Earthfire North

Seven

The economic information officer to the U.S. envoy in Montevideo felt a buzz of excitement as he ran up the stairs from the basement parking lot under the embassy. He hadn't had a thrill like this since the Cuban Revolution.

Just half an hour ago, when he had come home late from work, had parked his car, and had started up the back walk to his apartment, the intelligence officer had leaped like an apparition out of the garbage dumpster brandishing a gun.

"I don't want to hurt you," the man had said.

The information officer, whose name was Putnam, had worked for the CIA some years ago, and he knew better than to argue with an apparently overwrought man with a gun. They went back to Putnam's car, got in, the man on the floor in the back, and Putnam did as he was told.

As they drove back into town, the man explained what he wanted Putnam to do for him. He had a packet of film, he said, that had to be sent out in the diplomatic pouch immediately. There would be some phone calls he would have to make, but they could wait until Putnam was absolutely sure the embassy was essentially cleared for the night.

In the meantime he needed a first-aid kit, and he would wait in the car while Putnam went up and got it from the dispensary.

"Your name is Robert Putnam," the man said. He gave Putnam a number to call in Washington, D.C., and an index. "Before you do anything, Putnam, check that out."

Putnam gained the top landing of the stairs and found the first floor of the embassy deserted, as was usual at this time of night. Upstairs in communications mere would be the duty officers, but nothing moved down here except the guards.

The guard station was at the front of the building, and the marine on duty looked up as Putnam strode by. But he said nothing.

Back in the dispensary, Putnam pulled out a first-aid kit, then picked up the telephone, rang up to communications, and had them place the call to Washington. It only took a minute or two, and the phone rang only once before it was answered with the number by a woman.

Putnam gave the index word and number, and the woman described Carter, got the details of who was calling, from where, and the circumstances, then asked Putnam to help in any way he could. She gave a Washington address for the film.

After the call, he went up to communications, leaving the first-aid kit out in the corridor, and handed the film cartridges to the OD, along with the Washington address. "These get sent in the sack first thing in the morning."

"Yes, sir," the young OD said. "But there is one out tonight at midnight."

"That's even better. Get it in that one then, please."

"Yes, sir."

Back out in the corridor, Putnam grabbed the first-aid kit and hurried back down to the parking garage. The woman on the phone had identified the man as Nick Carter. He was lying in the back seat. Putnam helped him out of the car and to the elevator.

"Nearly everyone is gone, sir." he said. "I can get you up to my office without the marines seeing us."

"I may have to stay awhile," Carter said; his tongue seemed thick. "I'll need something to eat and drink."

"Yes, sir." Putnam said. This was great.

They got up to the third floor without incident, and Putnam helped Carter down the corridor and into his office, where he locked the door before he flipped on the light.

It was a tiny cubicle, but it had a small couch along one wall. He settled Carter back on the couch, doused his hand in disinfectant after pulling off the blood-encrusted handkerchief, put a splint on the badly broken finger, and finally bandaged the bites.

He poured Carter a drink of brandy from the bottle in his desk, lit him a cigarette, then sat back and watched him.

"You said you wanted to make some phone calls?" Putnam asked when it seemed as if Carter was beginning to recover.

"Right. Have you sent off my film?"

"It'll leave at midnight tonight. Should be in Washington by late morning. Your… office knows it's coming."

"Do they know where I am?"

"Yes, sir."

Carter sat back with his cigarette, seemed to think a moment, then looked up. He seemed very determined.

"Are you game to help me a bit more, Putnam?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. Anything you say."

"Get me that Washington number again, then take a walk for about five minutes."

"Yes, sir," Putnam said. He got communications again and placed the call. When it started to ring, he handed the phone across and left the office.

The phone was answered immediately.

"Carter, blue bird seven-three-zero."

The line went dead. Two minutes later David Hawk's voice came on. "I just got word you were in Montevideo. Are you all right?"

"A little shaken up. I've sent up some film. You should have it in the morning." Quickly and succinctly Carter told Hawk everything that had happened.

Hawk thought about it for a moment. "Ziegler knows you're after him, and he knows you're obviously not a newsman. It'll make him nervous. Maybe he'll make a mistake or two."

"My thoughts exactly, sir."

"Did you get a good look at the equipment you were photographing?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hang on — I'll put Cairnes on and maybe he can give us some ideas." Moments later the connection was made. Hawk was speaking to the chief of AXE's technical section. "Carter is on the line. He's taken a look at some equipment. See if you can make head or tail of it."

"Go ahead, N3," Cairnes's nasal voice said.

Carter explained in detail everything he had seen in the warehouse.

"A nuclear reactor or reactors, I'd guess," Cairnes said. "The big one was probably a waste water eliminator, standard for a breeder reactor. Steuben and Sons are the biggest manufacturers of that kind of equipment. But…"

"But what, Bill?" Hawk asked.

