Eyes of the Tiger (KM 009), page 1
part #9 of Killmaster Series
Eyes of the Tiger (1965)
(The ninth book in the Killmaster series)
Version 0.9
Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
CHAPTER ONE
TIGER, TIGER, BURNING BRIGHT
There had been the girl in Portofino last night—the girl who had given herself to Nick with passion and tenderness. She had been a dark-haired girl with a sylph’s body and a beautiful smile, and she had shared the joys of the soft Italian night with him. She had also shared the wine and the stars and the music and, finally, his bed. And Nick Carter, who lived always on the edge of danger, walked always in the shadow of death, had taken the girl and been grateful and left her sleeping. Headed for Turin and Geneva. Mission Tiger was beginning!
Now there was another girl. She was sleeping, too, because Nick had just given her knockout drops. A Michael Finn!
This girl was a knockout herself. Honey blonde, lovely and lithe, a Nordic type with a chiseled patrician nose over a full, sensuous mouth. Her lips were parted in silent invitation as she slumbered. On the ragged sofa in Nick Carter’s cheap hotel room in Geneva.
KILLMASTER had come into Switzerland early this morning, crossing on the last boat from Thonon in France. He had been dressed as a deckhand, had actually worked as a deckhand and he would be double-damned if he could see how anyone could have made him out. But it looked very much as though someone had—and if that were so the fat was right in the fire. Mission Tiger was blown before it got off the ground! And Nick Carter, Agent N3, old man Hawk’s number one boy, and KILLMASTER for AXE, was losing his touch.
Nick frowned down at the sleeping girl. He wasn’t losing his touch, of course. He never could. He’d be dead the minute he did. He was damned near perfect at his job and he knew it. There was nothing of bragging or boast in the thought. Just cold self-analysis. When you had worked for AXE as long as Nick Carter had, and were still alive, you were as perfect in your job as any man could get. Simple as that.
Nick paced the dingy little room. He was still wearing the shabby, dirty working clothes. No one back at AXE in Washington would have recognized him, probably not even Hawk, but that could be changed in ten minutes. He glanced at the girl—she would probably sleep for another two hours or so— and kept pacing the little cage. Like the tiger he was. As he paced his eyes moved constantly—scanning, probing, weighing, assessing. They were never quite still.
There was nothing to fear in this room. He already knew that. No bugs, no time bombs, no way in which a listening device could be beamed into the room. It was just a cramped, dirty room in a cheap Geneva hotel. No one could have made such preparations. No one had known he was coming.
Or had they? It seemed impossible. Yet the girl was here!
Nick ran his hands through his close cropped hair. Cropped especially short as part of the disguise for this job.
Job? Maybe there was no job. Not now. It did begin to look as though Mission Tiger had somehow been blown! Nick Carter came as near to groaning as Nick Carter ever did. He had been looking forward to Mission Tiger as a nice change of pace. It was a simple matter of stealing the most expensive tiger in the world from the strongest bank in the world. The tiger stood a foot high, was eighteen inches long, and had the two biggest rubies in the world for eyes. It also happened to be made of solid gold. No use trying to put a money value on it because it was priceless. For a lot of reasons. A lot of people wanted that tiger—also for a lot of reasons.
And now the girl! Did she want it too?
Nick went to the sofa and stood looking down at her. Sleeping like a baby. A beautiful baby! Yet there was nothing particularly young looking about her. Nick guessed her at about thirty, give or take a year. Her face, in repose, showed faint lines that indicated experience or even suffering. Her body, beneath a simple and expensive faille suit, was long and flowing. Good lines, Nick thought. Fine lines.
She twisted on the sofa, restless in her sleep, and her short skirt rucked up. Nick stared thoughtfully at quite a lot of slim and beautifully moulded legs in beige stockings. Her knees were not quite together. An extremely provocative posture.
Nick Carter gazed down at the pleasing vista with rather an odd look on his lean face. He rubbed his chin, feeling the heavy stubble without noticing it.
