by Nick Carter
Except that he planned to return.
With practiced eyes, Carter's gaze swept the room. What had he not checked?
The walls, ceiling, and floor.
Again he went to work, checking behind and beneath the furniture, the floor heater, the floor of the closet, under the rug, the plates behind the light fixtures, the vent grate. Nothing.
Then he heard the sound at the door.
A small sound, trying to be silent.
There were no other doors. Carter was trapped.
Swiftly he crossed the room and pushed up the window.
There was a narrow ledge, about twenty-four inches wide, and then the two-story drop straight down.
Not an enormous distance, but enough to break a leg… or a spine. And there were no fall-breaking awnings or trees between him and the concrete below.
Carter slipped out the window and onto the ledge. Beneath him, pedestrians window-shopped and cars spumed exhaust into the air.
With luck, no one would notice him, would call him to the attention of others, to the attention of the police. Or Silver Dove.
As he closed the window, the door to the hotel room opened and closed.
The man was slight, quick. He slid skeleton keys back into his pants pocket.
Carter smiled to himself. In a way, he'd been expecting him.
It was the same man who'd left the CB radio and first aid kit for Mike on North Island. The same man who'd returned Carter to his hotel in Wellington after the attack by the Russians. The man who drove the yellow Mazda, wore the tam-o'-shanter cap pulled low to his ears, and had small features.
His movements were careful, experienced. He followed a similar pattern of search to Carter's. He wasn't looking for Carter this time, and he wasn't a burglar. He was a professional agent.
Carter watched from high up in the window, his feet firmly planted on the two-foot-wide ledge. His body was out of sight. Only his head could be seen, if the other agent were quick enough.
Wind whistled around him. Periodically he ducked out of view as the searcher, growing frustrated, would stop to survey the room and think.
It was at one of those times that Carter's own gaze saw the scrap of paper. It was a piece of notepaper, folded small to fit in a wallet or key case, resting at the top of the bottom pane of window-glass inside the room. It could easily have dropped when two hands — rather than the expected single hand — were required to reach up to unlock the double-paned window. (It was a stiff window.) And the scrap would go unnoticed by maids who cleaned only what was visible.
Carter smiled broadly, patient as the agent completed his methodical search of the room. The man spent a good hour at it, even removing the plates that covered the light switches and electrical outlets. He w as after Rocky Diamond too. But what was his reason… and for whom was he working?
At last, discouraged and disgusted, the agent pressed his car against the door. When the sounds outside told him it was safe, he opened the door and slipped out.
Carter reopened his window, grabbed the folded paper, and followed.
The agent strolled past the House of Natural Health Foods Sanatorium, the New Market Butcherym Reynolds Chemists, Woolworth's Variety, and back into Christchurch's Cathedral Square.
He was a slender man wearing nubby tan slacks, a London Fog windbreaker, and the jaunty tam-o'-shanter. He strolled with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders relaxed, giving no indication he was concerned about being followed. That in itself was enough to make Carter suspicious.
An agent as good as this one appeared to be would be crossing streets, dipping in and out of stores, backtracking — because if he's on an assignment, he's a marked man. By somebody he often doesn't know.
He's also always on the lookout for unusual amounts of interest in him or what he's doing. That could lead him to information he needs. With Carter, careful use of a city's streets was second nature. Seldom was he tailed without his knowledge. He d lost at least one tail in Christchurch yesterday. And two in Wellington. Part of the job.
As they entered the square, Carter hung back farther.
The strange agent blended in with the European New Zealanders, his very English clothes like the very English clothes of the other inhabitants in the square.
Carter had never heard the stranger's voice, wondered whether there'd be a Scotch accent to fit the tam-o'-shanter, or another accent — Eastern European. American, Russian — that the tam-o'-shanter was worn to deflect.
The agent turned toward the flower stand in front of the big brick and stone post office. He had a strange gait, very idiosyncratic. If Carter had enough time to study it…
Instead, Carter ambled off, apparently heading for the men's rest room.