"That equipment could be for other purposes as well. Steam movement. Hot water transport. Even sewage disposal. Hell, there's no real way of telling without more information."

"Nick?" Hawk asked.

"I can leave for Mainz by morning. I'll have to get my things from Buenos Aires. Juan can do that for me. The embassy here can arrange my travel."

Someone knocked at the door, and Putnam snick his head in. Carter waved him in.

"I have to ring off now, sir."

"Keep in touch." Hawk said. "I'll have our people in Bonn keep an eye out for you."

"Yes, sir," Carter said, and he hung up.

Putnam had brought a couple of sandwiches and a few beers with him. "The commissary wasn't locked, and you said you were hungry."

Carter took one of the sandwiches and a beer. "I'm beginning to like you, Putnam… a lot."

Putnam beamed.

"We have a lot of things to get done tonight," Carter said. "I hope you're used to staying up all night."

"I can manage, sir. Just name it."

"First, I'll need to have my things brought up from the Sheraton in Buenos Aires. Tonight. Next I'm going to have to contact a man by the name of Juan Mendoza, who'll have to take a message to a friend for me. Then I'll need a doctor to set this finger, and I'll need to speak with the charge d'affaires for travel arrangements."

"Back to the States, sir?"

"No," Carter said.

Twenty-four hours later, Carter sat on a bench at the north end of Messerschmidt Park in Mainz, Germany, staring at the Steuben and Sons facility just across the street.

Mainz had been one of the principal Allied bombing targets during the war because of the Krupp munition works that had been located here. From the looks of it, Steuben and Sons had also been a part of that targeted industrial complex. A two-story-high wall of masonry still surrounded the plant to protect it from flash fires ignited by bombs in the city. The pads that had once held antiaircraft guns were still visible on the turrets at the comers of the walls.

Carter had already made a complete circuit of the factory's perimeter and had found the enclosure complete. The only way in or out was by the front or rear gates, or a single metal door. And the back gates seemed unused. Debris had been piled up over the top on the inside.

He crushed his cigarette on the sidewalk, then went back to his rented car parked around the corner from the main entrance. It was 2:10 in the afternoon. He pulled up near the corner so that he could see the main gate, then shut off the ignition and lit another cigarette.

At three the shift changed. A river of people streamed out one side of the front gate, while the evening shift streamed in. Most of the evening crew came by trollies that stopped at the corner, but a good number drove, filing the parking spaces along the park for several blocks on either side of the plant.

By 3:20 the streets were deserted again, and Carter was about to go back to his hotel to wait until dark, when a battered Volkswagen rounded the corner and sped up the street in his direction. A man dressed in workmen's clothes was driving. The car stopped short in the next block, and the driver tried to wedge into a parking space, but it was too small, and he continued on, turning the next corner.

He was circling. And he was late for work.

Carter jumped out of his car as the VW emerged on the far side of the park and disappeared again behind a line of brick houses. When it did not appear at the next street, Carter sprinted through the park, across a deserted playground, and over a ten-foot-tall wire-mesh fence. This put him at the rear of the brick houses, and when he made it to the front he found the car hastily jammed between a microbus and another VW. The driver was rummaging for something in the back seat.

Carter climbed in on the passenger side, his Luger drawn. The man's eyes widened.

"Is this a robbery?" he stammered, "I have nothing. I am late for work."

"Drive," Carter ordered in German. He raised the gun, and the man started the car, eased out of the parking place, and drove down the street.

There were too many houses there. Too many possibilities for someone to see what was going on and report it to the police.

Carter directed the frightened man to drive into the park and to stop behind the restroom building. There were only a few people in the park, all of them too far away to see what was happening. Carter brought the man into the empty men's room, where he made him take off his clothes. They switched clothes, then Carter bound and gagged the hapless worker in a stall.

The workman might have to stay there for a few hours, Carter decided, but he'd be okay.

Back at the man's VW, Carter clipped on the workman's ID badge, then he drove back out of the park and found a spot for the car two blocks away from his own car. He put on the workman's hard hat, grabbed his lunch pail, and headed up the street. At his own car he pulled out his camera and stuffed it in his pocket, then continued around the corner to the front gate.

He was Dieter Mueller from nearby Wertheim. Thirty-three years old, dark hair like Carter, and only a bit larger and heavier, so the clothes looked all right. Unless the gate man looked closely at the employee badge, or personally knew Mueller, there would be no problem.

The guard at the gate was busy talking on the phone. From his hip hung a huge, American-made, military.45 automatic. Carter hurried by, doing his best to appear worried about being late, and the guard glared at him, presumably for the same reason. But he said and did nothing, and Carter was inside.