He made up his mind. It was but a small thing. He meant the girl no harm. Not yet, anyway. And he had felt something when they brushed together in the taxi on the way here.
Nick reached down and pulled up the girl’s skirt.
It was not unpleasant work, if you could get it, and he certainly had it now. That was just it. It was work. His job!
It paid off. There were the two broad black garters around slim white thigh columns. Each garter supported a little holster! And in the holsters, nestling so innocently against their background of white satin-silk, were a little knife and a little pistol.
Gently, he lifted the weapons from their sheaths, trying not to touch the sleeping girl’s flesh—he liked his women awake. He pulled her skirt down again and took the weapons over to the room’s single sleazy lamp.
It was not properly a knife at all, but a small stiletto. A nasty little needle of Spanish make. It had blood grooves. The pistol was the smallest automatic made by Webley. A ‘Lilliput.’ Nick cradled it in the palm of his hand and grinned. Made a sound like a pop-gun, and kill you just as dead as a Colt .45 if it got you in the right place. Or as dead as his own hand gun, the terrible-tempered Wilhelmina, had made so many men who had thought themselves faster than he, and had been fools enough to put it to the test.
Nick went to the narrow, rump-sprung bed in one corner of the room. On it lay a massive suitcase of the Gladstone type. It was made of rhino-hide and was covered with beat-up travel stickers. These stickers could be arranged in certain patterns to identify Nick and convey messages to other AXE agents. Gladstone, as Nick affectionately thought of the old bag, had been around. Just exactly as much as he had. She was original issue. She had secret bottoms and sides, a score of little pouches and compartments containing vials and bottles and kits.
Old Mr. Poindexter, head of Special Effects and Editing at AXE, had built Gladstone personally for Nick. Now Nick grinned faintly, remembering. Little old Poindexter was something of a nut on gimmicks and gadgets, but he was the best in the world at his job.
Nick tucked the little gun and stiletto away in Gladstone and was about to turn away, when he hesitated. He stared down at the bag. A brief frown marred his high, usually serene forehead. Had Gladstone been a mistake this time? Had it been quite the right luggage for a deckhand on a steamer plying Lac Leman? Mistakes like that got you killed! Even the hangman can be hanged; even the executioner can be executed.
Nick shrugged and went back to work. Too late now. You never looked back anyway. Only forward. But someone had made a mistake! Somewhere. Somehow.
He inspected the sleeping girl again. Still out. Still long, lithe and lovely, the beautiful Nordic face showing faint lines of wear and worry. He pulled down her skirt again and went through her purse for the second time, just to make sure. She had no luggage.
No better luck this time. The usual stuff: a compact, tissues, three lipsticks, change purse, a pack of Players half smoked. French and German money, plenty of it, but no Swiss francs. Not surprising. She had crossed the lake with him—had in fact picked him up on the boat—and there had been no time to change money since.
Her passport was just as interesting, and puzzling, as it had been at first reading. West German. It described her as the Baroness von Stadt. Elspeth von Stadt. Elspeth? Surely that was an English name? He just might ask her about that in the future—if there was a future for either of them.
With the passport in hand Nick went to the sofa and studied the sleeping girl again. No doubt about it. This was the Baroness! At least it was the girl’s picture in the Baroness’ passport.
She could be a Baroness, he supposed. Her clothes were chic and expensive. There was even—-despite the concealed armory —a hint of that ineffable sense of class and distinction one associated with such women. Nick Carter had known a lot of them, and had bedded most of them, and he considered himself something of an authority on the subject.
Nick flung the passport back into her purse and stared at the stained ceiling in perplexity. This was a minor Gordian knot. It was, in fact, a sonofabitch! If she was genuine, really the Baroness von Stadt, why had she thrown herself at him like a common prostitute? Why seek him out on the windswept stern of the steamer Geneve and make an obvious pass? At him, of all people !
Because he was, or had been, a sort of low type! He was Herr Rubli Kurz, a laborer and lake roustabout, born near Zurich. He had a couple of minor offenses listed against him. He drank too much. He had the papers to prove all this. He spoke all four languages of Switzerland—French, Italian, German and enough Romansh to get by. And when Nick Carter, when KILLMASTER, was working and playing a part he didn’t really play it at all. He lived it!
