by Nick Carter
“So? Why should he?” Jean Pierre’s thin voice inquired.
“Because he and Tonio Martelo, Paula’s late husband, were lifelong friends. Because they’re both rebels, in their own way. And because Jacques doesn’t like the Chinese any more than we do—or so he says.”
“Chinese? They are there, then?”
“He says so. Claims they had an ammunition cache up in the mountains, says he and a couple of friends have been watching them for weeks. Small group, perhaps six men, apparently doing nothing but guarding the supplies. He also says he’s seen them on small-scale guerilla-type maneuvers, as if training for something. Or else staying in training so they can train others.”
“Operation Blast, you reckon?”
“Maybe. Jacques and Paula think so.” Nick stopped for a moment to listen. Crickets and birds chirped back at him and a horse neighed softly from where Paula waited. That was all right; the sound of a horse was common enough around here. Nothing else stirred. But the shadows were lengthening and it would soon be time to move.
“He says the Chinks moved about two weeks ago,” he went on softly. “Started tunneling their way into the Citadelle and carting in all their supplies. Did it all at night, so Jacques and friends couldn’t see as much as they would’ve liked. But their impression was that three or four new-comers had joined the original group and the whole lot of them were moving into, the Citadelle, ammunition and all. At the same time Paula the Terrible discovered that one of her own gang of female avengers had turned up missing—and a couple of familiar Chinese faces had vanished from Santo Domingo. So she got worried.”
He told the rest of the story briefly, how he and Paula and the LeClerqs had sat around the rough-hewn kitchen table in the village of Bambara going over past events and making plans.
Jacques’ stubby dark finger had traced a path over the chart in the tattered old book.
“It is not impossible to get into the Citadelle,” he said. “Here, you see, are several conduits that used to take water from the mountain stream into the castle. They have been dry now for many years, but as you see they are quite broad. The tunnel used by the Chinese is not marked here, but that does not surprise me. Old King Christophe would have wanted a secret escape route. One of the conduits would be better for your purposes, I think. They cannot guard them all. Still, it will not be easy. But you understand that I can only help you with arrangements; I cannot myself go with you.” His liquid brown eyes had gazed at Nick appealingly. “My own freedom of movement must not suffer for this business of the treasure.”
“It is not only the treasure,” Paula had said sharply. “We must find out what has happened to Evita. Obviously she found out something from Padilla and they got onto her somehow. If she is there—”
“Paula, Paula.” Jacques shook his head sadly. “They killed Padilla; why not her?”
“No!” Paula struck the tabletop so that the coffee cups rattled. Marie clucked quietly in the background. “They would only kill her after she had talked, and she would not talk!”
“But perhaps they already knew all they needed from Padilla . . . .”
The conversation had become a storm, and then finally settled down into a more reasoned discussion of how to broach the Citadelle. But at least Nick had learned a few basic facts. The Terrible Ones was an outfit consisting of women whose loved ones had been killed for political reasons by the former dictator Trujillo. Paula Martelo was their leader. Together they were trying to locate a cache of treasure that Trujillo had intended to ship to Europe but had never gotten a chance to. It was still hidden somewhere on the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The Chinese had learned of its presence and were trying to locate if for their own purposes, something to do with a project called Operation Blast. There were certain clues to the location of the treasure and Evita Messina had found a Dominican who knew one of them. Now the Chinese were in Haiti and Evita was missing. Immediate mission: verify the presence of the Chinese, and find Evita.
“So that’s the story,” Nick finished quietly. “It’s almost dark now. We’ll be going in soon. What about your end— Hawk hear anything more about Operation Blast?”
“Nothing. No more than that first rumor. Your Paula’s been our only confirmation to date that such an operation exists. She say anything more about it?”
“Not yet.” Nick frowned in the gathering gloom. “She’s holding back, for some reason. But I’ll get it out of her.”
There was a quiet chuckle. “I’ll bet you will, mon ami. Where the women are concerned—”
“That’s enough out of you, bud. I’m on my way. Greetings to Hawk.”
