A Korean Tiger (2 page)

"I know," said Nick. "And I'm working on it. I'm really trying hard. I'm tired of spending a fortune on booze and never even taking a trip, as the LSD set puts it. I've got to let myself go more."

"Fool!" Peg came back with his glass and handed it to him. "You're the most self-disciplined person in the world and you know it. All muscles and will power. Sometimes you frighten me, Nick."

Nick pulled her down beside him. "Like now?"

She nestled her dark head on his big chest. "No. Not right now. Right now is fine. But it never lasts." She began to trace a finger over his scars again.

Nick's smile was a little grim. "Nothing lasts forever, sweetheart. And, to coin an old cliché, nobody lives forever. The world is based on an orderly progression of life and death, of living and dying, with the old making way for the new."

Peg giggled. "My God! You sound like old Mr. Wright, my philosophy prof in college. This is a new side to you, my darling."

Nick frowned at her and, with mock pompousness, said: "I have many facets unsuspected by you, my girl. And some of the most ancient of wisdom is expressed in corn, by cliché."

Peg laved a scarlet cicatrix with her warm wet tongue. "I just said I've never seen you drunk — I've never known you to be serious, either."

God forbid, thought Nick. He reserved his serious moments for his work. A sense of humor, a gift for nonsense, was a must for a man in his line of work. A killer, an official executioner — never in his own mind did he gloss it over — such a man must have an escape, a safety valve, or soon wander over the line into madness.

He kissed her lightly. "You were going to tell me about your dark thoughts."

Peg had been lying with her eyes closed. Now she opened one eye and peered up at him with an expression of mingled mischief and desire. "I don't really want to tell you — but if I do, will you do something for me?"

Killmaster stifled a groan that was not altogether simulated. "You're an insatiable wench. But okay. It's a deal. You first."

She pouted. "You don't have to sound like such a martyr, you know. I know a lot of men who would leap at the chance to go to bed with me. Anyway it's your fault — I see you so seldom. Once every two or three years if I'm lucky. It's no wonder I can't get enough of you. And what little I do have has to last a long time. So you just be nice and do what mama wants."

There was nothing reticent about Peg. Nick watched with a half smile as she rolled the tee shirt up above her breasts. He reached to tickle her stomach. "Too bad they can't find a way to store orgasms. In test tubes, you know, kept in the fridge. For use as needed."

Her deep brown eyes were kindling as she stared up at him. She pulled his face down on her warm bare bosom. "Don't be nasty and clinical. Just kiss me. There — and there! Oh my God!"

Nick let his face rest in the soft white valley of her flesh, filling his nostrils with the womanly effluvia. Peg's skin was closely grained, finely textured. Her breasts were large and firm, round globes of creamy flesh laced with faint blue veins. In repose, as she now was, they were collapsed ripe melons against her rib cage, her nipples the smallest of pink buttons.

The AXEman felt a nipple stir and rise against his lips as he caressed her. Peg moaned and ran her fingers through his hair. She held his head against her breasts as though he were a child and said, very softly, "I dream of you a lot, darling. Nearly every night. Lately they have been terrible dreams. I keep seeing you dead. Dead at the bottom of the sea, all tangled up in seaweed. You're floating and drifting, with fish all around you, and always the seaweed. And your eyes! Your poor eyes! They're open and you're staring at something. And sometimes, in my dream, you come drifting at me, straight at me, and you seem to see me and you try to speak. But you can't! Bubbles come from your mouth instead of words — only bubbles. Oh, Nick! Nick! I get so afraid sometimes. Every time I see you I keep wondering if it's the last time, if I'll ever see you or hear your voice again. We have a little time together, like now. A few days, then you vanish. You disappear for months, even years, and I don't know, I..."

Peg began to weep. A tear trickled from her closed eyes and salted Nick's lips and he felt absurdly guilty. And made a resolve — he would not see Peg again. He would not come to this place again. He would sell it, forget it. It was rather ridiculous anyway — he had long conceded this, but not acted on it — to try to retain this last link with his youth and roots. Every molecule, every atom, of his flesh and brain had changed since he had been young in this country and had first loved Peg. His heart had long ago suffered a sea change, into stony coral, and the youth had died and long been buried. Every man he had killed — and there had been many — buried the boy a little deeper. He had been a fool to come back this time, to laze and dream like an idiot, but it was the last time. It was as though his last refuge had been liquefied, dissolved, in Peg's tears.

