Dragon Flame Page 2

  "Swell with me," he said easily. He told his professional self to get behind him and stay there. This was probably nothing. "Where, Bob?"

  There was a little silence. Then Ludwell said, "You'll be taking a walla-walla in, I suppose?"

  "Probably. There are only two men aboard, on watch, and I can't very well ask them to man the launch. Yes, I'll take a water-taxi."

  "Good. I'll meet you on the dock at the foot of Mandrake Road. You know it? It's in the Wan Chai sector."

  Nick chuckled. "You believe in living dangerously, fella. A white man in evening clothes in Wan Chai is asking for it, no?"

  Ludwell's laugh sounded forced. "I think we can take care of ourselves, don't you? Especially you!"

  Nick did not miss the veiled remark. It was, in all the years he had known Ludwell, the closest the man had come to disclosing what he, in his turn, knew about Nick Carter.

  He let it pass now. "Okay," he said curtly. "I'll be there in half an hour or so."

  They chatted for another moment and then Nick hung up. As he turned back to dressing he was frowning slightly. He didn't quite like the way the evening was shaping up. Nothing tangible, of course, nothing he could put his finger on, but he was adept at reading «below» a voice. And Ludwell's voice worried him. He sounded worried and afraid, did Bob Ludwell. Probably with cause. Bob Ludwell was the top CIA man in this part of the world.

  It was a game he and Ludwell had been playing for years. Bob knew that Nick was AXE and never mentioned it. Nick knew that Ludwell was CIA and would never dream of mentioning it. It was policy. Hawk was dead set against any intermingling of the services unless in dire emergency. But it was more than policy. It was common sense, good tradecraft. Agents did fall into enemy hands now and then and no man could stand torture forever.

  Bob Ludwell was working. Nick had known that from the moment of their chance encounter that afternoon. Blandly, with a straight face and knowing Nick would accept the professional he, Ludwell had told him that he was working as a minor clerk at the American Consulate. It was cover pure and simple. Nick had immediately switched the conversation to other things.

  Boy came back with the hingkichi, freshly ironed, and Nick told himself to forget it. Stop fretting. Probably it was nothing. Maybe Ludwell only wanted to borrow some money. If he was holding down a cover job he would have to live on cover job pay, and that wouldn't be easy in Hong Kong. Yet it would have to be done. Both CIA and AXE were meticulous in those matters. Nothing could betray an agent as quickly as too much money.

  That must be it, Nick thought. He just wants to borrow a few bucks. He had another cigarette and had a fast cognac and soda as he finished dressing. Boy fastened his cummerbund and stood back to admire his work. "Number one, I think."

  Nick glanced in a long cheval glass and agreed. He would not disgrace himself among the pukka-sahibs tonight. He was not above a little vanity and found himself almost wishing he had brought along some of his medals — medals given him very sub rosa and which he never dared to wear. They would have graced the white dinner jacket. More important, they might have attracted the right feminine eye.

  He fished a wad of Hong Kong dollars from his wallet and handed them to Boy. At the moment a HK buck was worth about 17 cents.

  "Maybe you go ashore tonight one time and look for mama and papa," he. suggested. "Maybe tonight find."

  Boy's thin little face screwed into an expression of disgust. "Maybe not find, I think. Same-same as yesterday and day before. Too goddamn many mamas and papas in Hong Kong! I think maybe Boy be sonbitch orphan till he die maybe."

  Nick had to grin. He shoved the kid toward the door. "I know one thing, Junior. I'm going to get big piecee soap and washee mouth."

  From the door Boy fixed him with a look of juvenile cunning. "You maybe have lady tonight, I think. You not want Boy around in way?"

  "You are so right, Confucius. Now take off one time. Beat it before I beat you."

  Boy grinned. "You muchee big bluff, Missa Clark. Not beat. You good man." He vanished.

  Nick locked the door. He went to the huge bed, fished beneath the mattress and brought out a large pouch of oiled silk. From this he took his weapons.

  There was the Luger, 9mm, stripped down, sleek and oiled and deadly. Wilhelmina. His favorite girl. And Hugo the stiletto. Needle sharp. Grooved for blood, perfectly balanced for throwing. With an appetite for heart's blood. And lastly there was the specialist, Pierre, the little gas bomb. A pellet no larger than a golf ball. Instant death.