Across the driveway, which split to the right toward the offices, Carter went left into the main factory building through a door marked Employees Only. He followed the safety notices down the narrow corridor and punched in at the time clock, finding Mueller's card with no problem. At least the man would get paid for today.

Inside the main workshop, it was incredibly noisy. Hydraulic hammers smacked parts out of thick sheet steel and sent them cooling down long assembly-line chains.

He hurried through the forming room and out on the other side into the factory yard. He was going to have to find out where they assembled the type of equipment he had seen on the docks in Buenos Aires. More photos were needed for a positive identification.

Outside, piles of material had been laid in neat rows with narrow aisles between them. Carter stood in the middle of one of the aisles trying to decide which way to try next, when a hoarse toot sounded behind him. He jumped just in time to avoid being run down by a forklift loaded with machine parts.

"Vorsicht, Jungen!" shouted a hard-boiled old man at the wheel, as he pulled up to a halt.

"Where is the assembly plant?" Carter shouted.

The old man turned, dropped his load expertly in its place, and backed up next to Carter. "New here… Mueller?" he asked, peering at the ID badge.

Carter nodded.

"Get on! I'm heading over there now."

Carter got a foothold, and they took off through the forest of machine parts, some piles of plastic piping, and several very large castings. The old man was an expert at getting around tight places, and within minutes they were rolling into a busy, brightly lit section of the factory, filled with huge hulks of machinery. The brilliant pinpoint lights of welding torches shone everywhere. Along the ceiling high overhead, a massive crane moved down the room. Dangling from the crane's cable was an enormous hollowed-out half-cylinder. Carter recognized it as the outer casting of the pump he was looking for. They were building another.

He shouted his thanks to the old man and jumped off the forklift, which continued across the assembly plant and out the other side. The pump casting overhead disappeared behind a barrier of corrugated iron that cordoned off one section of the work area. Along the barrier the stenciled word VERBOTEN appeared every few feet. The only gap in the barrier was the ceiling-high door through which the crane had passed. Beside the opening was a security guard, nodding at each man who came or went from inside. Personal recognition. Carter thought with a sinking feeling.

It would take some maneuvering to get around the guard, but he had come this far unchallenged; he wasn't going to stop this close to his goal. Yet he couldn't afford to have the alarm raised. He'd need time to take his photographs and then to get out with the film. He was going to have to be very careful.

He turned and started down the aisle in the opposite direction when he saw three men inspecting the spot welds on a section of pipe. One wore work clothes and the white hard hat Carter assumed was a foreman's. The second was in a business suit, and between them stood a taller man wearing a light jacket and slacks, and a white hard hat. He half turned, the harsh fluorescent light glinting off a lens over one eye.

Ziegler.

Carter retreated, walking hastily across the work area, cursing his luck. Ziegler had lost him in Buenos Aires, and he had run here to Germany to make sure nothing interfered with the work he had ordered. Goddamnit! He was the one man in Germany at this moment who could recognize him.

He hurried past an extruding machine, shooting out long sections of plastic piping, and past some other machinery whose purpose he could only guess at.

Overhead, the crane's empty cables sailed by. He followed the arc of their flight and saw the second half of the pump casting waiting by the huge outer doors. Two men stood in front of it, waiting.

He stepped up his pace, overtaking the cables, but not moving so fast as to attract any attention. Then he slipped around the huge pump casting to the inside, between it and the wall.

The huge hulk was shaped more or less like a teapot with three spouts: lower, middle, and upper. He tossed his lunch pail aside, grabbed the lip of the lower spout, and hoisted himself inside, just pulling his feet in as the cable's hook clanged noisily on the outer surface of the casting.

In a few minutes the cables were secured, and Carter felt the weightless surge as the casting swept into the air.

A panorama of the floor passed by the angle of his view from the spout as the massive piece of metal swung lazily on the chain. A minute later he could see the iron barrier, and the casting began to descend.

The pump hit the floor with a jolt, thrusting Carter deeper into the spout, almost into the main body. Then someone was directly below him as the cables were unhooked. They were saying something, the words coming only indistinctly to him where he lay.

After a few minutes the voices faded, and there were only the factory noises for an hour or two after that. At first he had feared that the two parts would be assembled immediately, and he would be discovered. But now he wondered how long it would be before he could get out of there.

As if on cue, a loud buzzer sounded, and gradually machines stopped, lunch pails rattled, and he could hear the men tramping away from the shop. Dinner break, he guessed, and in a few minutes the factory was silent.

Carter inched his way into the tank, and when he was clear of the spout, he stood up. A guard, seated by the door, was just visible from around the edge of the pump casting. The man was reading a magazine as he ate his dinner.

