The Black Death Read online

  “You’re a hard woman to convince,” I said curtly. “But never mind—what was in that drink tonight?”

  “Nothing much. Just a little LSD.”

  I nodded. “That’s nice to know. Just a little LSD, huh? Good. I was worried about that—I thought it might, be something powerful or dangerous.”

  She pushed her hand into the light from the instrument board. Her nails were long and well kept and the color of blood. She measured off a micro-dot on her thumb nail. “Just that much. A tiny smidgeon—not enough to hurt anyone. We found that it helps the illusion, makes it sexier, gets people more excited. So maybe they come back again and spend another couple of hundred dollars. Just good business, that’s all.”

  “Sure. Just good business.”

  She blew smoke at me, narrowed her eyes, then put a hand over her mouth and laughed beneath it. “You sound like you don’t approve. What are you, Nick Carter, some kind of a moralist?”

  She sort of had me there and I had to grin. She took her cue from the expression on my face.

  “You killed two men tonight—or one for sure—and most people would say that makes you a murderer. Or doesn’t it?”

  “That was in the line of duty,” I said. “I am an accredited agent of AXE, which is in turn an agency of the United States Government.”

  There seemed no point in telling her that I carried rank, with top seniority, and that I had killed more men than she had years. I doubted that she had ever heard of AXE, anymore than she had heard of Nick Carter before eight o’clock tonight.

  All laughter fled. She could change moods the way a chameleon changes colors. She cupped her chin in one hand and stared at me with that yellow glitter in her eyes.

  “What I do is in the line of duty, too. You were right— I am the Black Swan! I don’t have any official standing, and it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference. Sooner or later I am going to lead my people back into Haiti, and we are going to take back what belongs to us. I personally am going to arrange for that stinking black bastard, that Papa Doc Duvalier, to be banged in front of his own palace in Port-au-Prince! What do you think of that, Mr. Carter?”

  I laughed at her. “It is going to be later, Miss Bonaventure. Not sooner. Part of my orders are to see that there are no invasions of Haiti. Absolutely none! Uncle Samuel has just had a very bad time in the Dominican Republic and he is not looking to repeat it in Haiti. Uncle has a great longing for peace and quiet in the Caribbean and that is the way it is going to be. And what do you think of that, Miss Bonaventure?”

  She threw her cigarette butt overboard. She stood and put her hands on her hips and stared down at me in the conning chair.

  “I rather thought that was it,” she said, all soft and sweet and reasonable. “As a matter of fact it isn’t anything new, this attitude. Steve Bennett told me the same thing.”

  “He was so right,” I murmured.

  “Bennett was my contact with the CIA, as you know. I don’t know what really goes on, any of the inner workings, or why you people—AXE?—are taking over from the CIA, but I do know that Bennett and I made a deal. A bargain. Are you going to honor that bargain, Mr. Carter?”

  I was non-committal. “Depends on the bargain. What did you and Bennett agree to?” I knew, because Bennett had filled me in briefly, but I wanted to hear her version.

  She was behind me again, rubbing those cool fingers over the back of my neck. “I was to call off any invasion attempt, not to try it, and the CIA was going to go into Haiti and bring out Dr. Romera Valdez. You know that Papa Doc kidnapped him, right out of Columbia University, and has been holding him for five years?

  I knew. She was telling it about the way Bennett had told it to me. Yet I had to stall her. I couldn’t make any firm committments until I had talked to Hawk. And Hawk, of course, had to get clearance from The Man.

  Still I wanted to keep her happy and keep her from trying any monkey business while I sorted this thing out. Those bogymen had loused up a lot of things when they started shooting.

  I said: “I think we are going to honor that bargain, Miss Bonaventure. I say think, because I can’t make you an absolute promise at this time, but the chances are pretty good that we will try and get this Dr. Valdez out for you. But you will have to be patient. A deal like this takes time to set up—otherwise we’ll just get our heads shot off the way so many of your friends have. You have any idea how many invasions of Haiti have been tried in the past ten years?”

  I didn’t know the exact number myself, but there had been a lot. All failures. Papa Doc was pretty tough on his own turf.