He signed off briskly and made one more rapid survey of the immediate terrain. Darkness now; still silence; still no moon. Nick padded back to Paula and the horses, almost invisible between the trees. He whistled softly and she came to him at once.
“Did you find it?” she asked him almost soundlessly.
“Yes. It’s going to be as black as a hole in hell, but try to keep track of where we’re going. Just in case we have to get out in a hurry. This way.” He touched her arm lightly and led her through the trees toward the mound and the outer opening of the conduit.
“Breathe while you have the chance,” he muttered, and slithered in on his belly. She came in close behind him with the stealth of a jungle cat.
The air was thin and stale with age but it was breathable. Nick paused and groped around. The duct was a good three feet in diameter and the floor was dead moss and rough stone. It wasn’t ideal for an innocent evening’s stroll, but it was fine for a couple of prowlers in the night.
He reckoned they had about a hundred feet to go according to the building plan in Jacque’s old book. Nick quickened his pace and moved on in the stifling darkness, hearing the girl’s soft movements following along behind him.
Slap!
Tsing-fu Shu’s lean hand drew back and struck again, this time against her other cheek.
“So you did not like my Shang, eh?” Slap! “But I see you are almost ready now for another meeting. Good!” He slapped again and watched her eyes flutter open. “Unless you would prefer to talk to me instead?”
Evita cringed away from him, eyes wide with fear and horror.
“Not . . . that . . . animal . . . .” she whispered. “Talk. But . . . water . . . .”
Her words sounded like the rustling of dry leaves through her parched lips. Tsing-fu could barely make them out, but he could see the swollen tongue working feverishly.
“A little talk first,” he said persuasively. “Then your reward. Tell me who you are working for. That will be a good beginning.”
Her mouth worked and a tiny sound came out.
Tsing-fu leaned closer.
“What?”
“Fi-fidelistas . . . and the sound trailed off into a strangled croak.
“What!” Tsing-fu shook her furiously. “Who? Who?”
Her mouth worked earnestly but the sounds that came out were not words. It was obvious even to Tsing-fu that she was incapable of speech.
“Shang! Shang!” he bellowed. Evita shrank away and shuddered.
There was a low growl from the anteroom. “Master?”
“Bring water!”
Evita sighed and closed her eyes.
“Your reward,” Tsing-fu told her pleasantly. “Then the full story, yes?”
She nodded, eyes still closed.
Dr. Tsing-fu prepared another needle while he waited. This time he was going to have the true story. Of course she was still going to try to lie. But he, in his turn, still had the Shang treatment in reserve. And he was not going to cheat himself of that.
Nick flicked the pencil flashlight on for long enough to see that they were in a stone cellar thick with cobwebs and dead leaves. A broken wooden bucket lay beneath a broken rope beside a flight of steps leading to a trapdoor. It was bolted from within. But the hinges were loose and rusty with age. He doused the light and put his Lock picker’s
Special to work.
“I hear something up there,” Paula whispered. “Hammering. Digging.”
“So do I,” Nick murmured back. “Not near us, though. But if we walk into a roomful of people—”
“I know,” she said. “You told me. Hurry, please!”
“Hurry!” Nick muttered. “Two weeks they’ve been here, and now I have to hurry.”
He could almost see her lips tighten in the darkness.
“I only heard about this when Jacque’s message—”
“I know,” he said. “You told me. And cut out the female gabbing, if you don’t mind.”
Her silence was almost loud. Nick grinned to himself and went on working.
The ancient hinges parted from their moorings.
Tom Kee cantered up the slope on his spavined mount. It was a slow canter, more like a determined plod, but it was getting him there. He had news for Tsing-fu Shu. The Cuban Comrades had not sent Alonzo into Haiti. How could they? They had not even known that Tsing-fu and his men were there. Alonzo must have done it on his own, they said. They had no idea who might have killed him.