  Nick glanced at his wrist. Still plenty of time. Out of long habit he field stripped the Luger and assembled it again, working by touch as he pondered the events of the day and the evening ahead. He was still uneasy, edgy. The feeling would not go away. And N3, Killmaster, had learned to trust his forebodings. Years of danger, of close escapes from death, had built a sort of psychological tuning fork in him. The fork was quivering ever so slightly now, emitting little danger waves.

  Nick chose the stiletto for tonight. He took off the white dinner jacket and adjusted the soft chamois sheath on his right forearm, on the inside between elbow and wrist. He tested the release spring by flexing his wrist suddenly inward. The stiletto dropped easily and precisely into his palm, ready for throwing or stabbing. Nick replaced it and donned the dinner jacket. He put the Luger and Pierre back in the oiled silk pouch and hid them beneath the mattress again.

  By the time he went on deck he was once more whistling the little French tune. His spirits were high and he was looking forward to the evening, come what may. This was a comfortable time of year in Hong Kong with temperatures in the sixties, and little rain. He stood in the brisk December night and breathed deep of the harbor smells. An olla podrida of fish and diesel oil, of joss and cooking rice, of decaying wood and newly painted steel, of paint and turpentine and hemp, of tourists and habitués. Of good guys and bad guys. Of life and death and loving and hating.

  Kowloon glistened like a multihued Christmas tree, matching the myriad stars in the clear sky. The full moon was a yellow skull, mirroring itself in the unruffled harbor. From a Kowloon dock a tethered white liner bellowed a last call for passengers bound for the States.

  Nick summoned one of the Filipino watch and asked the man to hail a walla-walla. Corsair was moored perhaps 500 yards offshore. A matter of five minutes if he got a motor launch, a little longer if it was one of the blue-clad sampan women who sculled their little crafts.

  Bob Ludwell would be waiting for him at the foot of Mandrake Road, near Hennessy Road with its looming godowns. Nick fingered his fat wallet and found himself hoping fervently that all Bob wanted was a loan.

  He breathed deeply again and thought he detected a new fragrance in the air. Perfume? A subtle odor, soft and sensual as a pleasant minor sin could be. Nick Carter smiled. Life was good. And somewhere in all this spangled beauty that was Hong Kong there must be a woman. Waiting. Waiting just for him.

  Chapter 2

  The Red Ricksha

  On the way in, the walla-walla girl — she was at least fifty, with a trim figure and a brown wrinkled face, wearing clean blue denim — asked Nick if he wanted a girl for the evening. She knew he didn't, at least not the type of girl she had to offer, but she felt duty bound to tout the merchandise anyway. This handsome round-eye looked prosperous and warm hearted. The sampan woman knew that he was not of the English — little could be expected from the cold-eyed, curt-spoken sahibs.

  Nick laughed mildly at the query and admitted that he was indeed looking for a girl. But not, he added quickly, one of the girls in Shanghai Gai. The latter was a «street» of sampans in the Yau Ma Tei typhoon shelter. The girls, while not exactly licensed by the British police, were not bothered as long as they kept their pretty noses out of trouble.

  "Nice girl," the sampan woman persisted. "Nice for make love. Nice clean. You like, I promise. For you I find number one special girl."

  Nick smiled at her. "Not tonight, Granny. Tonight I find my own girl. Very num
ber one special — I hope. Thanks anyway, but no thanks. Here, have a little meat with the rice tomorrow." He gave her a sizable tip.

  Her toothless face creased in appreciation. In soft Cantonese she said, "M'goy. May the bird of love sing sweetly for you."

  "Hoh wah," Nick replied, also in Cantonese, and saw the surprise in her beady eyes. His fluency in Cantonese was a secret he usually kept to himself.

  She put him ashore on a rickety pier at the foot of Mandrake Road. The tender mauve of twilight had given way to a brisk dark blue, a chill brocade encrusted with the million golden gems of Hong Kong's lights. For a moment Nick lingered in a little enclave of silence and shadow near the blank wall of a large godown. A single yellow bulb in a tin shade illuminated stenciled black letters on the small postern door of the godown: Hung Hin Hong, Chandler.

