Macao (KM031), page 13
part #31 of Killmaster Series
Prince Askari had been very right about that—the General was well into lunacy or, at best, senility. Colonel Chun Li knew this and was using it.
Nick Carter put the cold muzzle of the Luger very gently against the General’s head, just behind the ear. He had been told the General spoke excellent English.
“Keep very still, General. Don’t move. Whisper. I don’t want to kill you, but I will. Just keep watching the movies and answer my questions. Whisper. Is this place bugged? Tapped? Mikes around?”
“Oui.”
“Speak English. I know you can. Where is Colonel Chun Li now?”
“I do not know. But if you are the man Carter, he is expecting you.”
“I am the man Carter.”
There was movement in the chair. Nick jabbed cruelly with the Luger. “General! Keep your hands on the arms of the chair. You must believe that I will not hesitate to kill you.”
“I do believe you. I have heard much of you, Carter.”
Nick prodded the General’s ear with the Luger. “You made a deal, General, with my boss, to set up Colonel Chun Li for me. What about it?”
“In return for the girl,” said the General. His voice, quavery before, grew stronger now. “In return for the girl,” he said again. “I must have the girl!”
“I’ve got her,” Nick said softly. “With me. She’s in Macao right now. She’s dying to meet you, General. But you’ve got to keep your end of the bargain first. How do you intend to trap the Colonel for me? So I can kill him?”
He would now hear some very interesting lies.
Not so. The General might be cracked, but he had a one track mind. “I must see the girl first,” he said now. “Nothing until I see her. Then I’ll keep my promise and give you the Colonel. It will be easy. He trusts me.”
Nick’s left hand had been exploring. The General was wearing a cap, a fiat-topped military cap. Nick ran his hand down over the old man’s left shoulder and breast—medals and ribbons. He knew then. The General was wearing full regimentals, the dress uniform of a French Lieutenant-General! Sitting in the dark, wearing the raiment of past glory and staring at pornography. Shades of de Sade and Charentan— death would be a blessing to this old man.
There was still the job to do.
“I don’t think,” said Nick Carter in the dark, “that the Colonel does trust you. He is not that stupid. You think you are using him, General, but he is really using you. And you, sir, are lying! No—don’t move. You are supposed to be setting him up for me, but really you are setting me up for him —right?”
A long sigh from the General. He did not speak. The movie ended and the screen went blank as the projector stopped whirring. The darkness in the room was total now. Wind rushed howling past the little balcony.
Nick decided against taking a look at General Auguste Boulanger. He could smell, hear and sense the decay. He did not want to see it. He leaned to whisper yet lower, now that the protective sound of the projector was gone.
“Isn’t that true, General? You are playing both ends against the middle? Planning to double-cross everybody if you can? The way you tried to have Prince Askari murdered!”
The old man started violently. “Tried to—you mean that Askari is not dead?”
Nick Carter tapped the withered neck with the Luger. “No. Very much not dead. He’s here on Macao now. Colonel Li told you he was dead, eh? He lied to you, told you the murder had come off?”
“Oui—yes. I believed the Prince to be dead.”
“Keep your voice down, General. Whisper! Ill tell you something else that may surprise you. You have an attache case full of raw diamonds?”
“Yes.”
“They’re phonies, General. Glass. Chunks of dirty glass. You don’t know much about diamonds. Aski does. He hasn’t trusted you for a long time. This trip he switched attache cases on you. The stuff you have is worthless. What is Colonel Li going to say about that?”
As they had come to trust each other, to a point, the Prince had revealed the strategem of the fake raw diamonds. He had lied during their talk in the Rat Fink Bar. He had the real diamonds safely tucked away in a vault in London. The General was trying to peddle the phonies, all unknown to him. Neither was Colonel Chun Li a diamond expert. If matters had somehow straightened out, gone well, the Prince could have had the real diamonds flown to Macao in a few hours.
