by Nick Carter
They lay clasped together for a while in a silence broken only by their uneven breathing and the pounding of their hearts.
Neither of them had forgotten how they happened to be there, nor that there was a disappearance and several deaths still to be accounted for, but both of them were used to living on the edge of hell and taking their happiness when they could find it.
At last, Nick sighed and stretched.
“Not enough,” he murmured. “Not enough. A day and a night on some warm, sandy beach, that’s what we need. Or a couple of days in a meadow, rolling in the grass. Or a week or so in some nice, soft haystack . . .”
“It all sounds very public to me,” Julia said practically. “Also a little scratchy. I thought you liked beds?”
“I do, I do,” Nick said warmly, and trailed his lips over the softness of her breasts. “See how I like beds, and what comes with them.” He kissed her full on the lips and lingered there until his pulses began to quicken too energetically, and then he forced himself to roll aside.
“Ah, well, strange things are happening,” he said, “and I’d better go do something about them.”
He rose with one fluid movement of his whipcord body and began to dress.
“But you’re not on shift yet,” Julia said, watching him.
“That’s right,” he agreed. “And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we were seen coming here together and I’m not expected to emerge until it’s time for me to take over from Parry. So I leave here well ahead of time and I do my own little bit of snooping.”
Julia started to pull her own clothes on. “What did you mean — there aren’t any mysterious strangers?” she asked, her slightly slanting, catlike eyes gazing at him through the dimness. “We agree there’s an accomplice in the building, right? And certainly there’s still something damn peculiar going on. Someone’s causing it.”
“Right, on all counts,” Nick agreed. “But not a stranger. Don’t forget that Valentina recognized someone who was with us. And kick this around in your lovely head, sweetheart — don’t you think that Valentina-abducting and sabotage are a little too much for one day’s work? Why should the inside man, the accomplice, want to blow the power — hours after Valentina had been snatched? Seems pointless. There wasn’t much damage, and nothing significant happened during the blackout. What was it for? And I can’t buy coincidence. So I’m telling myself that the two things are directly connected. And I mean directly. I think we can definitely accept the idea of an accomplice who is still with us. Let’s not give Hughes too much credit for swiftness and resourcefulness and all that kind of thing. Let us assume a man who used a gas mask on himself, who manipulated the cages from below after Hughes had done his shooting on the roof and taken off, and who turned the gas off when the “copter had gotten a good head start. Because, you know, if Hughes had turned it off, we would have come around a whole lot sooner than we did. Okay, assume a man like that, and I think you must assume more than an accomplice. Certainly you have a man who’s no stranger to this place.”
Julia drew a comb through her mane of raven hair.
“All right, so he’s not an accomplice then,” she said agree-ably “but the master planner himself. Yet, I wonder why he didn’t go with Valentina.” Her cat’s eyes narrowed and darkened. “You don’t think she’s dead?”
Nick was silent for a moment. Wilhelmina the Luger slid into her usual holster. Hugo the stiletto slipped into his chamois sheath on Nick’s forearm. Pierre the gas pellet nestled innocently in Nick’s jacket pocket.
“I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “Hughes could easily have killed her and left her body in the cage. No, there’s a more elaborate pattern here. Too elaborate to take at face value. I think they must have decided she’s more valuable to them alive than dead, so they hijacked her instead. For . . . questioning.”
“Questioning,” Julia repeated with a little shudder. “But where? And who, and how?”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I think,” said Nick, “and I’ll tell you why I think so.”
He told her, briefly. Julia’s eyes widened as she listened.
“So I think you’d best come with me this time,” he finished. “And if I get caught napping again I want you to run like hell and scream your lungs out. You ready?”
“For anything,” she said, and her lovely lips were grim.
The lights in the main work area were blazing. The watchtower cage moved slowly up and down and the duty guards on floor and platforms patrolled in double force, but no one stopped them. Parry had given orders.
“We’ll use the stairs,” said Nick, and they walked unchal-lenged down the spiral stairway to the sublevel. Guards greeted them with nods as they entered the wide corridor that housed the workshops and the power-control room, and again they were not stopped.
Two men were on duty outside the closed door nearest the elevator shaft. They stood to either side of it, alert and armed and ready. And they looked surprised. One of them looked at his watch.
“Two hours to go before your shift, sir,” he said helpfully.
“I know — I’ve urgent news for Parry,” said Nick. “He’s inside?”
“Yes, sir. With his finger on the red button just in case he needs us.” The man smiled faintly. “But he won’t. We searched first, no one’s hiding. And no one can get past us.”
“I can,” said Nick. “I hope he told you that.”
“Well, he did say that you’d be coming on at two, sir, but—”
“But I’m here now, right?” said Nick. “And the lady and I have business with him. So open up, will you? You can come in with us, if you like.”
The guard shrugged. “Okay, you’re the boss. But we gotta stay out here according to orders. Like he told us, we been checking on him at twenty-minute intervals — we just done one check — and like he told us we stay outside the rest of the time until he calls us. So he ain’t gonna like —”
“He will like,” said Nick. “You’re in the clear. Orders from Uncle Sam. So open.”
