The Weapon of Night (8 page)

And again the pattern shifted. Valentina cast one glance at Nick and silently moved her lips. But in that moment Pauling stepped aside to let her pass and she turned her head away so that her unspoken word was lost. And then both the president and Pauling stood between Carter and Valentina in a small knot at the foot of a tall, spiraling stair that ended high above in a platform with a vast door set into its single wall. The second elevator gantry reared alongside it, the cage waiting at floor level. Parry and Weston stationed themselves on either side of it, and waited.

Nick looked at the cage and did not like it. It was even smaller than the watchtower cage.

“Tight squeeze,” said Julia quietly. “I don’t know that I care too much for this. Capacity, three people — or one Valentina.”

“Well, that’s it, ma’am,” said Pauling. “I expect you’d rather use that than make the climb? I’m sure you would.”

“Rather small,” the president said apologetically. “To save floor space, you understand. But Parry and Weston will operate the control from below while the rest of us walk up and meet you there. Is that satisfactory?”

“But of course, of course?” said Valentina. “It is not your fault I am large economy size.”

“One moment, Madam Sichikova,” Nick said crisply. “In fairness both to the company and to yourself, it isn’t wise for you to go up in the cage alone.” His eyes swept the vast work area as he spoke. The other cage, he noted, was back from its skyward jaunt and hovered at mid-height within its gantry. All guards were at their stations on platforms and floor level. Nothing could have looked more secure and serene. But things have been known to happen within elevator shafts, and Valentiana had seen a familiar face among people whom she had never met before.

“But there is room for only me,” said Valentina reasonably. “And I can promise you, comrade, there is no way of inducing me to climb those stairs.
Nor
of talking me out of going up in the cage. It is decided, Carter. Positively.”

Nick knew from experience that she would not give in. So. at all costs, he would have to keep Comrade Valya constantly within sight. But that was going to be difficult, because at ceiling height the elevator would go directly beyond the roof into its own housing. And for that brief period it would be out of sight.

“Then if you don’t mind,” Nick said quietly, “I’ll send Thunder ahead of us to the roof to wait outside the housing. Miss Baron will stay here below. I’ll start climbing, keeping a little ahead of the cage. And you, sir,” he said to the president, “you might follow along behind me with Mr. Pauling. I know you realize that Madam Sichikova is my responsibility and that I’m expected to stay as close to her as possible. Mr. Parry — I assume that upper door is locked. Perhaps you’ll be good enough to send a guard up there with Thunder to let him out.”

Parry hesitated. “Well, this is a little irregular, you know. I’m not sure that —”

“It’s all right, Parry, it’s all right,” said the president. “Mr. Carter’s position is perfectly understandable. Send a guard up with Thunder; that will be in order.”

“That’s not really necessary,” said Parry. “I have two men on the roof already and I can open the door from down here.” He flicked a switch on a small control panel at the base of the spiral stair. “You can go on up, Thunder. There’s an electric eye on the inner platform that’ll open the door for you. Close it, too, afterwards, but then it’ll open again for the next man to follow. You’ll find yourself on a wide observation deck with my two guards at either end and the elevator cage on your right. The door to that, of course, will only open when the cage reaches the top. Automatically, you understand. Madam will have no difficulty. And the watchtower cage, of course, will follow all our movements.”

Then let us start at once,” said Valentina. She brushed past Pauling to step majestically into the tiny cage.

“On your way, Johnny,” said Nick.

Big Thunder started up the spiral stairway three steps at a time.

“My, my,” said Pauling admiringly. “Do you suppose he’ll last the distance?”

“He will,” Nick said shortly. “Julia. At the elevator, please.”

Her perfume brushed past him like a soft caress.

The watchtower cage was rising slowly to match Johnny Thunder’s climb.

Nick watched and waited. Johnny climbed. The watchtower cage rose slowly, pacing him. Valentina watched impatiently. Julia stood nearby, waiting like the rest.

“I must say I find your precautions a bit excessive, Carter,” Pauling said softly.

“No, he’s dead right,” Parry said gruffly. “Mustn’t take any chances.”

