by Nick Carter
“Just the other way round,” he said. “I’m agin. That’s all I can tell you.”
The bloodshot eyes regarded him steadily for a long time. Then Bannion reached for the bottle again. “Okay. I’m in, Mr. Carter. Short of murder, I’m in. What do we do first?”
Nick poured the drinks. “This is the last,” he warned Bannion. “I want you as sober as possible. After this one we leave—and we’ll need transportation. Got any ideas about that?”
“I’ve got a jeep outside,” said Bannion surprisingly. “The oldest jeep in the world. Name of Gae—that means cow in Hindustani. She still runs—barely. Where do you want to go, Mr. Carter?”
As they left the man from AXE said, “Call me Nick when you must call me anything—and don’t use my name anymore than you must. Never in front of other people! Right now I want to go to the Mauripur district—to Sam Shelton’s house. You know the district?”
“I know it. I even know the house—it’s on Chinar Drive. I used to drive a beat-up taxi around town until the Paks got sore and spoiled it for me. They don’t like white men working at their jobs.”
Nick followed him to a dark lane near the Indus. The night was clear and cool, with a hanging yellow lantern of moon, somewhat spoiled by the smell of mudflats and dead fish. In the faint light Nick could see ghostly dhows drifting with the current down to the Arabian Sea.
Maybe it wasn’t the oldest jeep in the world. Perhaps, Nick thought as he climbed in, it was only the second or third oldest. You couldn’t say that the paint job was bad— there was no paint. There was no glass in the windshield. The tires were worn down to the cord. The single headlight was wired on and bounced alarmingly.
Bannion had to crank—the starter having long ago gone to buy whisky, he volunteered without shame—and after an anxious moment Gae began to cough and wheeze and hawk up great blue gouts of stinking smoke. They took off cautiously as Bannion babied the tires. A coil of spring nipped at N3’s backside as they rattled and clanked and clunked down every dark alley Bannion could find. And he seemed to know them all. He carefully skirted the modern downtown section of Karachi. They came to a maze of miserable huts thrown together from every kind of material—packing crates, bamboo, mud blocks and logs, flattened oil and beer cans. The stench was appalling. They wound through this desert of misery by means of a single-lane knee deep in greasy mud. The ancient jeep huffed and puffed valiantly. The hovels, and the smell, covered acres.
Nick Carter put a handkerchief over his nose and Bannion snickered. “Rough, huh? Refugees from India in here —no place else to put ‘em. It’s a hell of a mess—even I live better than these poor devils.”
“Speaking of places to live,” said Nick, “after our little excursion tonight I’m going to need a place to shack up—a safe place where I won’t be bothered by cops or anyone else. Your place should do?”
“Perfect,” Bannion nodded and smiled, his teeth flashing through the red beard. “I thought you’d come to that! You’re welcome—part of the deal. The cops never bother me. I know most of them in the neighborhood and anyway I’ve been around so long they take me for granted now. I’m just the American bum!”
“Your wife? And nine kids?”
Bannion shook his head. “Not to worry. I’m bringing home some money, so Neva—that’s my wife—will be happy with me for once. The kids do what I say! No problem there, though you’ll have to keep out of sight. We’re one big happy neighborhood and the wives gossip something fierce—but we’ll worry about that later. Speaking of money — I’d better have some to show Neva.”
Nick fumbled in his wallet and handed the man a thousand rupee note. “That’s for now. There will be plenty more if we get along. If you do a good job and don’t let me down I might be able to do something about getting you out of this hole.” He let it go at that. Bannion made no answer.
They reached Drigh Road and headed west. It was a modern highway, four lanes, and well marked. Bannion pressed down on the gas and the old jeep sputtered and picked up speed. The speedometer didn’t work, but Nick guessed they were doing at least forty-five.
“This is the tricky bit,” Bannion said. “They patrol this pretty well. If we’re stopped it’ll be along this stretch.”
Nick glanced at his AXE watch. It was a little after one.
