The Weapon of Night

by Nick Carter

  Nick took a deep breath and turned to Valentina.

  “Thank God,” he said, and knelt beside her with Hugo in his hand. “Let’s get these cords off you and onto him.”

  “Thank you,” said Valentina simply. “I knew that you would come, my friend.”

  Her clothes were torn and covered with dirt; her face and arms were bloody. But she smiled, and when her arms were free she put them lightly around him and kissed him on the cheek.

  “It was my fault, Nick. The cage, I had to go up in it, because I felt something was bound to happen then and I was most curious to know what it would be. And I made much trouble for you. I am so sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” he said, twisting cords around Parry’s wrists. “It was planned from the beginning. Parry would have managed something — he and his comrade in the cage.”

  “Ah! The watchtower cage,” said Valentina, realization dawning. “So there was another one. But this one — this one, of course, was the one I recognized.” Her pudgy hands stroked over Parry’s face, roved over his eyebrows and underneath his beard. “Of course, I was not sure at first,” she said. “But here are scars. Do you see them? This man’s face was once a little different. Not too very different, of course, or they would not have chosen him, nor would I have known him. But I very much suspect that the real J. Baldwin Parry was killed some months ago. This man is Chang Ching-Lung — who left Moscow about a year ago.”

  “Is that so?” Nick said softly. His fingers poked around in Parry’s slack-jawed mouth for the escape pill he suspected might be there, but there was nothing. “Well, he brought a friend with him, scarred in much the same way. But he’s no longer with us.” He told her, briefly, about the man called Hughes while he searched through Parry’s pockets, about the decoy helicopter flight and about the gassing. “So I was pretty sure,” he went on, “that you had been brought down, not up. And after the business of the power failure I was almost positive. Parry, I figured, was the only man who could have slugged me with that spanner. Easy enough for him to lie down and pretend he had been hit, just the . way he pretended he’d been gassed. The way I saw it, you’d been dumped in here and hidden away somehow, then gotten free to throw the switches.”

  Valentina grinned. “So you got my signal. I thought that you would understand. I was only afraid that you might not still be in the plant, that you had perhaps taken off on some wild-duck chase . . .

  “Goose chase,” Nick corrected automatically, staring at the small rectangle of stiff paper in his hand.-

  “So, goose chase. But anyway you were still here. Next thing, though, Chang-Parry bursts into the power room and I am still so groggy from his dope, also partly tied, that I cannot fight back in my usual style. We fall together against the switches and some of them I bend. Then comes his hypodermic needle and — whoof! Out I go again, and I suppose he drops me down those stairs just before you got here. So that part is over now. But tell me, Nickska — why were you so sure that I did not take off in the helicopter?”

  Nick chuckled softly. “Valentina, honey, I saw its twin and I just had to know. I don’t know what power in the world could have squeezed you into that little spotter craft through its regular man-sized hatchway. It was too small for you, that’s all.”

  “Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!” Valentina slapped her thigh delightedly. “But what is that little paper you have there in your hand?”

  “Airline ticket,” Nick said slowly. “Yesterday’s date. Montreal to Buffalo.”

  “Yesterday,” Valentina rumbled. “Montreal. Yes, that is quite interesting . . . . Someone comes?”

  “I come,” said Julia from the dimness of the dirt passage. She moved into the light and beamed at Valentina. “Greetings, Comrade,” she said warmly, “I’ll tell you later how very glad I am to see you. But in the meantime, Carter, we have a minor crisis on our hands. People are milling about in the control room demanding to come down here. Shall I hold them off with my trusty derringer, or should I let them in? There’s half a dozen guards, all brandishing their guns; there’s Weston, Pauling and our own Charley Hammond. All looking very grim and white around the gills.”

  “For God’s sake, not all of them,” Nick said, rising from Parry’s prone body. “Weston, Hammond, and one of the guards. There’s no room for any more. And have someone rouse the medic, while you’re at it.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Julia smartly, and vanished down the corridor.

