare half-hour, and the man was apologizing! AXE moved pretty fast.
“A jeep will be picking you up within the next ten minutes,” Hawk went on. “It will take you first to a small private plane at a local airfield. That plane will take you to one of our own Army air bases, where you will board a jet and fly directly to New York. You will be met. That is all. Unless you have any questions?”
“No questions,” Hakim said.
But while he waited for the jeep he asked Garvey for the use of a mirror, and when he turned away from it the face he wore was completely unlike his own. In the game of disguises he was as good as anyone, and he had no intention of being rubbed out at this stage of that game.
“I don’t understand you!” Julia said angrily. “What the hell are you playing at? You’ve got everybody else out beating the bushes — helicopters here, border patrols there, guards swarming through the countryside, Davis and Alston zooming around in that jet-propelled car, Hammond lurking about the grounds, peering under every bloody pebble, and all you can think of doing is riding up and down these rat cages. Good God, I thought the least you’d do would be to commandeer a chase plane and get out there yourself. What’s the matter, Carter, you getting soft or something?”
The watchtower cage descended slowly.
“The interesting thing is the gas,” said Nick. “It can only be turned on and off from right here. So the watchtower guard must have turned it off before he left us. Thoughtful of him, wasn’t it? Considering that he might have gained himself an extra few minutes if he hadn’t. But lucky for us all that he did.”
Julia snorted. “What was so lucky about it? It doesn’t seem to have helped us any. Anyway, it wasn’t lethal gas.”
“No, not lethal,” Nick said thoughtfully. “But if we’d inhaled it very much longer we’d all of us been disgustingly sick. Continued inhalation might very well have caused death. Do you think he cared about the rest of us after killing three men on the roof and doing God knows what with Valentina? I don’t think so. And he thought enough of the gas himself to wear a mask.” Nick toed it thoughtfully. It still lay on the floor of the cage, as if tossed carelessly aside when no longer needed. “I wonder why he bothered taking it off. It would have made a pretty effective disguise. On the other hand, everyone in the plant knew that he was on cage duty so I guess he didn’t think there was much point in covering his face. So let’s play over what he must have done.”
The cage reached main-floor level and descended into the sub-basement. Nick moved a lever and they rose again. The television monitors on the panel in front of him reflected miniature images of the search throughout the grounds and buildings and he watched the efforts almost idly as he mentally replayed the gassing scene.
“Play all you want,” said Julia icily. “But you still haven’t answered my question. Why aren’t you out there doing something?”
“Doing what?” Nick asked mildly. “You’ve answered it yourself. I’ve got everybody else out there beating the bushes, as you say. Somebody’s got to keep the home fires burning. Me.” His whole being cried out for action even as he spoke, but something kept on nagging at him and telling him that there was no point in going off half-cocked on some futile airplane chase. The cage rose steadily and then stopped at his touch.
“It was about here,” he said, “when I last saw it. Valentina’s cage was opposite. By that time the gas had already started to pour out. Let’s say that I am Hughes, the killer. I put on my gas mask, and I halt. I wait for a couple of minutes until the gas has knocked everybody out. Until I am sure. I know that Valentina is out because I see her slumping in her cage. But her cage goes on rising. Or does it? I suppose it does. I, Hughes, can’t stop its rising, and anyway I want her on the roof. So when everyone is lying flat I move onward, upward.”
Nick touched the switch and the watchtower cage rose steadily. “I reach the roof, I stop, turn off the gas, and take off ray gas mask. I see Johnny Thunder with two guards, and I shoot them. Then I race over, grab the weighty Valentina from her now-open cage, and drag her over to the “copter. No — first I send down my cage and hers, because now that I am on the roof I have control of both the cages. According to Parry they can both be operated from within or by remote control from the main floor or the roof. So I send the cages back, permitting them to stop at mid-point between the floor and ceiling, and then I stuff the bulky Comrade Valya into the chopper, with or without the help of some mysterious accomplice, and I take off.”
Nick looked out over the roof. “I am a pretty clever man. Swift, resourceful, strong enough to lift an ox. Congratulate me. Because according to the roll call I am the only man missing from the plant. I have no accomplice with me. Which means that I either managed to smuggle one onto the roof from outside — which that snoop Carter is assured is quite impossible — or that I performed the whole miraculous feat all by myself. Of course, the impossible has been known to happen. But it needs a little help. And why, in the midst of everything else I have to do, do I bother with turning off the gas and sending the cages back?”
Julia’s almond eyes surveyed him steadily. The look of scorn was gone from her face and small lines pinched her exquisitely arched brows together. “You sent the cages back as a stalling maneuver,” she said, “to mystify the rest of us. It didn’t work because of that snoop Carter, but you’re over the hills and far away by that time so it doesn’t matter. And as for turning off the gas — maybe you have an accomplice down below that you don’t want to harm.”
“Maybe,” said Nick. “Maybe.” He stared at the spot where Johnny Thunder’s body had lain. Johnny had not even had a chance to draw his gun, and Johnny was a quick man on the trigger. But one
of the guards had. Drawn, and fired twice. And died before Nick’s eyes.
There was just a chance that he had hit someone, and that the blood outside the hangar was not Valentina’s.
“We’ll go down now,” said Nick, “and try the other cage.” He fingered the lever and the watchtower cage descended past the platforms and the watching guards. “And now that you’ve suggested an accomplice down below, try this one for size: He could have been the one to manipulate the cages from the floor controls. And turn off the gas.”
“No,” said Julia. “No, that can’t be. You were the first to come around. When the emergency squad came galloping to the rescue every single one of us was still out cold. We’ve been through that before. They saw us, saw every last one of us lying there like stranded fish and then gasping into life. Only you were moving.”
“Moving, yes,” said Nick. “Not playing possum, while maybe someone was. Because if I had been the accomplice down below I’d make damn sure I wouldn’t be seen moving until half a dozen other people were standing on their feet. Come on, let’s try out the other cage.”
The guards watched them impassively as they left the watchtower gantry and stepped into the cage last occupied by Valentina.
“What goes up must come down,” Nick said conversationally. “Elevators, as well as other things. And we know from our long look at the sublevel where this cage comes to rest. But let’s try it again, ourselves. Up first, though, for the look of things.”
They soared majestically up through the roof and then descended. This time they did not stop at main-floor level but went down into the lower depths. The cage door opened into a passageway lined with heavy steel doors. Each one of the rooms behind the doors had been carefully searched, and no one had been surprised that nothing had been found. Here were the maintenance shops, the power-control room with its rows of fuse boxes and switches, the storage areas for equipment and replacement parts. There were guards down there, Nick knew, but they were stationed out of sight along the access corridors. All the doors were customarily kept shut, as they were now. And all were locked when not in use.