  The sign reminded Nick that he must see about getting Corsair into drydock, as he had promised Ben Mizner. Tomorrow, perhaps, before he called Hawk and asked…

  Something moved in a blot of shadow near the go-down. A shoe scuffed dirt. Nick moved swiftly for the cover of a rotting bollard, flexing the stiletto into his palm. Behind the godown a scarlet wash of neon from Wan Chai blurred his vision for a moment. He waited, silent and ready. Probably nothing. A solitary opium sniffer, perhaps, building sensual dreams against the reality of a night in the open.

  "Nick?"

  Bob Ludwell's voice, high pitched and tense, with just a hint of quaver. Killmaster cursed softly to himself. Damn! The greeting, the "Nick," was all he needed to know. Ludwell was dropping cover. He didn't just want to borrow money. He was in trouble, probably bad trouble, and he wanted to share it with Nick. N3 grinned wryly and swore again under his breath. His instincts had been right. But friends were friends and he didn't have too many. And rules were made to be broken — in certain circumstances. Nick Carter had never lived entirely by the book.

  He snapped Hugo back into the sheath and stepped from behind the bollard. "Hi, Bob. Why all the creeping around? That can be dangerous, man!"

  "I know… I know. But I'm working, as you must know, and I've got to be damned careful."

  Ludwell left the shadow of the godown and crunched toward the pier. He was a short man, but broad and powerful, and his width of shoulder made him appear shorter than he really was. He was in evening clothes, as was Nick, but was wearing a black Homburg and a white silk scarf. A lightweight topcoat was tossed around his big shoulders, cloak style.

  As he drew close Nick saw a muscle twitching in one of Ludwell's smoothly shaven cheeks. He had noticed the same tic that afternoon in the bar of the Peninsula Hotel. His friend had a very bad case of nerves.

  Suddenly in that brief instant, Nick knew that it was more than just nerves. His sure intuition told him that Ludwell had had it. Fear was written all over the man. Ludwell had run out his string, was at the end of his tether. A man, any man, only had so many nerves, so much guts, and when they were gone — they were gone! Forever. It was time for Ludwell to quit. Go outside.

  Ludwell touched Nick's arm lightly. "Let's get out of here. Too dark. I've got to talk to you, Nick, and I'm going to have to talk out of turn. Break security and cover. Okay?"

  Nick regarded his friend with a bland stare. "You've already cracked it badly, old friend. My name is Harrington, remember? Clark Harrington. Who is this Nick character?"

  Ludwell fumbled for a cigarette and lit it with fingers that trembled just perceptibly. He peered at Nick over the brief tassel of flame. "Let's forget the con for the next half hour, huh? You're Nick Carter and I'm — well, I'm still Ludwell. I'm not using a cover name. The PTB didn't think it necessary. Anyway you're AXE and I'm CIA and that's the way we'll play it for a while. Okay?"

  "Okay," said Nick. "It must be important or you wouldn't do it. But the powers that be aren't going to like it. You know that."

  Ludwell pulled at Nick's sleeve again. "I know that. Can't be helped this time. Come on. There's a passage over here that leads out to Hennessy Road. We can get a taxi."

  They moved along a narrow passage between go-downs. There was a smell of fish and tung oil in the crisp air. Nick said, in a faint effort to lighten his companion's mood, "A taxi? I'm in sort of a romantic mood tonight. How about a ricksha?"

  Ludwell shook his head. "Too slow. We've only got about half an hour. I have to make a contact at the Cricket Club. Anyway, ricksha men have long ears. We can close the partition in a cab."

  Minutes later they emerged into the garish crescent that was Wan Chai, a tawdry district of cabarets, bars, and cheap hotels. Humanity seethed in the streets like molten lava — the dross would have to be swept up in the morning.

  At this early hour Hennessy Road was a riot of traffic and pedestrians tangled in an apparently hopeless jumble. Little Chinese cops, wearing white armlets, strove frantically to cope with it from their high kiosks. Traffic crawled like a wounded dragon. Huge red double-decker buses spewed their noxious fumes into the maze of rickshas and pedicabs and taxis and private cars. The night air was redolent with the oily smell of frying food. Above the braying of a record shop could be heard the constant clatter of mah-jongg tiles. Beneath a neon Tiger Balm sign a slim Chinese prostitute was trying to entice a disheveled member of the Royal Hong Kong Regiment.

