The Living Death

by Nick Carter

  Feeling a little like a mother hen with her brood, I herded everyone back to the hotel, checked out every piece of the professor's luggage, and we piled into the professor's little Fiat for the drive to Rome.

  I wasn't risking any last-minute occurrence after the meeting or just outside the immediate area. In Rome, there was another round of good-byes and thank yous. The professor and his wife had been nice people to know, erudite, pleasant and honest. Amoretta's eyes held a silent message. I knew she didn't want to return to the mountains of Calabria, and I was sorry for her. She really wasn't ready to leave the hills, there were still too many unfinished edges about her; yet she deserved something better than she could find there. Another few visits with her uncle and aunt ought to do it for her, I was sure.

  I left for the Rome airport with the feeling of a job well done. If anything had taken place at the previous ISS meetings, it hadn't taken place this time. If there had been a plot against Professor Caldone, it hadn't come off. Of course, I also knew that this one instance couldn't be looked at as a victory. The horrible sinisterness of it was still very much there and it raised an even bigger question. Where did we go from here? We had prevented whatever might have been planned for this meeting, which left us really nowhere. I put aside those irksome questions for my meeting with Hawk. I had something I wanted to clear up first. I caught a direct flight from Rome to London. It was my turn to pop up unexpectedly, which is exactly what I did, only to have the thrill of talking to Denny's landlady. Denny was away at a horse show and wouldn't be back for two days. The woman, a pleasant-faced old gal, was kind enough to take a note from me which I scribbled on the back of an envelope. I made it short. There was too much to say for a note. I wrote:

  Sorry, again. One of these days I will explain and you'll listen.

  Love, Nick.

  V

  The sky fell in. The world stopped spinning. I hadn't heard correctly, I told myself. It just couldn't be! Hawk's steel-gray eyes facing me across his desk were expressionless. Maybe I was dreaming.

  "Say it again," I asked. He nodded slowly.

  "Professor Caldone is a vegetable," he repeated. "His wife contacted us last night."

  "I don't believe it," I said angrily. "Damn it to hell, I covered him like a wetnurse. Nothing could have happened."

  Hawk shrugged. "Something did," he said quietly. I did some fast calculating. I'd left him in Rome in the early evening and caught a plane for London. Finding Denny away, I had to stay overnight because I couldn't get a flight out immediately. Then I'd come back here yesterday and this morning arrived at AXE headquarters. Altogether about thirty-six hours had elapsed between now and the time I'd left the scientist. Someone could have gotten to him in those thirty-six hours. I had to go with it. I'd stuck too close to the professor during the meeting itself.

  "I'd like to go see for myself," I said, still angry.

  "I figured as much," Hawk answered blandly. "I've booked passage for you on the eleven o'clock flight to Rome."

  "Damn it," I said, "there's got to be some explanation for this."

  Hawk's expression was all I needed. "Okay," I said. "I'll find it. But then this has got to be the weirdest bit or the cleverest one I've seen in a long time."

  I stalked out, angry at myself, angry at the world, but mostly angry at the unused-to feeling of having been taken. No one likes to fail, most of all me. But to fail is one thing. To have been taken, right under my nose, that was something else. It was a new experience for me and I fumed and thought about it all the way to Rome. I was sticking with the idea that whatever happened had taken place after I'd left the professor. As I said, I had to stay with it. But I wasn't that sure of it. Hawk had cabled on ahead for the team of medical specialists to meet me at the professor's house. He wanted me to hear what they had to say with my own ears. These were the doctors who had examined each one of the stricken scientists. At the professor's home a maid admitted me and Signora Caldone greeted me with more composure than I'd expected her to have.

  My anger turned into something else as I was ushered into the living room where a white-uniformed nurse sat in a straight chair beside the professor. He was seated in a deep, leather chair and suddenly I wasn't so concerned over my own anger, my own feelings. The cherubic face was now a gray, lifeless mask, the twinkling blue eyes now expressionless, staring orbs. His mouth hung slack, a small, continuous line of drool trickling down the corners which the nurse wiped off periodically with a gauze pad. I went over to him and called his name. There was absolutely no response. Every so often his throat would make small, guttural noises, sub-human sounds. I turned away, an icy band wrapping itself around my innards.