Johnny reached the landing, and the upper door opened. The watchtower cage, still pacing him, disappeared from view.

The door closed behind Johnny.

Valentina stifled an enormous yawn.

“I’ll start,” said Nick.

He took the first lap slowly, one eye on Valentina waiting in her gantry and the other on lookout for the returning watchtower cage.

There was a sixty-second pause. Then the watchtower cage glided slowly downward and halted several feet above the floor.

“Now, Parry,” said the company president.

Parry pressed a switch outside Valentina’s cage. It rose reluctantly, as if unaccustomed to such weight.

Nick raced up the spiral stairway. By the time Valentina’s elevator reached the top he would be on the inner platform to follow Johnny through that door. He saw her only feet below him, rising like a hippo in a tank, and yards away, across the huge work space, the watchtower cage glided smoothly up its gantry, pacing Valentina. Pauling and the president were climbing up behind Nick. Julia stood below, oddly flattened as he glanced down upon her, with one hand on the gantry and the other waving gracefully in the air as if in answer to some question. Parry and Weston stood there with her, watching Valentina’s rising cage.

Nick looked across at Valentina.

He paused for a moment to let her cage draw level with him so that he might call across to her. But in that moment there was an outcry from behind him, and as he turned to find its source he felt his head swimming as with an early morning hangover.

He saw Pauling drop upon the stairs, his hand clutching at his throat. He saw the company president grab at the stair rail, miss it, fall and clatter downward. His senses swirled. Through the thick mist that he somehow knew was within him rather than outside him he saw Parry, Weston and Julia slump down on the floor, and when he tried to clamber up the stairs to pace Valentina’s rising cage he felt as though he were wading through thick mud that grabbed at his legs and filled his mouth and nostrils.

Gas! he thought frantically. Got to reach the top! Got to . . . Valentina . . . must get to the door . . .

And then the mud tugged at him, flowed through him, drowned him, and he dropped.

His last blurred view was of a massive female figure slumped grotesquely in a cage, a cage that seemed to climb inexorably beyond his reach. . . .

The one man who had held his breath stayed quietly where he was until he was absolutely sure that no one else was moving. Then he gave himself a further count of ten, for safety’s sake, and looked around him. The safety doors were scaled. Guards lay slumped on floors and platforms. So did the Brass and the Very Important Visitors.

He smiled grimly to himself and took the one precaution needed for the critical few minutes to follow. Then he fingered the controls with his expert touch and went about his business.

Two elevator cages moved through the stillness of the gas-filled room.

CHAPTER SIX

Life Is Full Of Ups And Downs

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Hamilton Garvey. “And what’s more I don’t know anything about you. Am I to assume you’re asking me to put you through to the Central Intelligence Agency?” The First Secretary of the American Embassy in Cairo stared at his visitor with distaste and suspicion.

Hakim Sadek sighed with exasperation. American officialdom gave him a pain in the traditional place; in his experience nearly the whole damned lot of them were hide-bound, unimaginative stiffnecks. No wonder the Americans had so much trouble making themselves understood abroad.

“Once again, then,” he said patiently. “My name is Hakim Sadek and I am a professor of criminology at the University of Cairo. I am also attached, as a consultant, to the local Department of Police, and I am currently investigating the murder of a German surgeon named von Kluge. I have information which I have been requested to turn over to an American agency called AXE.
Not
the Cee Ai Ay. AXE. Ah, Ex, Ee. One of their agents, classified D5, was to contact me to receive this information. He was murdered even as we met. It is now even more essential for me to contact his superiors, his colleagues. I have much to report, and it is urgent. Make contact any way you like — do your own talking, scramble it, fry it, code it, use Hindustani or pig-Latin — but for the sake of Allah,
make contact!”

Garvey pursed his lips. He knew about D5 — something about him, anyway. AXE had hot-lined an inquiry about the fellow’s whereabouts. It seemed that he was missing. And now it seemed that he was dead.

