Ник Картер - Assault on England

We didn’t seem to have much choice. Heather went first, the thin man moving up beside her. I followed with his pal.

“Where are you taking us?” Heather asked.

“You’ll find out,” the thin man said. We were at the curb now. “Get in.”

“And no funny business,” the man beside me added.

The driver of the Rolls made no move to get out of the car. I had my eye on the gun my man was holding on me, but I didn’t know if Heather was tuned in to the possibility of moving against them. In the next second, I found out.

“Nick!” she shouted, and chopped sidewise at the thin man’s gun hand. His revolver clattered to the sidewalk as Heather hit him again, this time in the face.

In the meantime, I’d kicked out at the soccer player’s knee and connected with a loud crack. He yelled and doubled over, grabbing the leg. While he was distracted, I grabbed for his gun.

Heather now had a good hold on the thin man. She let his own momentum carry him off-balance then, using her body as a lever, threw him violently across the hood of the Rolls. He landed on his back.

Heather moved after the gun he’d dropped but had trouble locating it. I was still trying to wrestle the gun away from the soccer player who was putting up quite a fight.

I heard Heather shout, “Got it!” as she finally came up with the thin man’s gun... too late.

“Drop it or I’ll blow a bleeding hole through you.” The driver of the Rolls had joined the act with a big ugly revolver he was holding aimed at Heather’s back.

Heather groaned, glanced over at me and saw that I was in no position to help and dropped the gun.

“Now,” the driver said, swinging his gun toward me, “you stay right there. You come here, birdie.”

Heather moved to him. He slapped her hard and almost knocked her down. “Turn and put your arms behind you,” he said.

He nodded to the thin man who’d limped over to retrieve the gun Heather had dropped. He came over, took a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket and slipped them around Heather’s slender wrists. She gasped as he pressed them closed, far too tight. I cursed him under my breath.

The driver came over to me now. He was a heavy man with a slightly flabby face. He gave me a very nasty look and swung his revolver against my head. I grunted and went down, bleeding from a cut forehead. Then he and the soccer player jerked my hands behind me and locked a pair of cuffs on my wrists. They hauled me to my feet and shoved me into the Rolls. The thin man pushed Heather in beside me.

We drove for over an hour, the lights of London gradually fading behind us. It was black night when we turned into the drive of a country estate and the Rolls stopped at the main door of a large stone house. The three thugs got out of the car.

“All right, you two. Out” The thin man was giving the orders again.

They dragged us out of the back seat. “Inside,” the thin man said, indicating the house.

The place was very elegant, with the look and feel of Old England. We stepped into a high-ceilinged reception hall. Lights were on but nobody met us.

“He said to take them to the tower,” the driver reminded the others.

They marched us along a corridor to a narrow circular stairwell. It had a dank, musty smell. We climbed slowly up worn stone steps by the light of dim bulbs set at sparse intervals. At the top, the thin man stuck an iron key into the rusty lock of a heavy oak door and pushed the door open. We entered a circular stone room with a single barred window.

“Well, this is it Rest well.” The thin man grinned.

There was no furniture in the room.

“How about taking the cuffs off the girl?” I asked.

The thin man turned back to me. “Cuffs off the bird, you say?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Look how red her wrists are, you’re cutting the circulation off.”

“Ah! Circulation, is it?” he said. “Is that what’s worrying you?”

He hauled off and slugged me. I dropped to one knee and he lacked me in the side. I grunted and fell over.

“There you are, Yank!” he said. “That should improve your ruddy circulation!” He laughed and so did the soccer player. The driver just looked bored.

They left the room. We heard the key turn in the lock and then their footsteps, growing fainter and fainter, as they went back down the stairs.

“I’m sorry, love. I just can’t manage it.”

“It’s all right,” I said. Heather moved away from me and slumped to the floor, her back against the wall. She was very pale and looked completely exhausted.

“We’ve been in this bloody place for hours and hours now,” she said angrily. She had just been attempting, for the sixth time, to unfasten the difficult clasp on the buckle of my belt but her hands were too swollen, she just could not manipulate them well enough, and we needed that belt and the buckle.

“I’m sorry, baby,” I said.

“Do you think anyone will ever come?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe Jupiter intends to let us die up here but somehow I doubt it. I think he wants to find out how much we know first.”

It was daylight; a warm sun filtered through the high barred window in the wall, but the heavy oak door remained shut.

I looked down again at the belt and buckle that Special Effects and Editing had supplied me with. It contained plastic explosives and a tiny disassembled blowgun, but if I couldn’t get it off, it was of no use.

“I’m thirsty,” Heather said.

I opened my mouth to reply when I heard something on the stairs. It grew louder. Someone was coming up. “Listen,” I said, “we have visitors.”

A moment later, the key turned in the lock and the door swung open. Elmo Jupiter stood in the doorway, tall and imposing. The driver of the Rolls-Royce stood behind him with a gun.

“Well!” Jupiter said brightly. “We meet again. And so soon.”

Heather’s eyes darkened. “You bloody bastard!”

Jupiter clucked his tongue. “Such language for a lady.” He moved into the room. “I hope you’ve found the accommodations comfortable.”

“If you ever had any feeling for Heather,” I said grimly, “you’ll bring her some water. And loosen those damned cuffs.”

He regarded me coldly. “How delighted I am that you accepted my invitation too,” he said smoothly. “You who have made such a determined effort to wreck my plan.”

“I didn’t succeed,” I told him “Your money should be in Switzerland by now. Haven’t they told you?”

“They’ve told me,” he said. “I gave your people further instructions, but they haven’t acted on them.” He pushed his big hand through his dark blond hair. The scar stood out vividly on his neck. “Could it be that SOE is playing cat and mouse with me — Mr. Carter?”

So he knew my true identity. Jupiter’s underground intelligence network was certainly top-notch. I could see that he was waiting for my reaction, so I ignored it completely. “Nobody’s playing games, Jupiter. But SOE may doubt your motives since we’ve disappeared. What do you hope to accomplish? Are you doing this for the money, or do you just enjoy killing?”

He laughed at that. “They taught me how to kill and I refined the practice to an art.” Suddenly the smile was gone and a different mood struck him. “Yes, I enjoy killing when it removes the leeches from my flesh. I tried to play their game but they held all the high cards you see. Now they must play by my rules. And they must pay, Mr. Carter, in more ways than one. Does that answer your question?”

“Explicitly,” I said. “Just one more question: how did Fergus know you were the assassin?”

Jupiter looked at me dumbly. “Fergus? Who’s Fergus?”