  "The doctors are in the study waiting for you, Signor Carter," Signora Caldone said quietly. I followed her out into the hall and across the foyer to a book-lined study where four men stood up to greet me, their faces equally grave and tired. The iciness inside me had already crystallized into a deadly anger, a desire to want to tear something or someone apart, to see that justice was done for what I had just witnessed.

  "First, gentlemen," I said crisply, "is there any hope for a recovery?"

  A tall, graying, distinguished man spoke up, introducing himself as Doctor Van Duetonnze. I'd heard of him. He was an eminent Belgian neurologist.

  "None whatever, Mr. Carter," he answered. "The mind is completely gone. Neurological tests we have already conducted show that the brain's organic functioning is beyond repair. In fact, testing Professor Caldone was merely a formality. Our results taken from the other men stricken in this manner were more than sufficient. You see, the brain is a delicate organ and any complete interruption of its physiological functioning results in brain damage beyond our present medical ability to repair."

  Another physician spoke up. "We understand that your people are in this to discover what there is of a criminal nature involved."

  Hawk, I realized quickly, had given them a half-truth regarding my interest in the case, just enough to carry it over smoothly.

  "That's right," I said. "I am going to investigate your suspicions of both the destruction ray and the virus theory I was informed about."

  "Yes, though now we have been considering the possibility that perhaps someone in the ISS, someone attending the meetings, could be host-carrier and be himself immune. At the same time, the electrical ray — if indeed it is that — must be applied by a fellow-guest at the meetings. Everything centers around the ISS meetings and the seemingly impeccable people at these science seminars."

  I nodded. It all sounded highly logical, the way they had presented it. Someone at the meetings… Yes — but who? And, more importantly, how? But then I supposed that was my job to figure out. I knew about a few things they didn't, about a woman named Maria Doshtavenko, about a little punk with a card with the professor's name on it, about killings designed to keep everybody quiet about something. They could play along with their X-rays' and viruses' theories. I wasn't buying, though I didn't tell them that. I thanked the good doctors and returned to the living room. I heard the hard, anguished sobbing as I approached and when I entered, there was Amoretta standing beside the old man, her cheeks wet and stained with tears. She brushed them dry at once as she saw me. Signora Caldone was beside the girl. Amoretta's eyes turned black with unmistakable hatred and fury as I approached.

  "You have come back to see for yourself?" she spit out, her full breasts heaving under a blue blouse. She wore tight jeans and her thighs stretched the sides of them. "You were supposed to protect him!" she added accusingly. "He was fine until you came!"

  There was a brightness in her eyes that went beyond the obvious hate in them, a sudden hardness, a look of vengeance. She was angry and unhappy to see me, that was plain. Signora Caldone gave me an apologetic glance and ushered Amoretta out of the room to return in moments.

  "I am sorry about the way Amoretta spoke to you," she said simply. "She was terribly fond of her Zio Enrico. We had told her how he was possibly in danger wh
en we were on our way to meet you in Portofino and that you would be there to protect him."

  I told Signora Caldone that the girl's upset was certainly understandable. And it was. Hell, in a few short days I'd grown fond of the professor. Her emotions could well explain the hatred in her eyes but then I'd detected something more. Inside me there was ice, the icy hatred of my own. I was still convinced there was nothing wrong with the professor when I left them in Rome.

  "Did you have any visitors after I left?" I asked. "That night or the next day?"

  "No," the woman said tiredly. "No one. Amoretta was with us through the morning, and then she left for home."

  Only Amoretta. I turned the two words over in my mind, hating the thought, hating the meaning of it, yet going on with it. Again I asked myself, what the hell did I really know about the girl, other than that she was a volcano in bed? Signora Caldone of course held her niece above suspicion. Hawk had once said I wouldn't hold my own mother above suspicion if circumstances warranted it, and he was right. Especially when I was feeling as I did now, which was ugly, the angry, ugly feeling I got when I saw something dirty done. I glanced at the glob that had been a man, and it got uglier. Hawk had characterized it so well… the living dead. The nurse was starting to get him to his feet. He slipped from her grasp and I rushed over but he was on his hands and knees, crawling across the floor. "It's all right," she said to me. "I'll take care of him."

