Nick Carter - The Black Death

I smiled at him. “Valdez will come with me. Or—”

I did not have to finish it. P.P. nodded and shrugged. “Or you will murder him, too. Of course. I thought those might be your instructions.”

The car rounded and approached a well-lighted platform. A guard in a black uniform was pacing back and forth, a rifle on his shoulder. I lowered the Luger out of sight.

“Not a word or a move out of you two,” I said. “I’ll handle him. Thomas, you take the musette bag. Careful of it. Drop it or bump it and we all go sky high.”

Thomas nodded and worked his lever. The car glided to a stop by the platform. The guard approached us. I smiled at him and nodded to P.P.

“Help Mr. Trevelyn,” I said. “He isn’t feeling very well.”

He made no move to obey. He was big and black, wearing the same dark uniform, but there was something different about him. He was grim and uneasy, confused by our sudden appearance, yet it was more than that. Then I got it. This wasn’t P.P.’s man! Whose, then?

I did the only thing I could. I lashed at him, “Come on, man. Move! We’re in a hurry to see Dr. Valdez.”

Reluctantly he bent over the car and extended a hand to P.P. I laced him over the ear with the butt of the Luger. He fell into the car. I looked at Thomas. “Tie him with his belt and gun sling and gag him. Hurry.”

I prodded old P.P. with the Luger. “Let’s go, pops.” I gave him a hand up. Even with his paunch he didn’t weigh over a hundred.

P.P. looked down at the unconscious guard. “I don’t understand you, Mr. Carter. Why not simply kill him?”

“I decide who I kill and who I don’t.”

“But the girl? Poor Betty? Surely—”

“Poor Betty was KGB,” I told him. “A dumb American commie who did what she was told to do.” I watched his face. “She suckered you, P.P. Betty was Kremlin all the way.” Some of it had been in Hawk’s precis. The rest — guesswork to a certain extent. But Duppy’s file, Diaz Ortega’s file, read: almost invariably works with a female partner. Usually an American or European. Usually white. Never uses black or Russian females. See file Bettina Smid, born NYC, 1939… The cross reference meant they had worked together before. Duppy had signaled someone in P.P.’s mansion. It couldn’t be a coincidence. If it was, and I was wrong, I would burn a candle for her.

Trevelyn’s mouth hung open. His teeth must have cost him thousands. He gaped at me. “You mean that all this while I have been—?”

I wagged the Luger at him. “Yes. Think about it on the move. Where is Valdez?”

“Down this tunnel.”

We were under the Citadel. The tunnel was new, and some of the storerooms were new, but a lot of it was old dungeons and caves. Some were well lit, some dark. In some of the lighted rooms I saw stacks of crates and boxes and several long shiny missiles mounted on steel horses.

P.P. slogged ahead, dragging his feet. Thomas walked level with me, where I could keep an eye on him, lugging the musette bag like it contained eggs. In a way it did.

“How much farther to Valdez?”

P.P. stumbled to a wall and gasped for breath, holding on to a light bracket for support. “Not too far. Around the next bend. But I don’t think I–I can’t—”

I grinned at him. “Yes you can, P.P. Think positive. Be like the little engine.”

Before we rounded the bend we passed a brilliantly lit cave cut into the solid stone of the mountain. There was no guard on the entrance. I halted our little party and peered in, hiding the Luger behind my leg.

The cave was long and deep. Six long narrow tables stretched from end to end of the cave. On each table was a missile. Longer, thicker, fatter, than any missiles I had seen up to now. They were all painted black. Men were working around the missiles, polishing and making deft adjustments — with small shiny wrenches.

I watched P.P. He was staring with a very odd expression on his ravaged face. He began to shake. I saw him clasp his hands and squeeze them to keep his fingers still.

I jeered at him. “What’s wrong, P.P.? Something new been added — something else you didn’t know about?”

I was fishing. I didn’t know anything. Yet there was no question that the black missiles had somehow shaken the old man.

He shook his head and muttered, more to himself than to me. “There is something wrong here. Something I don’t understand at all.”

I gave him a little push. “Right. Let’s go find Valdez. Maybe he can explain.”

We trekked on down the tunnel. It took a right angle turn and ended in a large scooped-out cavern. The cavern was full of desks and filing cabinets and drawing boards. Maps and sheafs of blue prints hung from the walls. At the very end of the cavern a man sat at a desk, his face limned in the drop light. He watched us approach.

I herded Thomas a little forward so that both he and P.P. were in front of me. I whispered. “Do just as I tell you. Keep quiet. I’ll handle everything.” I screwed the Luger into P.P.’s spine a bit. “That is Dr. Romera Valdez?”

“Yes. That is Dr. Valdez.”

There were only the four of us in the cavern. A clock I showed a little’ after four. Dawn soon. From behind us, far down the corridor, came the faint tinkle of metal on metal. [For some reason my scalp began to crawl.

The man at the desk turned easily to face us. He did not rise, but crossed one long leg over the other and lounged * against the desk, one arm resting on a half-open drawer. He wore a gray lightweight suit, white shirt and blue tie in a I meticulous knot, blue socks and well-polished black shoes. His thick hair was tinged with gray and heavily pomaded. A pencil thin bristle of moustache covered a long upper lip. His nose was long and straight, jib sharp, and heavy sallow lids I hooded dark eyes as he watched us. He wore a gold wrist I watch and the fingers of his right hand bore several gold rings. He looked exactly as Lyda Bonaventure had described I him.

We came down an aisle flanked by desks and drawing! boards. A dozen feet from Valdez I said, “Okay. Stop right here.”

I peered between Thomas and P.P. at the man seated at the desk. He made no move to rise. Made no move at all. Just watched me with those hooded eyes. He had a certain type of Latin male beauty, aging a bit now, and I saw how Lyda could have loved him.

Something was wrong and I knew it and it bugged me. But I couldn’t place it. I tried the light touch, but I was careful to let Valdez see the Luger.

“Dr. Romera Valdez, I presume?”

He inclined his head very slightly. “I am Dr. Valdez. Who are you, sir?”

I told him who I was and why I was there. He listened, expressionless, his dark eyes examining the three of us. Behind that smooth aquiline facade a lot of thinking was going on.

I wagged the Luger at him. “We better get moving, Doctor. We’re running on a very tight schedule and the worst is still ahead of us. I’m hoping that you know a safe way out of the Citadel.”

His smile displayed perfect teeth. “I do, yes. But I have no intention of going with you, Mr. Carter. You, and Miss Bonaventure, and your superiors in the United States Government, you are all laboring under a delusion. I have no desire to be saved, as you put it. I am perfectly content here working for Mr. Trevelyn and Dr. Duvalier. I am well paid and well treated. I have, fortunately, come to see the error of my ways, of my former thinking. I am very afraid, Mr. Carter, that you have wasted your time.”

Before I could answer old P.P. broke in. He had been fidgeting and breathing hard, like he had something heavy on his mind, and now the words gushed from his diseased throat in a torrent.

“That woman, Valdez! That Betty you got for me… she… Carter here says she KGB… explanation… I can’t think… and those black missiles… I never knew of them.… I demand, Valdez… I demand…”