Death of the Falcon Read online

  “It’s not nature making those bubbles. That’s plain old American pollution,” I said. “That foam is just what it looks like—soap suds. Detergent, to be exact. They get into the river from upstream, then when they get swirled by the fast current here, the foam starts to form, just like in the washing machine.”

  We moved on to another footbridge that passed over a swifter current which had cut a deeper ravine in the rock formation. Sherima pointed out to us one spot where the rushing water had dug out a pothole; inside the hole a small rock was trapped and the water that flowed through the pothole spun it about frantically. She started to tell Candy about a glacier garden she had visited in Lucerne, Switzerland. I took advantage of their interest in the discussion of water being able to make little stones out of big ones, and slipped ahead on the trail.

  About twenty yards further on, the sudden snap of a branch to the side and slightly in front of me froze me in my steps. I waited an instant, then, hearing nothing more, stepped off the path and slipped into the underbrush, moving in a wide circle.

  “Where are they?”

  The whisper was in Japanese, off to my left, closer to the Falls trail. Creeping forward, I found myself staring at the backs of two of the Japanese tourists, who were crouched behind a huge boulder.

  “Shut up,” the second man hissed in reply to his companion’s anxious question. “They’ll be along soon.”

  The nervous one wasn’t to be silenced. “Why are there three of them? We were told there would be just two women. Are we to kill the man, too? Who is he?”

  “I don’t know who he is,” the other one said. I recognized him as the English-speaking clock-watcher.

  It was difficult to translate the Japanese whispers, and I wished he were using English again. “Whoever he is, he must die like them. There are to be no witnesses. That is the Sword’s order. Now be quiet; they will hear you.”

  Japanese and working for the Sword! Wait until Hawk hears about this, I thought, then added to myself, if he ever does. I was pretty certain I could handle the pair in front of me, despite the silencer-equipped pistols both of them held. It was the third one who had me worried. I didn’t know just where he was, and the women would be along any moment. Praying that the pothole and the swirling rock would hypnotize them just a few minutes longer, I slid Wilhelmina from the belt holster and let Hugo drop into my hand from the forearm sheath. Both of the waiting assassins would have to die at the same time, With no noise. Slipping off my jacket, I wrapped it around my left hand and the Luger. It was a very makeshift sort of silencer, but it would have to do.

  I swiftly moved four paces forward, bringing myself right behind the pair before they were aware of my presence. At the instant the cloth-swaddled Luger touched the back of the nervous Japanese man’s neck, I pulled the trigger. I had made certain that the muzzle was tilted upward, so the slug tore through his brain, exiting from the top of his head. The bullet continued its path skyward, as I had calculated. I couldn’t have afforded the noise that would have been inevitable if it had struck a rock or a tree when it left his skull.

  Even as his head jerked backward in a death contraction, my knife was sliding between the discs of the other’s spine, severing the cords that controlled his nervous system. My arm with its jacket wrapping came forward and closed over the dead man’s mouth, just in case he might scream, but there wasn’t even a gasp for air. I swung a hip to pin the first dead man to the boulder as I lowered the second one quietly to the ground, then let his companion slide down silently beside him. As I did, I heard a call from back along the trail.

  “Nick, where are you?” It was Candy. They must have realized I was no longer around, and perhaps had become frightened in the stillness of the woods.

  “Up here,” I called back, deciding that I had to let the third killer find me. “Just keep coming along the trail.”

