The Living Death

by Nick Carter

  "You're getting out," I said, putting one hand behind her back. She looked at me and I could see her eyes were round and wide with fright. What she saw in mine frightened her more. She pulled the door open and swung out of the car. I was right behind her and I'd just straightened up beside her when the shots came, two, maybe three of them. They whizzed past my ear and plunked into the car with a dull thud. Vicky screamed and I threw her to the ground with me. Despite her terror, I saw her squeezing herself under the car. I lay quietly, face down. It had happened too fast for me to see where the shots had come from, except to note that they came from different directions. Only the fact that I had gotten out of the car on Vicky's side and blended in with the dark shape of the car had prevented them from being directly on target. They'd been fractions away from it, as it was. If I tried to get up and run for it they'd ventilate me in seconds. I continued to lie still, still as a dead man.

  In a minute, I heard footsteps approaching, one pair of footsteps. They were cautious and competent. I'd been mentally reconstructing what little I'd been able to take in of the spot. The dark hull of the merchantman was closest to me, just beyond the row of packing crates. The footsteps stopped and a hand reached down to turn me over. Certain the other hand would have a gun in it, I let him turn me half over, limply, and then, pressing into the cobblestones of the dock with my heels, I flung myself into a roll, catching him at the ankles with the full weight of my body. His feet were swept out from under him and he toppled forward across me. I heard the gun explode and the high-pitched whine of the bullet as it richocheted off the pavement at close range. Before he could get to his knees I'd reached the row of packing crates and dived behind them. I heard the thud of two more bullets hit the crates, and now I saw that there were two more men, positioned at opposite ends of the dock, three of them in all. I ducked low behind the crates and raced along the dock until I was alongside the gangway ladder running down the side of the merchantman.

  I leaped onto it and raced up, a dark blur against the black bulk of the hull. It took them half a minute to zero in on me and then I was a lousy target. Their shots were wild and I vaulted onto the deck. They'd be coming after me, I knew that, too. I was aboard the darkened vessel. I could go down into the hold and hide from them. They might not find me there, but it could also be a certain death trap. I elected to stay out in the open where I could maneuver. I raced up to the bridge and lay flat on my stomach. I hadn't long to wait before the three dark forms came up the gangway ladder and onto the deck. They separated at once, ending my thoughts of gunning them down with a quick burst. I watched one head aft, another to the bow. The third one started to climb up the companionway toward the bridge. I let Hugo drop into my palm and lay flat. The minute his head appeared over the top step he saw me and started to raise his gun hand. But I'd been expecting him and Hugo flew with deadly speed. I heard him gag as the stiletto struck deeply into the side of his neck. He started to topple backwards but I was on my feet, catching him and pulling him onto the bridge. I retrieved Hugo and went down the steps to the main deck. Moving in a crouch, I went forward. The second one was searching behind every boom, every deck winch and ventilator. I managed to move close enough to him so that when he saw me, there was not more than six feet between us. I dived, catching him in a flying tackle, but my objective of silence failed. He got off one shot which, though it missed, exploded deafeningly on the silent vessel. The tackle sent him backwards against a deck cleat, and I heard the grunt of pain. He was bigger than the other one, heavier. I grappled for the gun with him, and as he slid from the cleat it fell away from both of us.

  He pushed up against me, his hand pressing into my face. I twisted away and brought a short right around that only grazed his jaw. He tried to roll away but I stayed with him. I could hear the sound of running footsteps approaching. I grabbed an arm and twisted to find he was strong as an ox. He managed to pull away from me and I felt his hands on my throat. I brought a knee into his groin and he let go with a gasp. The other one had come up but, as I'd hoped, couldn't get off a shot at the two dark figures grappling on the deck. I felt his hands grabbing my jacket to pull me away from his friend. I let him and as he lifted me, I caught the other one with a kick that landed right at the point of his jaw. I could feel the jaw give way and he lay still. Twisting backwards and reaching to one side, I gave the newcomer a hip flip that sent him sprawling. He came up with gun in hand but I had Wilhelmina out and ready. She barked once, and he fell sideways over a chock.

