by Nick Carter
Hawk smiled briefly. "The flight is ostensibly a personal one. Vacation. You know how we citizens scream about congressmen and other civil brass using funds for pleasure jaunts. So, in defense of our way of life, and to avoid calling attention to himself by any change of plan, Mr. Harcourt is making a point of flying like any ordinary citizen."
"And scholarly Mr. Cane and the beautiful Julia will be blown to bits while holding hands in the air. America, it's wonderful."
"Yes, it is," Hawk said sternly. "Now tell me your version of what happened at the Elmont."
Nick outlined the evening's events in succinct phrases, leaving nothing out except the exact circumstances of his meeting with Julia and the initial coolness between them. He dwelled on the perfumed envelope.
"Miss Baron's way of preparing you for her appearance, no doubt. That's another thing..."
"Yes, Mr. Hawk," Julia said demurely. "Tomorrow, Yardley's Lavender."
"Anything new on my gentlemen callers?" Nick went back to business, but his eyes were smiling. Julia might get in the way, but he was going to like her.
"Nothing at all on tonight, of course. Not yet. As to the rest, the police have been cooperative, but we haven't made much headway since this morning. The Biltmore corpse revealed nothing more than I told you this afternoon. Apparently just another gun — or knife — hired for dirty work. The hansom carriage pair were East Side hoods, who kill for anyone with enough money to hire them. Just murder for profit, even in the case of Seersucker. The difference with him is that he was closer to the source."
"The source being, in this case, the inscrutable A. Brown."
"Yes. We may have something there. A few more questions at the airport elicited the interesting fact that someone they thought was the same man who'd asked questions about Flight 16 was seen talking to a tall fellow with, they said, 'a mean and calculating eye.' Now, that doesn't tell us much, but it does suggest that Seersucker got his orders at the airport after X had seen something on the field. You, perhaps, and Rita Jameson."
"Oh." Nick fell silent. There was no use cursing himself now. But a picture of Rita leapt to his mind. A lovely vision that shimmered, as in a nightmare, into a sharp image of the mutilated, blood-drenched figure on the carriage seat. Damn Judas, then!
Hawk was still talking. "Brown, whoever he is, is going to be our concern at this end. You know the enemy, Cane. Why waste valuable espionage agents on mere executions when there's plenty of local talent for hire? Very confusing and very clever operational technique. Too bad we don't know how to use it."
Nick pulled his wandering thoughts together. "Doesn't it strike you that someone's been a little careless with his ambushes and killings?"
"No, I don't think so, Cane." Hawk's voice was grim. "Who could have guessed that the whole of AXE would be down on his neck if he killed one airline hostess and one playboy private eye?"
He reached into a pocket and withdrew a set of keys. Handing them to Nick, he said: "Front door. I'm afraid you'll both have to stay here tonight. It's the safest place in town for you. There are two army cots in the bedroom. That's the best we could manage. Set them up as you wish."
Hawk walked slowly to the door, then turned suddenly to face them.
"Oh, Miss Baron. You'll have to leave the Jaguar. We'll look after it. You'll find a thermos of coffee in the kitchen and some cigarettes. You both should try to make the best of a somewhat embarrassing situation. Miss Baron, you're here because Washington wants you in on the operation. It's up to Cane to decide your value and call the shots. I, personally, am very proud to have you with us — I know your services to this country. So please cooperate with each other. Keep Lyle Harcourt in one piece." He unlatched the door. "Mr. Judas is no joke. Good luck to you."
In the brief silence that followed. Carter and Julia Baron surveyed each other with measured looks.
"Cooperate with each other! The old buzzard. I'll see about those cots. You can have the bedroom. I'll sleep out here."
Nick left Julia standing in the middle of the blank living room, looking like a newly arrived tenant wondering why the moving van was late.
His survey showed him that Hawk had done all he could to offer them comfort without spoiling the illusion of an unoccupied apartment. Heavy shades were pulled down everywhere. The bathroom's frosted window was locked and barred. The cots were made up and looked almost good enough to sleep in. The thermos was comfortingly warm and the cigarettes were Players.