The agent selected a bouquet of yellow, white, and blue daisies from the flower woman. It was a simple, conversation-filled transaction, and Carter scanned the square, bored.
Until he saw Blenkochev.
The chief of the dreaded K-GOL was coming through the big double doors of the post office as casually as if it were the Kremlin.
The old agent was dressed in a dowdy, rumpled suit. Very English. He was shuffling through a stack of overseas envelopes as if looking for a remittance check.
It was a good cover, and Blenkochev was hardly recognizable as the polished Soviet official in Mike's photograph.
He was there to meet the man in the tam-o'-shanter.
Despite the enormity of the implications of having the world's top KGB man working once again in the field, Carter had to smile.
Blenkochev was good. The hands trembled ever so slightly. The nose was made up floridly red to suggest too much drink. And then just the right touch — the look of need on Blenkochev's face brightened into greed when he found the right envelope and ripped it open. He beamed as he read the amount on the fake check. Then he walked as if looking for a bar.
Meanwhile, the young agent in the tam-o'-shanter was busying himself at the flower stand, still engaging the flower woman in small talk. As the agent watched Blenkochev from the comer of his eye, he rotated the bouquet in his hand, cradled it a moment in his arms, then dropped it to his side to tap it against his thigh. He didn't know what to do with the thing.
At last, finishing the chat, the young man said thank you and turned.
Bumped into Blenkochev.
The envelopes flew into the air.
The bouquet dropped.
Both men bent to retrieve their belongings, and Carter saw the brief conversation that occurred without either man actually looking at the other. The young agent was reporting in. Carter lip-read. The old agent was disgusted with the message, then issued orders. They exchanged no looks or packages.
The two stood, shook hands, once again polite strangers. Apologies were given.
They walked off in directions ninety degrees apart.
Carter followed Blenkochev, giving him plenty of room.
Blenkochev walked at a brisk pace through the square, circled back, took advantage of the men's rest room, paused on a park bench to rest, then ambled around the post office to the street.
At some point he'd spotted Carter. But the AXE agent stayed with him. The KGB man didn't try very hard to lose the Killmaster.
Back at the street, the yellow Mazda was at the curb, and Blenkochev strode toward it. His too-long suit jacket flapped against the baggy pants.
The young agent reached across the front scat and opened Blenkochev's door. Impatient, he gunned the motor.
Blenkochev hopped in, turned, and looked back through the window.
As the Mazda sped away, the old fox gave Carter a small, impish smile and a tiny wave. It was a salute, one pro to Mother.
Grinning, Carter watched the Mazda weave into the Christchurch traffic. There was no point in following Blenkochev. Carter had found what Blenkochev had sent the young agent in the tam-o'-shanter for.
He took the small folded notepaper from his pocket, opened it, reread the address, and hailed a taxi.
* * *
Carter's destination was southwest, beyond Christchurch's city limits, in a sparsely populated area near Wigram Aerodrome. Willows and oaks dotted the dry landscape. Abandoned farm implements were rusty reminders of the original purpose the English gentlemen had had in mind for the land.
Now the area was partitioned into vacant lots, waiting for sale or foreclosure. A Maori family stood on a sagging porch as Carter drove by in the rented car. They were quiet people, exhausted by life. They didn't wave, but they watched Carter turn down the road that led to Charlie Smith-deal's address. His passing was their day's entertainment.
Carter parked the rented car in the shade of a willow whose branches brushed the ground. The summer afternoon had grown hot; it was almost eighty degrees. New Zealand's weather was not only dramatic, it was unpredictable.
He got out of the car and looked around. Smith-deal's house was little more than a shack. Tin cans, tires, a roll of barbed wire jumbled on the ground around it. Weeds sprouted limp from thirst. A metal flap from a broken reaper banged as a light breeze stirred dust into the air. It had been a good, sturdy house once. The foundation was even of stone. A dirt trail led to the sagging front porch. Carter walked up it.