  I didn't bother to search them. I knew they'd have nothing revealing on them. They had been professionals. Their silent, efficient manner tipped that off. It was over, and that was all I knew. Who sent them, who they were, whether they were involved in the original message to AXE, were unanswered questions. There'd been enough shots fired to bring the London Bobbies or the Thames Division of Scotland Yard, who patrol the waterfront and dock areas. I was starting down the gangway ladder when I saw the small figure emerging from under the Sunbeam. I'd forgotten about little Vicky in the tumult of events. She had the engine coming to life when I reached her, had the car in gear when I got a hand in and snapped off the ignition. I felt her teeth sink into my wrist. It hurt, but instead of tearing away I pressed up against her mouth, snapping her head back. She let go with a cry of pain and I grabbed her dyed blonde hair and shoved her across the seat. I had one hand on her throat and her eyes were beginning to bulge from more than fear.

  "Don't kill me," she pleaded. "Oh, Lord, please! I didn't know about thisl I didn't!"

  "Who were they?"

  "Blimey, I don't know," she gasped. "It's the truth."

  I increased the pressure. She would have screamed if she had the breath. All she could do was half whisper the words.

  "I only did what they paid me to do," she said. "I'm telling you the truth, Yank." I remembered her scream of terror and surprise as the first shots nearly killed me. I let up so she could talk and the words spilled out of her.

  "They never said anything like this was up. God, I swear it to you, luv. They just gave me the money and told me what to tell you and where to bring you. It was a lot, more than I could make in a year. Here, look, I'll show it to you."

  She reached for her purse but froze as my hand clamped down on hers.

  "I'll get it," I growled. I was taking no more chances. The little purse revealed no gun but a roll of bills was there. I handed the purse to her. She was half sobbing.

  "I couldn't turn it down," she said. "I couldn't. But I would have if I'd known they were up to somethin' like this."

  I wasn't so sure about that last bit but it was unimportant. She was genuinely terrified and not just of me. The whole affair had her shaking. I'd seen plenty of good actresses, but you can tell the real thing. She was essentially what I'd concluded earlier, a dupe, a pawn, a scroungy little bird out to make a fast pound without asking too many questions. But she had been contacted somehow and that she hadn't revealed to me, yet. I put a big hand at the back of her neck again and her eyes immediately widened in fear.

  "How did you meet these men?" I growled. "No fancy talk, doll. You're on very thin ice."

  "My boyfriend introduced me," she said quickly. "I'm a B-girl at the Jolly Good Pub and he hangs out there a lot. He told me I could earn a real big wad by doing a favor for some men he knew."

  "What's his name? Your boyfriend."

  "Teddy. Teddy Renwell."

  "Then we're going to visit your boyfriend Teddy," I said, glancing at my watch. It was just one o'clock. I had time to make it back to the hotel. "But I've something else to do first. I'll drive."

  I wanted to be in my room and waiting when two o'clock came. If the phone call didn't materialize, it could mean I'd been right all along about the whole thing being a trap. Or, it could mean that whoever they were, they'd gotten to the woman who originally called. But if it came, it was damned important I be there to get it.

  II

  Vicky sat quietly beside me as I tooled
the little car back through the streets of London. Her glances at me, I noted, were a mixture of apprehension and a kind of grudging admiration. After a while, she began to open up.

  "You're a bit of all right in a pinch, aren't you?" she commented. I let the remark go without answering.

  She lapsed into silence again for another long moment.

  "What are you going to do with me?" she asked a little later.

  "Nothing, if you're telling the truth," I answered. "And well find that out when we visit your boyfriend. But till I'm certain of it, I'm going to keep you out of trouble."

  More silence followed. I could feel her trying to decide whether to go along quietly or try to break for it. She kept glancing at me and she had more than enough street wisdom to read the score right. She also had enough guttersnipe in her to use everything she could in self-protection.

  "I'll bet you re a bit of all right in other ways, too," she said, giving me a sly, sidelong glance.

  "Maybe," I said. "Would you like to find out?" Two could play her little game, what the hell.

  I might," she said, gaining immediate confidence at my rising to the bait. Her cleverness was of such a low-grade transparency I felt almost ashamed.

  "Maybe well look into it," I said. "But I've got to wait for a phone call first."

  She settled back and I could feel the tension go out of her, confident she had bought a degree of safety with the age-old weapons of woman.

  When we reached my room at the hotel, my watch read five minutes to two. Vicky obediently sat down in a stuffed chair, letting me see plenty of leg. At precisely two a.m., the phone rang. It was a woman's voice again, but this time the accent Hawk had described was there, heavy, Russian or Slavic. I had thoroughly memorized the identification code she had set up and I waited.