Carter took out his camera and, careful to make absolutely no noise, took several photographs of the pump casting he was standing inside of and of its mate on the other side of the shop floor.

He stepped out of the casting and, keeping it between himself and the guard, moved through the shop area, snapping photographs of the equipment and gears that evidently were to be installed inside the castings.

When he was finished, he stuffed the camera back in his pocket and went around the far side of the casting in which he had ridden.

The guard was still engrossed in his magazine. Carter picked up a large chunk of slag from the floor and threw it across the large shop. It clattered off the side of the twin casting.

The guard jumped to his feet, the magazine falling to the floor. "Was ist?" he shouted. He took a couple of steps forward, then hurried across to the other casting.

When he was around the opposite side. Carter hurried out into the main shop, then sprinted across toward the main doors leading outside. Suddenly in the wide doorway a knot of men appeared. At the forefront was the steel worker whose clothing he had stolen. He looked angry.

"Damn," Carter swore. He wheeled a hundred and eighty degrees and headed back toward the iron barrier. Just then the guard came out.

"Here, what are you doing?" the guard shouted, his hand on the butt of his automatic.

They asked me to come fetch you, sir," Carter said, pointing to the men across the factory.

The guard looked uncertainly that way.

"You'd better hurry, sir. They're mad."

"Verdammt," the guard swore, and he headed across the factory as Carter sprinted in the opposite direction to the left of the iron barrier.

At the rear of the building he went through a set of swinging doors into a packaging area. Three men in carpenter's aprons looked up from their dinners as Carter shot past.

Somewhere behind him an alarm bell sounded. Up ahead loomed the loading dock where flatbed rail cars stood waiting to haul the finished equipment to Bremen for shipment west. Powerful cranes stood by to lift the heavier pieces onto the cars while men with thick chains would batten them down.

The men out here were eating as well, but some of them stood up and were looking past him.

"What are all the alarms about?" one of them asked as Carter emerged.

"I don't know," Carter shouted, passing behind the car. "They don't tell me anything."

On the other side of the track was a grassy field that ran a hundred yards out to a series of old storage sheds and buildings adjacent to the perimeter wall.

He headed across the field at a fast trot as someone shouted something a! him from behind. He ignored it but picked up his speed.

A shot was fired, and he began zigzagging across the field, keeping low as more shots were fired.

Halfway across the field he pulled out his Luger, rolled to the left, then scrambled up on one knee and squeezed off four shots in rapid succession. Two of the guards went down, and for a moment, at least, the firing stopped.

He jumped up and made it the rest of the way to the storage sheds. He ducked behind them, then went inside the larger one.

The oblong of dim twilight from the doorway revealed piles of old motors, stacks of pipe, and other old equipment rusting away.

He closed the door and started down the length of the shed, whose rear wall was formed by the brick of the perimeter wall, looking for a break, perhaps a wooden door or some weak spot.

Light appeared behind him as the door swung open again and a shot sounded, the bullet ricocheting off a metal object to his left.

He hurried deeper into the darkness as other shots were fired, then someone switched on a flashlight. The guards were framed for easy targets in the doorway, but he had not come here to kill anyone. He had come to get information. He had it, and now he merely wanted to get free.

Another shot rang out from behind. They were firing at random, not able to see anything because of the darkness.

Carter came to the metal door set into the thick outer wall, A rusted, ancient padlock held it closed.

He checked his Luger. There were only five shots left. Carefully he aimed to the left of the doorway behind him — he was certain there were no guards standing there — and squeezed off three shots. Someone shouted, and they all took cover.

He turned, stood back, and fired two quick shots at the lock, the second one springing the rusted mechanism.

He holstered the gun and put his shoulder to the door, the ancient hinges giving way very slowly, until he had the door open about a foot, just enough to squeeze out.

Several more shots were fired toward him, these much closer, but by then he was outside and running down the street.

His first thought was the worker's Volkswagen, but the man had been with the guards; they'd have the car staked out. So he headed in a dead run around the corner toward his own car.

Another shot rang out behind him from the metal door through which he had just emerged. Damnit, he hadn't thought they'd shoot at him out here, on a public street.

Down the street a garbage truck turned the corner, the driver obviously in a hurry. The big truck tipped to the side under the strain of the acceleration.

Carter sprinted down the opposite curb as a car passed, and then he was behind the rapidly accelerating garbage truck. He grabbed the handrails at the back and swung aboard, keeping well to the outside so the guards pursuing him would not have a clear shot.

The truck lumbered around the corner, and Carter jumped off as it passed his car. He had his keys out and was racing around to the driver's side when two vans pulled up, each disgorging a half-dozen armed men. He pulled up short. The odds had just gone through the ceiling.

He raised his hands as Ziegler got out of the lead van and came toward him. The bald man did not look happy.