He heard a sound of planes overhead and glanced up. They were old prop jobs. Far across the city he watched lances of brilliant light spring to life and sweep the sky. There came the distant popping of anti-aircraft fire. Two of the searchlights caught a plane in their apex and held it for a moment, pinned to the black sky like a moth to cork. The plane slipped away. There came the remote crash-thud of a bomb exploding.
Bannion chuckled. “Hit-and-run raid. Tomorrow the Indians will officially deny it ever happened. The Pakistanis are probably raiding Delhi about now—and they’ll deny it too. Some war! A two-bit deal that neither of them wants.
N3 remembered Hawk’s words—somebody wanted this war. The Red Chinese!
They were getting into the Mauripur district now. Well-paved streets and large estates and compounds surrounded by thick-growing chinar trees. A delicate fragrance of cashew-nut bushes scented the crisp night air. The AXE man noted the street lights, dark now because of the blackout.
“This is where the money lives,” said Bannion. “And most of the foreigners. The place you want is just up here.”
Bannion slowed the jeep to a crawl. Even so the old engine made a fearful racket in the quiet night. “Turn it off,” Nick ordered quietly, almost whispering. “Park it someplace where it won’t be noticed by a patrol, then we’ll walk.”
Bannion switched off the engine and they coasted. They left the jeep in the clotted shadow of a towering Persian oak, and Bannion led the way down a strip of blacktop. He stopped in the shadows just short of where a white gate gleamed in the gibbous moon. At that moment, from afar on the outskirts of the city, a jackal wailed.
“They come in close looking for food,” Bannion said. “Tigers not a hundred miles from here.”
Nick told him to shut up and stand quietly. He was not interested in tigers, other than himself, and the only jackals he cared about were the two-legged variety. He whispered his instructions to Bannion. They would remain in the shadows, and stark still, for twenty minutes. If anyone was watching they should betray themselves by then. In the meantime Bannion, whispering into N3’s ear, was to fill him in on a few matters. Bannion obliged.
He had followed the Nick Carter case in the papers, of course, but only with cursory interest. Until tonight his interest in spies and secret agents had been nil—his chiefest concern being the next drink. Now he probed his alcohol-ridden memory as best he could.
Nick Carter—the man who looked like and was posing as, Nick Carter—had been arrested because of the alertness and loyalty of Sam Shelton’s maid, a Hindu girl. Hindus who worked for Americans were fairly safe in Karachi. The maid had admitted the man calling himself Nick Carter and had left him alone with Sam Shelton. Shelton, she told the police later, had appeared puzzled at first, but glad enough to see the man. They had gone into Shelton’s private office. Later the girl heard angry words and peeked through a keyhole just in time to see the stranger stab Shelton with a small stiletto. The girl had used her head, had not panicked, had called the police immediately from an upstairs phone.
By luck there had been a police car nearly on the spot They captured the killer after a terrific struggle in which a policeman was badly hurt. Once taken, however, the murderer had given no trouble. Not in the ordinary way. In another way he had been enormous trouble. He had identified himself as Nicholas Carter, an American agent, and had cheerfully confessed to killing Sam Shelton. Shelton, the man claimed, was a traitor who was about to defect. He had been killed on orders from Washington. To top it all off the killer demanded diplomatic immunity.
The real N3 whistled softly as he heard this latter. Clever devil! He wondered if the story had been rehearsed, or if the g
uy had simply made it up as he went along? Anyway it was fiendishly confusing—as the man had meant it to be. The cables and air waves between Washington and Karachi must have been blazing. Nick grinned sourly now as Bannion talked. He could almost smell the mutual distrust. And Hawk—his boss must be nearly out of his mind.
The best—or the worst—was yet to come. Day before yesterday the fake Nick Carter had escaped! Had been delivered from jail by a gang of masked and armed men who left three dead cops behind, plus one of their own. This man had turned out to be a Hindu thug well known to the police, which helped matters not at all.
Into this mess Nick Carter had walked! Unsuspecting. Hawk hadn’t known the details in time to warn him. Might not have warned him anyway— Nick had a job to do and he was on his own. It was a thing his chief was capable of—withholding information that might only complicate matters. It was a judgment call—and Hawk never erred on the side of making things safer and more comfortable for his agents. It was his theory that such solicitude only made them lax.
