Run, Spy, Run

Julia Baron

A long, quivering sigh escaped her parted lips. Scanty clothes lay forgotten on the floor. Carter's lingering memories of the Countess de Fresnaye fled on wings of a new and deeper passion. The firm thighs so very close to his undulated rhythmically, giving and taking, rising and falling, flowing and receding.

The narrow Army cot was a haven of delight, the darkened room an amalgam of unexpected and delicious pleasures. Two who lived for the moment made marvelous love without restraint or shame. Nick Carter, alias Peter Cane, felt every taut nerve in his body surrendering to Julie's fluid beauty and to the endless, fleeting fragment of time.

She spoke to him once or twice in little gasps, the words disjointed but full of the meaning that her body so eloquently expressed. He whispered something, nothing, and trapped her sinuous firmness beneath him, his powerful muscles making his body an instrument of pleasure. She moaned, but not in pain. She circled his ear lobe with sharp teeth and bit, and murmured breathlessly. The darkness dissolved into tiny separate shafts of warmth, shafts that drew together in the blackness and caught fire. Their senses reeled in a communion of soaring happiness. For brief, ecstatic moments, the component parts of a blueprint, how to blow up a railroad train or detail-strip a .45, meant less than nothing. They belonged to a different layer of life, not the life that pulsed between them now. Man and Woman fused together. Their minds and hearts were blazing skyrockets of emotion. Both felt, as one, the overwhelming flood-tide of wonderful release.

"Peter, Peter, Peter." And a sigh.

"Julia... my one and only favorite spy."

They laughed together in the darkness, a relaxed and happy sound.

"Peter Cane, what is your name?"

"Julia Baron, what is yours?"

She laughed. "All right, I won't pry. Let's have a cigarette."

The coffee was lukewarm but welcome. They sat side by side in the darkness, their cigarettes twin points of light in a room that no longer seemed bare and drab.

After a moment he said: "Are you sleepy?"

"Not a bit. Never less."

"Good. Because we have a little homework to do that I somehow forgot in the press of more urgent business."

Julia eyed him lazily. "Such as?"

"Bombs. Their cause and effect. Not a very appropriate time to talk about them, perhaps, but we may not have another chance. Do you know much about demolitions?"

The darkest patch of darkness moved as her dark head shook. She sensed, rather than saw, the compact, whipcord figure so close to hers. "Three weeks, a few years ago at Fort Riley. A short, intensive course I've never used. And I suppose there've been modifications since then."

The tip of his cigarette flickered.

"Mostly variations on old themes. On Flight 601, you'll have to know some of the things to look for. Not to forget steel hands and bags that go bang in the night."

"Or day," she reminded. "They've all happened during the day. And tomorrow is another."

"Not our last, if we're careful. The OSS came up with a cartload of demolition gadgets in World War II. They're still damned effective, custom built for espionage and its baby, sabotage. Ever hear of gimmicks like Aunt Jemima, Stinger, Casey Jones or Hedy?"

"Pancake, cocktail, trainman, movie star. Or what?"

"You haven't heard of them," he said matter-of-factly. "Each is a choice little item in the well-rounded spy's book of tactics. You are, of course, well-rounded, but..."

Nick described the Machiavellian devices he had encountered in his crowded lifetime:

Aunt Jemima, innocent-looking devil with the destructive force of TNT, was an apparently ordinary flour which could be kneaded, raised, and actually baked into bread. Even if moistened, it was still effective. Stinger was a fob-pocket gun with a three-by-half-inch tube; a short, automatic pencil in appearance. The tube contained a .22 cartridge, activated by a tiny lever on the side. One squeeze of the lever with your fingernail, and you could kill a man. Casey Jones was a magnet fastened to a box device containing a photoelectric cell. All it took to trigger treacherous Casey into explosion was a swift cutting-off of light, such as the dimout incurred when a train entered a tunnel. The electric eye would react to the sudden darkness and trip the explosive. Hedy was a decoy, rather than a weapon, a screeching firecracker-type device which gave off enough attention-getting clamor to allow an agent to create a diversion anywhere he chose while the real scene played elsewhere.

There were sundry other niceties in the OSS catalog. Nick detailed them with care and Julia listened. It was becoming increasingly clear that Flight 601 would take a lot of surveillance.

"That's about it," Nick finished. "There may be refinements, but those are the basic elements. Want to cash in your ticket?"

"I wouldn't if I could," she said quietly. "I've seen Harcourt at the U.N. I'd hate for us to lose him."

"That's why we're going to have to be on our toes every minute," Nick said. "Do you have any kind of weapon, by the way?"

"You bet I have. But I feel like a babe in the woods, after all that... I've a small traveling clock grenade, useful for bedsides in strange places. A small .25 that looks like a cigarette lighted. And a nailfile that's made of Toledo steel and cuts like a razor. I've only used it once — so far."