“Yes, sir. Jerry — key.”
The second guard nodded and thrust a key into the lock. Then the chatty one took his own key and performed a second maneuver.
“For safety,” he explained. “Gotta use two keys, separate ones, kind of tricky, you have to know just how — Hey, wait a minute! Something’s jammed.” He pushed at the door and wiggled his key. “Jerry, you turn that key of yours again.”
Jerry tried again. “Mine’s okay,” he said.
“Well, Goddamn!” said the talkative guard. “Something’s stuck here, for Chrissake!”
“All right, quit that,” Nick said urgently. “And keep your voices down now. Lock all right last time you tried?” The laser pistol came out of its hiding place as he spoke.
“Sure it was — what the hell are you doing?”
“I’m getting in there. With the lady. And you two are going to stick to your posts no matter what happens.”
Metal spat and melted. The door around the lock curled like burning paper. A thin rim of light shone out at them through the opening, then a circle, then a sphere as the thick metal piece containing the lock dribbled into nothingness.
“The Chief won’t like this,” the chatty guard said nervously.
“No? But you’ll notice he’s said nothing yet. Now keep quiet and stay here. Julia — come with me. But stay a few paces behind.”
The door swung inward at Nick’s touch. He kicked it as far back as it would go and stared into the room.
The bent switches had been straightened and repaired. A sharp light bathed every corner of the room.
“No, Goddamn, that’s impossible!” blurted the guard. “Why, we were here —”
“Shut up!” Nick said furiously. “You’re supposed to be on guard at this door, so guard it and keep quiet!”
He stepped into the room and his gaze swept through it.
Like Valentina’s elevator cage after the gassing —
It was e
mpty.
Chief of Security J. Baldwin Parry had disappeared.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nine Minus Two Leaves — Eight
And there was no sign of violence.
Julia closed the door and leaned against it.
“I suppose this room has its own little elevator cage,” she murmured.
“Something of the sort,” Nick muttered. “It has to.”
And he knew it must be a fairly simple device or there would not have been time for what had to have been done.
Yet, there was no escape hatch through the floor or ceiling. He had checked before and now he checked again. And still found nothing.
“If we just wait . . . ?” Julia mouthed at him.
He shook his head. “Can’t leave him any loopholes. Got to find him where he is.”
There was a row of storage cabinets across the room from him, set against the wall. These, too, he had looked into with the guards earlier in the evening, and they had told him nothing but that the plant kept plenty of spare parts. The cabinets were wide but shallow and their shelves were neatly stacked with tools and labeled boxes.
Now he scrutinized them with care. Especially their locks. The cabinets were kept unlocked during the day, and when he had last seen them two or three had stood slightly ajar. He had inspected them all, opening those that had not already been open, and it was obvious that only a very small midget could have wedged himself between any of the shelves. And even then he would have had to push aside the contents. Yet, none of the shelves had been disturbed, and there was no midget in sight. But Nick had been interested in the width of the shallow cabinets — a width that brought to mind another less capacious opening.
Now all the doors were closed and locked.
And he saw something that he had not noticed before. Maybe he had missed it because the doors had already been unlocked and some of them open, or maybe because he had been so busy peering inside looking for an assailant he had not really expected to find; maybe because his mind had not really been on locks at all.
But now it was, and now he saw it.
The lock and handle of one of the doors bulged outward slightly, as if the door had been dented from the inside. And the outer plating of the lock was absolutely new. It gleamed, it shone. AH the others had the dullness, almost rustiness of several years of use.
Julia arched her eyebrows and looked questioningly at Nick.
He clamped his ear against the sturdy metal of the cabinet door and reached for his lockpicker as he listened.
There was no sound from within. He had not really expected that there would be. And yet there was a suggestion of sound from somewhere through the door, as if the cabinet itself were a listening ear or a conductor of a very distant, hollow thread of noise. Not loud enough even to be heard within the power-control room; certainly not loud enough to be heard through the virtually soundproof doors into the corridor.
Nick motioned Julia to absolute silence and went to work on the lock. It was indeed new, and it was as sturdy as the complicated locks on the main doors throughout the plant . . . incredibly sturdy for a lock to a simple storage cabinet.
At last, it gave. He eased the door open cautiously, and it opened as if freshly oiled. Rows of boxes still stood undisturbed upon the shelves. He pushed at them. Most of them were small and light. But they did not move.
“Why, they’re attached to the shelves!” Julia whispered. “Why in the world . . . ?”
“I’m a bloody fool,” Nick muttered. “Should have realized it before. They’re stuck there so they won’t fall off, of course.”
The thin beam of his pencil flashlight probed the inside of the cabinet. The boxes contained junk parts, leftover material which could have very little use. Which meant, thought Nick, that the cabinet itself would need to be opened rarely, if at all. And yet it had been open earlier in the evening, when he had looked into it after being slugged.
