Dragon Flame Read online

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  THE FINE ART OF GENERAL SMUGGLING.

  The situation couldn't have been worse. The Communists had the border sealed up so tight, not even a fly could slip through. On the Hong Kong side, the vicious Tiger Tong waited, ready to kill anyone attempting the General's rescue.

  The General — badly wounded, unable to walk — was holed up in a temple barely a mile from the camp with a thousand Chinese soldiers itching to move in.

  Only a fool would have tried to cross that border to get to the General. A fool — or AXE agent N3, who — in spite of the prodding of the delectable Fan Su — knew he would have his work cut out for him to get in… and out again… alive!

  * * *

  Nick Carter

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  * * *

  Nick Carter

  Killmaster

  Dragon Flame

  Dedicated to The Men of The Secret Services of the United States of America

  OCR Mysuli: [email protected]

  Chapter 1

  Chance Encounter

  Nick Carter, senior ranking Killmaster for AXE, was enjoying one of his rare moments of euphoria. Even a hangman, it is said, must be permitted his moments of reverie and calm reflection. And while Nick was no hangman he was, in a very real sense, an executioner. Resting at the moment. On vacation. Death, insofar as Killmaster was concerned, was taking a holiday. This is not to say that Carter had grown careless or dropped his guard. He was quite aware that the bony old gentleman was at his elbow every moment, matching him stride for stride.

  Now, sitting in a deep rattan chair on the afterdeck of his borrowed yacht, Corsair, Nick watched another of Hong Kong's wondrous sunsets fade to glowing embers in the west. To the north the last shards of sun smashed themselves to a rose and purple glory on the sere mountains beyond the Sham Chun River. The Bamboo Curtain began at the Sham Chun. Twenty miles of it, straight across the peninsula from Hau Hoi Wan to Junk Bay.

  Nick drained the last of his cognac and soda and thought idly that Bamboo Curtain was indeed a euphemism. In reality the Chinese Reds had dropped a barrier of steel and concrete across the base of the peninsula — pillboxes, bunkers, tank traps and dragons' teeth.

  A high-pooped junk, its patched brown sail flapping lazily, glided past Corsair and Nick saw that the figurehead was that of a dragon spouting flame. N3 allowed himself a wry smile. Dragons were very big in the Orient. The important thing was to be able to distinguish between the two main types of dragons — paper and real.

  He had been in Hong Kong three days now and, as an old China hand, it had not taken him long to pick up the poop. Rumors were racing through the Crown Colony like a forest fire and there was scuttlebutt to please every taste and ear. Something big, very big, was going on in Kwangtung Province across the border. The Chinese had sealed off the border and moved up troops and tanks in large numbers. It was easy enough to get into China — at least for the peasants and merchants — but getting out was another matter. Nobody, but nobody, was getting out!

  Some of the pessimists around the bars and clubs, the perennial woe-cryers, were saying that this was it. The big dragon was at last going to gobble up the little dragon.

  Killmaster thought not. He had tried not to think about it at all — he was on vacation and it was none of his affair — but his complex and highly trained mind, attuned to such politico-military matters, kept harking back to the rumors and their basis in fact. Such as it was.

  The Chinese were in a sweat about something. They had moved in a couple of divisions and a few tank companies. They appeared to be making a fine tooth comb search for something, or someone, on their side of the border. What or who?

  Nick sipped his cognac and soda and stretched his big sleek muscles. He couldn't care less. This was his first real vacation in years. He felt fine, in the pink. His feet, badly frostbitten on his last mission in Tibet, were healing at last. He had fully recovered his energy and along with it his tremendous urgency to enjoy life. A new desire, a longing, was beginning to itch in him. Nick recognized it for what it was — and he intended doing something about it that very evening.

  He tapped a little silver gong on the table beside him, unable to repress a grin of pure sensual pleasure. This was the sweet life indeed. He still found it hard to believe. Hawk, his chief back in Washington, had actually insisted that Nick take a month off! So here he was on Corsair, anchored in the basin of the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. Well offshore. He had not wanted to plug into shore facilities. The ship-to-shore radiophone worked well enough and, though his body might be on vacation, his professional agent's brain was not. It was just as well to keep a moat between Corsair and the shore. Hong Kong was a hotbed of intrigue, the spying crossroads of the world, and Killmaster had far more enemies than friends.