Nick made love to her as tenderly, as skillfully, as he knew how. His anger, at himself and at the Fates, added a subtle edge to the bittersweet flavor of the moment and he took her to the highest peak that two people could attain. Peg was a moist, sweet-smelling white cling of moan and motion and in the end she screamed as though she had been stabbed.

Nick rolled away from her, leaving her in the silent trance that was her habit, her eyes closed, her breathing barely audible, her ripe red mouth a little open and showing a glint of white teeth. For the moment she was content, deep in soft aftermath, her senses lulled and free of fear and doubt and sorrow.

As he fumbled for a cigarette he saw the red light in the ceiling begin to blink off and on. Perfect timing. How considerate of his boss, of Hawk, to wait until he had finished. It was Hawk, of course. Only Hawk knew where he was. Hawk did not really approve of these "retreats," as he called them; he said they dulled Nick's edge. But the line was a direct one to Washington, and it would be Hawk, all right. That meant only one thing. Back to business! Nick reached down and pulled on his swimming trunks. He felt a tremendous sense of relief.

He kissed Peg's forehead, tasting the faint perspiration of spent passion. She said,
"Ummmmmm,"
but did not open her eyes. Nick took his cigarettes, and a lighter and left the lodge. As he left he glanced at a cheap alarm clock on the mantel and realized, with a little sense of shock, that it was only a few minutes past one. The day had only begun. He did not think he would be around to see the sun go down over the flat prairie to the west.

Killmaster found a path that skirted the lake to the east. Hot sun beat at his scarred, tanned shoulders and chest. He passed the woodshed and the towering stack of wood he had chopped since his arrival. It was good exercise and kept his muscles in tone. Beyond the shed was the Chevy he had rented in Indianapolis — his own Jag Special attracted too many eyes — and Peg's Buick hardtop.

He came to a fork in the path and left the lake side. As he was about to plunge into a narrow ravine, a loon came skittering down to a landing on the water, giving its maniacal cry. A lunatic laughing in this vast asylum cell that was called the world. Nick thumbed his nose at the bird and went sliding down into the weed-choked ravine. Burrs and wood lice plucked at the hair on his stalwart legs and he had to go carefully through a patch of bramble.

At the far end of the ravine there towered a majestic weeping willow, its dripping linear tears forming a tent around the huge bole. Nick pushed through the green fronds and approached the tree. He was completely hidden now, encompassed by the drooping greenery, and for a moment he had the feeling of moving under green, faintly sun-tinted water. He thought of Peg's dream and his grin was hard. Not just yet.

There was a canvas camp chair by a hollow in the huge tree trunk. From above a catbird whistled at him and squirrels chittered angrily. Possibly the same squirrels he had dispossessed to install the phone.

Nick tossed away his cigarette and lit another before he sank into the camp chair. Hawk wasn't going to hang up. At last he reached into the hollow and took out an Army field phone in a leather case. It was, in this his last refuge, the only concession he had made to the electronic age. If his boss considered Nick a little touched, he had been gracious enough not to mention it. No radio, no TV, no electronic gimmicks or gadgets. No other AXE agent, lacking Nick's seniority and prestige, could have gotten away with it.

He took the phone out of the leather case. "N3 here."

A female voice, metallic over the wire, said: "Just a moment, N3. Blackbird wants to talk to you. Will you scramble, please?" The prim tones of Delia Strokes, Hawk's ultra-efficient private secretary.

"I'm scrambling." He pressed a button on the phone.

Hawk came on the line. "You there, son?"

"Yes, sir. What's up?"

Over the years Killmaster had learned to decode the nuances of Hawk's voice. Now his boss was speaking in a slow, steady, almost too casual cadence. It was his worried, high-priority voice. Nick Carter, who was never far from tension, came completely alert.

"All hell is up," said Hawk. "Or may be. That's part of the hell — we aren't exactly sure yet. It's either a false alarm — or we're in the deepest trouble we can be. You get back here right away, boy. As of right now. Boy Scout camp is over. Start as soon as you hang up. That's an order."