Minutes passed as he made his probing search. He glanced at his watch. Eight minutes now since he had burned his way into the room. Well, that should give him time enough — if he could only find the thing.
And then he saw it. A small, sliding knob at the rear of the cabinet, half-hidden by the cardboard flap on an open box.
“Julia,” he whispered, “kill the lights in the room — there’s a switch at the door — and tell those guards out there to keep absolutely still and silent.”
Her eyebrows questioned him but she glided quietly away without a word. The lights went out, all but the thin beam from his flashlight, and from behind him he had heard the low murmur of her voice. Then silence. He felt rather than saw her come back to him in the darkness.
“It’s a door,” he murmured. “I’m going through; you’re staying here.”
He slid the knob aside. There was the slightest of clicks, and the shelves swung inward several inches. A dim and ghostly light shone through the opening, and he heard a thin sound like the echo of a distant voice. And now that the false back of the cabinet was open so that its edge was revealed, he could see the marks upon it — as though someone had levered it open, literally beaten it open, from the other side.
It was the one last answer that he needed. He knew for certain, now, how and why the power had gone out. But how ironic that he should have been trapped in an elevator cage!
He pushed the shelf-door back, stepped into the wide but shallow cabinet, and looked down into space.
There was a crude ladderway leading downward toward the glow of light, and at its foot there was a narrow passageway through which a brighter light spilled.
A smell of raw earth rose to meet his nostrils as he descended. But what interested him more than anything was the one stair that was splintered as if by a sudden heavy weight, and the fragment of dark cloth that clung to one of the splinters.
He reached bottom. There was no time now, nor any need, to inspect the scuff marks in the dirt at the foot of the ladder. Someone had lain there, and someone had risen, but that no longer mattered. Only the sounds filtering through the lighted passageway could matter to him now . . . two voices, murmuring, both of them deep and low.
Nick padded silently toward the brightness and stopped where the passage widened into a small crude room occupied by the two people who were murmuring to each other.
One was Comrade Valentina Sichikova of Russian Intelligence.
The other was J. Baldwin Parry, Chief of West Valley Security.
“That is good, Comrade, very good,” said Parry, and his voice was almost loving. “So you told them about the nine of us yes? Ah, so. That was only natural. But what about this Egyptian you say has certain dangerous information — what is his name, do you recall?”
Valentina’s wide features wobbled sideways in an expression of regret.
“Not now,” she said. “Not now. But wait — it will come to me. Let me think a moment. Patience, Comrade. Patience.”
For one blinding, awful moment Nick’s faith hit bottom. She, Valentina — his Valentina — had set this whole thing up to blab to one of the Nine . . . .
And then Valentina moved and Parry moved with her, and Nick cursed himself for a doubting fool.
Her arms were tied behind her back and there was a heavy chain around her ankles. And Parry had a hypodermic needle in his hand.
“I have no time for patience, Comrade,” Parry said softly. “I cannot believe your elephant’s memory has failed you. We fight the same fight, your people and mine. We must co-operate. I must know who else suspects anything about us. I must know who there is to recognize us. I must know this man’s name and where he is. Time is short — I must know, I must know, I must know! Who is he?”
Valentina yawned prodigiously. Her eyes opened suddenly in a bright and beady stare. “No, you are no Comrade, and our fight is not the same as yours. There is a lake nearby, you Chinese devil. I say go jump in it!”
Her bound feet lashed out and struck solidly against Parry’s crouching form. He snarled like
a dog as he stumbled back and struck out viciously with the thin whip in his left hand.
“Fat bitch! I have other methods — drugs to make you scream for mercy, but you will not even scream because that great gawping mouth of yours —”
“Silence, pig!” Valentina roared, and this time her huge body moved like a battering ram and slammed hard into Parry.
Neither of them saw Nick’s flying tackle — but Parry felt the steel-trap grip around his lower body as he staggered back, spitting with rage, from Valentina’s ramrod blow. He dropped on the crude earth floor like a sack of ballast.
“Ho, ho, ho! That was pretty, Nickska!” Valentina roared.
But Parry was not finished. He writhed like an outraged python in Nick’s clutch, and his digging, clawing hands were the hands of a man well-trained in the art of killing.
They rolled over together. Nick slammed an axe blade of a punch at Parry’s temple and found raw earth instead as Parry squirmed aside. Nick caught at the wrist that came at him and twisted savagely, hauling himself to his feet as he tightened the armlock until Party dangled over his shoulder like a drunk being hauled home after too much party. Then something snapped. Parry yelped shrilly and Nick let him drop, slicing a neck punch at him on his way down. He lay flat, like a man out for the count, and Nick’s foot arced through the air in what should have been the knockout chin kick.
But Parry was quick. You had to give him that. He lurched aside and one hand snaked deep into a pocket, and then there was a sharp bark of sound and a smell of burning cloth. Nick felt the bullet crease his thigh, and then he jumped — hard down on Parry’s fallen form, hard down on the one hand in the pocket. This time his kick went straight and true. Parry’s head snapped back and he gave a sort of belch, and then the man was silent.