Nick took another look at the girl. He wondered. There were women, high born women, who picked up rough types and wallowed with them in filthy little hotels. They took no pleasure in men of their own class. After they had satisfied themselves they went back to their own world and forgot the whole thing.
Nick shook his head. No. Too coincidental. He had a lifelong distrust of coincidence. In any case, after she had insisted on coming to the Hotel Lux with him, she had begun to act a little scared. She certainly
So he had gotten the bottle of good wine out of Gladstone, always keeping between the girl and the door, and poured them both a little drink. And spiked her glass with a shot of old Poindexter’s very special sleep inducer!
Now he had her and what in hell was he going to do with her?
It would be dawn soon. He had to get out of here fast and talk to Hawk at AXE and find out what was going on. Maybe Mission Tiger was blown. Or maybe the little lady was only an eccentric whore. He had to know.
Nick Carter trusted the sleeping potion with which AXE so gercrously provided him, but he never took any chances he could avoid. He got the special straps and gag out of Gladstone and in one minute flat had the Baroness just where he wanted her. She would keep until he got back. He took the rhino bag into the tiny bathroom. In a couple of minutes the Herr Rubli Kurz was going down the greasy drain.
Mr. Frank Manning, of Cleveland, Ohio, USA, came out of the bathroom and went to inspect the sleeping girl. The gag would not choke her, and he had checked to make sure she was not a mouth breather. He pulled down her skirt again. Funny how that skirt kept riding up and he wondered if it could be an indication of character or profession? He hoped neither. Mr. Frank Manning, of Cleveland, was a kindly man. He wished the girl well.
Mr. Manning did. But then Mr. Manning was getting on a bit, graying, and had a little rubber paunch which could be inflated to suit the occasion. Mr. Manning was, in fact, a little flabby.
Nick Carter was quite another matter.
Carter, not yet lost in the flabbiness of Mr. Manning, bent over the sleeping girl and kissed her lightly on the lips. He sincerely hoped he wouldn’t have to kill this lovely thing.
Carter cursed. Audibly. Bitterly. Cursed himself.
How could he have been so damned careless? He had overlooked one of the best and most common of women’s hiding places!
Mr. Frank Manning sighed and retired for a time. He was too much of a gentleman for this sort of thing.
Carter wasn’t. He unbuttoned the girl’s thin blouse, with its lace jabot, to release a swell of white breasts over a black half-bra that concealed nothing. Nick wasted no more than a glance on the soft-firm pears, the pink aureoles, the red cherry tips. He plucked the silver locket by the chain and drew it slowly up from the well between her breasts.
It was large. About the size of a silver dollar. Nick flicked it open. He studied the picture in it for a long time.
Even Nick Carter, who had seen so much death and destruction, of butchery and brutality, even he could not restrain a grimace of disgust.
CHAPTER TWO
THE HANGING MAN
The face in the locket—if you could call such a leering, contorted thing a face, was that of an elderly German officer. His blouse was open at the throat. Nick could see threads where collar insignia had been ripped away.
The man’s face, even in the last agonies of a horrible death, bore the indelible stamp of a Prussian of the old school. Junkers! The type had hated Hitler, and Hitler had returned the hatred.
In this case Hitler had won. Nick immediately recognized the picture for what it was: one of a series of still shots, released after the war, from the motion pictures of the execution of German officers involved in the July plot on Hitler’s life.
This man had been hanged with wire instead of rope—the wire was buried in the swollen flesh—and instead of the conventional gallows a meat hook was used. The method was neat, simple, and horrible.
The executioner twisted a loop of piano wire around the condemned man’s neck, hooked it over a meat hook suspended from a bar and kicked away the chair or box on which the man stood. Even Nick was sickened at the thought of the ensuing agony. There was no hangman’s mercy, no breaking of the neck; there was only the slow hellish strangling, the soundless agony, the pitiful dance on air you could never breathe again.