He carried one of the cots into the living room and set it up. Julia drifted past him into the bedroom and made suitcase-opening noises. She came out carrying something filmy and gave him a quick glance before closeting herself in the bathroom. He stripped down to his shorts and put his clothes on top of the two-suiter.
Julia emerged, looking a good five years younger than the femme jatale who had strolled so confidently into Yankee Stadium and waited for him, later, in the dashing Jaguar. The dark hair was loose over her shoulders and her face was scrubbed and as smooth as a child's. Yet her cat's eyes were far from childlike. Nick saw a lovely young woman with a tawny skin, high, proud breasts and a tall, exquisitely shaped body draped loosely in something that only a woman, and a very beautiful woman at that, would regard as something appropriate to sleep in.
She saw a tall, hard-faced man with an almost classic profile and a magnificently muscled body. An Apollo with a knife-scarred shoulder, wide-set steel gray eyes, and a crew-cut that somehow managed to look unruly.
"Julie, you are beautiful. How about some coffee?"
"I'd like that very much."
"Here, you maneuver these nasty little cups while I clean off the grime."
He vanished into the bathroom and splashed briskly for a while. When he came out the coffee was poured into the two plastic cups and Julie was sitting on the bed. He sat down beside her and they sipped the still-scalding brew.
"So you're O.C.I.?" he began formally.
"Uhuh." Her eyes slid over his body, then turned quickly away.
Carter noticed the glance and enjoyed the feel of it.
"Suppose you fill me in on your own immediate background. What you saw and heard in Peking; things like that."
She told him rapidly, in the crisp, incisive style of one accustomed to giving vital reports and having them listened to. Nick's mind absorbed every word, though his eyes wandered from hers down to her lips and then to the firm, exciting breasts that rose and fell with her measured breathing as if issuing invitations.
When she had finished her story she asked him: "Who is Rita Jameson? Hawk didn't tell me about her."
He told her. Her eyes widened with horror as he described the scene in Central Park. She reached over and touched him gently when his forehead clouded with the memory of what he thought was his own guilt. He found his breath quickening.
"Was she very beautiful?" she asked.
"She was," he answered seriously. "Much too lovely to die like that." He looked into the almond-shaped pools of her eyes. "But not as lovely as you. Some gentleman prefer brunettes." It seemed to him her breath had quickened, too. He uncoiled his whipcord body and got up from the bed, reaching for her hands with his.
"Perhaps we'd better get some sleep. We have to be up very early."
He pulled her gently to her feet.
"Perhaps we should," she murmured. She freed her hands from his and very lightly encircled his neck with her marvelously tawny arms. "Goodnight." Her lips brushed his. The arms stayed where they were. His own arms rose as if on hidden strings and reached around her, past the provocative firm softness of her magnificent bosom.
"Goodnight," he said, and kissed her lightly but lingeringly on the lips and eyes. Her arms tightened around him.
"Goodnight," she whispered. Her lips wandered over his face. The wonderful breasts swelled against his chest. She could feel the welcome warmth of his lithe, virile body.
"Goodnight," he breathed. His hands slid down her back and traced the contours of her thighs.
One arm went around her and the other brought her mouth against his. Their lips caught fire from their bodies and fused together in the flame. They stood like that for moments, two perfect human bodies almost melding into one.
Nick drew his head back, still holding her body close.
"Bedtime, Julie," he said gently. "Do you want to sleep alone?"
Her hands flowed over the skin of his arms and torso.
"Peter Cane. whoever you are... turn out the lights. I want you."
Julia Baron
A long, quivering sigh escaped her parted lips. Scanty clothes lay forgotten on the floor. Carter's lingering memories of the Countess de Fresnaye fled on wings of a new and deeper passion. The firm thighs so very close to his undulated rhythmically, giving and taking, rising and falling, flowing and receding.
The narrow Army cot was a haven of delight, the darkened room an amalgam of unexpected and delicious pleasures. Two who lived for the moment made marvelous love without restraint or shame. Nick Carter, alias Peter Cane, felt every taut nerve in his body surrendering to Julie's fluid beauty and to the endless, fleeting fragment of time.