He knocked.
"Smith-deal!"
No answer. He knocked again, called again, circled around to the back. No one there either.
He returned to the front, his hand on the doorknob, when he saw the old jeep lurching along the country road toward the shack.
The driver was having trouble deciding whether he preferred the accelerator or the brake. The vehicle would rush forward, skid almost to a stop, then would leap ahead like a jackrabbit with a shotgun at its tail.
Carter watched the jeep's erratic progress and smiled.
When the jeep at last ground to a dusty stop in the jumbled yard, he walked toward it.
"Charlie Smith-deal?"
"Betcha!" the driver said, exhaling a cloud of whiskey.
His eyes were red and bleary. He jerked his baseball cap around so the flap was over the back of his neck. He raised his fool, aimed it outside the jeep, and set it deliberately on the ground. He grinned at Carter.
"Do I know you?"
"Don't think so," Carter said, grabbing Smith-deal's arm to steady him.
He followed Smith-deal up the path to the shack's porch. Smith deal never wavered, a dog on a scent. There was probably a bottle in the shack.
"I'm looking for a friend," Carter went on. "Name's Rocky Diamond. You might know him as Philip Shelton, or Shelton Philips."
"Oh?" Smith-deal's interest was waning. He opened the door. "Need a drink."
There was a faint, plastic click.
Carter tackled Smith-deal's legs Hurled them off the porch. Rolled them next to the stone foundation.
The shack exploded.
Nine
The ground shook and rolled. The roar of the explosion rocked their eardrums. Dust and debris clotted the air, and the two men huddled next to the stone foundation and coughed.
The bomb had been set on a split-second delay switch to be sure that anyone entering would be inside when the explosives blasted the shack apart. That had been the soft click that Nick Carter's acute hearing had picked up. Just like all experts, bomb professionals tried to think of every contingency.
As Carter picked up Charlie Smith-deal and held him by a wobbly shoulder, he thought about it. Too much of anything was often not a good idea… even too much efficiency.
Smith-deal gazed at the stone foundation of his shack, now filled like a volcano crater with wood splinters useful only to a toothpick factory. Dust settled slowly toward the ground.
"Shit," he said mournfully.
"Sorry about that," Carter said. "Looks like somebody doesn't like you. You'll need a new house."
"Never mind the bloody house!" Smith-deal cried in outrage. "Me bottle was in it!"
"I am sorry." Carter grinned. "You don't have an emergency bottle, maybe? Hidden somewhere?"
Smith-deal looked blankly at Carter. Slowly memory brightened his eyes. He snapped his fingers.
"Dammee, you're right!"
Carter followed Smith-deal across the jumbled yard to the back. The drunk went straight to a well with a low stone wall. The overhead arch that had held a bucket was long gone. The bucket was nearby, upside down, with a tattered rope tied to the handle. Smith-deal ignored it. Instead, he pulled up a second rope that was fixed lo a deeply embedded hook inside the well's wall. The bucket was left outside the well so that the puller wouldn't get the ropes confused in the night.
Carter looked over the well's edge into darkness. Slowly the jug appeared. It was home-brew in a plastic bleach bottle, not an encouraging container. It had been there so long that algae covered it in a slimy green.
Smith-deal crowed with pleasure. He sank next to the well, his back supported by the wall, lifted the bottle, and drank.
Carter squatted next to him.
"Looks like you've been having a good time," he observed. "A long celebration of something."
"Can't figure it," Smith-deal said, wiping a fist across his mouth "Who'd want to blow the old shack? I don't even own it."
"They were after you, not the shack."
"Doesn't make a goddamned bit of sense."
Smith-deal drank again, long and deep. At last he sighed, and set the jug next to nun. He kept a proprietary arm around it.
"You don't want any, do you?" he inquired.
"Wouldn't dream of depriving you," Carter said.