Nick could find but one small crumb of comfort—he was only two days behind the impostor now. It occurred to him that the man might still be in Karachi.
The twenty minutes were up. The moon ducked behind a cloud and it was very dark. Nick, walking on the grass, went to the white gate and vaulted it. Bannion was just behind him. “What do you want me to do?”
“Stay and watch,” Nick whispered. “Be careful. I don’t expect you to take any risks or get in any trouble for me. But if anyone comes snooping, a police car, or anyone, I’d appreciate a warning.”
“I whistle pretty good.”
Nick remembered the jackal. “Whistling’s too obvious. How’s your jackal howl?”
Bannion’s teeth flashed in a grin. “Not bad. I scare the kids with it sometimes.”
“Okay then. That’s it. After you signal, and if you think there is any danger, you take off! I don’t want you caught.” Bannion would talk, of course.
“I don’t want to get caught,” Bannion agreed. He chuckled. “Not until I get the rest of the money anyway. But every cop in Karachi knows my jeep.”
“We’ll risk that,” said Nick. “Now keep quiet and hide. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
The house was low and rambling, much like a ranch house in the States except that one wing had a second story. Maid’s room, Nick thought as he studied the house from the shelter of a hedge. It was dark and quiet. He wondered briefly what had happened to the maid. Cops still holding her? Gone to relatives in India?
A tiny censor in his brilliant, superbly trained brain began to click and glow. But for once he ignored it, so intent was he on his purpose.
Nick moved across a cement porch without sound. He found a French window open, the jalousie raised. A second censor clicked in his brain. This time he paid heed. How come the window so conveniently open, so beckoning? Sloppy police work when they had sealed the house? Could be. Or could not be. So—he was being paid danger money for this mission.
N3 checked his weapons. Pierre, the gas bomb, was safe in the metal cartridge between his legs. Surely he wouldn’t need Pierre tonight. Hugo, the stiletto, was cold against his forearm. Sam Shelton had been killed with a stiletto, remember!
N3 checked Wilhelmina, the Luger. He jacked a cartridge into the chamber, muffling the sound beneath his borrowed airman’s jacket, and flicked off the safety. He went into the dark room beyond with a single fluid motion that was without sound.
Nothing. A clock ticked dutifully away, though its owner had no more use for time. It was blacker than a dictator’s sins! Nick felt his way along a wall, his fingers detecting flocked wallpaper.
He reached a corner and halted, counting the seconds, listening. After two minutes he dared the pen light he always carried. The thin beam disclosed a big desk, files, a small safe in another corner. He was in Shelton’s office.
Cautiously he approached the desk. It was bare except for a blotter, a telephone, and some sort of an official form pad. Nick held the light close and scanned the pad. It was a new one with only a few sheets missing. Nick picked it up gingerly—he had no means of knowing how clever the Karachi police were with fingerprints—and read the small black lettering. It was in gobbledy-gook. Officialese! U.S. Lend Lease style. It was a pad of requisition slips.
The dead Sam Shelton had been special attache for APDP—Arms Procurement and Distribution Program. There was a huge transshipment depot on the Indus northeast of Karachi.
N3 scanned the pad again. He turned it in the air so the little beam of light played across the top sheet at an angle, bringing up indentations, the impression of what had been written on the preceding sheet. Even without special technique he could make out a long list, written in a small hand, and at the bottom the heavy swirl of a signature. Sam Shelton.
Excitement began to build in the AXE man now. He thought he was getting close—close to finding out what the fake Nick Carter was after. He twisted the pad this way and that, trying to make out more of the writing. He was positive that one of the faintly limned phrases was— Consigned to—
Damn! He needed a heavy pencil, a soft lead, to brush over the impressions and bring them up. The desk top was bare. Nick found a drawer, the top drawer, and slid it softly open. There should be—
For a micro-second the man and the snake stared at each other. It was a krait, eighteen inches of instant death! Cousin to the cobra, but much deadlier. Death in less than a minute and no serum could save you.