  Parry’s body suddenly jerked to life. His head darted sideways and his mouth opened wide in a biting movement.

  Nick whirled and kicked out savagely at Parry’s head.

  But Parry’s teeth were already clamped on one corner of his shirt collar and they fastened there with the bite of a mad dog. Nick fell on him and wrenched with desperate strength. The collar tore in Parry’s teeth, the corner came off in his mouth. Nick’s fist slammed hard against his cheek and the jaw opened fractionally; and as it did, Nick fastened one hand tight around the man’s throat and thrust his other roughly between the clamping teeth.

  There was a little gurgle from Parry as a tiny crunching sound came from inside his mouth.

  His voice was muffled, but the words were clear enough.

  Too late, too late,” he mumbled thickly, and threw his head back galvanically with Nick’s hands still clawing at him. His face twisted hideously; he jerked, and then he slumped back, dead.

  Nick pulled himself away and his arms dropped to his sides. There was no point in saying anything, but his face mirrored his despair and self-contempt.

  Valentina sighed with gigantic disappointment, but the look she turned on Nick was one of sympathy and affection. “It is a loss in one way,” she said softly. “But still we have gained much. Think — two down, and only seven to go.”

  “Only seven,” Nick said bitterly. “And he could have told us where to find them.”

  “I think he would not have,” said Valentina gently.

  Feet clumped down the passageway and three men looked in on them. The chatty guard, Plant Manager Weston, and AXE’s Charley Hammond.

  “For the love of Christ, what’ve you done to Parry?” Weston cried.

  “It’s not Parry,” said Nick. “I’ll explain later. At least we have Madam Sichikova back with us. Charley — you have news?”

  For he had not posted his men at the exits as he had said he would; instead he had issued quiet instructions that they search the plant with Weston only as their guide. Even if Weston could not be trusted, either, he would have to show them everything they asked to see.

  Charley Hammond nodded. “News, all right,” he said tightly. “Bad news. Weston can tell you better than I how much is missing, but this much I can say — there’s enough uranium and plutonium missing to blow up the entire world a dozen times and take the moon with it. If it’s ever used that way. If not — there’s helluva lot of radioactive material on the loose somewhere.”

  “It’s disastrous, unthinkable!” Weston burst out, and the guard looked on open-mouthed and wide-eyed. “Someone must have been systematically stealing it in special .containers. We didn’t notice it before — we keep it in that row of steel and concrete chambers that I showed you earlier, and we don’t use them all at once. Chambers A and B are the ones we’ve been using for the last few months. But C and D and E we haven’t touched; we haven’t needed to. They should be full — but they’re practically empty! But how — why — who? I don’t understand. The thing’s impossible!”

  “With a couple of traitors in your midst, and maybe more than a couple,” Nick said grimly, “and a pair of helicopter! on the roof, and the phony Parry with all the freedom in the world to come and go, I don’t think it’s so impossible. You’ve told the president?”

  “Yes. God, he’s running round in circles,” Weston said feverishly. “Calling New York, Washington, his wife, the bloody lot.”

  “That’s got to be stopped at once,” Nick said sharply. “There’ll be a national panic before he’s throug
h. Let’s get the hell out of this dungeon and knock some sense into his head. Hammond — you stay down here with Julia and search around to see if there aren’t any other hidden doors or stolen supplies of God knows what. And I want to impress on the lot of you — each and every one of you, in this room and anywhere else in the plant — that not a word of what’s happened here must be permitted to leak out. Not a word. Least of all, about the missing material. Get me? Okay, let’s go up and’ make sure the president understands that too . . . and makes it an order. Nobody, nobody, is going to talk.”

  But somebody did.

  The first to open his mouth was a talkative guard named Brown, Joe to his buddies — and he had plenty of them. When he reached his home after going off shift at two that morning he woke his wife and told her all about it. After all, she was his wife, and a wife is to be talked to, right?