The old man stiffened in the chair. “The diamonds are fake? This I cannot believe—”
“You had better, General. Believe this, too—that when Peking finds out you’re selling them glass for twenty-odd million in gold, you’re going to be in a lot more trouble than you are now. So will the Colonel. He’ll take it out on you, General! First. To save his own skin. He’ll try to convince them that you’re just crazy enough to try a swindle like that And there will go your whole deal—the girl, the revolution you want to take over in Angola, the gold for diamonds setup with the Chinese. Everything. You’ll just be an old ex-General condemned to death in France. Better think it over, sir.”
Nick softened his voice. He was whispering close to the old man’s ear, aware of the overpowering scent of a harsh perfume. The old boy stank. Perfume to cover the odor of an old and dying body? Against the time when he met the girl? Once again the AXEman was near to pity, not a usual emotion for him. He pushed it away from him.
He pushed the Luger a bit more firmly into the old neck. “Better stick with us, sir. With AXE. Set the Colonel up for me the way it was originally planned. That way you get the girl, at least, and maybe you and the Prince can still work something out between you. After the Colonel is dead. How about it?”
He felt the General nod in the dark. “I appears that I have no choice, Mr. Carter. Very well. What do you want me to do?”
His lips touched the man’s ear as Nick whispered. “I’ll be at the Inn of Ultimate Happiness in one hour. You come and bring Colonel Chun Li with you. Just the two of you. Tell him that I want to talk, to make a deal, and that I don’t want trouble. Do you understand?”
“Yes. But I do not know this place—the Inn of Ultimate Happiness? How do I find it?”
“The Colonel will know it,” said Nick brusquely. “The moment you come through the door with the Colonel your job is over. Get out of the way and stay out. There will be danger. Is that clear?”
A little silence. The old man sighed. “Most clear. You intend to kill him, then? On the spot!”
“On the spot. Goodbye, General. Better play it safe this time. No double-cross.”
Killmaster went up the rope with the skill and speed of a giant ape. He pulled it up and hid it under the coping. The roof was deserted, but as he gained the little penthouse he heard the freight elevator ascending. The machinery was humming and counterweights and cables were sliding down. He ran to the door leading down to the ninth floor, opened it and heard voices at the foot of the stairs speaking Chinese. Nick guessed they were the two guards who had been at the General’s door, arguing about which one would ascend to the roof. He turned back to the elevator. If they argued long enough down there he had a chance. He wedged back the iron grille door of the elevator and held it with his foot. He could see the roof of the freight elevator rising towards him, the cables whining greasily past. Nick glanced up at the top of the housing. There should be room—just.
As the roof of the elevator reached him he stepped lightly on and eased the grille shut. He flattened on the filthy top of the elevator as it clanked to a stop. There was a good inch between the back of his skull and the top of the housing.
Chapter 10
HE COULD REMEMBER the rifle butt striking him in the back of the neck. There was hot white pain in the region now. His skull was an echo chamber where a couple of jazz bands were going crazy. The floor beneath him was as cold as the death he now faced. It was wet, dank and Killmaster began to understand that he was stark naked and in chains. There was, somewhere above him, a vague yellow light. He made a supreme effort to lift his head, marshalling all his strength, beginning the long fight back from what he sensed was very near total disaster. Matters had gone completely wrong. He had been outsmarted. Colonel Chun Li had taken him as easily as one takes a lollipop from a baby.
“Mr. Carter! Nick—Nick! Can you hear me?”
“Uhhhooooooo—” He raised his head and looked across the small dungeon at the girl. She was naked, too, and chained to a brick pillar just as he was. As he tried to get his eyes in focus Nick did not regard any of this as particularly strange—when in a nightmare you go by nightmare rules. It seemed quite proper that the Princess Morgan da Gama should be sharing this terrible dream with him, that she should be chained to a pillar, lithe and naked and big breasted and absolutely frozen with terror.
If ever a situation needed a light touch this was it—if only to keep the girl away from the edge of the hysteria. Her voice said she was fast approaching it.
He tried to smile at her. “In the words of my immortal Aunt Agatha—‘wha hoppen’?”
New panic moved in the green eyes. Now that he was awake and looking at her, she tried to cover her breasts with her hands. The jangling chains were too short to permit it. She compromised by twisting her slim body so that he could not see her dark pubic hair. Even in such a moment, when he was sick, hurting and temporarily defeated, Nick Carter wondered if he would ever understand women.
