White Death

by Nick Carter

  Often a mission was lost simply because of poor foot work. Answers seldom arrived on silver platters. Most often they had to be dug out with a seasoned trowel.

  The bartenders, waitresses, and patrons he approached in the Wellington bars and restaurants around the airport tended to be suspicious and closemouthed. Part of it was his scruffy beard. But mostly it was the standard — and normal — reaction.

  So, consequently, each time he had to find what would loosen their tongues — bribery, sympathy, coercion, or sometimes, for a lonely drinker, a friendly chat.

  The questioning took time, energy, and money, and he was running low on all three. And no one he talked with had met or heard of Rocky Diamond.

  * * *

  It was a half hour before closing time, and Carter ducked his head to reenter the wind-blasted night. The bar he was leaving was the Plow and Angel. The one he would go to next was the Moon Face, two doors away.

  His leather-soled shoes snapped on the cold pavement. He dug his hands deep into his jacket pockets and hunched his shoulders as the wind pummeled him down the empty sidewalk. Most Wellington citizens had enough sense to be home on a night like this. And to think it was summer.

  There was an alley to his left. A black rectangular hole. He rushed past, propelled by the gale.

  Still, with his peripheral vision, he saw the momentary flash of the knife's blade within the blackness of the alley's entrance.

  He kept moving. Only one more store, a jewelry shop with hand-hammered gold and silver necklaces displayed in the window, then he'd be at the next bar. The Moon Face.

  Whoever was in the alley would have to be a lot quicker if he expected to catch someone to rob on this windy night.

  Then he heard the feet.

  They ran out of the alley, thundering. Ten of them. Dressed in black jump suits. Their faces darkened against the city's lights. Dressed and camouflaged just like the group that had attacked the mountain jail.

  Carter grabbed Wilhelmina from the small of his back.

  One of them lunged at Carter's legs.

  He kicked him off.

  They circled.

  Carter spun, swinging the Luger.

  He caught another one in the neck. His hand was so cold that he hardly felt the violent blow.

  The man's eyes rolled up into his head, and he went down uncomplainingly.

  But the others attacked, a circle of determination.

  Too many. They could afford to have reflexes a little slower than the Killmaster's.

  They came in high and low.

  Carter lashed with his gun, his elbows, hands, and feet.

  It was like fighting an avalanche.

  He kneed one in the belly. The attacker doubled over and vomited.

  He whipped another across the cheek. The black makeup scraped off a fish-belly-white face that quickly turned red with blood.

  They grabbed his aims. Ripped Wilhelmina from his hand. Pinned him against a brick wall. There were too many of them.

  Quickly before he broke free, one belted him in the jaw. Another blasted two hard punches to the spleen.

  Red and black pain erupted behind Carter's eyes.

  "Forget Diamond!" one man snarled.

  It was a low voice. Rusty, disguised. English, but a Russian accent.

  "What?" He wanted to hear the voice again.

  "Go home!" rasped another.

  They were black wraiths in the night. Each looked like the other. Thin lipped carbon copies wearing black jump suits padded against the wind. They had revolvers strapped to their legs. They worked in unison, well trained and enthusiastic.

  "Silver Dove!" Carter said.

  That did it. With machine-gun repetition, the fists hit Carter's face, neck, chest, and belly. Over and over. Punishing him for his knowledge.

  He struggled.

  They hit harder, an exploding series of pains that left him gasping against the rough brick wall.

  "Don't try to follow Diamond!" a new voice warned, finality in the words. "Next time, you're dead!"

  To emphasize the point, another attacker grabbed Carter's head and slammed it back into the brick wall.

  Hands released Carter. He slid down, every muscle in his body screaming. Warm, sticky blood oozed from the back of his head. The Wellington street revolved crazily. He felt the faintness of the few seconds before unconsciousness.

  The attackers stared at him solemnly.

  Silently they turned and ran down the deserted street.

  * * *

  The night's chilly cold radiated from the sidewalk. Carter awoke in the brittle stillness of it, knowing he should get up, knowing he'd be stiff, maybe even ill and out of action if he didn't.