Tom Kee’s Oriental mind chewed things over carefully. He had believed their story; the Cubans had not sent Alonzo and they were genuinely puzzled. So—why had he come, and who had killed him? Tom Kee whacked his mount to hasten it. There was a long ride ahead, and something told him that there was a need to hurry.
“Sit up, you! Sit up!” Tsing-fu could hear the hysterical rage in his own voice but he did not care. He dashed the mugful of water into her face and shook her head from side to side but the eyelids did not open nor was there the slightest moan. She had done it again! He cursed wildly in all the languages he knew and slammed his fist against her head. For one moment, one moment only, he had turned his eyes away to take the water mug from Shang, and in that moment she had dashed her head against the wall and now she lay as silent as the grave. Now, by God, he would tie her down, and next time . . .!
He threw the mug down on the floor and screamed for rope. For a while she could rest, trussed like a chicken, and then he would be back. He watched Shang tie her up and then he left. Oh, yes, he would be back.
The trapdoor was a loose covering over the hole and they were in a stone room listening to distant thuds. Total darkness pressed down upon them like a coffin lid. Nick let several minutes pass while he sent his senses out like tentacles into the blackness and looked at his mental picture of the map. Then he touched Paula’s arm and moved down a corridor toward the sound.
Tom Kee whipped his tired horse. The feeling of urgency was growing in him. His every instinct told him that there was danger in the air.
He forced the clumsy beast to hurry.
Shang’s Second Chance
At the end of a tunnel of darkness there was a muted glow of light. Nick groped towards it, ghostlike in his dark fatigues and the special boots that Editing called “creepers.” Paula followed him like a shadow in sneakers.
Under any other circumstances Nick would have avoided the light like the trap it might turn out to be. But his main purpose was to verify the presence of the Chinese and see what they were up to, so the only sense was to head for where the action was. Also, there was the girl Evita. If she was here and if she was still alive the chances were that she would be somewhere near the center of their activities rather than tucked away in some distant part of the Citadelle.
So he padded on toward the light and the sound, expecting momentarily to run headlong into trouble.
It started even sooner than he had expected.
A sudden pool of brightness splashed upon the stone floor yards ahead and angled sharply toward him, as if a man with a flashlight had turned a corner from one passage into this. Nick could hear the dull clunk of heavy feet approaching as the pool of light advanced.
He brushed Paula back with one hand and spread out his arms along the wall in the faint hope of finding a doorway. There wasn’t one within reach; not even a niche. That left him with only one thing to do. Attack.
He went on walking toward the flashlight’s beam, one hand raised to shade his eyes and face against its light and the other hand half-clenched at his side in readiness for Hugo. He peered at the shadowy shape beyond the light and made himself grunt with irritation. A startled exclamation echoed him and the flashlight’s ray played over his body.
“Lower that light, you fool!” he hissed in Chinese, hoping he’d picked the right language to hiss in. “And the noise back there with the digging! It would waken the dead.” As he spoke he let Hugo trickle down his sleeve, and he kept moving, with his eyes still shaded from the light, until he was within inches of the other. “Where is your commanding officer? I have a message of importance.”
“Commanding off—?”
Nick struck. His right hand swung sideways and down against the throat with the Chinese voice-box. Hugo, razor-edged and icepick slender, sliced through the voice and cut it in mid-syllable, then moved on easily as if through butter and slashed the jugular. Nick grabbed the falling flashlight and struck again at the gargling sound of death in the man’s throat, thrusting Hugo’s slim length clean through the neck and out again. The body toppled in slow motion; he caught, its weight and eased it to the floor.
He listened for a moment, hearing nothing but Paula’s faint breathing and the sounds of hammering and digging from beyond the passage walls. No disturbance. But now he would have to find some place to put the body. He swung the beam of the flashlight down the hall and saw a recess several feet ahead. Wordlessly, he handed the light to Paula and heaved the limp form over his shoulders. They would have to take a chance on the light for a moment, and another chance that there was no one in that dark recess in the wall.