The Princess had been crying. Her eyes were swollen. She said: “You-you don’t remember?”
He forgot the chains and tried to massage the huge bloody lump on the back of his skull. His chains were too short. He swore. “Yes. I remember. It’s starting to come back now. I—”
Nick broke off and put a finger to his lips. That blow had knocked all the sense out of him. He shook his head at the girl and tapped his ear with his finger, then pointed around the dungeon. It was sure to be bugged.
From above, somewhere up in the shadows of the ancient brick arches, there came a metallic chuckle. A loudspeaker rasped and whined, and Nick Carter thought, with a grim little smile—the next voice you hear will be Colonel Chun Li!
The loudspeaker said: “Very professional of you, Mr. Carter. Of course the place is wired. There is also closed-circuit television—I can see you quite plainly. But do not let this inhibit your conversation with the lady. There is very little that you can say that I do not already know. Are you hearing me well, Mr. Carter?”
Nick kept his head down. He did not want the TV scanner up there to see the expression on his face. He said: “Screw you, Colonel.”
Chuckle. Then, “Very childish, Mr. Carter. I am disappointed in you. In many ways—for you did not really give me much of a fight, did you? I rather expected more from AXE’s number one killer. I begin to think that you are only a paper dragon, after all. Tch-tchk. But then life is full of little disappointments.”
Nick kept his face down. He had been analyzing the voice. Good, too precise English. Learned from text books. Chun Li had never lived in the States. Ergo—he did not really know or understand Americans, how they thought or what they were capable of under stress. It was a faint glimmer of hope.
Colonel Chun Li’s next remark truly startled the man from AXE. It was so beautifully simple, so apparent once it was pointed out, yet until this moment it had never occurred to him.
“And how is our dear mutual friend, Mr. David Hawk?”
Nick was silent.
Chuckle. “You may as well know, Mr. Carter—and I hope it does not wound your pride—that my interest in you is only secondary. You are, to be truthful, only the bait. It is your Mr. Hawk that I really want. Just as he wants me. This whole thing has been a trap, as you know, but for Hawk, not you.”
Nick laughed up at the ceiling. “You’re out of your mind, Colonel. You’ll never get close to Hawk.”
Silence. Chuckle. Then: “We’ll see, Mr. Carter. You may be right. I have the highest respect for Hawk, professionally speaking. But he has human weaknesses, just as the rest of us do. I believe that you two are very close?”
Danger in that question. For Hawk. Nick said, “You’ve been misinformed, Colonel. Hawk doesn’t buddy-buddy with his agents. He’s a heartless old man.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” said the voice. “If one method doesn’t work, another will. I will explain later, Mr. Carter. Now I have a little work to do, so I shall let you have your privacy. Oh—one thing. I am going to turn on some lights now. Please observe the wire cage. Something most interesting is going to happen soon in that cage.” There was a hum, buzz and click, and the amplifier went dead. A moment later harsh white lights came on in a corner of the dungeon that had been in shadow. Both Nick and the girl stared. Killmaster felt an icy finger along his spine. Yet it was only an empty cage of closely meshed chicken wire, about twelve by twelve. A door opened through the brick wall of the dungeon. On the floor of the cage were four short chains and manacles set into the floor. Just right for spreadeagling a man. Or a woman.
The Princess had the same thought. She whimpered at him. “My God! W-what are they going to do with us? What is that—that cage for?”
He didn’t know and he didn’t want to guess. To keep her sane, from hysteria, was his job now. Nick didn’t know just what good that would do—except that it might, in turn, help him keep his own wits about him. He was desperately going to need them.
He ignored the cage. “Tell me what happened at the Inn of Ultimate Happiness,” he commanded. “I’m fuzzy on things. A rifle butt will do that. I remember coming in and seeing you squatting in a corner. Aski wasn’t there, though he should have been. I remember asking you where Aski was—then the joint was raided and the lights went out and somebody put a rifle butt in my skull. Where is Aski, anyway?”
The girl was fighting for control. She looked askance and pointed around.
“To hell with it,” Nick grunted. “He’s right. He knows it all anyway. I don’t. Tell me.”