  Arranging the jacket so that it looked like I had casually tossed it over my arm, I stepped out onto the trail and began walking. I knew he had to be nearby—they wouldn’t have separated too far apart—and I was right. As I rounded a huge slab of granite that practically formed a wall beside the path, he suddenly stepped into view, blocking my progress. A silencer-fitted pistol was leveled at my gut

  “Don’t shoot; I’m the Sword,” I whispered in Japanese. His hesitation marked him as a non-professional and it cost him his life. The slug from my jacket-wrapped luger caught him in the heart and coursed upward, lifting his body for a moment before he started to slump forward. I caught him and dragged him behind the granite slab, dumping him there. A grisly burbling came from his gaping mouth. I couldn’t risk having Sherima or Candy hear him as they passed by, so I tore loose a clump of grass and shoved it deep between the lips that already were turning blue. Blood welled from around my makeshift gag, but no sound penetrated it Turning and running back the few feet to where the other dead Japanese lay, I pulled them around the boulder where they had set up their ambush, working swiftly as I heard Sherima’s and Candy’s voices coming closer. By the time they reached me, I was back standing on the trail, my jacket once more draped casually over my arm so that the bullet holes didn’t show, my collar and tie loosened. I had transferred my gun, holster, and wallet to my pants pockets.

  Candy asked the question that was on both their faces. “Too warm, Nick?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I drawled. “This hiking surely is hot work on such a balmy day. I hope you ladies don’t mind.”

  “I certainly don’t,” Sherima said. “This wool pants suit is starting to feel pretty uncomfortable, too.”

  “Mine, too,” Candy chimed in. “In fact, I think I’ll just put this jacket around my shoulders.” She slipped off her jacket and, as I helped her adjust it around her shoulders, I noticed that she had settled on a bra under today’s man-tailored white shirt. It didn’t quite succeed in restraining her ample breasts. She seemed to sense my critical appraisal, because she turned just enough to brush her right breast against my chest, then looked up innocently at me. I played the game with her, lifting a hand as if to brush back an errant strand of my hair, but making certain my fingers trailed across the bulging shirtfront. Her quick, muted gasp told me that she was feeling the same desire that was rising in me.

  “Guess we better move on,” I said, moving away from her and taking the lead once more on the path. “It’s only a little way to the Falls now. You can hear the water if you listen carefully.”

  “That must have been the noise I heard,” Sherima said, turning to Candy. “But I thought it was you, Nick, moving around in the underbrush ahead of us after we missed you at that place with the pothole.”

  “It must have been the Falls,” I agreed, thankful for the increasing noise that was reaching us as we walked on. “I decided to go on while you two looked at the locks. .I’m a camera fancier and I thought I might catch up to those Japanese tourists and see what kind of equipment they had with them. They must’ve listened to the one who was so worried about the time, though, because they’re not around, and probably way ahead of us by now. We’ll see them at the lookout point at the Falls.”

  By that time, the roar of the water rushing over the cataract ahead was quite loud, then, as we rounded a bend, the full beauty of the huge, steep cascade struck us.

  “My God, it’s fantastic,” Sherima exclaimed. “So lovely and so frightening at the same time. Is it always so violent, Nick?”

  “No,” I said as we moved up to lean against the metal piping that served as a fence around the lookout spot created by nature and the Park Service. “The water’s high this time of year with the spring thaws. They tell me that sometimes it becomes just a trickle, but that’s pretty hard to believe looking at it now. And from what I remember of my last visit here, the floods seem to have washed away quite a bit of the banks around here.”

  “Is there any dang now?” Candy asked, backing away a bit from the guard rail.

  “No, I’m sure it’s safe, or there’d be someone from the P
ark Service to keep us out,” I said. I draped my jacket over the railing, then turned to take her hand and pulled her forward again. “Look, you can see that the water still has quite a way to rise before it gets to here.”

  When she -had satisfied herself as to the safety of our vantage point, I called their attention to the other side of the river. “That’s the Virginia side,” I explained. “The land’s higher over there. It forms palisades, something like those on the Hudson across from New York City, only not so steep. There’s a highway along that side, too, and on that sort of plateau over there is a great spot to look down at the rapids. They’ve set up a little picnic grove there, too. Maybe you’ll get a chance to see Great Falls from there some—Hey! Darn it!”

  “Oh Nick, your jacket!” Candy cried, leaning over the railing and sadly watching my jacket’s rapid progress through the air and into the water.