She spoke to him once or twice in little gasps, the words disjointed but full of the meaning that her body so eloquently expressed. He whispered something, nothing, and trapped her sinuous firmness beneath him, his powerful muscles making his body an instrument of pleasure. She moaned, but not in pain. She circled his ear lobe with sharp teeth and bit, and murmured breathlessly. The darkness dissolved into tiny separate shafts of warmth, shafts that drew together in the blackness and caught fire. Their senses reeled in a communion of soaring happiness. For brief, ecstatic moments, the component parts of a blueprint, how to blow up a railroad train or detail-strip a .45, meant less than nothing. They belonged to a different layer of life, not the life that pulsed between them now. Man and Woman fused together. Their minds and hearts were blazing skyrockets of emotion. Both felt, as one, the overwhelming flood-tide of wonderful release.
"Peter, Peter, Peter." And a sigh.
"Julia... my one and only favorite spy."
They laughed together in the darkness, a relaxed and happy sound.
* * *
"Peter Cane, what is your name?"
"Julia Baron, what is yours?"
She laughed. "All right, I won't pry. Let's have a cigarette."
The coffee was lukewarm but welcome. They sat side by side in the darkness, their cigarettes twin points of light in a room that no longer seemed bare and drab.
After a moment he said: "Are you sleepy?"
"Not a bit. Never less."
"Good. Because we have a little homework to do that I somehow forgot in the press of more urgent business."
Julia eyed him lazily. "Such as?"
"Bombs. Their cause and effect. Not a very appropriate time to talk about them, perhaps, but we may not have another chance. Do you know much about demolitions?"
The darkest patch of darkness moved as her dark head shook. She sensed, rather than saw, the compact, whipcord figure so close to hers. "Three weeks, a few years ago at Fort Riley. A short, intensive course I've never used. And I suppose there've been modifications since then."
The tip of his cigarette flickered.
"Mostly variations on old themes. On Flight 601, you'll have to know some of the things to look for. Not to forget steel hands and bags that go bang in the night."
"Or day," she reminded. "They've all happened during the day. And tomorrow is another."
"Not our last, if we're careful. The OSS came up with a cartload of demolition gadgets in World War II. They're still damned effective, custom built for espionage and its baby, sabotage. Ever hear of gimmicks like Aunt Jemima, Stinger, Casey Jones or Hedy?"
"Pancake, cocktail, trainman, movie star. Or what?"
"You haven't heard of them," he said matter-of-factiy. "Each is a choice little item in the well-rounded spy's book of tactics. You are, of course, well-rounded, but..."
Nick described the Machiavellian devices he had encountered in his crowded lifetime:
Aunt Jemima, innocent-looking devil with the destructive force of TNT, was an apparently ordinary flour which could be kneaded, raised, and actually baked into bread. Even if moistened, it was still effective. Stinger was a fob-pocket gun with a three-by-half-inch tube; a short, automatic pencil in appearance. The tube contained a .22 cartridge, activated by a tiny lever on the side. One squeeze of the lever with your fingernail, and you could kill a man. Casey Jones was a magnet fastened to a box device containing a photoelectric cell. All it took to trigger treacherous Casey into explosion was a swift cutting-off of light, such as the dimout incurred when a train entered a tunnel. The electric eye would react to the sudden darkness and trip the explosive. Hedy was a decoy, rather than a weapon, a screeching firecracker-type device which gave off enough attention-getting clamor to allow an agent to create a diversion anywhere he chose while the real scene played elsewhere.
There were sundry other niceties in the OSS catalog. Nick detailed them with care and Julia listened. It was becoming increasingly clear that Flight 601 would take a lot of surveillance.
"That's about it," Nick finished. "There may be refinements, but those are the basic elements. Want to cash in your ticket?"
"I wouldn't if I could," she said quietly. "I've seen Harcourt at the U.N. I'd hate for us to lose him."
"That's why we're going to have to be on our toes every minute," Nick said. "Do you have any kind of weapon, by the way?"
