by Nick Carter
"And you grew up in New Orleans?"
"Right."
"Four years in the French Foreign Legion?"
"Right. What have you been doing, Louie? Taking notes?"
He grinned disarmingly. "Ah, you know. Just makin' sure T got things right."
"Right," I said. I knew where his questions were heading — at least I hoped I did — even if he didn't want to get to the point right away.
He picked up the cross-examination like any good prosecutor. "And the last couple years, you've been… uh… hanging round Beirut?"
"Right." I poured some more wine into each of our glasses.
"Well." He dragged it out, looking thoughtful. "I could probably arrange it if you really want to get back to the States."
I glanced over my shoulder just for effect "I sure as hell have to get out of here."
He nodded. "Maybe I can help you, but…"
"But what?"
"Well," he grinned that disarming grin again. "I don't really know much about you except you got a lot of guts."
I weighed the situation carefully. I didn't want to play my trump card too quickly. On the other hand, this could be my cracking point and I could always — if events warranted it — eliminate Louie.
I pulled the metal cigar tube out of my shirt pocket and dropped it carelessly on the table. It rolled over once and stopped. I stood up, and pushed my chair in. "I've got to go to the John, Louie." I patted him on the shoulder. "I'll be back."
I walked off, leaving the little tube worth, eventually, about $65,000 on the table.
I took my time, but when I got back Louie Lazaro was still there. So was the heroin.
I knew from the look on his face that I'd made the right move.
Chapter 5
At five o'clock that afternoon I met Louie in the lobby of my hotel. The silk suit was blue this time, almost an electric blue. The shirt and tie were fresh, but still white on white. His anxious-to-please smile was unchanged.
Outside on the street we hailed a cab. "The St. Georges," Louie told the driver, then settled back smugly in the seat.
It was only six blocks and we could have walked, but that wasn't what bothered me. What did was the fact that the St. Georges was the one place in Beirut where I was known as Nick Carter. The possibility that a room clerk or floor manager might greet me by name, however, was miniscule. Overfamiliarity is not a way of life in Beirut if you're obviously an American.
I needn't have worried. Even in my down-at-the-heels clothes, no one paid me the slightest bit of attention as Louie first made a quick call on the house phone in the lobby, then ushered me into the elevator, chattering nervously.
"This is a real good-looking lady, man! She's — she's really something else. But she's smart, too. Ooh mama! Is she smart!" He snapped his thumbnail on his front teeth. "But all you have to do is just answer her questions, you know? Just play it easy. You'll see."
"Sure, Louie," I reassured him. He'd been through the same routine a half-dozen times already.
A very tall, spare man with blue expressionless eyes opened the door of the eleventh-floor suite and gestured us in. He stood aside as Louie passed in, but when I followed he suddenly gripped the inside of my right elbow with viselike fingers and spun me around backward. A leg across the back of my knees threw me to the floor as he twisted, so that I hit the thick carpet on my face, my arm wrenched up high behind my shoulders and a bony knee pressed against the small of my back.
He was good. Not that good, however. I could have broken his kneecap with my heel when he made the first move, but that wasn't what I was there for. I lay there and let him remove Wilhelmina from her holster.
A hand made a cursory search of my body. Then the pressure on the small of my back eased. "AD he had was this," he announced.
He was careless. Hugo still rested in the chamois sheath strapped to my forearm.
He nudged me with his toe and I got to my feet slowly. He'd pay for that later.
I brushed my hair back with one hand and took stock of the situation.
I was in the living room of a large suite and there were several doors leading off it. It was extravagantly decorated — to the point of opulence. The heavy, dark blue rug was complemented by gossamer-like draperies in robin's-egg blue. Two Klees and a Modigliani were in perfect keeping with the clean-lined Danish Modern furniture.
Two couches were flanked by small onyx lamps and chrome-trimmed ashtrays. In front of each couch were heavy, low-slung coffee tables, large rectangles of gray marble sitting like pale islands in a dark blue sea.