  Hazel Brown could scarcely wait until morning to call her very best friend. So what could hurt, telling just one very good friend? And who could keep such startling news to herself?

  “Ginnie! You know what? There’s been the most shocking robbery at the plant. Not money. Uranium! Plutonium! Honey, do you realize that’s radioactive material and nobody knows where it went. And do you know what else . . . .”

  Joe woke late and took his car for a tune-up at his favorite service station. It was his favorite because it was run by an old pal of his, an ex-guard at West Valley, and he couldn’t see any harm in telling old Max about it as long as he swore him to secrecy . . . .

  Ginnie Nelson whispered something to her neighbor over the back fence . . . .

  Martha Ryan had a party line . . . .

  Max had a brother who ran a saloon . . . .

  None of them knew that several hours earlier, in California, a small boy had picked up a wooden box in a parking lot and played with it before his big brother came along and took it away from him and turned it over to the police, nor that the police had turned it over to experts who viewed it with great alarm.

  Neither did they know about the tin box that had been planted in a Denver hospital, or about the patients who were slowly dying without knowing it themselves. The patients, and the doctors, and the nurses.

  Nor did Nick know about any of that until much later.

  At the first light of the morning after the events at West Valley he was driving back to New York at breakneck speed. Valentina slept soundly in the back seat; Julia and Charley Hammond talked together in low voices. There was an AXE car ahead, an AXE car in front, an AXE helicopter overhead and chaos back at the plant.

  The signal on the dashboard beeped.

  Nick flicked the switch. “Carter. Come in,” he said.

  “Hawk, here,” said the answering voice. “Much of what I have to say to you will keep until you’re sufficiently rested. And I’ve got plenty to say to you, N3, believe me. But right now I have someone else with me who wants to talk to you. Go ahead, H19.”

  H19? Nick thought. Now what the hell? There is no H19.

  “Greetings, N3,” said a voice that sounded oddly familiar. “H19 here with a whole new batch of feelthy peectures. But perhaps you’re not in the mood for them right now, my friend.”

  “Hakim!” Nick yelled. “You cross-eyed old son of a bitch!” And his face split into the kind of grin he had not worn in many hours. “What are you doing here — or there — or wherever you are? And what’s with the H19 routine?”

  “I am now a Secret Agent,” Hakim said sepulchrally. “Mr. Hawk has given me a temporary assignment. I am especially sent for to unbotch your mistakes.” Then his voice changed; it was low and serious. “We will talk more later, Nicholas. But I have one bit of news that I think might interest you. It is this: I remembered who it was that I saw watching the surgeon von Kluge at that Cairo party. He left the country on the following day, destination unknown — many visas on his passport, including Canada. Not the U.S., but Canada is close enough. I described him to your Mr. Hawk, who was particularly interested in his artificial hands.”

  “Artificial hands!” Nick sat bolt upright in the driver’s seat and Julia swung away from Hammond to stare at him.

  “Yes, artificial hands. Two of them, and quite good ones. Apparently, he is much changed otherwise, but according to the description I was able to give, Hawk thinks he knows the man. His name was given to me as Martin Brown, his occupation, traveling salesman for some highly specialized equipment company which sent him often around the world. But it seems quite likely that his occupation is something entirely different, and that his name is not Martin Brown — but Judas.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Tenth Man

  The finely shaped, so nearly natural fingers beat a metallic drum tattoo on the polished table top. Voices filled the room; raised voices of men engaged in heated business discussion. The tape, this time, had been especially chosen to drown out the live sounds, for now it was no longer possible to carry on the business of the day through scribbled notes and occasional brief whispers. There was too much to talk about.

  “You must be sure of this, A.J., you must be sure!” the chairman cried, and his voice carried around the table like the singing whine of an angry mosquito. “We cannot permit ourselves to be deluded by rumours that may have been deliberately planted.”