"You bet I have. But I feel like a babe in the woods, after all that... I've a small traveling clock grenade, useful for bedsides in strange places. A small .25 that looks like a cigarette lighted. And a nailfile that's made of Toledo steel and cuts like a razor. I've only used it once — so far."
Nick could feel her shudder in the dark. Then she said: "What about you?"
He laughed. "Wilhelmina, Hugo, and Pierre. And a little grenade gadget that I haven't yet named and probably never will. If I don't use him, he doesn't deserve christening. And if I do — well, then he's dead."
"Wilhelmina who?"
"The Luger. We're a walking armory, we are."
She sighed and lay back on the cot. Her eyes searched for his in a darkness that was no longer absolute.
"Do you have any L-pills?" she asked quietly.
He was surprised. "No. Do you?"
"Yes. I've seen what's happened to some of us. I don't want to end up like that. If they ever get me, I want to die my way. I won't brainwash, and I won't talk. But I don't want to end up a babbling, mindless... thing."
Nick was silent for a moment Then he said: "I'd like to say, 'stick with me, kid, and you'll be fine.' But I can't guarantee anything but trouble."
"I know that" She reached for his hand. "I know what I'm doing, even though sometimes I hate it."
The cigarettes were dead, the coffee finished.
Nick stroked her fingers as if counting them.
"It's getting late. We'd better get some sleep. Now. In the morning, you leave first I'll help you get a cab on Broadway, then I'll clock out of here about ten minutes later. I'll meet you at the airline weighing-in counter, looking like a hungry lover. Which, I might add, won't be hard. You look breathless and expectant, as if looking forward to our assignation but wondering what mother would think if she could only know." She laughed quietly. "And then, for God's sake, when we get on the plane you'll have to tell me how we're supposed to have met! What is your cover, anyway?"
"I am an art teacher at Slocombe College, Pennsylvania," she said dreamily. "Destiny — and your best friend — brought us together. It was like a bolt of lightning from a summer sky... Oh, well. Tune in tomorrow for the next thrilling installment. I do draw rather well, by the way."
Nick smiled and kissed her, putting his hands lightly on her silky shoulders.
"Goodnight, then. You might as well stay here — I'll have the bedroom."
He rose silently.
"Peter," she call
ed softly.
"Yes?"
"I still don't want to sleep alone."
"Neither do I," he said huskily.
They didn't.
* * *
Dawn was lacing the sky with a ladder of fleecy clouds above the vast expanse of Idlewild as Nick Carter's taxi drew up before the Air America Building.
Julie Baron had pecked his lips in hasty farewell and tucked her long legs into the back of her airport-bound cab. Nick instructed the driver and had watched the Yellow Cab take off. He had gone back to the apartment and checked every inch of it before locking up. The little pile of cinders in the fireplace had become a light powder, as shapeless as dust. Nick carefully collected cigarette butts and ashes into an empty pack of Players. Habit was so strong that his check-up of the place was as natural as breathing.
The American Tourister luggage was neatly packed with the wardrobe and toilet accessories he would need for the flight. This time, he would have to leave his brief case. Peter Cane's notebooks and favorite reading matter were in the overnight bag, which he would keep with him on the plane. The four thousand dollars in bills were in a dual-purpose money belt strapped about his waist; his pockets were filled with items that proclaimed his identity as Peter Cane.
Nick set the black horn rims on his straight nose and surveyed himself in the discolored bathroom mirror. He rather liked the effect. We Professors don't have time to fuss with our appearance. Satisfied, he took his leave, throwing the discarded cigarette pack and the apartment keys into the nearest convenient garbage can. The Jaguar, he noticed, was already gone.
He hailed a cab, and the past was behind him. Only the lingering happiness of the night with Julie remained, and a feeling of fulfillment and relaxation.
The trail behind him was empty. There were no early morning followers to throw discord into the harmony of the pleasant ride to the airfield.
Wilhelmina, Hugo and Pierre waited patiently in their beds, oiled and ready for maximum effort. The nameless key-chain flashlight just waited.