“We did just as you said,” the girl began. “Aski dressed himself in that d—that other man’s uniform and we went into town. To the Inn of Ultimate Happiness. At first no one paid any attention to us. It—well, I suppose you know what sort of place it was?”
“Yes. I know.” He had picked the Inn of Ultimate Happiness because it was a low Chinese inn and brothel where coolies and Mozambique soldiers hung out together. The Prince, in the uniform of the dead trooper, would have been just another black soldier with a pretty Chinese prostitute. Aski’s job was to cover Nick if he succeeded in luring Colonel Chun Li to the inn. The disguise had been perfect.
“The Prince was picked up by an MP patrol,” the girl said now. “I think it was just a routine thing. They were Mozambiques with a white Portuguese officer. Aski didn’t have the proper papers, no pass or something, so they arrested him. They dragged him out and left me there alone. I—I waited for you. There was nothing else to do.”
Bad luck. The disguise had been too good. Nick swore a little under his breath. It was not a thing that could have been foreseen, guarded against. No one could ever cover every angle! So now the black Prince was in some jail or stockade and out of circulation. He spoke a little Mozambique, so he might be able to bluff for a time, but sooner or later they would find out the truth. The dead guard would be found. Aski would be turned over to the Chinese. Unless— and it was a very slim unless—unless the Prince could somehow use, as before, the confraternity of a dark skin. Nick shrugged the thought away. Even if the Prince got free what could he do? One man. And not a trained agent at that.
As always, when the deep bind was on, Nick knew that he could count on only one man to save his skin. Nick Carter.
The loudspeaker rasped into life again. “I think you will find this interesting, Mr. Carter. Observe closely, please. An acquaintance of yours, I believe?”
Four Chinese, sturdy brutes all, were dragging something through the door and into the chicken wire cage. Nick heard the girl gasp and choke back a scream.
There was something sickening, nearly obscene, about the nakedness of General Auguste Boulanger as he was dragged into the cage. He was bald and the sparse hair on his emaciated chest was white. He looked like a shivering, plucked chicken and, in this primal human state, utterly devoid of all human dignity and pride of rank or uniform. The knowledge that the old man was mad, that real dignity and pride had gone long before, made no difference in the revulsion Nick felt now. A sick ache began in his stomach. He had a premonition they were about to see something very nasty, even for the Chinese.
The General put up a good fight for one so old and frail, but in a minute or two he was spreadeagled on the floor of the cage and chained. The loud speaker whispered in Cantonese: “Take out the gag. I want them to hear him scream.”
One of the men pulled a large chunk of dirty rag from the General’s mouth. They left and closed the door in the brick wall. Nick, watching closely in the glare of 200-watt bulbs that lit the cage, saw something he had missed until now—on either side of the door, at floor level, was set a small opening, a dark scallop in the brick work, the sort of little entrance one might make for a dog or a cat. Light glinted from the metal plates closing them now. Killmaster’s flesh crawled— what were they going to do to this poor, crazy old man?
Whatever it was—he knew one thing. It was not really directed at the General. Or the girl. It was aimed at him, at Nick Carter, to terrify him and break his will. It was a sort of brain wash, and it was about to begin.
The General fought his chains briefly, then subsided into an inert pale lump. He gazed about him with a wild stare that did not appear to comprehend much.
The loudspeaker rasped again: “Before we get into our little experiment, there are a few things I think you should know. About me. I have, and I admit it freely, my share of vanity. I even think I am entitled to gloat a bit. You have long been a thorn in our side, Mr. Carter—you and your superior, David Hawk. Now the tables are turned. It is, of course, all a part of the process of degrading and conditioning you. As your nakedness and the miserable surroundings are a part of it. You are a professional and I am sure you understand this. But I am an old-fashioned Chinese, Mr. Carter. We have, in our new China, our share of bright young men. Psychologists and psychiatrists, all the rest of it. Mostly they favor new methods of torture, more subtle means. I am not of that school. For ten thousand years we Chinese have been experts in inducing terror and I, for one, am most old-fashioned in that sense. Sheer, stark, unqualified terror, Mr. Carter! As you will now see.”