Both the man and the snake struck in the same instant. Nick was just a shade the faster. His action was spontaneous, without thought. Thought would have killed him. His nerves and muscles took over and the little stiletto flashed down to pin the krait to the bottom of the drawer, just below the obscene flat head.
The krait lashed in a furious death agony, still trying to strike its enemy. Nick Carter gave a long sigh and wiped sweat from his face, watching the fangs still flickering a half-inch from his wrist.
Chapter 7
Double Trouble
His nerves were back to normal before the krait stopped writhing. Careful to avoid the still feral mouth the man from AXE found a soft pencil and brushed it lightly over the pad. It was a trick every kid knew. As he stroked in the soft graphite, words began to appear. Soon he could read most of what was on the pad. N3 pursed his lips in silent speculation.
Sam Shelton, acting by the authority of his office, had turned over a lot of arms to the Pakistani Army. Evidently on orders from the fake Nick Carter. It didn’t have to be that way, but Nick had a sinking feeling that it was. His double had taken the top sheet from this pad. A requisition and consignment slip releasing arms to the Pakistanis. Dated day before yesterday.
Nick slanted his light on the pad and read a note scribbled on the bottom—the arms to be shipped up the Indus, by boat, to the Lahore front! That would look just great in the newspapers! Washington favoring Pakistan over India— breaking its own edict! It wasn’t true, of course, but that was how it would look. If it got out.
N3’s handsome, saturnine face crinkled in a wolfish grin. It wouldn’t get out—not if he had anything to say about it. It was just one more angle to this job—find that arms shipment and stop it! That must take priority even over killing his other self.
He scanned the paper again. Rifles—and Mis at that! Light and heavy machine guns. Grenades. Bazookas and light anti-tank guns!
Five million rounds of ammunition!
Nick Carter heard it then. A faint sliding sound somewhere in the house. In one rapid motion he flicked off the light, snatched the stiletto out of the dead krait, and ran on tiptoe to a wall near the study door. He liked something solid against his back.
The sound was not repeated. N3 waited, tensed and ready, breathing noiselessly through his open mouth. Not one of his superb muscles so much as quivered. He was an unseen statue—the perfect hunter doing what he was best at—the waiting stalk.
Five minutes passed in utter silence. The clo
ck’s insistent voice was metronomic in the dark. Nick could count his pulse as it thudded in his temples. He began to realize what he was up against. A man who was supposed to be himself—and who was just as patient, as cunning, and as deadly! And that man, the impostor, was somewhere in the house now! Waiting, even as Nick was waiting. Waiting to see who made the first mistake!
N3 understood something else—his enemy had purposely made that noise. It had not been a slip, a mistake. His enemy had wanted Nick to know that he was in the house. That single small sound had been a challenge. Come and get me!
That, N3 admitted, was the hell of it! He had to go after the other man. The fake agent had all the time in the world— Nick had none to spare. The double had come back to this house because he had reasoned that Nick would come here! And he was -confident, sure of himself, else he would not have signaled his presence. He had an organization behind him, too. A clear escape route laid out. Help within the sound of his voice. N3 had none of these things. He stood alone but for the growing anger and determination in him. The confrontation had come sooner than he had expected.
One other thing was clear. The arms shipment must be on its way. The Chinese agent had attended to that first, then doubled back to ambush Nick as he followed the trail. What queer bravado could have prompted the man to make a sound, to give himself away? A kind of twisted pride—or stupidity? Over-confidence?
Most unprofessional, Nick thought as he went back out the French window in a silent gliding motion. Unprofessional and dangerous. It’s going to get him killed!
For a moment he lingered in the shadows of the porch, listening. Nothing stirred near the house or in it. The planes had gone and the searchlights vanished. A pi dog howled dismally from far off—it sounded nothing like a jackal. Nick thought of Mike Bannion and hoped the little man was obeying orders and wouldn’t come snooping. And wouldn’t get hurt if, indeed, the man inside had helpers about.
He left the porch and moved silently through grass on which droplets of dew were beginning to gather. He had replaced Hugo in the sheath and went with the Luger ready and eager. He would like to do this job silently, but that might not be possible.