  His cover was playboy, pure and simple. He was Clark Harrington from Tulsa, loaded with inherited oil money, and he had all the papers to prove it. Hawk had been most obliging in all these matters and Nick had wondered vaguely — was Hawk fattening him up for something?

  The slip-slop of small rubber shoes interrupted his thoughts. It was Boy, bringing another cognac and soda. Nick had borrowed Boy in Manila, along with Corsair and the Filipino crew.

  Ben Mizner, who had lent Nick the yacht, had had to interrupt his own cruise to fly back to the States on urgent business. He and Nick had talked briefly at the airport bar.

  "I picked up the poor little bastard in Singapore," Mizner had explained. "Starving in the streets. From what I gather, he's trying to get to Hong Kong to find his parents, and he's had bad luck. They were separated trying to get out of China. Boy — he won't tell his real name — Boy tried to make it alone in a rubber boat from Macao. Imagine a nine-year-old trying that! Anyway, he got caught in a typhoon and a freighter picked him up and took him down to Singapore. I promised him I would try to get him to Hong Kong somehow, sometime, and this is as good a time as any."

  Ben Mizner had gone on to explain that Corsair needed work and it was to be done in Hong Kong.

  "I bought her there," he said. "And I want to drydock her with the same firm. So you take her down and have yourself a ball. When you're through with her turn her over to the builders and I'll pick her up one of these days. S'long." And Ben Mizner, who had been a millionaire from birth and had known Nick in college, waved goodbye and ran for his plane. Ben had not, of course, the faintest idea of Nick's real profession.

  Boy took a tall frosted glass from a silver salver and placed it on the table. He picked up the empty glass, regarding Nick with narrow dark eyes. "You go byemby dancee house? I fixee clothes, maybe, yes?"

  Nick and Boy got by very well in pidgin. Boy was from the north of China and did not speak Cantonese. Nick, fluent in Cantonese, was deficient in the northern dialects. So they compromised on the lingua franca of the Orient.

  Now N3 fixed the kid with an unsmiling stare. He liked Boy and was amused by him, yet during the voyage from Manila he had tried to instill a little discipline. It was not easy. Boy was a free soul.

  "Maybe go dancee house one time, maybe not go," Nick said. He indicated the cigarette dangling from Boy's lips. "How many piecee cigarette you smokee today?" He had set a limit of six per day. Sort of a weaning process.

  Boy held up four fingers. "Smokee four piecee only, Missa Clark. I swear by damn only four piecee!"

  Nick picked up the fresh cognac and soda. He had never caught Boy in a lie yet. "Good boy," he sai
d. "You also no steal drinkee?"

  He had forbidden liquor to Boy, who had a weakness for gin, and kept a close watch on the liquor cabinet. Now Nick held out his hand. "Key to drinkee, please."

  Boy smiled and handed him the key. "I not lie, Missa Clark. I have one drinkee. But not steal — take! I swear by damn only one drinkee."

  Nick, trying to keep a straight face, considered the lad over his drink. Boy wore a miniature sailor suit, cut down for him by one of the crew, and rubber shoes. His hair was thick and tar black and cropped short. He looked like a frail saffron-skinned doll, a toy that might break at a touch, and never had appearances been more deceptive. Boy was nine — with the wisdom of ninety. He knew most of what there was to know about the seamy side of life. He had been raised in a brothel and had been on his own since he was five.

  Nick said mildly, "You swear too much. And you drink too much. One drinkee too much. You'd better watch it, kid, or you'll be the youngest alcoholic in the world."

  Boy screwed up his small features. "Not understand. What is alcoholic?"

  Nick patted his shoulder. "Alcoholic is what you'll be if you don't cut Out the boozing. Muchee bad. Now you go and lay out my dinner clothes one time, eh? I think I go byemby dancee house. You put out dinner clothes — dancee clothes. You catchee?"