  I just sighed, and she and Sherima groaned in sympathy as it fell into the water and was carried away on the foaming current below us. While I had drawn their attention to the opposite shore, I had eased the jacket over the guard rail. Perhaps Hawk wouldn’t be too happy that part of any expensive wardrobe had been disposed of so readily, but I wouldn’t have been able to wear it again anyway. Nobody would have believed that the two round, singed holes were the latest in men’s fashions—not even in Texas.

  “Oh, Nick, your lovely jacket,” Candy moaned again. “Did you have anything valuable in it?”

  “No. Luckily, I carry my wallet and most of my papers in my pants,” I said, displaying the billfold and hoping that they would think the bulge of the Luger on the other side was my “papers.” I added, “It’s a habit I got into in New York City after a pickpocket lifted just about everything I was carrying while I was telling him how to get to Times Square.”

  “Nick, I feel responsible,” Sherima said. “You must let me replace it for you. After all, you’re here because. I wanted to see the Falls. I wish now that Abdul’s friend never had suggested it.”

  “I’m here because I wanted to be here,” I told her. “And don’t you worry about replacing it; you know how much money we folks in the oil industry throw away on expense accounts, lobbying in Washington.”

  She looked at me oddly for a moment, then she and Candy burst into laughter as my smile told them I had been kidding. If only they knew, I thought, just where my expense account came from!

  I looked at my watch and said we better start back to the car and go on with our househunting. As we retraced our steps, I said, “I’d hoped that we could have lunch somewhere nice around Potomac, but I reckon that with me in my shirtsleeves, we’ll have to settle for a Big Mac.”

  “What’s a Big Mac?” they both asked at once, surprise and amusement mingled in their voices.

  “That’s right,” I said, slapping my forehead, “I’d forgotten that the two of you have been out of the country for so long that you’ve never had the taste-treat of the century. Ladies, I promise you that if we can find a McDonald’s you are in for a real surprise.”

  They tried to persuade me to tell them the secret of the Big Mac as we walked on, and I persisted with my game, refusing to explain anything further. I kept them involved in that laughing discussion as we passed the section where three corpses littered the underbrush, and they walked by without noticing any hint of the bloodshed that had recently occurred there. We had just reached the bridge where the women had been watching the swirling rock in the pothole when Abdul came charging up to us. I had wondered why he hadn’t shown up earlier, considering his reputed dedication to the role of watchdog, but he had an explanation ready.

  “My lady, forgive me,” he begged, almost prostrating himself before Sherima. “I thought you had gone into that building near the parking lot, so I began to check the car’s engine as I had wanted to do before we left. Only minutes ago did I discover that you weren’t there, and I came after you right away. Forgive me.” Again his bow almost touched the ground.

  “Oh, Abdul, that’s all right,” Sherima said, taking his arm so that he had to rise. “We’ve been having fun. We just walked to the Falls and back. You should have been along—” Seeing that he had mistaken her meaning, taking it as a reprimand, she hurried on to explain, “No, I mean that you should have been there to see the Falls. They are spectacular, just as your friend told you. And you could have watched Mr. Carter’s jacket float away on the soapsuds.”

  He seemed completely mystified by her last words, and by the time she finished explaining my loss to him, we were back at the limousine. He looked at me speculatively as we got into the car, and I decided that he probably was wondering what kind of a careless idiot I was to lose a valuable jacket the way I did, but he only politely expressed his regrets, then got in and started driving back toward Falls Road.

  We just had started through Potomac when the little dagger that had been stabbing at my thoughts suddenly made its point: What friend of Abdul’s had told him about Great Falls? He’s never been in this country before. So when did he meet a friend here? Twice, Sherima had mentioned that the suggestion for the side trip to the Falls had been made by that unknown friend, and twice, my brain had registered it, then gone on to other things. I made another mental note to try to find out, either from Candy or through her, just where Abdul had met this acquaintance.

  The next couple of hours were spent just driving around the area, allowing Sherima to see the types of estates that dotted it and the rolling countryside that went with them. We had to stop several times as she admired a herd of horses grazing in a pasture, or when she went into rapture over a private steeplechase course that extended almost to the roadside.