  Couples hurried past him, sneers in their voices as they circled distastefully away. They thought he was a drunk, or a deadbeat, or maybe worse. A few cars passed, their bright lights sweeping the sidewalk. Music and laughter blared out onto the sidewalk as up and down the street bars and restaurant doors occasionally opened and closed.

  Carter stood up. A wave of nausea washed over him. With shaky hands, he dusted uselessly at his jacket. He grabbed for the wall to steady himself.

  As another car slowly drove up the street, he stepped into the alleyway. There he found Wilhelmina in an inky shadow. He dropped the Luger into his jacket pocket and stumbled back to the lighted sidewalk. The beating had been expert, designed so the body would not forget.

  He patted his pockets for a cigarette. The car was small, yellow. The nausea returned, this time accompanied by faintness. His knees turned to water, but his mind still worked.

  The yellow car was a Mazda, and it had slowed to a crawl in front of him.

  Suddenly the knees buckled. Dizziness engulfed him. He forgot the cigarette and the yellow Mazda. Once more he fell unconscious to the cold sidewalk.

  * * *

  When he awoke, he was troubled by dreams of being dragged. They were indistinct dreams complicated by his being cozily back in his hotel room bed, the sun shining bright and innocent through the window, and bandages and assorted smelly ointments covering parts of his body.

  Gingerly, he stretched. Felt the sore muscles ripple. The pain made him smile. He was alive at least. He moved his bones and joints. Nothing broken.

  He flung back the covers and sat up. Nude, he walked carefully, and then with more confidence, to the bathroom.

  He relieved himself, then stared into the mirror. White bandages made a patchwork of his bearded face. He pulled the bandages off. Abrasions and cuts, but nothing serious. He returned to his bedside table to check his watch.

  It was eleven forty-five. He'd slept a long time, maybe twelve hours. What was necessary to revive his battered body. When professionals go to work on you, recovery isn't fast or easy, but it helps to be in the extraordinarily trained condition of a Killmaster. He looked around the room. His ct was open, the clothes from last night neatly hung. He picked up the telephone.

  "Yes, sir?" the clerk from yesterday said from downstairs.

  "Any messages for me?"

  "I'll check."

  There was a moment of silence, then the eager young man was back.

  "Nothing, sir. Sorry."

  "Did a man driving a yellow Mazda bring me in last night?"

  "As a matter of fact, my coworker did mention that. A pleasant fellow. Helped you to your room. Called the hotel doctor."

  "Any name? I'd like to thank him."

  "No, sir. Said he was just a Samaritan. You'd been attacked by one of the rough waterfront gangs."

  Carter sighed. The samaritan was obviously the man in the yellow Mazda. That's where the dragging part of his dream had come from.

  As if in a haze he remembered being hauled to his feet and half dragged, half pulled to the small car. He remembered the door's banging shut, opening his mouth to thank his benefactor, then passing out again.

  The stranger was a real puzzle, impossible to identify at this point. Carter had never had a good look at the
man's face. He didn't know age or even hair color because the man wore the tam-o'-shanter low to the ears. Didn't know the car's license plate. Didn't know why — or whether — the stranger was following him.

  "Anything else?"

  "Well… there is one more thing. But I don't know whether it's still important…"

  "Rocky Diamond?" Carter said, suddenly alert.

  "It's not much," the young clerk warned, "but I remembered what you said about asking around, and one of the maids said she'd seen a man like you described. He came in drunk with a woman to visit one of our guests. He ordered martinis with a dash of Pernod at the bar. The maid didn't remember which guest they were visiting. Anyway, they laughed all across the lobby to the elevator. Very undignified, she thought."

  "Did the maid hear him say anything?"

  "Christchurch," the hotel clerk said, pleased that he could deliver information to a guest who paid so generously. Money may not buy love, but it regularly buys cooperation. "He mentioned Christchurch. The woman hung on his arm and begged him to take her along, too."

  Carter grinned.