  Boy regarded him with eyes that were somehow old and wary in the young, petal-smooth face. The stub of Nick's gold-tipped cigarette still smoldered in his lips. He would, like all Chinese poor, smoke it down to the last micro-inch.

  "I catchee," said Boy. "Do many times for Missa Miser. I go now." He gave Nick a grin that disclosed small pearly teeth, and vanished.

  Nick sipped his cognac and soda and wondered why he was so loath to move. A man could get lazy this way, succumb quite readily to this soft life. He watched a green and white Star ferry plowing toward Kowloon. The ferry passed close to Corsair and the trim 65-footer rocked gently in the bow waves. A whiff of harbor stench struck N3's nostrils and he winced. Hong Kong meant "fragrant harbor" — but it wasn't. Idly he wondered just how many bodies were floating around in the scummy water at the moment. Hong Kong was a great spot for efficient hatchet jobs and nocturnal splashes.

  Nick stretched in the chair and tensed his great muscles. Then he relaxed with eyes half closed and admitted the truth to himself — his vacation was beginning to spoil. Somehow, in the past few hours, a thin dagger of unease had begun to prick him. Or was it only boredom — that insidious wedge of boredom that always plagued him when he was too long away from his work? He was not a man to sit in the quiet byways of life. I have, he admitted now, just about had the vacation bit.

  A million golden lamps were springing to life on the nine dragon hills of Kowloon. To his right, in the Yau Ma Tei typhoon anchorage, paper lanterns were glowing like fireflies at every masthead. They were burning joss to Tien Hau, the sea goddess, and Nick could smell the acrid tang of it on the slight breeze. Hong Kong, its rich and its poor, the water people and the roof people, the beggars on the ladder streets and the wealthy in their villas on the peak — they were all Hong Kong and they were getting ready for another night. A typical Hong Kong night of intrigue and treachery and deceit and death. Also of life and love and hope. Men would die in Hong Kong tonight and children would be conceived.

  Nick let the cold drink slide down his throat. There was no doubting the symptoms now. His own personal signals were flying. He had been celibate too long. What he needed tonight was a lovely girl who would enter into the spirit of things, see the world and love as he saw them. A lithe, fragrant, tender-fleshed, young and beautiful girl who would give of herself without stint. As Nick did. Who would give, and take, in joy and pleasure throughout the tender hours of the night.

  Swee Lo?

  No. Nick Carter shook his head. Not Swee Lo. Not tonight. Swee Lo was an old and valued friend, as well as lover, and he must see her before he left Hong Kong. But not tonight. Tonight it must be a stranger, a beautiful and exciting stranger. Adventure beckoned him tonight. So he would, after all, accept Bob Ludwell's invitation to the ball at the Cricket Club and see what happened.

  Nick flexed his muscles and got out of the deep rattan chair without using his hands. His muscles were back in shape. His brain was clicking. He would look for adventure tonight, female type, and then tomorrow he would call Hawk and ask for an assignment. Nick went down the companionway three steps at a time, whistling a little French tune. Life was good.

  * * *

  His suite in the stern of Corsair was luxurious beyond anything Nick had ever seen aboard ship. Ben Mizner did himself more than well — he lived like a caliph.

  Nick, soaping his bronzed body in the glass-stalled shower, told himself again that it was time to move on. He was only human — there were many dead men who, if alive, would contest that — he was only human and it would be only too easy to grow accustomed to luxury. It could ruin a man, especially an agent. Luxury could corrupt. How well the old Romans had known that! You began to value your life too much and, in his profession, that was the surest way to lose it. You might get away with it for a long time, but one day you would hesitate, waver, stop to think when there was no time to think. That would be the day you got killed.

  Nick toweled himself dry and began to shave. He frowned at his image in the steamy mirror. Not for him. When he got killed it would be by a better man, not because he had let his reflexes rust and his muscles go to jelly.