“But why come to me?” he asked quietly, still disliking this repulsive-looking fellow. “What makes you think that I can make contact at all? Oh, we shall write, of course —”

“No, we shall not write,” Hakim said with icy calm. “We will place a call on the hot line to AXE headquarters in Washington, and we will speak with Hawk or the agent classified N3, also known as Killmaster. And I know that you can make contact because N3 told me so himself when I was working with him on a previous occasion. Every American embassy, legation and consulate in the world has such a hot line for emergencies. Is that not so? And this is an emergency. Hawk himself sent D5 to me, and now D5 is dead. Now, will you kindly place that call?”

Garvey pushed back his chair and got up, very slowly. Sadek seemed to know a lot about AXE — about Hawk, N3, D5. And he was right about the hot line.

“Very well,” he said at last. “I will. Wait here, please.”

He stalked from his desk to an inner office door and closed it behind him.

He was back within three minutes, wearing a look of astonishment on his broad face.

“I have them on the line. Come this way, please,” he said.

Hakim followed him into the small back room and spoke into the receiver.

“Sadek here,” he said. “Carter?”

There was a slight pause, due perhaps to hesitation or perhaps to the process of unscrambling. Then a dry voice spoke clearly in his ear.

“Carter’s a little busy at the moment,” said the voice. “This is his assistant. Name of Hawk.”

At the other end of the line Hawk smiled faintly to himself. It amused him, for the moment, to play second fiddle to Carter.

But his amusement fled as he heard Hakim’s story.

About D5. About the face that Hakim had remembered. About the pictures, contact prints, found in a secret drawer in von Kluge’s house.

About the artificial hands.

“Any more threats on your own life?” asked Hawk at last.

“Intermittent,” Hakim said. “Sometimes I am able to work in disguise, sometimes not. Whenever I appear as myself things come flying through the air and people skulk on corners. They are after me, all right.”

“A pity. And no chance of turning tables on them?”

“But regrettably, no. They have the trick of instant suicide. Also they are more cautious now, operating always from a distance. Perhaps they are running low on personnel.”

“Perhaps. I hope so. And you say you have no picture of the tenth man?”

“No. Nothing. Nothing at all. I have no evidence at all that he is connected with the others. Only a little circumstantial pattern that I have built up in my head. And a memory of the way he looked.”

“Then you had better come here at once,” said Hawk. “Are you available?”

“I am packed,” said Hakim. He heard Hawk chuckle briefly.

“Then stay where you are. I’ll arrange transport. Give me Garvey for a moment, you’ll hear from me again within the hour.”

Hakim gave the hot line back to Garvey and went back to the other room to wait.

Ten minutes ticked by slowly.

There was a screaming in his ears that was as acute as a physical pain and a leadenness in his chest that weighed him down and choked him as if he had been buried alive.

Then through a wave of nausea he heard the running footsteps and the shouts, and he suddenly remembered.

Nick opened his eyes and pulled himself to his feet. He swayed as he clutched the stair rail and looked downward through a sea of mist. Guards were pouring through the passages toward the nightmare scene below. The sprawled figures still lay where they had dropped. Julia alone was getting up from the floor and gazing unsteadily upward at Valentina’s cage.

Nick turned dazedly and looked at it, too.

It was a little higher than when he had seen it last, but it was there, hanging immobile in its gantry midway between the floor and ceiling.

And it was empty.

He groaned involuntarily and swung toward the watchtower. Its cage, too, was pretty much where he had seen it last, and it also was still. But it was enclosed, and there was no way of telling what its occupant was doing.

Now the others were stirring — guards on platforms and civilians on the floor — and his eyes raked through them as if by some miracle he would see Valentina’s great bulk rising up among them. But no; she wasn’t there.

He turned and raced up the spiral stairway to the roof.

From far below he heard a voice cry, “Haiti” and Parry’s voice yelling, “Let him go — it’s Carter — oh, my God, she’s gone!”

Then he was on the landing and the big door slid open as he neared it. He stumbled out into the bright cold light of the autumn afternoon and sucked in his breath at the sudden shock of what he saw.

Johnny Thunder lay motionless a few feet in front of him. The blood clotting the back of his head was no longer flowing; the big heart had stopped beating.