  "You have come to see me?" the woman's voice asked.

  "I have come to see you," I echoed.

  "Why?"

  "Because you wanted me to come."

  "Why did I want you to come?"

  "Because the world needs help."

  There was an almost inaudible sigh of relief, and then the heavily accented voice went on.

  "You will go to Alton. Walk along the west bank of the Wey River. A quarter of a mile above Alton, you will find a rowboat. Take it and row toward Selborne. Stop at the second stone bridge. At dawn, six o'clock, I will meet you there. Do you understand clearly?"

  "Perfectly," I answered. The phone clicked off and went dead. But the call had proven three very important things. First, that the original message to AXE had indeed been legitimate. Two, the woman was still alive, and three, she was being closely watched. Whoever was watching her had known about her call to AXE and decided to play it through, watch for my arrival and nail me. The question now was whether they'd get to her before I did. It all depended on how soon they found out their trap for me had backfired. I turned to Vicky.

  "Take your stockings off, honey," I said. She looked up at me, indecision in her eyes and then, as I watched, she stood up, lifting her dress to unclasp her garter belt. She had a round little belly under white, modest panties.

  "I'll take them," I said, reaching for the stockings. Sudden uncertainty tinged with apprehension leaped into her eyes. "What for?" she said. "What are you up to? I thought we were going to get chummier, luv."

  She was still in there pitching. I grinned inwardly.

  "The answer to that is still 'maybe, " I said. "Right now I have to go somewhere and I want to be sure you'll be here when I get back."

  I tied her to a straight-backed chair, using the stockings to securely bind her ankles and wrists. Women's stockings make excellent bonds for a short period of time. They are resilient but tough. I put a handkerchief gag in her mouth, taking care to see that it was tight enough to keep her quiet and loose enough to keep her from suffocating.

  "Don't bother answering the door," I said to her as I left. Her eyes glowered at me from above the gag. To add insurance, I hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside of the door and hurried downstairs. It was a quarter to three and I hadn't any time to waste. Vicky's little Sunbeam Imp was no Aston-Martin either.

  The London streets were deserted now, except for a few girls still hopefully wandering about. Alton was south and a little west of London and I took the Old Brompton Road through Kensington and Chelsea. There was little traffic and hardly any when I got out of London. I bore down on the little car and winced as the engine strained. The ever-present curves of the English country roads kept me plenty alert as I passed road signs with the very English names of Brookwood, Farnborough, Aldershot.

  Alton, when I reached it, was silent and sleeping. I found the wandering river Wey, really not much more than a large, placid stream, and pulled the Sunbeam off the road under a cluster of sturdy oaks. I began to walk along the west bank and saw that the sky was beginning to hint at the coming dawn. The woman's instructions had failed to mention the English fog which, alongside the river, was thick and constant I had to walk slowly to avoid going into the river by accident. Occasionally, the fog would lift enough for me to get a glimpse a few feet ahead. It was at just such a break that I avoided falling over the rowboat pulled halfway up on the bank. I pushed off into the water and began to row. Fogbound, silent, the only sound the soft splash of the oars in the water, I was in a world of my own. The gray of dawn was coming up, but it did nothing to dispel the fog. That would take the sun, which in England seldom burned it away until mid-morning. Then, looming up ahead, barely visible, I saw the arch of a footbridge over the river and caught a brief glimpse of the heavy stones that formed the arch. I passed underneath, rowing a little faster.

  My eyes hurt from trying to peer through the fog. About a third of a mile on I dimly made out another bridge span. When I passed under it I saw it was a wooden bridge, with rails of wood and sides of log. I kept rowing and then, around a curve, I saw another arched bridge, ghostly, ethereal, substance made shadow by the fog. When I reached the bridge I saw the stones forming the arched sides. Only the walkway was wood planking. I stopped the rowboat and waited in the silent, shrouded river. My watch read six o'clock. I counted the minutes that passed. Two, three, five, ten. I wondered. Had they gotten to her first? Then I heard the sound of oars dipping into the water. I took Wilhelmina out and held her in my hand. The other boat, my ears told me, was coming from upriver and would pass under the bridge to get to me. Slowly, the rowboat began to materialize, more a shadowy shape than anything else. All I could see was the upright form of someone seated at the oars. The boat halted a distance from me, the voice across the water the same one I'd spoken to on the telephone. Obviously, the woman had chosen this spot because of the fog. She wanted to be sure I didn't see her.