  "I'll be damned," he said.

  Eight

  Consistent with a city founded by nineteenth-century English gentlemen, Christchurch was tweedy rather than trendy. Formal flower gardens decorated the manor houses of the rich, while tidy flower beds of snapdragons and posies dotted working class bungalows. Storybook swans swam in streams and ponds. Picture-postcard schoolchildren wore loden green blazers and carried traditional field hockey sticks.

  Christchurch's pace was slow, almost casual. It was a reflection of upbringing that emphasized good taste, not how many cars were sold today, not how much money would be made tomorrow. Business flourished without frenzy. Financial success was admired but not flaunted in the most English city outside Great Britain.

  Nick Carter thought about this as he spent the next two days quietly working his way across the city of more than 300,000. There were more restaurants than bars. Christchurch was a city of shopkeepers, all with small eccentricities in the English way to set their establishments apart.

  He went to Grimsby's Restaurant housed in a converted medieval-style church. To the gaudy Shangri-La, which promised in plastic what the movies had provided in celluloid. To the Oxford Victualling Company decorated with old wooden booths and iron gooseneck lamps. To the Waimairi Lounge where young marrieds on the way up talked rugby and politics. And to various Chinese, Mexican, Italian, American, English, German, and any other kind of ethnic bar or restaurant the fertile mind can contrive.

  It made him tired and gave him indigestion, but he continued. Even in a city of 300,000 individualists. Carter knew that it was only a matter of time until perseverance would pay off. With luck.

  * * *

  It was dusk of the second day. Rosy-checked youngsters of European descent rode bicycles through Christchurch's Cathedral Square.

  The town hall and the Anglican cathedral dominated the parklike area. Seagulls circled and called overhead. Unemployed teen-age Maori hoys stood on the corner, their shoulders hunched, smoking cigarettes. Their dark Polynesian faces with the handsome flat bones were sullen and discouraged in the fading light. All was not perfect in this English inspired paradise.

  Carter strode past them, past the square, past the Savoy Hotel to continue his methodical search. He wore a Fleet Street suit imported from London and a jaunty attitude that covered his growing discouragement. His beard was beginning to look like the affectation of a monied businessman rather than the sloppiness of a penniless derelict.

  The next stop was the Wyndham Club, a posh three-story hotel hewn of fieldstone. There were heavy brocaded drapes at the arched windows and an obsolete footman at the front door. The footman bowed and touched the brim of his cap as Carter mounted the steps. Proper clothes and the right attitude bought you respect, if not peace of mind.

  The smells of expensive whiskey, brandy, port, and old wood perfumed the air of the first-floor paneled bar. The bartender wiped a white cloth across the shining bar and smiled appraisingly at Carter.

  "London?" he asked. Carter stood at the bar, put a foot up on the rail, and nodded.

  "Just got in."

  Tell a person what they expect to hear, and you confirm their intelligence. Instant rapport.

  "Went to London once," the bartender went on.

  He had pale blue eyes and thin silvery hair swept back close to his head. His dignified posture suited the hushed bar.

  "Did you like it?"

  "I was disappointed, sir. I'd expected the fogs. You know, the thick pea-soup fogs of Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper?" The bartender of the high-class establishment had a taste for adventure. "But when I got there, they told me that the fog was really smog, just air pollution, and that London had new ordinances against it. There hadn't been a thick pea-souper since the sixties. Very disappointing."

  "I can imagine," Carter said.

  The bartender stopped polishing and looked at his only customer.

  "What would you like to drink, sir?"

  "Martini with a dash of Pernod."

  "Unusual drink," the bartender said as he went to work.

  "Serve it to anyone else lately?"

  "No, sir."

  The barkeep dropped ice cubes into the shaker one at a time, clinking. He poured in Boodles gin, nipping up the mouth of the bottle at just the right moment. His hands moved with the flourish and drama of a concert pianist. He held up a bottle of Cinzano vermouth.

  "Twelve to one?" he asked.

  "That's it," Carter nodded, continued. "He would've been a tall man, rangy. About my size. English accent. A pilot."