Smith-deal beamed and rotated his baseball cap so that the brim was again over his eyes, sheltering his face from the afternoon sun. He was in his early forties, a slender man in need of a shave. What flesh he had was pulpy, almost without substance. He'd been drinking for years and not bothering to eat when he did. He appreciated those who didn't take the liquor that he substituted for proper nourishment.
"It's not all that great," the New Zealander admitted and drank again. "But you can have some. Sure. You saved my life. I think. Didn't you?"
Carter laughed.
"Probably, but you keep your booze. Instead, maybe you'd answer some questions. Know anything about airplanes?"
Smith-deal blinked slowly, digesting Carter's words.
"Mechanic," he replied, still puzzled.
"Know a flyer by the name of Rocky Diamond?"
Smith-deal hooted and slapped his thigh.
"Oh, he's a hard case, he is!" he said. "One of the hardest cases around!"
"Did you see him last week?"
The mechanic's eyebrows knitted in thought. His forehead creased with suspicion.
"Why d'you want to know?"
"If I wanted to hurt him, I wouldn't be bothering to talk to you now. I'd have you down, your arm locked back, and your neck stretched from here to Auckland. You'd tell me anything I wanted."
Smith-deal blanched.
"Diamond's missing," Carter continued. "Maybe he's dead. Maybe he's hurt somewhere and needs help. If he's your friend, you'll want to tell me what you know."
Smith-deal drank, then looked at Carter with bleary eyes.
"He flew out of Christchurch?" Carter prodded.
"That's it," the mechanic said. "Don't know whether he'd want me to tell you or not. But then, if the poor boy's missing…" He shrugged. "Ah, well. He should be there by now, and no damage done. He was doing a bet. Someone hired him to make a stunt flight from Christchurch to the South Pole. He was supposed to stay overnight there and then fly on to the Falklands. When he took off, he gave me a wad of money for helping him and to keep my mouth shut. I went off to celebrate. Haven't been home since." He stared mournfully across the yard to the remains of the shack.
"It saved your life," Carter reminded him. "If you'd come back sooner, you wouldn't have heard the click and you'd be dead."
"Don't know why anybody'd want to kill me." The mechanic shook his head sadly. Thinking about it was upset-tag, so he drank again.
"Sure. Had to. Everyone does."
"And he had plenty of supplies?"
"Everything. Snow equipment mostly. Just in case. Food, too, and survival gear. No frills. And the gas tanks were full, Saw to it myself."
"There's no record of him at either Christchurch International Airport or Wigram Aerodrome."
"Well, we were quiet about it all. Rocky called himself something else — Philip something — but there should be records. The flight plan."
Carter stood and dusted his hands.
"Come on," he said. "There's someone you need to talk to."
He lifted Charlie Smith-deal by the armpits and steadied him on his feet. The mechanic clasped the algae-covered jug to his chest.
Smith-deal was the only witness Carter had to Rocky Diamond's presence in New Zealand Smith-deal believed what Diamond had told him, hut somewhere in the man's unconscious there might he clues about what Diamond had really been up to. Carter would get Smith-deal to Colonel ffolkes and let the New Zealand intelligence head's expert psychologists take over.
"Not sure I like this," Smith-deal muttered as Carter propelled him around the house.
"Can't be helped," Carter said, aiming him at the Ford Laser 1.3 he d rented in downtown Christchurch. "No one's going to hurt you. Just help you remember better. Might actually be fun for you. Interesting."
"Don't like this at all!"
Smith-deal wouldn't be convinced easily. Alcoholics didn't like change. The most important constant in their lives was threatened — liquor.
Still, Carter urged him toward the Ford. And Smith-deal, whose will had long ago evaporated in an alcoholic haze, went.
The bullet streaked through the sunlight.
Instantly the AXE agent dived. He yanked Smith-deal down and pulled out Wilhelmina.
The bullet bit into the ground five inches from Carter.
Carter dragged Smith-deal with him to shelter behind the rented car.
Smith-deal quaked. His teeth chattered as he gripped the plastic bottle of booze to his chest.