  She massaged my neck. “Bunglers,” she said. “Fools and cowards and half wits. Cretins! It wouldn’t have been that way with my invasion.”

  I liked her use of the subjunctive mood. Maybe she was going to play it my way after all.

  I said: “So let’s leave it that way for now, huh? You be a good girl, be patient, and leave everything to me. I’ll see what can be worked out and 111 do it fast. Like tonight. But you keep your nose clean, honey. No tricks and no double-crosses. You try anything with me and I’ll have you in jail and this boat, and cargo, confiscated so fast you won’t know what hit you. Deal?”

  She nuzzled my ear. She put her tongue in my ear and then she bit it a little. “Deal,” she whispered. “To tell you the whole and entire truth, Mr. Carter, right now I am not very interested in an invasion of Haiti or even in Dr. Valdez. Later I will be again, but I never mix business with pleasure, and that is a thing that works both ways. Just now I am fascinated by the pleasure principle. Your pleasure and my pleasure. Our pleasure. I believe that as soon as possible we should inflict pleasure on each other to the very limit—as much as each can bear. What do you say to that, Mr. Carter?”

  The lights of the Croton Yacht Club slid past to starboard. It wasn’t far now to Tom Mitchell’s marina. I craned my head back to stare up at her. Our faces were very close. For an instant I had the impression of a beautiful African mask hanging in midair: hair dark and smooth-glinting back from the high, pale, tan brow; eyes wide-set and long and umber with yellow pin wheels swirling in them: the nose straight and fragile and the mouth a trifle wide and full lipped and moist red with teeth glistening like porcelain mirrors. She moved to press her large tender breasts against me.

  “Well, Mr. Carter?”

  I nodded up at her. “Deal,” I said. “Within limits Mr. Carter is a yea-sayer beyond compare.”

  She made a mock frown. “No limits! I do not like limits. I do everything to you and you do everything to me. Deal?”

  We both laughed then, a spontaneous explosion that sounded wild in the April dark. I moved my face against her breast. “Deal, Lyda! I only hope you’re up to it. I can play pretty rough when I get started.

  She bent to kiss me. Her mouth was hot and moist and she thrust her tongue into my mouth for just an instant and then took it away.

  “So do I,” she told me. “So do I play rough, big man. And now I am going to go mix some more martinis. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She went and I wondered. I thought the sex bit was genuine—she was a passionate girl and she was aroused and she had to do something about it—but you can never be a hundred per cent sure. Women are born knowing how to sucker men, and Lyda Bonaventure was no different. In any case it didn’t really signify—if she did have a genuine case of hot pants she would be just as tricky, as dangerous, after I cooled her down. Maybe more so, because the sex thing would be out of the way for a time and she could concentrate on skullduggery.

  Just what skullduggery I didn’t know, but she would probably come up with something. Right now she needed me. She was afraid of the Tonton Macoute—more so than she was letting on—and at the moment I was her best chance of survival. That shoot-out at the voodoo church had been pretty convincing. It sure as hell convinced me and I don’t scare as easily as most.

  Another thing was that I knew her secret—I was sitting square in the middle of about a mil
lion dollars worth of boat and illegal arms—I hadn’t begun to explore that angle yet but I knew they were there—and I was the only insurance she was likely to get. All in all, I thought, I should be able to trust her for a time. Like the next few hours.

  She came back with the drinks and we clinked our glasses and drank. The Sea Witch rounded a point and I saw the dim lights of the Montrose Marina ahead. The yellow dock lights showed a couple of small cabin cruisers and a yawl, nothing else. It was still a little early in the season for the real trade.

  I finished my drink and put the glass on the deck. “Just for the record, Lyda, who owns this boat? What about the papers?”

  She was lighting cigarettes for us. “Everything is in order there. She’s registered to a Donald Campbell who lives in Stamford and works on the Stock Exchange. He doesn’t exist, of course.”

  “Where are the papers, just in case?”

  “In a drawer in the stateroom. You want them?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not tonight, but maybe later. I know the guy that owns this marina. We won’t have any trouble here.”