Nick could feel her shudder in the dark. Then she said: "What about you?"

He laughed. "Wilhelmina, Hugo, and Pierre. And a little grenade gadget that I haven't yet named and probably never will. If I don't use him, he doesn't deserve christening. And if I do — well, then he's dead."

"Wilhelmina who?"

"The Luger. We're a walking armory, we are."

She sighed and lay back on the cot. Her eyes searched for his in a darkness that was no longer absolute.

"Do you have any L-pills?" she asked quietly.

He was surprised. "No. Do you?"

"Yes. I've seen what's happened to some of us. I don't want to end up like that. If they ever get me, I want to die my way. I won't brainwash, and I won't talk. But I don't want to end up a babbling, mindless... thing."

Nick was silent for a moment Then he said: "I'd like to say, 'stick with me, kid, and you'll be fine.' But I can't guarantee anything but trouble."

"I know that" She reached for his hand. "I know what I'm doing, even though sometimes I hate it."

The cigarettes were dead, the coffee finished.

Nick stroked her fingers as if counting them.

"It's getting late. We'd better get some sleep. Now. In the morning, you leave first I'll help you get a cab on Broadway, then I'll clock out of here about ten minutes later. I'll meet you at the airline weighing-in counter, looking like a hungry lover. Which, I might add, won't be hard. You look breathless and expectant, as if looking forward to our assignation but wondering what mother would think if she could only know." She laughed quietly. "And then, for God's sake, when we get on the plane you'll have to tell me how we're supposed to have met! What is your cover, anyway?"

"I am an art teacher at Slocombe College, Pennsylvania," she said dreamily. "Destiny — and your best friend — brought us together. It was like a bolt of lightning from a summer sky... Oh, well. Tune in tomorrow for the next thrilling installment. I do draw rather well, by the way."

Nick smiled and kissed her, putting his hands lightly on her silky shoulders.

"Goodnight, then. You might as well stay here — I'll have the bedroom."

He rose silently.

"Peter," she called softly.

"Yes?"

"I still don't want to sleep alone."

"Neither do I," he said huskily.

They didn't.

Dawn was lacing the sky with a ladder of fleecy clouds above the vast expanse of Idlewild as Nick Carter's taxi drew up before the Air America Building.

Julie Baron had pecked his lips in hasty farewell and tucked her long legs into the back of her airport-bound cab. Nick instructed the driver and had watched the Yellow Cab take off. He had gone back to the apartment and checked every inch of it before locking up. The little pile of cinders in the fireplace had become a light powder, as shapeless as dust. Nick carefully collected cigarette butts and ashes into an empty pack of Players. Habit was so strong that his check-up of the place was as natural as breathing.

The American Tourister luggage was neatly packed with the wardrobe and toilet accessories he would need for the flight. This time, he would have to leave his brief case. Peter Cane's notebooks and favorite reading matter were in the overnight bag, which he would keep with him on the plane. The four thousand dollars in bills were in a dual-purpose money belt strapped about his waist; his pockets were filled with items that proclaimed his identity as Peter Cane.

Nick set the black horn rims on his straight nose and surveyed himself in the discolored bathroom mirror. He rather liked the effect. We Professors don't have time to fuss with our appearance. Satisfied, he took his leave, throwing the discarded cigarette pack and the apartment keys into the nearest convenient garbage can. The Jaguar, he noticed, was already gone.

He hailed a cab, and the past was behind him. Only the lingering happiness of the night with Julie remained, and a feeling of fulfillment and relaxation.

The trail behind him was empty. There were no early morning followers to throw discord into the harmony of the pleasant ride to the airfield.

Wilhelmina, Hugo and Pierre waited patiently in their beds, oiled and ready for maximum effort. The nameless key-chain flashlight just waited.

Mr. Judas. Nick swore softly to himself. The biggest name in international espionage. Nobody knew what he looked like or how old he was. Or his nationality. Just the name. A code name given him years ago because his shadowy presence so often made itself felt in treasonous activity. Interpol had racked its resources for fifteen years in hopeless pursuit. England's Special Branch had turned all its data on him over to Security Service when a national crime wave had assumed the proportions of a political scandal. No result. Argentina had detected his unholy stamp in a monstrous blackmail and murder plot. But the chimera had wavered and disappeared. He was dead; he was not dead. He had been seen; he had never been seen. He was tall, short, hideous, handsome, frying in hell, luxuriating at Cannes. He was everywhere, nowhere, nothing and everything, and all that was known was the name of Judas. Reports filtering down through the funnel of years made it appear that he enjoyed the name "Judas" and wore it with pride.

Now he was back. The faceless genius of sabotage.

Nick ached to meet him, to see for himself what the wizard looked like and sounded like. Judas had to be a wizard. How could anyone be so well known and yet so obscure?