A most undignified death. Hitler had meant it to be that way.
But who was the hanging man? And what was his death photo doing in a silver locket between a pair of lovely breasts?
Nick put the locket back where he had found it and re-buttoned her blouse. He patted her cheek.
‘You’re some kid,’ he told her. ‘Whoever you are! A gun, a knife, and a picture of an atrocity for a necklace. Either you’ve got a damned good reason for all this—or you’re a nut to end all nuts.’
The girl stirred and moaned in her sleep. Her face was flushed and the honey-blonde hair strayed in curling tendrils over her forehead. Nick brushed it back. She turned on the sofa and he looked down the enticing white canyon of her thighs. He pulled down her skirt.
‘I’m going to keep you around for awhile,’ he told her. ‘You interest me, Baroness. You really do.’ Time would tell what she was. Who she really was.
Time!
Nick took a last swift look around the seedy room. The lock on the door wasn’t too bad. There was no window in the bathroom. The single window in the room, grimy and cracked, was locked also. Hermetically sealed, by the look of it.
He peered through a patina of filth at a rusty fire escape. It twisted down four flights to a back area. Nick saw the shadows of boxes, crates, garbage cans, and realized that dawn was sneaking in fast.
In chill surrealistic light, with the beginning shadows falling and clotting before him, cobbles ringing hollowly, Nick made his way along narrow streets. Once, at an intersection, he saw two policemen coming his way. He ducked into a shop door and waited, but they turned off. Nick sighed in relief. He wanted no trouble with the Geneva police, and it might be a little hard to come up with a genuine excuse for Mr. Frank Manning, staid and respectable businessman, wandering around alone at this hour in a strange city.
He came to the Quai-du-Mont-Blanc and found a taxi rank, as he had known he would. The puffy eyed chauffeur was annoyed at being dragged from his nap. He opened his mouth to complain, then closed it. If this paunchy, graying American wanted to go to some insane address in the worst and toughest part of Geneva, then so be it. He shrugged his fat shoulders over the wheel of his ancient vehicle and took off. In any case there was something about his passenger’s eyes he found disturbing. They were luminous in the graying light, yet hard; they went through you like rapiers. Strange eyes. They did not go with the rest of this flabby American.
‘Allons.r said the man behind him. ‘Vite!’
‘Merde!’ said the driver. But he said it to himself.
Twenty minutes later Nick entered a small and admirably equipped depot deep in the cellar of a nondescript and decaying building. It is doubtful if anyone other than the concierge, and the few people who actually used it, knew of its existence. Certainly the Swiss Government, and the Geneva police, did not. Or gave no sign if they did. American gold, as supplied in vast quantities by the American taxpayer, can work miracles.
One of the minor miracles in the place was the small but immensely powerful radio transmitter that, upon demand, hooked instantaneously into the AXE phone system in the States.
There were two men in the depot when Nick was admitted. He had spoken a word, made a sign, shown a card. The heavy door had been unbarred. Now he had to face Hawk. Verbally, at least. Nick felt a slight sense of relief that it was only verbal. He still had the queasy sensation of having somehow goofed.
If he had—well, Hawk had a rough way with agents who goofed. Even over the radiophone. Nick could visualize him doing it. Hawk, ramrod stiff and lean, cold-eyed, chewing on a dead cigar as he took the hide off a man.
But to save his sin-encrusted and, probably, damned soul, Nick could not imagine how he had fouled up! Everything had been routine until the Baroness had come into his life. Had insisted on picking him up.
Even the little adventure in Portofino hadn’t mattered. Nick had often indulged in these little side trips, these pleasant excursions into fun, femininity, frolic, and a little wine. They did no harm when time was not important. On this job, on Mission Tiger, it hadn’t been. Or so he’d been given to understand at the final briefing. He wasn’t exactly to loaf, but he didn’t have to rush either. Nick had rather looked forward to this one, just for once to have a little margin in time. All work and no play made even Nick Carter a dull boy.
