Nick Carter - Double Identity

Mike Bannion shrugged. “Why not? I can help you — and God knows I need every pice I can make. In any case I’ve already helped you — so now I’m in as deep as you are. As the Limeys say — in for a penny, in for a pound. Anyway I like doing this — been a damned long time since I did anything worthwhile.”

Nick left the rope bed and hobbled toward the table. Mike gave him the single chair and Nick took it without question. “How are the feet today?” Bannion asked as he helped himself to a pack of cigarettes and threw one short stocky leg over a corner of the table.

“Murder,” Nick admitted. “But never mind the feet— if you’re coming with me we’ve got to have an understanding. Now! About the booze.”

Bannion’s eyes held his steadily. “As I said, Nick, I’ll watch it. One bottle a day, no more. I have to have that or I’ll fold — have the DTs and the screaming meemies! I wouldn’t be any good to you then.”

N3 regarded him for a long moment, his eyes steel hard. Finally he nodded. “Okay. You’re making a bargain. Better stick to it. If you louse me up God help you — I won’t! I’ll leave you out there to die. I mean it, Bannion!”

The little man nodded. “I know you do. You don’t have to threaten me. I know how tough you are. I suppose you have to be in your — er — in your job.”

N3 stared at him. “What is my job?”

“I don’t know,” said Bannion hastily. “I don’t want to know, either. I’m in this only for the baksheesh, remember? Now hadn’t we better be getting on with it — I’ve got the stain and the makings outside. It’s almost dark now.”

“Do that,” Nick said curtly. “You get a map? Did you scout the arms depot?”

Bannion went to the door and bellowed for his wife to bring in the bundles he had left outside. He turned back to Nick with his grin showing again. “I went out to the depot and snooped about as you told me. I wasn’t even noticed — I’ve been there before looking for work and I pulled the same routine again today. No work, of course. They won’t hire white men for coolie labor. But I kept my ears open and got what you wanted — a big shipment of arms went upriver yesterday by steamer. Under guard, of course. Half a company of Pakistani soldiers. That do it?”

N3 said: “That does it! I can tell you this much, Mike— that shipment is headed for the Lahore front and I’ve got to stop it. It’s a mistake — it should never have been sent!”

Neva Bannion came in with her arms full of small boxes and packages which she piled on the table and around it. Her wrists and ankles were still delicate, still fine, though the rest of her had gone to fat. Her light copper-colored skin was smooth and unblemished. Though she was not in purdah she wore a long shapeless burqa, without the hood and eye-slits, which covered her from neck to toe. Her glistening black hair was piled high on her head and held with a cheap, factory-made comb. Nick conceded that she must have been attractive once — before Mike Bannion and the children.

She left without speaking. Mike winked at Nick. “I’m in pretty good at the moment. Food and money in the house, you know. If I was going to be here tonight I could probably—”

Nick broke in, “The map?”

Bannion produced a small-scale map of Pakistan and spread it on the rickety table. He tapped with his finger. “Here we are, in the Goth Bakhsh sector of Karachi. If you’re really going after that shipment all we can do is follow it up the Indus and try to catch it. Though I don’t know what the hell you think we can do against half a company of Pakistanis.”

N3 was studying the map intently. “Leave that to me,” he murmured.

Bannion gave a mock salute. “Gladly, sahib. Mine not to question why, huh? Okay, I won’t. I’ll just have a little shot instead.” He left the room.

Nick shook his head as he pored over the map. It wasn’t good to have to use, to trust, a drunk like Mike Bannion. But there was no help for it. He needed the man — both for his knowledge of the country and as a part of his new cover. He was starting on this venture as a Eurasian oil prospector, a free lance. Mike Bannion was his guide. There was just one big hitch — they had no papers!

N3 shrugged and went back to his map. So they would have to do it on the cuff, without papers. And hope his luck held.

The country through which they were traveling was some of the most rugged terrain in the world. That should help, Nick thought now. It would be scantily patrolled. He traced the northeasterly course of the great Indus with his finger: to their right would be the arid Indian Desert, to their left was a series of rugged mountain ranges running parallel to the river and joining the Himalayas in northern Kashmir. Except for the narrow strip watered by the Indus it was nasty country.

Bannion came back with a bottle of expensive Scotch and two plastic tumblers. He showed the bottle to Nick. “Two drinks gone, see. This will get me through until morning — and I’ll even buy you a drink out of it. Okay?”

N3 nodded. The Scotch tasted good. He pushed the map across the table to Bannion. “This is your department, Mike. How about it? Can they take that shipment all the way to Lahore by water?”

Bannion rubbed his bald spot and frowned at the map. “No can do. The Indus goes west of Lahore. Anyway it isn’t navigable beyond Bhakkar — not this time of year. They’ll have to go overland from there.”

“Maybe that’s where we can catch them,” Nick said. “Two men in a jeep, even your jeep, should be able to catch a convoy.”

He did not think it necessary to explain that, if and when he caught up with the arms convoy, he hadn’t the slightest idea what he was going to do. He would have to figure that out later. All that was important now was — if that shipment of arms was used against the Indians and the world found it out, then the U.S. was in trouble! And the Chinese would see that the world found out! Maybe that was the whole point of the impostor’s foray into Pakistan — to get those arms by trickery and turn them over to the Pakistanis. Then claim the Americans had given them and beam the distorted facts to the world.

N3 pondered that very briefly, then dismissed it. No. It had to be more than that — something bigger. Bigger even than trying to kill him! But what?

Mike Bannion broke into his thoughts. “I don’t know if it’s important or not, but maybe you’d better know. I saw something today at the arms depot that sort of put a chill in me.”

Nick began to take off the OD shirt the Air Force had given him. It was time to get on with the make-up job.

“Such as what?” He was anxious to get going now while Mike was sober. He hadn’t much faith in the man’s promises.

Mike began to smear brown paste on Nick’s face and neck. “Such as a mullah preaching a jehad, a holy war! A lot of the workers at the depot are Pathans, you know. Tribesmen come down out of their hills to make a rupee or two. They’re rough bastards, Nick. Savages. And they were listening pretty good to this old guy today. He got them worked up into quite a lather.”

N3’s first impulse was to forget it. This deal had enough angles now without looking for more. His immediate job was to find that arms shipment and hope the man he was after was somewhere near it. If not, and after he stopped the shipment — how? — he would have to use himself as bait again to lure the double.

Yet he listened. In his job no small thing could be overlooked without danger. Bannion’s next words drove a fertile wedge into Nick’s alert mind.

“The mullah was yelling at them in Pashto,” Bannion said. “I understand a little. Not much, but enough to know that he was promising them the world if they’d go back to the hills and wait He was shouting about food and new uniforms and plenty of guns and ammunition and—”