  The silvery-haired bartender worked without pause. He added the quality vermouth and stirred the mixture cold. He splashed Pernod into a stemmed glass, poured in the martini, twisted a lemon peel over it, and with a flick of the fingers dropped the peel into the concoction.

  He stood back, crossed his arms. He was a general awaiting the outcome of an important battle.

  Carter sipped thoughtfully.

  "Excellent," he announced. "Tender, not bruised."

  The bartender beamed. Carter had made his day.

  To show his appreciation, Carter drank.

  As he cleaned up, the bartender watched his customer enjoy the fruits of his talent.

  "You have a new bottle of Pernod, I see," Carter said at last.

  The bartender hesitated, and looked at the bottle as he returned it to its shell.

  "Indeed. We don't open bottles often. Even in the summer."

  Pernod was a summer drink, usually served over shaved ice. Green from the bottle, it turned milky yellow when it hit the ice. The liquor was prized for its faint licorice flavor.

  "Wonder who had the last drink from it," Carter said casually.

  The bartender said nothing. He mopped the bar. He rinsed glasses. He dusted bottles.

  "You could call," Carter suggested, sipping. "Ask them."

  The bartender who enjoyed his work but still yearned for the adventures of Sherlock Holmes's London fogs nodded, look off his apron, and left the room.

  Carter hoped that this was the luck he'd been waiting for.

  The bartender was phoning his fellow Wyndham bartenders to inquire whether any gentleman lately had asked for a martini with a dash of Pernod.

  He was gone twenty minutes. When he returned, Carter had finished the martini.

  "An interesting situation," the bartender confided as he retied the apron.

  Carter waited patiently. It was the bartender's moment of glory. Still, he had the urge to throttle him. It'd been a long two days.

  "You had success?" he asked.

  "I believe so," the bartender said solemnly. "There was a gentleman here, a guest of the hotel, named Shelton Philips. Handsome man. Even dashing, or so the ladies seemed to think."

  Carter smiled. Rocky Diamond's birth name was Philip Shelton.

  "Last week?" Carter said. "Do you still have the charg
e slips?"

  "His room, sir. Of course you'd want that."

  The obliging bartender went through the bar's copy of receipts. When luck happened, it was often abundant. But while you're doggedly, hopelessly pursuing elusive information, you forgot that.

  The room number was 203.

  * * *

  When Nick Carter stuffed twenty dollars in her pocket, the second-floor maid of the Wyndham Club remembered Shelton Philips.

  Philips was still renting the expensive room, she recalled. She was a short brunette with bright eyes and a mobile mouth. He'd paid up until next week.

  With another twenty dollars, the maid unlocked the door, blew Carter a kiss, and disappeared to assault the next room with lemon wax.

  Rocky Diamond's room at the Wyndham Club was decorated with hand-painted china plates, brass fixtures, heavy mahogany furniture, a hardwood floor, and a hand-knotted Oriental rug that started just inside the door and extended the length of the oblong room to beneath the high four-poster bed.

  Rocky Diamond liked to spend money. Was it his…or someone else's?

  Carter started with the drawers in the bureau, found the usual assortment of socks, underwear, and handkerchiefs. The closet contained two business suits — a dark blue and a gray pin-striped — and shoes and leisure clothes.

  Wherever Diamond had gone, he hadn't taken much with him. An austerity trip, or perhaps he'd simply been kidnapped, killed, and his body chopped into shark bait.

  Carter checked the linings and pockets of the clothes, tipped over and shook the shoes, then went through the rest of the drawers in the room.

  He found Wyndham Club stationery, a Gideon's Bible, a woman's brassiere and bikini underpants, tissues, and a case of men's jewelry. He worked with precision, carefully replacing everything as he'd found it.

  But his luck had run out again. There were no financial records No checkbooks, credit cards, or even local shop receipts or matchbooks.

  It was almost as if Diamond had expected his room to be searched His belongings were personal but revealed nothing of his true identity or his intentions in Christchurch or New Zealand.