She held the beam down low, away from Nick and his burden, and played the light upon the opening. It led into an empty room whose rotting shelves had been ripped from the walls and piled on the floor, as if someone had been trying to wrest a secret from them. Nick dragged his burden into a corner and let it drop with a soft thud.
“Turn the light on his face,” he whispered. “One quick look, then douse it.”
She swung the beam over the body and let it linger on the head. Blood encircled the neck like a crimson hangman’s noose and the features were horribly contorted. But even in its death agony the face was unmistakably Chinese. So was the work uniform with the small, faded insignia sewn into the fabric. Nick’s face was grim as Paula flicked the switch and left them in darkness with the corpse. He knew the tiny badge for what it was, the symbol of a highly specialized company of Chinese scavengers and infiltrators whose main task was to strip a country of its spoils and prepare the way for the propagandists and military tacticians. It usually meant, as it had meant in Tibet, that the Chinese were planning to move in for a takeover, either openly or behind the scenes with a puppet fronting for them. But here, right under the noses of the OAS and Uncle Sam?
Nick frowned and padded back into the passage. Paula the Silent glided along behind him. Again they headed for the light.
It was almost too easy. The passage branched off to left and right. To the left was darkness, to the right, the light. It streamed through an open doorway and close to the door was a low, barred window. Nick ducked to peer through it. Four men, all Chinese, were methodically tearing apart a huge stone room. Propped against one of the walls was a device he recognized as a metal detector. No one was using it at the moment; it had a waiting look about it as though its operator might be temporarily absent. Where? he wondered. But he had seen enough to confirm Paula’s story of a Chinese hunt for treasure and some underlying motive much bigger than a simple lust for loot.
Now for the girl. Once again he pinpointed their position on his mental map. The passageway to the right must lead directly to the section of the dungeons open to the tourists. They would hardly keep her there. To the left, then. He prodded Paula and they glided into the dark left corridor.
Tsing-fu sat down on a folding chair in
the room he called his office. He had eaten well from his little private supply and he was feeling very much better. Things had not gone well for the last few days, but now he was convinced that he would get something more out of the girl and perhaps even out of his balky confederates, the Fidelistas. The Fidelistas . . . . He pondered. Had the girl been lying again when she had croaked out the name? Or could they be playing a double game with him? His thin mouth tightened at the thought.
He glanced at his Peking-made watch. He would give her another hour to think her thoughts and then he would tear her apart . . . her mind first, then her body. Shang was waiting for her.
Shang was waiting. He was asleep, but his animal senses lay close to his thick surface and he would awaken at the doctor’s footfall. A lantern glowed beside his huge recumbent form. Even he sometimes wanted light in his cage. Shang growled in his sleep, dreaming animal dreams of passions to be satisfied and beings who kept on saying to him No! Not yet, Shang, not yet. Shang, you devil’s bastard! Wait! He was waiting, even as he slept. But he would not wait much longer.
“Paula. This is hopeless,” Nick whispered to the blob of darkness beside him. “We can’t wander around this maze all night. I’ll have to find someway to flush them out and then come back—”
“No, please! Please let us keep looking.” For the first time she sounded like a woman, pleading. “If we leave and they find that man’s body, what do you think they’ll do to her? We must keep looking!”
Nick was silent. She had a point, about the body. But he also knew that their luck could not hold out for ever. They had flattened themselves against the walls countless numbers of times as men tramped past them down a cross-corridor, and they had pussy-footed into endless dark cellars to risk the flashlight and a challenge. It was a fool’s errand. His brain urged him to stop this nonsense and get out.
“All right, one more college try,” he said. “Thataway. I don’t think we’ve been down there. I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.” They padded down yet another of the corridors. Nick put his brain to work on reconstructing the map. He hadn’t an idea in hell where they were. No, wait—they’d done that bit before. He recognized the curve and the rough stone. Now they were entering unexplored territory. But at least he knew where they were in relation to the conduit.