  She put a cigarette in my mouth. She ran her fingers over my chin and felt the slight stubble.

  “Don’t you shave,” she told me. “I like men to have a little beard sometimes.”

  I said that shaving had not entered my mind.

  “Please do whatever it is you have to do and get it over with,” she said. She patted my cheek. “And hurry back. Lyda is getting a little impatient.”

  That made two of us.

  Chapter 4

  I brought the Sea Witch alongside a floating dock, and Lyda tossed a line to the kid who had come out to greet us. He was a skinny kid with a bad case of acne and hair cut reasonably short. I cut the engines and went forward to handle the bow line. When the cruiser was well snubbed in I told Lyda to stay aboard and keep out of sight.

  “Go easy on the booze,” I added. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

  “Yes, Captain darling.”

  The kid was staring and probably having nasty thoughts, so I took his arm and we crossed the duck-boarding to the main pier and I said, “Is Tom Mitchell around?”

  “Yes, sir. In the office. Usually he ain’t here at this hour, but tonight he stayed late. Taxes or something.”

  I knew Tom Mitchell when he was a Marine guard at the Consulate in Hong Kong. He was an old gunnery sergeant, transferred to diplomatic duty, and we had shared a few brawls and done each other a few favors. I’d had one letter from him since he opted out and invested his life savings in the marina.

  The kid was still with me. I pointed to the little brick building just ahead. “That the office?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thanks. I know Tom and I won’t be needing you any more. A little private business.” I gave him a five dollar bill. “That’s for your trouble. Good night.”

  “Good night, sir. If there is anything else I—”

  “There isn’t. Good night.”

  The door was half open. Tom Mitchell sat at his desk with his back to me. He was getting bald and there were fat bulges on his neck. He was working on a tax form with a ball point and he didn’t look happy.

  I rapped on the door and waited. Tom swung around in his chair and stared at me.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Nope,” I said. “You flatter me, but nope. Nicholas Hunting Carter, in the flesh, come to spend a little money in this poor-looking marina. And ask a few favors.”

  “I’ll be a son of a bitch!” Tom pulled himself out of the chair and charged at me and grabbed my hand and tried to tear it off. He was getting fat but he was still as powerful as ever. His plain shanty-Irish face lit up like a beacon as he steered me to a chair and opened a drawer and took out a bottle of Old Pile Driver. He went into a lavatory and came back with two dirty glasses. This was the Tom Mitchell I remembered. No talking until the drinking started.

  He poured my glass half full and I shuddered and took a little of it and said: “Good to see you, Tom. And I’m glad that you’re glad to see me, but let’s get one thing straight— this isn’t going to be any booze bout. I’m working. I need a little help, mostly negative help, like I’m not here and you never saw me and can you handle that kid out there? He never saw me either.”

  “Wayne? Sure. Be right back.”

  I lit a cigarette and took another sip of the cheap booze. I could hear Tom talking to the kid somewhere out on the docks. Tom didn’t know I was AXE, but he did know that I did some very special jobs. I didn’t talk and he didn’t ask and that was the way we both wanted it. I figured that he thought I was CIA and I let it go at that.

  He came back into the office and closed the door behind him. “It’s okay now. Wayne won’t talk—he likes this job, and he needs it, and he don’t want his neck broke. Jesus H. Christ, Nick, but it’s good to see you.”

  I grinned at him. “Fine. Now cut it out. We’ll have the reunion another time when we can let our hair down and tie one on. Now—who belongs to those other craft out there?”

  Tom sank into his chair and picked up his glass. “Local people. I know them. Nothing to worry there, Nick. The yawl belongs to an insurance man and the cruisers, well, just locals like I said.” He stared at me over the glass. “You need any sort of physical help, Nick?” He sounded wistful.

  I shook my head. “No. You should have stayed in the Corps, gunner, if you want the physical bit.”

  “I know. But I got old, Nick. Too damned old.”

  I wasted a tenth of a second in feeling sorry for the old war horse, then I picked up the phone on his desk.

