Nick Carter - Run, Spy, Run

"Was she very beautiful?" she asked.

"She was," he answered seriously. "Much too lovely to die like that." He looked into the almond-shaped pools of her eyes. "But not as lovely as you. Some gentleman prefer brunettes." It seemed to him her breath had quickened, too. He uncoiled his whipcord body and got up from the bed, reaching for her hands with his.

"Perhaps we'd better get some sleep. We have to be up very early."

He pulled her gently to her feet.

"Perhaps we should," she murmured. She freed her hands from his and very lightly encircled his neck with her marvelously tawny arms. "Goodnight." Her lips brushed his. The arms stayed where they were. His own arms rose as if on hidden strings and reached around her, past the provocative firm softness of her magnificent bosom.

"Goodnight," he said, and kissed her lightly but lingeringly on the lips and eyes. Her arms tightened around him.

"Goodnight," she whispered. Her lips wandered over his face. The wonderful breasts swelled against his chest. She could feel the welcome warmth of his lithe, virile body.

"Goodnight," he breathed. His hands slid down her back and traced the contours of her thighs. One arm went around her and the other brought her mouth against his. Their lips caught fire from their bodies and fused together in the flame. They stood like that for moments, two perfect human bodies almost melding into one.

Nick drew his head back, still holding her body close.

"Bedtime, Julie," he said gently. "Do you want to sleep alone?"

Her hands flowed over the skin of his arms and torso.

"Peter Cane. whoever you are... turn out the lights. I want you."

A long, quivering sigh escaped her parted lips. Scanty clothes lay forgotten on the floor. Carter's lingering memories of the Countess de Fresnaye fled on wings of a new and deeper passion. The firm thighs so very close to his undulated rhythmically, giving and taking, rising and falling, flowing and receding.

The narrow Army cot was a haven of delight, the darkened room an amalgam of unexpected and delicious pleasures. Two who lived for the moment made marvelous love without restraint or shame. Nick Carter, alias Peter Cane, felt every taut nerve in his body surrendering to Julie's fluid beauty and to the endless, fleeting fragment of time.

She spoke to him once or twice in little gasps, the words disjointed but full of the meaning that her body so eloquently expressed. He whispered something, nothing, and trapped her sinuous firmness beneath him, his powerful muscles making his body an instrument of pleasure. She moaned, but not in pain. She circled his ear lobe with sharp teeth and bit, and murmured breathlessly. The darkness dissolved into tiny separate shafts of warmth, shafts that drew together in the blackness and caught fire. Their senses reeled in a communion of soaring happiness. For brief, ecstatic moments, the component parts of a blueprint, how to blow up a railroad train or detail-strip a .45, meant less than nothing. They belonged to a different layer of life, not the life that pulsed between them now. Man and Woman fused together. Their minds and hearts were blazing skyrockets of emotion. Both felt, as one, the overwhelming flood-tide of wonderful release.

"Peter, Peter, Peter." And a sigh.

"Julia... my one and only favorite spy."

They laughed together in the darkness, a relaxed and happy sound.

"Peter Cane, what is your name?"

"Julia Baron, what is yours?"

She laughed. "All right, I won't pry. Let's have a cigarette."

The coffee was lukewarm but welcome. They sat side by side in the darkness, their cigarettes twin points of light in a room that no longer seemed bare and drab.

After a moment he said: "Are you sleepy?"

"Not a bit. Never less."

"Good. Because we have a little homework to do that I somehow forgot in the press of more urgent business."

Julia eyed him lazily. "Such as?"

"Bombs. Their cause and effect. Not a very appropriate time to talk about them, perhaps, but we may not have another chance. Do you know much about demolitions?"

The darkest patch of darkness moved as her dark head shook. She sensed, rather than saw, the compact, whipcord figure so close to hers. "Three weeks, a few years ago at Fort Riley. A short, intensive course I've never used. And I suppose there've been modifications since then."

The tip of his cigarette flickered.

"Mostly variations on old themes. On Flight 601, you'll have to know some of the things to look for. Not to forget steel hands and bags that go bang in the night."

"Or day," she reminded. "They've all happened during the day. And tomorrow is another."

"Not our last, if we're careful. The OSS came up with a cartload of demolition gadgets in World War II. They're still damned effective, custom built for espionage and its baby, sabotage. Ever hear of gimmicks like Aunt Jemima, Stinger, Casey Jones or Hedy?"

"Pancake, cocktail, trainman, movie star. Or what?"

"You haven't heard of them," he said matter-of-factly. "Each is a choice little item in the well-rounded spy's book of tactics. You are, of course, well-rounded, but..."

Nick described the Machiavellian devices he had encountered in his crowded lifetime:

Aunt Jemima, innocent-looking devil with the destructive force of TNT, was an apparently ordinary flour which could be kneaded, raised, and actually baked into bread. Even if moistened, it was still effective. Stinger was a fob-pocket gun with a three-by-half-inch tube; a short, automatic pencil in appearance. The tube contained a .22 cartridge, activated by a tiny lever on the side. One squeeze of the lever with your fingernail, and you could kill a man. Casey Jones was a magnet fastened to a box device containing a photoelectric cell. All it took to trigger treacherous Casey into explosion was a swift cutting-off of light, such as the dimout incurred when a train entered a tunnel. The electric eye would react to the sudden darkness and trip the explosive. Hedy was a decoy, rather than a weapon, a screeching firecracker-type device which gave off enough attention-getting clamor to allow an agent to create a diversion anywhere he chose while the real scene played elsewhere.

There were sundry other niceties in the OSS catalog. Nick detailed them with care and Julia listened. It was becoming increasingly clear that Flight 601 would take a lot of surveillance.

"That's about it," Nick finished. "There may be refinements, but those are the basic elements. Want to cash in your ticket?"

"I wouldn't if I could," she said quietly. "I've seen Harcourt at the U.N. I'd hate for us to lose him."

"That's why we're going to have to be on our toes every minute," Nick said. "Do you have any kind of weapon, by the way?"

"You bet I have. But I feel like a babe in the woods, after all that... I've a small traveling clock grenade, useful for bedsides in strange places. A small .25 that looks like a cigarette lighted. And a nailfile that's made of Toledo steel and cuts like a razor. I've only used it once — so far."

Nick could feel her shudder in the dark. Then she said: "What about you?"

He laughed. "Wilhelmina, Hugo, and Pierre. And a little grenade gadget that I haven't yet named and probably never will. If I don't use him, he doesn't deserve christening. And if I do — well, then he's dead."

"Wilhelmina who?"

"The Luger. We're a walking armory, we are."

She sighed and lay back on the cot. Her eyes searched for his in a darkness that was no longer absolute.

"Do you have any L-pills?" she asked quietly.

He was surprised. "No. Do you?"

"Yes. I've seen what's happened to some of us. I don't want to end up like that. If they ever get me, I want to die my way. I won't brainwash, and I won't talk. But I don't want to end up a babbling, mindless... thing."