Nick Carter - Istanbul

Narcotics and the Turkish cops had tried to bug the place, tried to search it without detection — and they had failed. He wouldn't do any better.

There remained the ornate bathroom. He wasn't going to find anything there but he had to look.

Urfa, Nick was thinking. Urfa and the Edessa pass in three days. The dying man had probably been telling the truth. Almost certainly. When you are in the final throes you do not have time to think up lies. So now he knew, for once on this mission, where he was going next. What he was going to do next. Upcoming — one hell raid!

So now for a fast look at the bathroom and then on his way. He had stayed too long now pushing his luck.

The moment he stepped into the bathroom he smelled it. This time he recognized it immediately. Acetone. Nail polish remover! The same smell he had noticed in the office and bathroom at Le Cinema Bleu. Nick glanced back at the fat corpse on the bed. Maybe the old goat had been just that — an old goat! Maybe he had his moments, had the little hotsies in and out, in spite of crippled heart.

And maybe not! Nick was beginning to feel a trifle bugged by the smell of acetone. It meant something! He was sure of that. But what?

He opened the white medicine cabinet, sure of what he would find.

There it was. The little bottle of nail polish remover. Fastact. Made in Chicago. Same as that he'd found at Le Cinema, in the bathroom of the murdered Standish woman.

Nick slipped the bottle in his pocket. No time to puzzle over it now. It was time for one phony Red Chinese agent to vanish — completely and forever. He took a final look around the suite and headed for the door.

He opened the padded leather door — and there she was. The blonde from Le Cinema Bleu. Marion Talbot. Defarge's secretary. She had a tiny automatic in her hand and it was pointed straight at Nick's belly. Behind her was the uniformed guard, revolver in hand.

Think fast, Mr. Carter!

Mr. Carter thought and acted at the same time. With incredible speed. He would have liked to put the collar on the willowy blonde and asked some pertinent questions at leisure, but the guard ruined that project. Probably had spare rounds in his pocket, Nick thought even as he was going into action. Black mark for me. Careless.

He kicked the little gun out of the blonde's hand and grabbed her in the same quicksilver motion. He kept her between himself and the guard, using her soft, fragrant body as a shield. The guard backed away, revolver at the ready, looking for an opening.

The girl fought silently except for a hissing noise. She clawed at Nick's face. He picked her up and threw her bodily at the guard. He went backward over a desk, the girl on top of him in a froth of skirts and pink underwear and black elastic and dazzling white thigh.

Nick ran like a thief. Great bounding kangaroo leaps that took him down the office and across the landing and up the iron stairs to the roof before they could disentangle themselves. He had a very good idea that the guard wouldn't shoot at him — the girl wouldn't let him. She wouldn't want the police anymore than Nick did. She was in on this deal somehow — no matter what Mousy had said!

He gained the roof, lined himself up with a certain spot on the tile coping and ran for it at full speed. He went out and over into the void in a smooth sailing dive. Midway down he twisted into position for a perfect fireman's fall. He would land on his back, clutching his knees, a compact ball of muscle and bone.

If no one had moved the trampoline!

They hadn't. Nick hit it squarely, bounced high, twisted erect and came down to bounce once more, then from the canvas to the roof top. He lit running.

By the time the guard and the girl reached the roof of the Annex Apartments nothing was to be seen on the adjacent roof but the silent and motionless moon shadows.

Nick Carter and Mija Gialellis left from Yesilkoy Airport in the small hours of the morning. He had roused her from the soft bed at the Hilton — a bed still redolent of passion — and hustled her unmercifully. Mija did not complain — she was too sleepy. Now, in slacks and a bush jacket, wearing a tawny little trenchcoat and a dark red beret ornamented with the silver pin Nick had given her, she slept with her head on N3's shoulder as the AXE plane droned through the night.

There was not much time. They must be dropped with the dawn and find cover before the sun came up. If it came up. The forecasts, including Turkish, U.S., and AXE's own were uniformly bad. Nick sat quietly smoking and pondered what lay ahead of him.

Southeast by east from Istanbul, roughly 600 miles, lies some of the roughest and most treacherous country in the world. In this irregular triangle formed by the sourcing Tigris and Euphrates rivers the earth was badly plowed by the Gods and then forgotten. It is a lonely desolation of towering mountains and unscalable cliffs and narrow gorges that twist and intertwine like giant intestines.

This wild and forbidding country, long forsaken by Allah, is cherished only by its kindred souls, the Kurdish tribesmen. They are as wild as the mountains — and much more deadly.

Nick and Mija were dropped just before dawn. There was a chancy moonlight and very little wind, which allowed Nick to slip the chute enough to get them down without breaking any legs or hanging up on a cliff. Mija had not jumped before, and since Nick did not want to lose her now, after having kept her alive so long, he took her down with him in the black chute. They landed with a jarring thump on a smallish plateau that somewhat resembled a moonscape. The AXE plane made another pass and dropped a jeep, also by black chute, and loaded with supplies. Then the AXE plane waggled its wings at them for luck and droned away to the north.

N3 was, as usual, very much on his own. True that the response from the Ankara depot to his demands had been prompt and nearly awesome. He had gotten everything he wanted, with a few extras thrown in. Nevertheless here he was again, in the midst of the savage Kurdish Taurus, in a country the Devil wouldn't claim. Looking for a certain Basque named Carlos Gonzalez. Object — to kill!

By the time a watery sun, obscured frequently by rain and sleet, peered over the towering peaks to the north and east Nick and the girl were snug in a cave on a ledge overlooking a gorge that led into the Edessa Pass. The jeep was concealed in another cave nearby.

"This is mountain goat country," Nick had cracked as they made a turn in creeper gear with the off front wheel hanging over a chasm that fell away for a thousand feet. "I don't think we'll be using the jeep much."

But the Basque, he remembered, was reputed to get around in this country without too much difficulty. Maybe he knew a few tricks, remembered from his youth in northern Spain.

Mija was too terrified to speak. She rode with her eyes closed most of the time, reaching to touch Nick every now and then for comfort. He sensed that it was not only the dizzy trail that frightened her — it was the entire setup, everything. The brooding weather, the high stab of gloomy peaks on which the snow never melted, the terrible depressing sense of isolation. Nick felt it himself. It would pass, he knew, as soon as he got into action.

After they found the cave and settled in, as snug as possible in the circumstances, Mija still wanted comforting. Outside the rain was sloshing down in a gray curtain of discouragement. It was impossible to build a fire in the cave, even had they had dry fuel — the smoke would drive them out. And Nick dared not risk a fire on the ledge.

Partly to comfort her, and because the urge was moving him again, he crept into her sleeping bag. It was tight quarters — Mija had to wriggle out of her clothes somewhat like a snake shedding its skin — but the result was happy for them both. Mija sighed and moaned and finally cried — and enjoyed herself immensely. When it was over she went promptly off to sleep.