  “All I want from you is discretion,” I told him. “Silence. Forget I was here. And keep everybody, but everybody, away from that 57-footer out there as long as I’m here. I can’t say how long that will be.”

  Tom Mitchell nodded. He reached into another drawer and came out with a Colt .45 automatic, the 1911 model, so old that the bluing was worn off the barrel so it sparkled like silver in the light.

  I dialed Operator. Tom said: “You want me to leave? I can take a little walk, make sure that Wayne isn’t still hanging around.”

  It was a good idea. I had trusted Tom Mitchell with my life more than once, but this was no affair of his and it is only routine, SOP, to keep secret matters secret.

  I nodded at him. “You do that. See you in a few minutes.”

  The girl put me through to the AXE office in Washington. I got the night duty officer, identified myself, and after a code check the night man told me that Hawk was flying to New York to see me.

  “He left about nine, sir. He should be there by now. He left word that if you called here he would be at your place.”

  I thanked him and hung up. The old man at my penthouse? All the way from Washington just to see his number one boy? All hell must be popping!

  My house boy, Pok, answered the phone in the penthouse. When he recognized my voice he said, “Is ancient gentleman here to see you, Missa Nick.”

  I liked that. I hoped Hawk was listening in. Ancient gentleman!

  “Good,” I told Pok. “Put the venerable gentleman on, Pok.”

  “Yes, sir. Is here now.”

  Hawk came on like a tiger with a sore throat: “N3? Good—remember no scrambler. This is plaintalk. Clearcode. Got it?”

  I said I had it. Hawk can be irritating at times. He thinks everybody but himself is still in kindergarten.

  “There is a lot of Hades over the SB thing,” Hawk said. “The spooks are covering and we haven’t surfaced yet. What occurred and where is the tinsel in the crackerjack?”

  Hell was being raised over Steve Bennett’s murder and AXE was not connected with it, and where was the girl?

  “I’ve got the prize,” I told him. “A toy swan. The SB thing was straight waylay—Papa’s boys trying to make Papa proud. Surprise achieved. I caught two, then track meet seemed advisable.”

  I had the girl and I had run like a thief.

  I could hear
the relief in his voice as he said, “You’ve got the prize?”

  “Yes. And a gunboat.”

  “Hmmmmm—safe?”

  “For now safe. But tempus fugit and things change. Anything from HQ for me?”

  I was asking for orders.

  I got them. For fifteen minutes I got them. A lot of info had come into the hopper, a lot of cards popped out of the computers, since I last talked to Hawk. I listened with what is commonly known as a sinking sensation in my gut.

  At last he let me say something.

  “Just me?” I asked. “All alone by my lonesome? Maybe the deal is too big, H. Maybe I can’t swing it.”

  “You’ve got to swing it,” Hawk said. “There is no one else. The spooks are dead in subject, and so are we for the moment. You have to do it alone.”

  The CIA was well blown in Haiti—I had known that already—and there were no AXE men on the island who could help me. That I hadn’t known. Nick Carter. One-man invasion force.

  “It could be complicated,” I said. “The prize is axe grinding. Own ideas about matter at hand. Unreliable.”

  “Understood,” the old man said. “Cope.”

  Sure. Just like that. Cope.

  I sighed and said okay. Then, because I had to know and I had to hear it from Hawk, I asked: “Ultimate on V?”

  Final decision on Dr. Romera Valdez, the bone of contention, the guy who was causing all the trouble. The character I was supposed to bring out of Haiti.

  Hawk cleared his throat. “Final is kill or cure. Cleared with White.”

  If I couldn’t get Valdez out I was to kill him. Decision made by The Man.

  “Tempus does fugit,” said Hawk. “No waste. I’ll do the best I can on CG. Make first landfall KW and take on new supplies, if any. Okay?”

  Get with it as of right now. Hawk would fix it with the Coast Guard and I was to check in at Key West for new orders. If any.

  “Okay,” I said. I sounded like a man going to his own hanging. “I’ll have a voucher here,” I added. “Honor it, eh?”

  “Sign it correctly and it will be honored,” Hawk said. Dry. Matter of fact. Like an accountant demanding proof of a swindle sheet.