  I turned to Signora Caldone again. "You called Amoretta to tell her about her uncle," I probed. The woman nodded, keeping her eyes on me, refusing to look at the pitiful form crawling past us.

  "Did you tell her I was coming here this evening?"

  "Yes," she answered. "I had received the cable from your superior."

  "And what did Amoretta say?"

  "She said she was driving up at once," the woman replied. "She thought perhaps you were going to take her uncle away and she wanted to see him again."

  Or, I thought quietly, she just wanted to be here while I was. I walked to the door. If I were wrong about the girl, I wanted to find out and give her a big, fat apology. If I was on the right track, she was in big trouble. I was still convinced that someone had gotten to him from the time I'd left them in Rome, somehow, somewhere. Who and how? Those were the two key questions. I was sure that if I got the answer to either of them I'd be able to answer the other. Right now it was question time for Amoretta. But the hallway was empty. I took a quick look outside but the streets of Rome were dark and still. I found Signora Caldone.

  "Amoretta's gone," I told her. "Does she have anywhere else to go here in Rome? Any other friends, relatives?"

  "No, no, we were the only ones," the woman said. "She has probably run into the streets. She is so upset. Please look for her."

  I'd look for her all right, I said grimly under my breath and I raced outside, pausing for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the dark. The Caldones lived just off a small piazza, and I quickly searched the circle of light under each of the street lamps dotting the edges of the square. I saw her unmistakable form as she paused under the lamp at the farthest corner of the square. I took off on the run as she moved on. She was nowhere in sight when I reached the spot, and the street leading away was a narrow, cobble-stoned one of darkened shops, bakeries, groceries, and fruitstands, with a profusion of doorways. I listened for the click of heels on the stones but there was none. She was hiding in one of the doorways. I started to move down slowly, when she stepped out and stood waiting. Even in the dark I could feel the burning hatred of her eyes.

  "Why do you follow me?" she asked.

  "You're going to answer a few questions," I told her, coming up to her. She took a step backward and half-turned to run. I was just going to grab her when I heard the faint scrape behind me. I whirled, but not fast enough. The blow, it felt like a billy, crashed down on the side of my temple. My head exploded in shooting lights and stars and sharp pain. I pitched forward and forced myself not to black out. I heard footsteps, a lot of them. I grabbed at a pair of legs in front of my face and yanked. The owner gave a yell in Italian and went down. I leaped forward onto him, my head still fogged, glimpsing a short, sweatered man when a sharp kick in the ribs sent me toppling from him to one side. I continued on in a hard roll, hitting hard against more legs, grabbing out at them and pulling. One figure came down over me and I got in a sharp left to his belly, hearing him grunt in pain. My head had cleared a little now, and I knew there were at least four or five of them. Pressing my heels down on the spaces between the cobblestones, I got a lift and catapulted myself forward, head-on, into someone's mid-section, carrying him backwards with me. Managing to avoid flailing arms and wild swings, I grabbed the one I had knocked backwards by the arm, lifting him in a judo move and sidearmed him through the window of a bakery. I heard his yell amid the sound of the shattering glass. Still fighting more out of training and instinct than clear-headedness, I swung at a face that appeared before me, heard the satisfying crunch of my knuckles into a cheekbone, and the face disappeared. But now it was my turn to be tackled. It was a good, hard one from behind and I went down. A hard object crashed down on my skull almost at the same instant a heavy-soled shoe got me in the temple. I heard Amoretta's voice before the lights went out, damn her black heart. She'd figured I'd go after her. She'd led me right into it. I tried to lift my head to shake it but it wouldn't respond. Another blow crashed down on me. This one didn't hurt as much. It just rang the curtain down.

