Nick Carter - Death of the Falcon

“Come in, Mr. Carter,” he said, still polite even under such a tense, situation as he was in. “We’ve been waiting for you to arrive. Now my plan is complete.”

Calling it his plan threw me for a minute. Hawk and I had been wrong. The man who had played bodyguard for Sherima and chauffeur for the Adabian Embassy official was the Sword, not the one who had been his passenger. I stared at Abdul now as though I were looking at him for the first time. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement from the side of the room where the two men had been frozen in position. I was pulling the trigger as I swung my head, and the slug from the Luger hit the Arab with the automatic rifle in the temple as he shifted to try to line up the barrel on me. He was dead before he hit the floor, following his rifle, which had dropped from his hands.

“Don’t try it,” I warned his companion, who had started to reach for the gun beside him on the bed. I wasn’t sure he understood English, but he apparently had no trouble interpreting the tone of my voice or my intention, because his hands snaked back and up toward the ceiling.

“There was no need for that, Mr. Carter,” Abdul said coolly. “He wouldn’t have shot you. That wasn’t part of my plan.”

“He didn’t hesitate using that thing earlier today,” I reminded the Sword. “Or was killing those three men part of your plan?”

“That was necessary,” Abdul replied. “It was almost time for me to come here — and they were following too closely for me to do it without disclosing where my men were holding Her Highness.” The last was said with a sneer as he turned slightly toward Sherima. “Were they good company, my lady?” He said those last words in a tone that made them seem dirtier than anything he or his two thugs might have done to the beautiful, bound captive, and the blush that spread from her face down over her bare throat and heaving breasts told me that her ordeal had been both mental and physical.

Sherima still hadn’t spoken since I opened the secret door and stepped into the hidden room. I had a feeling she was in shock, or just coming out of it. Or, perhaps, she had been drugged beyond the tranquilizers given her by Candy, and only now was starting to recover full control of her senses.

“All right, Abdul, or should I say Seif Allah?” I said. His reaction to my use of the Arabic for the Sword of Allah was simply to bow slightly. “Get those chains off Her Highness. Fast.”

“That won’t be necessary, Abdul,” a voice behind me said. “Drop your gun, Nick, and put up your hands.”

“Hello, Candy,” I said without turning around. “What kept you? I’ve been waiting for you to join us down here. If you’d arrived a couple of minutes earlier, you might have saved the life of one of your pals.”

The shock of seeing her long-time friend and companion holding a gun on the man who had come to rescue her snapped Sherima fully awake. “Candy! What are you doing? Nick came to get me out of here!”

When I told her that Candy Knight was the one who had made it possible for her to be captured in the first place, the revelation was too much for the former Queen. She dissolved in tears. Gone was the royal dignity that had maintained her bravely in the face of her tormentors. She was a woman betrayed by someone she had loved like a sister, and she sobbed over and over, “Why, Candy? Why?”

I still hadn’t dropped my gun or raised my hands, but Abdul left Sherima’s side and walked over to take the Luger away from me. There was little I could do at the moment except let him take it. If Candy pulled the trigger on me, there was no hope for the sobbing woman whose head had slumped forward on her breast. Her world was shattering into a billion pieces, and for her, physical pain was forgotten. The raw creases that the ropes had cut into her wrists and splayed ankles was no longer nearly as brutal as the process of her life disintegrating — a process that had begun when she’d been forced to leave the man she loved and her children.

“Now, if you will just move over against the wall, Mr. Carter,” Abdul said, gesturing with my gun where he wanted me to go.

Playing for time, I asked him: “Why don’t you let Candy tell Sherima why she sold her out? You’ve got nothing to lose now.”

“Nothing but time,” he said, turning to order the gunman on the cot to come and guard me. As the man picked up his automatic rifle and began walking toward me, he paused to look down at his dead companion. Rage crossed his face and he raised the rifle threateningly and pointed it at me.

“Stop!” Abdul commanded, still speaking to him in Arabic. “He must not be killed with that weapon. When everything is ready, you may use the pistol which you used on the ones upstairs.”

Sherima lifted her head to look at me questioningly. Apparently, she had been kept outside until the Sword’s men had disposed of the CIA’s resident agents. “There’s a ‘nice young couple’ dead upstairs,” I told her. “At least, the lady next door described them as nice.”

“They were spies for your imperialistic CIA,” Abdul snarled at me. “We knew all about this house for some time, Mr. Carter. Selim here,” he continued, nodding toward the man at the desk who had gone back to his paperwork once I was disarmed, “was quite helpful on that score. He is attached to security at the embassy, and once had to escort Shah Hassan here when our illustrious monarch was in Washington to get his orders from his masters in the CIA. That meeting lasted almost six hours, and Selim had ample opportunity to memorize the layout of the house. For spies, they were not very clever; Selim was even permitted to stand guard outside the secret door to this room and see how it operated while he waited for Hassan.”

“The Shah never took orders from anyone!” Sherima snapped at her former bodyguard. “I remember him telling me about that meeting when he returned to Sidi Hassan. The CIA was briefing him on what was going on in the rest of the Mideast so that he could protect himself from those who pretended to be our friends while they were making plans to take the throne away from him.”

“Who besides you and Hassan believe that fabrication?” Abdul said smugly. “By the time we are finished, everyone in the Arab world will know of his treachery and how he let himself and his people be used by the imperialist war-mongers. And how he became their running dog, thanks to you”

When Sherima’s attractive face showed a big question mark, Abdul gloated. “Oh yes, my lady,” he said, walking back to her side, “Didn’t you know? You are the one who so clouded Hassan’s mind that he could not determine what was best for his country. You used this evil body of yours to inflame him with passion so that he could not see who his true friends were.” To emphasize his point, Abdul reached out and stroked Sherima’s breasts and thighs salaciously as she tried to twist away from his torturous caresses; pain from her coarse bonds and nausea from his barbaric touch mirrored in her face at the same time.

“Then, when you had made Hassan your love slave,” Abdul continued, “you began to pass on to him the orders from your masters here in Washington.”

“That’s a lie!” Sherima said, her face flushed again, this time from anger rather than embarrassment at what her former servant was doing to her body. “Hassan’s only thought was of what was best for his people. And you know that is true, Abdul. He trusted you as a friend and often confided in you, too, from the day you saved his life.”

“Of course I know it, Your Highness,” Abdul admitted. “But who will believe that when the world sees the evidence Selim is preparing here — evidence that already is waiting to be handed over to the mighty Shah when we send word of your death at the hands of the CIA.”