Nick Carter - Operation Moon Rocket

Nick opened the wallet The one hundred crisp portraits of Grover Cleveland were still there. He opened the closet, and found himself staring into a full-length mirror on the inside of the door. Mickey Elgar was still in place. Last night's "workout" hadn't disturbed a single hair. As he looked at himself, he felt renewed admiration for Editing's lab. The new, fleshlike polyethylene silicone masks might be uncomfortable to wear but they were foolproof. No amount of tugging, scratching or smearing could remove them. Only hot water and knowhow could do that.

There was a faint salt-water smell to his suit. Nick frowned as he got dressed. Was the shipwreck story true, then? The rest a nightmare? Reno Tree's face came swimming vaguely into focus. Any thin' else you want to tell us? That was an interrogation standard. It was used on someone just coming around. The idea was to convince them that they'd already talked, that only a few points remained to be filled in. Nick wasn't going to fall for that one. He knew he hadn't talked. He'd been in the business too long; his training had been too thorough.

A voice boomed in the hallway outside. Footsteps approached. The door opened and the familiar bald eagle's head atop huge, hunched shoulders leaned in. "Well, Mr. Eigar, how do you feel?" Simian rumbled jovially. "Ready for a little poker? My associate, Mr. Tree, tells me that you like to play for high stakes."

Nick nodded. "That's right"

"Then follow me, Mr. Elgar, follow me."

Simian strode rapidly along the hall and down a sweeping staircase flanked by cast stone columns, his footsteps ringing authoritatively against the Spanish tiles. Nick followed, his eyes busy, his photographic memory registering each detail. They crossed the first floor reception area with its twenty-foot-high ceiling and moved through a series of galleries with gilded pillars. The paintings that hung on the walls were all famous ones, mostly of the Italian Renaissance school, and the uniformed GKI police spotted here and there suggested that they were originals, not prints.

They went up another staircase, through a museumlike room filled with glass cases containing coins and plaster and bronze statuettes on pedestals, and Simian pressed the navel on a small David and Goliath. A section of wall slid silently aside and he motioned Nick to enter.

Nick did, and found himself in a damp concrete hallway. Simian stepped past him as the paneling slid shut. He opened a door.

The room was dark, filled with cigar smoke. The only light came from a single, green-shaded bulb that hung a few feet above a large round table. Three men sat at the table in their shirtsleeves. One of them glanced up. "You gonna play, for chrissake?" he growled at Simian. "Or you gonna wander all over the place?" He was a bald, thickset man with pale fish-eyes that shifted now to Nick and rested on his face a moment, as if trying to find a slot to put him in.

"Mickey Elgar, Jacksonville," said Simian. "He's going to sit in a hand."

"Not until we're finished here, friend," said fish-eyes. "You." He pointed to Nick. "Move over there and keep your trap shut."

Nick recognized him now. Irwin Spang, of the old Sierra Inn crowd, reputed to be co-director of the Syndicate, the sprawling nationwide criminal organization active at every level of business from vending machines and loan sharking to the stock market and Washington politics.

"I thought you'd be ready for a break," said Simian, sitting down and picking up his cards.

The fat man next to Spang began to laugh. It was a dry, papery laugh that caused his great, loose-hanging jowls to shake. His eyes were extraordinarily small and heavily lidded. Sweat poured down his face and he passed a screwed-up handkerchief round the inside of his collar. "We'll take a break, Alex, don't worry," he wheezed hoarsely. "Soon as we got you squeezed dry."

The voice was as familiar to Nick as his own. Fourteen days of it pleading the fifth amendment in front of a Senate Committee ten years earlier had made it as famous as Donald Duck's voice — which in a gravelly way it resembled. Sam "Bronco" Barone — the Syndicate's other director, the one known as The Enforcer.

Nick gathered saliva into his dry mouth. He had begun to think that he was safe, that the masquerade had worked. They hadn't broken him, they hadn't tumbled to the Elgar mask. He had even pictured himself walking out of this room. Now he knew it could never happen. He had seen The Enforcer, a man generally thought to be either dead or in hiding in his native Tunis. He had seen Irwin Spang in his company (a connection the Federal Government had never been able to prove), and he had seen both men in the same room with Alex Simian — a sight that made Nick the most important witness in U.S. criminal history.

"Let's play poker," said the fourth man at the table. He was a dapper, suntanned Madison Avenue type. Nick recognized him from the Senate hearings. Dave Roscoe, a top Syndicate lawyer.

Nick watched them play. Bronco passed four hands in a row and then got three ladies. He opened, drew but didn't better it, and got out. Simian won on two pair and Bronco showed his openers. Spang stared at him. "What-sa matter, Sam?" he growled. "You don't like to win? You had Alex's doubles beat."

Bronco chuckled grimly. "Wasn't good enough for my money," he rasped. "I want a big one when I catch Alex's purse."

Simian scowled. Nick sensed the tension around the table. Spang swung around in his chair. "Hey, Red," he croaked. "Let's have some air."

Nick turned, surprised to see three other figures in the shadowy room. One of them was a man wearing glasses and a green eye-shade. He sat at a table in the dark, an adding machine in front of him. The others were Reno Tree and Clint Sands, the head of the GKI police force. Sands stood up and pulled a switch. The blue haze began to boil up toward the ceiling, then disappeared, sucked into the maw of an exhaust vent. Reno Tree sat with his arms on the back of a chair, watching Nick, a faint smile on his lips.

Bronco let another two or three hands go by, then he saw a thousand-dollar bet and raised it the same amount Spang and Dave Roscoe called and Simian raised a thousand. Bronco raised two G's. Dave Roscoe folded and Spang saw. Simian tipped it another G. It seemed to be what Bronco was waiting for. "Ha!" He shoved in four G's.

Spang backed out and Simian studied Bronco with glacial eyes. Bronco grinned at him. Everyone in the room started to hold their breath.

"No," said Simian grimly and tossed in his cards. "I'm not going to be suckered into that."

Bronco spread his cards up. The best he had was a ten high. The expression on Simian's face was dark and wrathful. Bronco started to laugh.

Suddenly Nick knew what he was up to. There are three ways to play poker, and Bronco was playing the third — against the man who is the most desperate to win. He's the one who usually overplays his hand. The need to win shuts out his luck. Get him mad and he's dead.

"What's that make it, Sydney?" wheezed Bronco, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

The man at the adding machine had switched on his light and tabulated some figures. He tore the tape off and handed it to Reno. "That's twelve hundred G's less he owes you, Mr. B," said Reno.

"We're gettin' there," grated Bronco. "By the year 2000 we'll be settled."

"Okay, I'm out," said Dave Roscoe. "I've got to stretch my legs."

"Why don't we all take a break?" said Spang. "Give Alex a chance to scrape some cash together." He nodded in Nick's direction. "You got here just in time, pal."

The three of them filed out of the room and Simian pointed to a chair. "You wanted action," he said to Nick. "Sit." Reno Tree and Red Sands advanced out of the shadows and eased themselves into chairs on either side of him. "Ten G's a chip. Any objections?" Nick shook his head. "Then deal."