  “I am sure as I can be,” the can called A.J. murmured. “I heard the story first in Buffalo, and then again in the small township near West Valley. I then, as scheduled, made contact with L.M. He confirmed that, from his vantage point, he saw the craft go down and watched the search parties. Feng most certainly is dead. As for B.P. — no, I cannot be positive of that. But he did not contact me, as he was supposed to do. Perhaps, M.B., you have heard from him?”

  “Don’t be a fool!” the mosquito sound whined furiously. “Would I be asking you these things if I knew the answers myself? Of course I would not, idiot! No, I have not heard from B.P. Nor have I heard anything intelligent from J.D. in New York. He has seen nothing, knows nothing, only that Carter and the Russian woman did not go back to their hotel. But I have heard from Cairo. Yes-s-s, I have heard from Cairo! And the Egyptian, Sadek, has slipped through the fingers of our people over there. The devil only knows what he has found out and what he is doing with his information.”

  A.J. shrugged. “But what could he possibly have discovered? He will not know where to find us and he will not know us when he sees us. We were careful. Certainly he did not see us either before or after our — ah — operations. And von Kluge gave us back all the information and pictures from his files. He —”

  “Ah, he gave us back the pictures, yes!” The man at the head of the table produced a smile that turned his face into a death’s head. “And I would have had him killed much sooner if it had not appeared that we might have further use for him — in which case I would have made very certain that he did not keep hidden copies. But, as it was, one had to work swiftly and without one’s customary care. Bah! those paid Egyptians turned out to be worse than useless. A careless killing and a careless search. Oh, yes, it is quite likely that the pig, von Kluge — my honored countryman, God rot him! — kept copies of the pictures for himself. And Sedek is not the fool he looks. If there were pictures, Sadek found them.”

  “But pictures?” H.M. spoke for the first time. “That is all he could have found, and we have little to fear from them. These are big countries, and how is he to find us —?”

  The metallic hand slapped down heavily on the table top.

  “I tell you he is not a fool!” the thin voice snarled. “He will find good use for them. You can count on that. And it is not only pictures. He saw me! Me! He may not remember; he may not make anything of it. But he may. Certainly he will make something of those incredibly inept attempts to kill him. Hell’s teeth, I should have done the thing myself! But enough of that. He lives; he is a danger. Presumably the Russian woman also lives. Another danger. Therefore we must move quickly.” His burning slits of eyes sliced around the table like hot knives,
biting into each man in turn. There were only four board members present, in addition to the chairman; three were attending to their business in the United States, and the other two . . .

  “We must presume,” the high-pitched voice keened on, “that both Chang and Feng are dead. That means our entire link with the plant has been wiped out overnight. It is most unfortunate that we are unable to make further substitutions in the plant, but I suppose we must consider ourselves lucky to have done what we did. When L-Day comes we will take the plant without difficulty. In the meantime, we have all the supplies we need for the dress rehearsal.” The parchment face split .again into the death’s-head grin and the heavy shoulders bunched. “You four have your instructions in front of you. Read and burn as usual. I shall contact the rest myself. From now on we will step up all activities, especially those in connection with the material from the plant. Our three men in the field will handle its distribution. You, A.J., will add to their efforts, and you will also take the LSD. You will see that I have arranged its use to coincide with a power failure. You, C.F., will handle the pollutants. O.D., the same, but you will concentrate on water supplies. H.M., you will remain here for two days. You have the remote power-tripper in place? Good. You will activate it according to instructions, and then come back to the hotel to man the transmitter and receive calls. I myself will travel and make sure that all our plans work out. We will no longer meet here. It may be dangerous. Another of your duties, H.M., will be to report any investigative activities here in Canada for the next couple of days, at which time you will receive further orders. Remember — we are working now toward the final rehearsal. There can be only one. It must be a success, it must be devastating! And after that . . . ah, after that!” Again the hideous smile, like Death gloating in a charnel house. “After that, the final darkness. L-Day, and the end. All of North America will be ours.”