Standing in front of the picture windows was an exquisite Chinese doll, one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life. Her hair hung straight and black, almost waist length, framing delicate high-boned features. Almond eyes in an alabaster face regarded me somberly, a hint of skepticism tensing the full-lipped mouth.
I ruled my face expressionless while my mind clicked through its memory file. The ten days I had spent at AXE headquarters last year doing what we bitterly referred to as «homework» hadn't been wasted. Her picture on the dossier in File Room B had made me gasp the first time I had seen it. In the flesh, the impact was a hundredfold.
The woman in the high-necked gray silk evening gown before me was Su Lao Lin, next to Chu Ch'en the highest ranking intelligence agent the Red Chinese maintained in the Middle East. Chu Ch'en I had run up against before, both in Macao and Hong Kong; Su Lao Lin, I had only heard of.
What I'd heard was enough — ruthless, brilliant, cruel, fiery tempered but meticulous in her planning. She had been handling the pipeline funneling heroin into Saigon during the Vietnam war. Countless American G.I.s could lay the responsibility for their addiction at the exquisite feet of Su Lao Lin.
Now, obviously, she was in a different pipeline — funneling Mafia recruits into the States. This was no small-time operation. If Louie's uncle and the others on the Commission could afford Su Lao Lin, it would be a multi-million dollar investment, well worth it, perhaps, if they could gain — or regain — the great power they had wielded in the major cities in another time.
Looking at Su Lao Lin, my abdominal muscles tightened involuntarily. The gray silk, diaphanous in the light of the standing lamp behind her, only enhanced the perfection of that tiny body: the boldly full little breasts, the minute waist accentuated by the suppleness of neatly rounded hips, the legs surprisingly long for such a tiny person, the calves slim and lithe as you find so often among the Cantonese.
Sensuality crackled like lightning between the two of us. What Communist China's No. 2 agent in the Mideast was doing tied into the American-Sicilian Mafia was a mystery, but it wasn't the only reason I wanted to get my hands on her.
I let the lust show in my eyes and I could see her recognize it. But she didn't acknowledge it. She probably saw that same lust in the eyes of a half-dozen men every day of her life.
"You're Nick Cartano?" Her voice was soft but businesslike, the Oriental slur of the hard consonants only barely detectable.
"Yes," I said, running fingers through my disheveled hair. I glared at the tall hood who had rousted me as I came through the door. He stood just to my left, about a foot behind me. He held Wilhelmina in his right hand, pointing it toward the floor.
She gestured negligently, her deep red lacquered nails flashing in the lamplight. "Excuse the inconvenience, please, but Harold feels he must check everyone, particularly people with your…" She hesitated.
"My reputation?"
Annoyance clouded her eyes. "Your lack of reputation. We haven't been able to find anyone who's ever heard of you, except Louie here."
I shrugged. "I guess that means I don't exist?"
She shifted slightly and the light from the window behind her poured between her legs, sharpening that exquisite silhouette. "It means either that you're a phony, or…"
That hesitation in mid-sentence seemed to be a habit.
"Or?"
"…or you are very good indeed." A ghost of a smil
e flirted across the slightly parted lips and I smiled back. She wanted me to be "very good indeed." She wanted me, period. I could feel it. The feeling was mutual, but we still had to play the game for a while.
"In my business, we don't advertise."
"Of course, but in my business we usually can get a line on most people who are in… shall we say… allied lines?"
I fingered the shining cigar tube in my shirt pocket.
She nodded. "I know, Louie told me. But…"
I didn't blame her. She had a reputation for not making mistakes and my only tangible evidence of a "shady past" were the eight ounces of heroin in the tube. That and the fact that Louie had obviously been making a pitch for me. But Louie was the nephew of the man who was most likely bankrolling most of Su Lao Lin's operation. In the end, that had to be the deciding factor. She wouldn't want to displease Popeye Franzini's nephew.
She wouldn't want to displease herself, either. I stared at her insolently. Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. She was getting the message, all right. I decided to take her off the hook.
I fished the pack of Galoise out of my pocket and tapped the open end against the side of my hand to bring out a cigarette. I tapped just a shade too hard and one popped out all the way and fell to the floor. I leaned over to pick it up.