  * * *

  I don't know how long it was before I woke up but from the condition of my head I guessed it was a good while. I moved my neck slowly in a circular motion and the fuzzy cobwebs started to tear loose in my head. A tight sharp pain in my wrists told me that my hands were tied behind my back. A terrible bouncing and jouncing wasn't helping the throb of my head any, but I managed to focus on the surroundings. I wasn't alone. Four other men sat inside what was obviously the interior of a closed panel truck. I was against the driver's partition, the others sat in pairs on each side of the truck. They were stocky, hard-faced, black-eyed men wearing work clothes and heavy, peasant's shoes, their hands heavy, gnarled, thick-fingered. I noted that three of them sported cut faces and bruised cheekbones. One of them called out to the driver in Italian.

  "The Americano is awake," he said.

  "Si, be careful," the voice came back. "Watch him"

  Then I heard Amoretta's voice. "Take no chances " she said.

  They could all relax. This wasn't the time or place to act up. Besides, I wanted to find out more about where I was being taken. From the steep incline of the truck, we were going up into the mountains. The men spoke to each other in short, curt asides but enough for me to pick up the dialect as Calabrese. It wasn't hard to figure the rest. Amoretta was taking me up into the hills of her home. If I'd been out as long as I thought, chances were we were almost there. How she and the peasants of Calabria fitted into this dirty business was something else again. It was sure as hell an unexpected turn. But then, this whole thing had been weird from the very start. The road was getting rougher and the truck bouncier. I tested my wrist bonds. They were well knotted. They had taken Wilhelmina from me, but I could feel Hugo in his sheath around my forearm. They'd been in too much of a hurry to get me off the street and into the truck, and they plainly weren't professionals. I knew that from the way they'd been falling all over each other to get at me in that narrow street. If that first blow hadn't taken the edge off my reflexes, they'd be still back there putting themselves together.

  The truck slowed and my muscles tensed automatically. I counted two more curves before it stopped and the rear doors were opened. I was pulled out and exchanged glances with Amoretta, looking intense and throbbing in the blouse and the tight jeans.

  "Nice friends you've got," I said casually.

  "These are my brothers," she said, gesturing to three of the men. "And the other two are my cousins."

  "A family enterprise," I commented.

  "When
I heard you were returning to make sure of your work, I brought them with me," she snapped. "Now we are going to find out what you did to Zio Enrico and why."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" I said frowning. She slapped me across the face. Hard.

  "Take him inside," she said. "Enough of his lies."

  I was still frowning as I was hustled into a low-roofed, long house of stone and terra cotta. They took me into the kitchen, a large, spacious room, and threw me into a sturdy, straight-backed chair, keeping my hands tied behind my back. As double security, they tied my wrists to the back of the chair. Amoretta stood in front of me, supervising operations. When they finished, they formed a semicircle behind her. Her eyes, blazing in anger, bored into mine.

  "When I think that…" she began, and quickly broke off, a fleeting flush of embarrassment crossing her face.

  "Go on, Amoretta," I grinned. She slapped me again, harder.

  "I'll kill you," she hissed. "You are a creature from hell. You're going to tell us what you did to Zio Enrico."

  "I didn't do anything to him," I said, studying her eyes. She slapped me again.

  "No more lies," she shouted. There was nothing but hate and anger in those eyes, I saw. This was no act, no attempt to trick me into anything.

  "By God, you really mean it, don't you?" I asked, incredulously beginning to realize it.

  "Yes, I mean it," she said. "I'll kill you myself if I must."

  "No, I mean you really think I did it," I said.

  "Let us just kill him now," one of her brothers cut in.

  "No," Amoretta snapped. "I must find out what he did and why."

  "It is done," said a cousin, a vacant character with big ears. "What difference does it make? Just kill him."

  "Silencio!" Amoretta shouted. "I'll handle this."

  I listened to them in astonishment. They weren't kidding about anything, especially about killing me. Here I'd been suspecting her, and she was convinced I had done it. It might have been funny under other circumstances, but these characters were a wild bunch, fully capable and charged up enough to do anything.