Ник Картер - The Liquidator

“How did you happen to find us here?” Nathaniel went on. Another half step.

“Been on the island a couple o’ weeks, ever since they turned me loose. My wife comes from here...”

“Oh, of course. And Mrs. Gormsen is your mother-in-law, isn’t she?”

“You catch on pretty good.” Graves moved forward. “I guess you and your friend best back up to the edge of the cliff there.”

“Are you going to shoot us or do you think you can make us jump?”

“Don’t make no difference to me, Mr. Frederick. I was fixin’ to pay a call on you over to Newport, but you saved me the trouble today.”

“If I’d known our Red fishing friends had let you go, I might have changed my itinerary.” Nathaniel kept that genial half-smile on his face, calm as though he were facing a classroom filled with eager pupils.

“Yeah, well I didn’t figure they’d send you a telegram. You set me up pretty good, Mr. Frederick, and I don’t forget nothin’ like that. Only reason they didn’t kill me was...”

“Because you weren’t terribly important, were you?” The change in Nathaniel’s voice was remarkable; now there was a sneer in it.

It got the reaction. Graves started toward him, his face livid even in the gathering darkness. He swung the shotgun up to use it as a club, and the retired schoolteacher dove in under it. He drove stiff fingers into the man’s gut, using his other forearm to block the blow from the shotgun barrel. Graves doubled over, eyes popping. Nathaniel hit him again in the same spot, this time turning his hand over and nearly lifting the man off his feet, fingers hooked under his sternum. Graves tried to screech, but only a strangled sound of agony came from his wide-open mouth.

Nathaniel took the shotgun from his hand as he let the man sag to the ground. There was a smile of mixed satisfaction and regret on his face as he looked at Graves, writhing in excruciating pain — and he looked a little too long.

The other car door opened, and a woman got out. I could tell it was a woman because she wore pink plastic curlers in her hair; otherwise she was dressed more or less like the man who lay at Nathaniel’s feet. She carried a pistol.

So did I. Wilhelmina, the Luger that was as much a part of me as my right arm, jumped from her shoulder holster. I dove at Nathaniel, knocking him aside as the woman aimed the big old revolver in our direction. Because of the wind and surf I hardly heard the sound of the shot, but felt the searing pain as a bullet ripped a gouge out of my upper arm.

Woman or no woman, I shot her. One clean shot, right through the heart; she was too close for me to miss, and I had no intention of just wounding her.

She dropped like a stone, the revolver falling from her fingers like a toy she’d suddenly grown tired of. Nathaniel was already getting to his feet, the shotgun pointed at Graves.

“Very nice, Mr...ah... McKee. She seemed to know what she was doing with that weapon.” He bent over the woman’s body and shook his head. Then he picked up her pistol and shoved it into his belt. “Now we do have a little problem.”

“Yeah.”

Graves was still writhing at my feet, trying to get up but unable to, any more than he could talk.

“Pity he involved his wife,” Nathaniel was saying. “Or at least I presume that’s who she was. Is that right, Graves?” He bent low over the other, man.

Graves nodded, his face distorted, neck corded.

“Then I suppose you’re not likely to forgive me for her death.” He shook his head pityingly. “No, hardly likely after your performance this evening. So...” He shrugged. “Sorry, Graves.” He reached for the man’s chest, dug relentless fingers under the ribs and kept pushing — higher and higher, probing for the heart until his hand was nearly buried in the flesh. Graves yowled faintly, legs thrashing; Nathaniel casually cuffed him across the face, never relaxing the pressure. Then the man lay still.

The retired teacher stood up, wiped his brow with the back of a hand. “I don’t know if he’s dead or not, but it’s not really important. Will you help me get them back into their unfortunate car?”

It wasn’t the most convincing accident ever staged, but the fact that the old Chevy’s automatic shift had a tendency to snap out of gear made it all a little less implausible. We switched on the ignition, rolled the car to the brink of the cliff, and pushed it over the side. Nathaniel didn’t wait to see it hit the rocks below; it was too dark to see much of anything, anyway.

I looked toward the lighthouse.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “If they’d heard anything, they’d have been here by now. Their concern is what’s happening out at sea, not along the shore. Shall we return the bikes to Mrs. Gormsen?”

The riding wasn’t easy in the dark; my bike light didn’t throw a beam much beyond my front tire, and Nathaniel’s didn’t work at all. But he seemed to know where he was going, and as we rode slowly across the island, he told me what Graves was all about.

“He was a fisherman, boatman, call him what you will. Worked mostly out of Montauk, at the tip of Long Island. Just across there.” He pointed to our left, where I knew there was a stretch of water separating Block Island from the mainland. “Some years ago the Reds recruited him. Common labor, you’d call him in the espionage business. His job was simply to keep his eyes open. There’s a lot of submarine activity around here, for instance; Block Island Sound is a principal access to the Atlantic from the New London sub base. There were other things. Graves worked on charter boats, and quite a lot of people with important government connections come out this way for a few days of relaxation. Even Nixon did when he was campaigning in sixty-eight, you know. At any rate, I was put on to Graves by our mutual friend in Washington, and since I was handy and knew a bit about boats, I was assigned the job of... neutralizing him.” He grinned over at me as we pedaled side by side. “Normally I don’t accept active assignments, but it happened I could use the money Hawk offered.”

“What was that business about a factory ship?” I asked, swerving to avoid a pothole the size of a backyard swimming pool.

“Ah yes, that was how they worked it. As you must know, the fishing fleets of many nations — Russia in particular — are working just a few miles off our shores. What rivalry there is economic rather than ideological, so there’s a fair amount of communication between the various boats, regardless of nationality or politics. So it wasn’t hard for Graves to deliver his reports to one Russian boat or another. But sometimes he would have messages that were urgent, and then he would signal with a light — right from those cliffs where his brakes failed and he and his wife plunged to their deaths...”

“About that,” I interrupted. “Maybe his death can be made to look like an accident, but how about hers? She’s got a nine-millimeter slug in her.”

“Yes, yes. Not very neat. However, at this time of the year that part of the shore is so deserted that if the car is underwater — and it should be — by the time the mishap is discovered there won’t be enough left of the bodies for the local authorities to suspect anything but an accident. If they do, well, that’s what our friend in Washington is for, isn’t it?”

I didn’t have to say anything; this mild-mannered schoolteacher who could kill in cold blood was way ahead of me.

“At any rate,” Nathaniel went on as we started down a long, gradual slope toward the cluster of buildings and docks beyond, “I managed to convince Graves that I was a sympathizer. It wasn’t difficult; he has that sort of mentality — believes schoolteachers are all Communists of one degree or another. Eventually I persuaded him to send a message that would bring one of the fishing boats inside our territorial waters — strictly forbidden, of course. A Coast Guard cutter was standing by, and there was a carefully orchestrated — and futile — chase while I pretended to take Graves prisoner. He escaped, made his way down to the harbor on the other side of this island and stole a power boat to make his getaway. He was successful, needless to say; he located one of the Red trawlers and was taken to the factory ship, which does a bit more than process fish. Frankly, we expected them to take him back to Mother Russia, but evidently their facilities are more sophisticated than we thought.”