Simultaneously, I bent my right knee and lashed straight back with my left leg. Behind me, Harold screamed as his kneecap crumbled under the hard rubber heel of my shoe, driven home with every ounce of power I could deliver.
I spun to my left, twisting into a sitting position. As Harold bent sharply forward, grasping for his shattered knee, I hooked two fingers of my right hand deep into the declivity under his chin, hooking them into the jawbone; I rolled back onto my shoulders, flipping him neatly.
It was like yanking a fish out of the water, throwing him forward and over me, so that he described a short arc in the air. Just before I lost my leverage, I jerked sharply downward and his face smashed into the floor with the full weight of his body behind it. You could almost hear the bones of his nose shatter.
Then he lay still. He was either dead from a broken neck or just unconscious from shock and the force of hitting the deck so hard.
I retrieved Wilhelmina and restored her to the shoulder holster where she belonged.
Only then did I smooth my hair back with one hand and look around.
Neither Louie nor the Chinese woman had moved, but the excitement had gotten to Su Lap Lin. I saw it in the slight flaring of her nostrils, the tautness of the vein running across the back of her hand, the flaring of intensity in her eyes. Some people are aroused to a high sexual fervor by physical violence. Su Lao Lin was breathing in short, quick gasps.
She motioned distastefully at what was left of Harold on the floor. "Remove him, please," she ordered Louie. She permitted herself a slight smile. "I think perhaps you're right, Louie. Your uncle could use a man like Mr. Cartano here, but I think you had better introduce him yourself. You had both better be ready to leave on the morning flight."
There was dismissal in her tone and Louie moved over to wrestle with Harold. Su Lao Lin turned to me. "Come into my office, please," she said coolly.
Her voice was controlled, but the overly modulated tone betrayed her. Excitement quivered on her lips. I wondered if Louie could sense it, too.
I followed her through the door into an efficiently equipped office — large modern desk with a businesslike swivel chair, a streamlined gray metal dictaphone, two straight metal chairs, a gray filing cabinet in one corner — a good place to work.
Su Lao Lin walked over to the desk, then turned and leaned back against the edge of it, facing me, her tiny fingers half-hooked over the edge of the desk top, her ankles crossed.
Lips parted over even teeth and a tiny tongue flicked out nervously, tempting.
I hooked the door with my foot and slammed it shut behind me.
Two long strides took me to her and a small groan escaped her lips as I crushed her to me, one hand under her chin, tilting it upward as my hungry mouth groped for hers. Her arms wound upward, curling around my neck as she thrust her body into mine.
I pinned her mouth with my tongue, probing, smashing. There was no subtlety. Su Lao Lin was incredibly small, but she was a wild woman, writhing, moaning, long nails ripping at my back, legs hooking around mine.
My fingers found the clasp on the high collar and unhooked it. The invisible zipper seemed to slide down of its own accord. I put both hands around her miniature waist and held her away from me, in midair. She broke reluctantly, fighting to keep her mouth clamped on mine.
I put her down on top of the desk. It was like handling delicate porcelain, but this porcelain could squirm.
I stepped back, pulling the gray silk dress away from her as I did. She sat still then, leaning back on her arms, her breasts heaving, the nipples outthrust, tiny feet flat on the desktop, her knees widespread. A rivulet of sweat ran down her belly.
She had been wearing nothing beneath the gray silk sheath. I stared, momentarily transfixed, savoring the alabaster beauty perched like a live objet d'art on the bare metal desktop. Slowly, unbidden, my fingers groped at my shirt buttons, fumbled at my shoes and socks, unhitched my belt.
I picked her up gently by the buttocks, balancing her like a cup on a saucer for a moment, and pulled her to me as I stood spraddle-legged before the desk. At the first penetration she gasped aloud, then scissored my waist with her legs so that she was riding on ray hips.