  We never did find a McDonald’s, so T finally had to tell them about the burger chain and its menu. For lunch, we settled on a little country inn, after I had checked it out to make certain I could be served without a jacket.

  I excused myself at one point to go to the men’s room, heading instead for the phone booth I had spotted near the cashier’s desk. I was surprised to find Abdul there before me. He had declined to have lunch with us; when we were inside, Sherima explained that he preferred to prepare his own food, sticking strictly to his religious dietary laws.

  He spotted me almost at the same time I saw him in the phone booth and he quickly hung up and stepped out to make way for me.-

  “I was reporting to the embassy where we were,” he said coldly. “His Majesty might want to contact my lady at any time and I am ordered to let our ambassador know our whereabouts regularly.”

  It seemed like a logical explanation, so I said nothing, simply allowing him to pass and watching until he went out to the car. Then I called Hawk to make a report myself. It was unnecessary to worry about the absence of a scrambler on a pay phone. He got a bit upset when I asked to have someone tidy up the landscape at Great Falls. I left the details of how to collect the three corpses without arousing the suspicions of some Park Service employee up to him, and just gave him a quick rundown on what our schedule was for the rest of the afternoon, then told him that I would contact him when we returned to the Watergate.

  Just before I hung up, I asked if Communications Section had been able to get into Sherima’s suite to plant our bugs. His grunt of disgust told me that the listening devices hadn’t been put in place, then he explained why. “It seems someone phoned the Adabian Embassy and suggested that Sherima might feel more at home if some native paintings and handicrafts were sent around to decorate the suite while she was out. Anyway, the First Secretary has been in the suite almost from the moment you all drove away, and he’s had people carrying things in and out all day. We’re ready to move in as soon as they get out of there, but it looks to me as if the First Secretary wants to be on hand when Sherima returns so he can take credit for the decorating job.”

  “Who phoned to suggest all this?”

  “We haven’t been able to find out—yet,” Hawk said. “Our man in the embassy thinks the call went directly to the ambassador, so it wou
ld have had to have come from Sherima herself, your Miss Knight, or, perhaps, from that Bedawi fellow.”

  “Speaking of him,” I said, “see if you can find out if he knows anyone at the embassy, or has had any opportunity to contact a friend here.”

  I went on to tell him how our side trip to Great Falls had been suggested. Hawk said he would try to have an answer for me by the time we got back.

  Then, pitching his voice to an almost admonishing tone, he said, “I’ll take care of those three packages of Japanese goods you mentioned leaving behind at the Falls, but please try to be more careful in the future. Collection service of that type is rather difficult to arrange in this area. The competition among the agencies that might have to be involved is so hot, one of them might find it to their advantage to use the information against us, businesswise.”

  I knew he meant he would have to make some arrangements with either the FBI or the CIA to cover up the fate of the trio of would-be assassins. Asking for assistance of that kind always upset him, for he was certain he would have to repay the favor ten fold at a later date. “I’m sorry, sir,” I said, trying to sound as though I was. “It won’t happen again. I’ll stay behind myself next time.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said brusquely, then hung up.

  Returning to Sherima and Candy, I found that lunch had arrived. We all were hungry from our hike, and since I had indulged in a bit more exercise than the others my stomach was screaming for anything, and the food was good. We finished quickly, then spent another hour touring the hunt country, with Candy busily making notes as Sherima told her what sections particularly interested her. They decided that Candy would begin to contact real estate agents the following day. Hopefully, they would find a home within the next week or two.

  It was shortly after six P.M. when Abdul swung the limousine into the Watergate driveway again. By then, we had decided to have dinner in Georgetown. I insisted that they be my guests at the 1789 Restaurant, an excellent dining spot housed in a building that dated back to the year that gave the restaurant its name. Sherima again was hesitant about imposing on me, but I convinced her to agree by accepting her invitation to be her guest the following evening.