  Ludwell paused to regard the scene with distaste. "Hell! This is a mess. We'll never find a taxi in this." He took Nick's arm and guided him toward the mouth of a narrow street leading upward. "Let's cut through here up to Queen's Road. Stand a better chance there."

  They ducked into the narrow medieval ladder street and started to climb. Nick saw that Ludwell was casting wary backward glances.

  "You expecting company, Bob?" He kept his voice casual, but he was nevertheless a little concerned. Ludwell was obviously ducking a tail. The chances were that he had ducked it efficiently — he was an old and experienced operative. But if he hadn't, if he had failed to lose the tail, then Nick was inexorably tied in with the CIA man. The thought did not please him. It would please Hawk even less.

  Nick sighed inwardly and shrugged his massive shoulders. Too late to worry now. His friend was in trouble and if he could help, without compromising AXE, he would. And take the consequences.

  In answer to his query Ludwell said, "Nothing to worry about. I've had a tail now for a couple of days, but I lost him this afternoon. That was one of the reasons for the ferry ride we took. I'm sure we're private now. But I've got the habit, damn it. I can't even go to the bathroom without looking behind me!"

  N3 could only chuckle in sympathy. He knew the feeling.

  At the top of the street, near a snake shop where a solitary housewife was sorting through the snakes for tomorrow's breakfast, they spied a Mercedes taxi prowling their way on Queen's Road. It was one of the new diesels. Ludwell hailed it and gave the driver instructions in Cantonese. Then he carefully rolled up the glass partition.

  Nick Carter crossed his long legs and adjusted the razor-sharp creases of his trousers. He lit a gold-tipped cigarette and offered the case to Ludwell, who refused. Instead the CIA man fumbled a cigarette from a crumpled blue pack of Great Wall and lit it. Nick sniffed at the harsh tang of sook yen. He had not noticed it in the open air. The native tobacco was murder to an Occidental throat.

  Carter waved away the acrid fumes. "How can you smoke that stuff? It would tear my head off."

  Ludwell inhaled deeply. "I like it. I've been in China too long, that's the trouble. I've got to get out, Nick. I'm going to get out — after this last job. If…"

  He broke off. They passed a street light and Nick saw the tic working furiously in Ludwell's cheek. "If what, Bob?"

  The light passed and they were in shadow again. He heard Ludwell sigh. Somehow it reminded Nick, unpleasantly, of a man expiring.

  "I've had a nasty feeling lately," Ludwell said. "Call it a premonition if you like. And don't laugh, Nick, until you hear me out."

  "Who's laughing?"

  "Good, then. As I say, I've had this fee
ling that I'm not going to get out of this one. I'm so damned sure of it that it's driving me nuts. I… I don't suppose I have to tell you that my nerves are pretty well gone?"

  "No," said Nick softly. "You don't have to tell me that."

  The taxi turned right at the ornate façade of the Daimaru store with its festoons of bright paper lanterns. They were now headed for Tai Hang. As they made the turn Nick glanced back, thinking with faint amusement that he was nearly as bad as Ludwell.

  There was nothing behind them but a solitary red ricksha. It was empty, the coolie padding along with his head down. No doubt going home to his pallet and rice in some packing-case slum.

  Ludwell took off the black Homburg and mopped his high forehead with a clean folded handkerchief. The night was crisp, nearly chill, yet Nick saw droplets of sweat on the pale flesh. He noticed that Ludwell was fast going bald. Nick pushed a big hand through his own thick hair and thought: He must be damned near fifty now.

  Ludwell mopped the sweatband of his hat and put it on. He lit another of the harsh Chinese cigarettes and flipped the match out the window. Without looking at Nick he said: "Do you know how many times I've been into Red China? And out again?"

  Nick said he didn't know. Couldn't guess.

  "Twenty times," Ludwell said. "This old pitcher has gone to the well twenty times! And always gotten back in one piece — or nearly so. I've got a few scars. But now I've got to do it again and I've got a feeling that this time I won't make it. And this trip is the most important of all-real big stuff, Nick. The top! I've got to do it, yet somehow I don't think I can. This time the old pitcher is going to be broken, Nick."

  This was a badly troubled man. Nick considered, briefly, what he could say or do, if anything, to lighten his friend's mood. Not much, probably. Perhaps better to keep his mouth shut. Ludwell was a veteran, an experienced and highly capable agent. He was no neurotic, certainly no coward. Yet Nick thought he had better try.