Pushing against the desk for support, I leaned back with Su Lao Lin on top of me. The world exploded in a maelstrom of spinning sensation. Twisting, gyrating, we writhed around the sparsely furnished office in a feverishly hysterical dance, the two-backed beast upright, staggering into the furniture and against the wall. Finally, with a great shuddering spasm we crashed to the floor, driving, pounding, thrusting with every straining muscle until suddenly she screamed twice, two short, shrill yells, her back arched despite my weight pressing against her.
I pulled away and rolled over on my back on the floor, my chest heaving. With all the bedrooms in the world, I somehow had managed to end up on the floor of an office. I smiled and stretched. There are worse fates.
Then I became aware of a tiny hand on my hip. Delicate fingers traced a filigree pattern on the inside of my leg. Su Lao Lin, it was obvious, wasn't finished yet.
As a matter of fact, several hours passed before she was.
Then, once we had bathed, dressed and eaten the dinner I ordered sent up, she became all business.
"Let me see your passport."
I handed it over. She studied it thoughtfully for a moment "Well have to get you a new one," she said. "An entirely different name, I think."
I shrugged, and had to smile inwardly. It looked as if my life as Nick Cartano was going to be very short indeed — not even a week.
"I want you out of here in the morning," she said.
"Why so fast? I kind of like it around here." That was true. It was also true that I wanted to find out as much as possible about the Beirut end of the operation before I left for the States.
She looked at me expressionlessly and I was forcefully reminded that this was Su Lao Lin, the Red Chinese agent who had sent so many American G.I.'s through hell along Heroin Highway, and no longer the delicate little wildcat on the office floor.
"Well? It has been an interesting evening, you'll admit."
"This is a business," she said coldly. "While you're around, I might forget that I can't afford to…"
"So you want me out of here on the morning flight," I finished for her. "Okay. But can you fix up papers for me that fast?"
Charlie Harkins could, I knew. But I doubted if there were any more Charlies hanging around Beirut.
Su Lao Lin again permitted herself that ghost of a smile. "Would I suggest it if I couldn't?" Her logic was hard to fault. "I want you to go now," she said.
I looked at my watch. "It's already ten o'clock."
I smiled at her. "You're the boss," I conceded. "Where do I go?"
"One-seven-three Almendares Street. It's over on the fringe of the Quarter. See a man named Charles Harkins. He'll take care of you. Just tell him I sent you. He's on the third floor." She patted my arm gently. It was probably the closest she would ever come to making an affectionate gesture.
I was cursing myself for a fool as I strode down the corridor and rang for the elevator. I should have known her penman was Charlie Harkins, which meant I had a problem. There was no way Charlie was going to fix me up with an entire new set of papers and not inform the Dragon Lady that she was playing around with AXE's No. 1 field agent.
There was one way, of course. I felt the reassuring weight of Wilhelmina against my chest as I stepped into the elevator. Poor old Charlie was going to get leaned on again, and this time it was going to have to be a pretty bard lean.
Chapter 6
Number 173 Almendares Street. The odors, noises and activities in the building were external. Charlie answered the doorbell almost before I took my finger off the buzzer. Whoever he had been expecting, however, it wasn't me.
"Nick…! What are you doing here?"
It was a legitimate question. "Hi, Charlie," I said cheerfully as I pushed past him into the room. I sat down on one of the sofas in front of the coffee table, pulled a Galoise out of the half-crushed pack in my pocket and lit it with an ornate table lighter that looked as if it might have come from Hong Kong.
Charlie looked nervous as he closed the door, and after a moment of indecision, took a chair opposite me. "What's up, Nick?"
I grinned at him. "I've got another job for you, Charlie, and I want to talk to you a bit, too."
He assayed a small smile. It didn't come off too well. "I… uh… I can't talk much about things, Nick," he pleaded. "You know that."
He was right, of course. Half of Charlie's not inconsiderable value to the international underworld lay in his remarkable talents with a pen, a camera, a printing press, an airbrush, and an embossing kit. The other half lay in his absolute silence. If he ever talked about anything, he would be dead. Too many people in the Mideast would be too afraid that the next ones he talked about would be them. So silence was part of his stock in trade, and in my occasional brushes with Charlie I had never asked him to break it.