  The lean face in the mirror was still a little haggard from the Tibet mission. The dark brown hair was growing out and now could be parted on the left, thick and glossy and growing to a mildly satanic widow's peak. The forehead was high and, when in repose, unlined. The nose was straight and, though there were some slight traces of battering, it had never been broken. The eyes were wide-set over high cheekbones. They were strange eyes, hardly ever still, and changing color as often as the sea. The mouth, firm and well shaped, with a hint of the sensual, was usually reserved. It could smile and laugh when occasion justified, but it was not a mouth that smiled too readily and it did not laugh at fools' jokes. It could also be bitter and hard and unforgiving, that mouth.

  On the whole the face in the mirror was mobile and expressive, intimating the capacious and highly resourceful brain behind it. In moments of urgency, of great stress, when the die of life or death was cast, that face could assume the rigid implacability of a skull.

  The body beneath the face was all that years of cruel and demanding conditioning could make it. The body was, after all the wear and tear and countless tortures, self and otherwise imposed, still in near mint condition. The shoulders were massive, but without the clumsiness that ruins clothes; the waist was narrow and tight, the legs tanned pillars of smooth muscle. Nick's muscles did not bulk large, did not especially call attention to themselves, but they were like steel cables. They moved as easily beneath his sleek pelt as oiled ropes.

  Nick left the bathroom, a towel bound around his lean middle, and went into the spacious bedroom. Boy had laid out his evening things on the bed: dark trousers with satin stripe, white dinner jacket, pleated shirt with turn-down collar, maroon tie, a maroon cummerbund. No club in the world was more formal than the Hong Kong Cricket Club. Evening dress was mandatory, even for charity balls.

  Boy, with another of Nick's long, gold-tipped cigarettes dangling from his mouth, was busily polishing a pair of patent leather shoes. As usual, he gazed in awe at Nick's torso. Boy did not know what a Greek god was, and he had never heard of Praxiteles — many a near-to-swooning woman had voiced the thought that Nick Carter was not quite real, but a piece of sculpture — but Boy knew what he admired. Tiny and fragile himself, he longed with all his little gutter soul to possess a body like the AXEman's.

  Now he tried to encircle Nick's bicep with both his tiny hands. His fingers did not meet. Boy grinned. "Number one muscle, I think. Okay I feelee one time?"

  Nick grinned down at him. "You already feelee one time. Why askee?"

  "I
polite boy, Missa Clark. I likee one time have muscles same-same you. Go back to my village and kill all bad mens."

  Nick shook off the little fellow and stepped into a pair of white boxer shorts of Irish linen. "You lay off the cigarettes and the booze and maybe you'll one time grow some muscles. You try, huh?"

  Boy shook his head sadly. "I try okay. But no damned good. I not grow big one time likee you — I always be sonbitch little Chinese man."

  "Don't let it worry you," said Nick. "There are things known as equalizers in this life." He glanced at the bed. "Hey, you forgot a handkerchief. Hingkichi. You want me to be tossed out of the Cricket Club for improper dress?"

  Boy slapped his brow. "By damn I forget one time. I have go irong one. No have."

  Nick gave him a gentle shove. "Okay — you go irong one and make it hubba. And watch that language."

  As Boy left the room the ship-to-shore phone buzzed. Nick picked it up. "Hello. Clark Harrington here."

  A light tenor voice said, "Clark? This is Bob. How's everything?"

  It was Bob Ludwell, an old friend. He was, in fact, one of Nick Carter's very few real friends. From BA. Before AXE. It had been a purely chance encounter that afternoon. Nick had just left his tailor, in Nathan Road, and had literally bumped into Bob Ludwell. They had had a couple of drinks at the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon — Bob had been on some strange errand and Nick had gone along for the ferry ride — and Bob had mentioned the dance at the Cricket Club tonight.

  Now Ludwell said: "You coming to the dance tonight?"

  "Yes. I'm getting dressed now. Plenty of time. You did say nine, didn't you?"

  "That's right. Nine. But I–I thought we might meet a bit early, Clark. I'd like to talk to you about something."

  Again Nick felt the slightest nip from the dagger of unease. There was something about Ludwell's tone that puzzled him, worried him. Coming from any other man, it wouldn't have meant much. But he knew the truth about Bob Ludwell.