Nick Carter - Death of the Falcon

The ringing of the phone in my room allowed the man in the building across the street another thirty seconds to live. I was positive that the phone would ring again, then be silent for twenty seconds before it rang twice more; it would be Hawk’s special two-ring system, signaling me to call him immediately. Over the years, I’d developed an almost instinctual sense that knew on the first ring when Hawk’s signal was coming. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I was right. I locked in the sight on the Anschutz 1413 Super Match 54 again as the bell jangled for the second time, then was silent. Before the second double ring, I squeezed the trigger.

The let-off was perfect. Through the partially open French doors across the street, I could see a third eye suddenly appear in my target’s forehead. It was a bit above and between the other two that would never again gleefully watch while an AXE agent was being tortured for information. Their evil twinkling stopped forever as Krischikov slumped forward over his desk. Only that third eye seemed alive as a slight swell of blood appeared in it, glistened in the light, then rolled down across the bridge of his nose.

The second double ring of the phone came quickly after my shot, and stepping back from the open window of my shabby, rent-by-the-week apartment, I put the rifle down on the bed and picked up the receiver. I dialed Hawk’s direct number and he answered at once.

“You’re not scrambled,” he warned as always.

Having a scrambler installed on the phone in that little Montreal apartment hadn’t seemed necessary. Nor did Hawk’s reminder, but he never failed to give it and I automatically replied, “I know.”

“Have you made that sale yet?”

“Mr. Kaye just bought it,” I told him. “Now I have to close this office as quickly as possible and move on.”

“I think it’s time for you to come back to the home office,” the Old Man said slowly. “We have a client in town who needs your services.” He waited for a moment, then added, “It’s one of our biggest clients in Washington. Do you understand?”

That stopped me for a moment It wasn’t often that Hawk wanted me in Washington; he didn’t like to take the chance that somebody from the competition might spot me — either on their side or ours; because if anything happened in the capital, he and his N-rated agents who might be there at the time would get blamed for it. That’s the trouble with having an N rating — mine’s N3 — and being permitted to carry out the ultimate solution to a problem. Everybody thinks you’re a bad guy; that is certainly the feeling on their side, and on ours, too — unless you happen to be doing a dirty little job they don’t feel up to handling. Then the Killmaster becomes a hero — until the job’s done.

Also, Hawk was never too enthusiastic about lending me out to another agency, and his reference to a “client” could mean another intelligence organization. I wanted to ask him which of the super-intelligence agencies had goofed again and needed us to pick up the pieces for them, but we were on an unscrambled phone, so my questions would have to wait until I got back to the States.

Not only that, but I realized Hawk’s slow, deliberate tone was intended to convey much more than just the uncomplicated exhaustion at the end of another long day. I knew better than that. For a man who was getting on in years, he could hold his own with the best of us when the job called for it. No, Hawk wasn’t speaking in that tone because he was tired; someone was in the office with him, and the careful pitch of his voice warned me against putting him in a position to say anything that would give that someone any hint of where I was or what I had been up to.

“Yes, sir,” I said simply.

“Pack your things and go to the airport,” he instructed matter-of-factly. “I’ll arrange for your plane ticket on the next flight to D.C.… Oh yes, I don’t think you’ll need all of your equipment. “I think you can store some of it with the local office.”

I knew our weapons officer wouldn’t be too happy when he found out I’d left one of his favorite rifles in Montreal; but Hawk obviously wanted me back quickly, and he didn’t want me delayed by airport security clearance which would be inevitable if I tried to board a plane with that gun. I had a specially designed briefcase, with lead shielding for my own weapons, but none for the rifle.

“I’ll be in your office early tomorrow morning,” I said.

He had other ideas. “No, go directly to the Watergate Hotel. I’ll contact you there. A reservation’s already been made in your name.” He wasn’t even saying my name, much less the room number, on an unscrambled phone. “I took the liberty of sending someone around there with some clothes for you. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No sir. That was very thoughtful of you.”

Hawk was playing it very formally in front of his company, and I knew it must be someone especially important; usually he could get pretty crusty with the brass from the Pentagon or the CIA when they came begging for favors.

After we said our equally stiff goodbyes, I put down the phone and stood there looking at it for a moment. I was pretty certain the President hadn’t come to Hawk’s office. But there was only one other person in Washington the Old Man really respected: one of his old school chums who had managed to do things right for a change. As I hurriedly packed, I wondered what the Secretary of State had been talking about with Hawk and how it might affect me.

After checking across the street to make sure Mr. Kaye’s three-eyed corpse hadn’t been discovered yet and somebody wasn’t figuring out the line of fire, I picked up the phone again to call our local office; I had to arrange for the pickup of the rented car I had driven to Montreal and the rifle I would lock in its trunk. Last to be packed were my Luger, Wilhelmina, in its shoulder holster and my stiletto, Hugo, in its chamois forearm sheath. They went into an ingenious compartment in the briefcase the lab boys had designed for agents traveling with weapons on commercial flights. A special lead shielding made certain no alarms went off as we boarded planes. Too bad there hadn’t been time to get a similar suitcase made to transport the rifle; I would have liked to return it personally to Eddie Blessing, our armaments man. His face really lights up when one of his “babies” comes back home. Oh well, I was happy enough just to be bringing my babies with me. I had a feeling I’d be needing them soon.

Only ten minutes later, I was regretting my hasty packing. As I walked out of the rundown rooming house across from Krischikov’s formerly secure house, I spotted two men lounging against the rented Nova I had parked two doors further down the street. With a flight bag in one hand and a briefcase in the other, I couldn’t have appeared too menacing, for they looked up only briefly at the sound of the door closing behind me, then continued talking. I recognized the language as Russian, and the quick glimpse I’d had of their’ faces in the glare of the streetlight told me who they were.

I’d come to call them “Laurel and Hardy” in the short time I had been observing Krischikov and this pair who dogged his footsteps. AXE’s local office had filled me in on their actual identities and their jobs as the spy chiefs favorite killers and bodyguards. An hour earlier, I had seen them drive up with their boss and drop him off in front of his hideaway; then they rode away. At the time, it struck me as unusual that they didn’t go into the building with him, as they ordinarily did, and I had mistakenly reasoned that he must have sent them off on some assignment. Obviously, however, their orders had been to return and hang around outside. Either Krischikov had some kind of work to do that he didn’t want them to know about, or he had been expecting someone and had posted them to wait outside, possibly to pick up his visitor and check him out before letting him into the house.