  "Good, you have come," she said. Her accent in person was, if anything, heavier. From her voice, I guessed she was not a young woman.

  "First, you must understand something," she said, speaking with deliberate slowness for emphasis. "I am not a traitor. Do you understand that?"

  "I have nothing to understand so far," I answered.

  "I know they are watching me," she went on. "I spoke out too freely about how I felt They might decide to send me away any moment. That's why I had to arrange this meeting."

  I decided to say nothing about the attempt on me, at the moment. She plainly was unaware how closely she was being watched. If I told her what had happened I had the feeling she might clam up and take off. The woman transmitted great inner torment, even in her fogbound, disembodied voice.

  "I would not betray my country, do you understand?" she said again. "You must not ask me any questions that would do that. I will tell you only what I have decided to tell you. Is that clear?"

  The thought of her being a traitor was bothering her tremendously. She seemed to be trying to convince herself, more than me, that she wasn't being disloyal. I wanted her to get on with it. The iog would be lightening before long and God knows what other complications might set in then.

&
nbsp; "I will understand when you tell me what you have to say," I answered. "Suppose you start at the beginning.

  "I just cannot sit by and watch it go on any longer," the woman said. "These men have a value to the world that comes before anything else. I cannot see it any other way."

  "What men?" I pressed.

  "It is a terrible thing," she said. "I thought long about it before I made up my mind."

  She never went any further. The shot split the foggy air and I saw her figure topple silently forward, face down, into the rowboat. I dived to the bottom of my boat as the second shot thunked into the wood of the seat Whoever he was, he was a helluva a good shot, and he had a rifle. He was too accurate for a hand gun in this fog. The boat was drifting toward the bridge where he obviously was. In moments he'd be able to shoot right down at me. My fingers found the edge of the gunwale. Pressing down hard with my leg muscles, I half jumped, half flipped myself over the side. His shot sent slivers flying from the gunwale where my hand had been but I was underwater already. Fully clothed, I knew I hadn't much time underwater and I struck out for the bridge, surfacing underneath it just as my wind gave out. I treaded water, listening to the footsteps above on the wooden walkway of the little bridge. He'd already figured out where I would head and he was on his way to the end of the span. I swam for the same end, the wet clothes feeling as though I'd bags of cement tied to me.

  Where the bridge arched down to the shore, I pressed myself against the flat underside of the span, still in the water but at the very edge of the bridge underside. I heard a loose stone roll into the water. He was carefully moving down the embankment. I hung there, waiting. The muzzle end of the rifle appeared first as he came carefully nosing down to the water's edge. Then he appeared, crouched over, his eyes searching the wispy fog floating beneath the bridge. He was a slender, wiry man wearing a one-piece coverall. Pushing off against the underside of the bridge, using the strength of my shoulder muscles, I dived at him. He spun at the sound but I was on him, catching him around the waist. He lost his footing and went backwards off the bank into the river with me hanging onto him. The rifle went slithering from his grip to sink at once. I drove a fist into his face and he went backwards in the water. He made a quick, shallow dive and tried to come up underneath me. I managed to move away, and he was on the surface again in front of me. We struck at each other and I felt the pain of his blow, felt my head go back. Again I swung and again he beat me to the punch. His one-piece coverall, not soaked through, spelled the difference. I might as well have had weights tied to my arms. He knew it, too, and he came at me, treading water and swinging. I backed water. Even if I struck out for the bank, he'd still have the advantage ashore. My arms were already tired. I backed again and dived, wrapping both arms around his right leg, pulling him under with me. I'd done some hard long-distance swimming on occasion. I was hoping he hadn't. That plus the fact that I'd taken him quickly. He'd had no time to draw a long breath. He was raining blows on my back but underwater they were nothing more than harmless taps. I clung to his leg, hunched over, like a crab hanging onto a fish. He was using up precious wind trying to twist away, while all I had to do was hold on. His struggles grew rapidly weaker, and my own lungs were burning now. Suddenly I felt his body grow limp. I hung on five seconds more, and then let go and struck out for the surface. I burst into the air a second before my lungs were ready to burst, drawing deep draughts of the precious stuff, fog and all. His body floated up alongside me and I pulled him onto the bank with me.