Nick frowned at the instrument. "Of course, sir. But what is it? Can't you tell me a little more? Something to chew on while I'm traveling."

Hawk's laugh was bleak. Nick could hear the dry crackle of his unlit cigar over the line. "No can do," he said. "Too complex, Nick. Anyway, as I said, we aren't really sure where we stand yet. But I'll tell you this much — if we're right, and it is trouble, it's one of our own. We've got a traitor in AXE!"

"I'm starting now," said Nick. "Be there in a few hours, sir."

"Make it damn few hours," said his boss. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye, sir." Nick put the phone back in the leather case and replaced it in the tree hollow. Remembering his vow not to return to the lodge again, he yanked out the case and disconnected the wires. He coiled the wires as best he could and hid them under leaves beneath a bush. On his way back to the lodge he tossed the field phone into the lake.

It was typical of Killmaster that he gave not a thought to the parting scene that lay ahead. He was already working again. The time for softness, for moodiness and nonsense and sex and booze, was over for the time being. Until the job was done.

A traitor in AXE? It seemed impossible. Incredible. And yet he knew it was neither of those things. Every organization had its weaklings, its potential betrayers. Why should AXE be an exception? Just because it had never happened before....

That killing would be involved, he had no slightest doubt. Nick merely shrugged and walked faster. Killing was a foregone conclusion in a case like this. Mere routine. He did not give it another thought.

The lake looked cool and inviting and, now that time had run out, he suddenly felt like a swim. Nick chuckled at his own perversity and went into the lodge to tell Peg it was over.

Nick left Peg Tyler to close up the lodge — she could mail the keys to his agent in Indianapolis — and late that afternoon he returned the rented Chevy and caught a jet for Washington. His parting with Peg had been brief and unemotional, verging on the brusque. It was best that way for both, and both knew it. Neither voiced what they both sensed — that they would never see each other again.

On his way south to Indianapolis Nick stopped in Fort Wayne long enough to call a puzzled sheriff of Limberlost County and tell him that the special patrol could be taken off. Said sheriff was puzzled because he had never really understood, in the first place, why a patrol had to be maintained twenty-four hours a day around Nick's hundred acres. The sheriff had never seen Nick, nor had the patrolling deputies, but it stood to reason that he was
very
VIP. The orders had come straight from Washington.

It was, rather amazingly, cool and pleasant in Washington. Weather-wise, at least. The professional climate was something else again, as Nick found out the moment he entered his chiefs barren little office on Dupont Circle. Hawk was alone, a cigar clamped in the corner of his thin mouth. He looked haunted. His suit looked as though he had slept in it, but this was par for Hawk.

Nick Carter was wearing a two-hundred-dollar tropical suit from London's Regent Street, a Stetson straw, and Brooks cordovan moccasins with leather tassels. His shirt was of pristine Irish linen, dead white, slightly open at the throat where he had loosened his wine-colored tie. Nick had developed a thing about tight collars — ever since he had barely escaped being garrotted in Istanbul.
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Hawk eyed Nick's sartorial splendor with a cold eye. The old man rubbed the back of his weathered neck, cross-hatched with wrinkles like a farmer's, and rolled his dead cigar to the opposite corner of his mouth. "You look fine," he said at last. "Rested and ready, eh? You must have taken my advice for once and really had a vacation, eh? No booze and no women?"

Nick said nothing. He sank languidly into a hard chair, crossed his legs — careful to protect the crease in his trousers — and lit one of his long gold tips. Then he nodded at his boss. "It was all right, sir. But I was ready to come back. So what is it? Who's our pigeon?"

Hawk tossed his chewed cigar in the wastebasket. He jabbed a new one in his mouth, then immediately took it out and pointed it at Nick like a rapier. "It's a good thing you're sitting down, boy. Maybe you better hold on, too. It's Bennett. Raymond Lee Bennett!"

For what seemed a very long moment, Nick could only stare at his boss. As sharp as his mind was, as awesomely computerlike his brain, still it refused for the moment to ingest this information. It just didn't make sense. Bennett wasn't even an agent. Not even a low-level official in AXE. Bennett hadn't been — at least not until this moment — much more than a cipher, a lowly cog in the organization.