Safari for Spies

Duel in the Smoke

Nick heard the low whistle that meant Hakim had freed Liz and was ready with his carbine in case things got out of hand too early. And he heard the double chirping signal that told him Abe and Stonewall had filtered down to cover the encampment with their submachine guns. A tall, barrel-chested figure in tattered American battledress stepped out of the smoke clouds holding up an assegai. He thrust it into Rufus’ unwilling hands.

“You have lied again, Rufus Makombe,” he boomed. “You make us kill and tell us that the gods protect us, that we cannot die. And still we die. Now let us see you kill, and live!”

Rufus backed away. “You fool! What use is this spear to me against his gun? Men! My warriors...!”

“Kill for yourself, or be killed, Rufus,” the big voice said coldly.

Nick raised Wilhelmina pointedly.

“Who gives the orders, Rufus?” he asked softly. “You or your subordinates? I did not come to kill you but to take you back with me. To your brother — the Chief of all Nyanga. Order your men to fall back.”

“No!” said the big, cold voice. “He will not be taken back, white man. Fight him yourself, as man to man, or the rest of us will tear you both apart, gun or no gun. You, Rufus, and the woman.”

“That would be a mistake,” said Nick, just as coldly. “I am not alone. Abe!” He raised his voice. “Fire above their heads!”

A warning burst of fire chattered through the smoke.

The man in battledress looked calculatingly at Nick. “That makes no difference,” he said softly. “It only means that many more of us will die. Fight him!”

Nick thought swiftly. The big man was wrong; yet he was right. That he would be able to get himself and friends safely out of that valley and far away, Nick had no doubt. But too many brainwashed, misguided men would die. And out of it all new hatred would be born.

“Then give me a spear,” Nick said, and slid the Luger out of sight.

Rufus swung back his arm and threw.

Nick saw his movement as it started and ducked with time to spare. He reached behind him and pulled the still-quivering assegai out of the valley floor. “In that case,” he said, “give him a spear.”

Wordlessly, the big man handed Rufus another assegai.

Rufus took it in both hands and charged. Nick crouched low and waited for him. At the last possible second he sidestepped and thrust the tip of his own spear deep into Rufus’ unguarded thigh.

“Aaaarghh!” Rufus bellowed out his rage and agony and whirled on Nick like a dervish, jabbing with a lightning thrust even as he turned. The spear point ripped Nick’s sleeve and bit a painful gouge into his upper arm. Nick cursed softly and leapt aside, feinting a jab at the stomach and then flipping the point of the spear upward to catch Rufus lightly in the chest as he lunged and pulled back just in time to avoid a fatal slash.

Rufus danced lightly backward, a grotesque figure in his flapping toga. Blood was seeping through the cloth that covered his thigh and his lips were drawn back from his teeth in a snarl that turned his handsome face into an ugly mask. The toga put him at something of a disadvantage, but he seemed to be gaining confidence and speed. Nick’s assegai flashed. Rufus parried expertly, came in quickly with a light stabbing motion that pricked at Nick’s left side, and danced away. Nick heard an “Aaahh!” of approval coming from somewhere in the smoke. He knew that his own performance was nothing to “Aaahh” about; the two bullet creases of last night had so stiffened both his leg and shoulder that his footwork and his thrust were far short of their usual skill. He decided on a change of tactic.

Rufus bent low, held his assegai like a lance, and charged.

Nick dropped before him like a stone. Almost instantly, he came to life again, jerking his body upward beneath Rufus’ flying, stumbling legs, and felt his enemy leapfrogging clumsily over him. He made a leaping turn with his spear held in front of him across his body, his hands spread wide apart along the shaft, and watched Rufus hit the dirt.

“Up, Rufus!” he called invitingly. “Stand up and come and get me.”

Rufus sucked in the dusty air and grabbed his fallen spear. He was breathing heavily when he came at Nick, and his movement was no longer swift and sure. Nick pivoted and swung his weapon like a stave — the Japanese stave called the bo, which does nothing so crude as lunge or club but twirls like a drum majorette’s baton. It twirled now, describing an invisible, perfect circle that was marred only by contact with Rufus’ spear. There was a sharp clack of wood against wood. Rufus came to a blundering, startled stop, his hands empty and his eyes searching wildly for his lost spear. Nick heard it clatter to earth yards away. Deliberately, he threw his own spear to the ground. Rufus growled like a wounded animal and darted for it with his hand outstretched. Nick leapt and grabbed Rufus’ hands in his own sinewy clutch, jerked him close so that the dark sweating face almost touched his, and ground a series of twisting jabs into the breast plate and heart. Rufus groaned and grunted and struggled feebly. Nick gave it to him with a right fist-hammer to the heart that held back nothing. Something cracked sickeningly. Rufus’ face and body twisted with the awful agony. His eyes glazed; and he dropped.

Nick drew a couple of slow, deep breaths and pulled out Wilhelmina. He heard a low groan rising from the valley. He looked about him for the first time in many minutes and saw that most of the thick smoke had lifted. Abe and Stonewall had stationed themselves at strategic positions near the huts but still high enough up the slope to command the whole encampment. Hakim, now without his bush shirt, was stationed only feet away from Nick’s left shoulder, his carbine raised in readiness and aiming steadily at the big man in the ragged battle-dress.

The big man stepped forward uncertainly.

“Is he dead?” he asked, and his voice was a cracked half-whisper.

“What difference does it make?” Nick answered quietly. “He’s finished. See for yourself if he’s dead — if you think it matters. And the rest of you can fight and die for nothing, if you want to. Or you can stop working for your enemies and start thinking for yourselves. You’ll be under arrest within the next few minutes whatever you decide. So take your choice. Die for the yellow men; live to make something of your country.” He stopped suddenly, full of things he wanted to say but not knowing how to say them. Anyway, it was a pretty ridiculous thing for a counterspy called Killmaster to do — lecture about the dangers of foreign intervention and the joys of national pride. “It’s up to you,” he finished abruptly, and turned on his heel.

The brisk, chopping sounds of helicopter blades filled the valley. Nick heard Abe Jefferson’s crisp voice bark out an order.

“Where’s Liz?” he asked Hakim.

Hakim winked horribly. “Behind the tall rocks, there, beautifying herself for you and scratching mightily. Be careful — she has my .22 and an itchy trigger finger. Plus itchy almost everything.”

Nick strode through the wispy smoke and found her, draped in Hakim’s bush jacket and hastily pulling a man’s short comb through her tangled hair and waving the pistol like a can of insect spray.

“Liz! You all right?” he asked anxiously.

“Oh, wonderful!” she said enthusiastically. “Thanks just a heap. It’s been the greatest, the whole thing.” She dropped the comb and gun and fell into his arms.

It was only moments later that the valley began to fill with smartly uniformed men. Nick led Liz to the waiting helicopter. Hakim followed, leaving Abe and Stonewall with the joint team of army and police.

There was plenty to talk about on the smooth flight back to Abimako. But there were two questions, and one fascinating answer, that hung in Nick’s mind for a long time afterwards.

The first came from Liz. Her question cut abruptly into one of those sudden silences that break up intense conversations.

Liz looked up from her survey of the African, plains below and said: “Who was Mirella?”

“I’m not quite sure,” Nick answered slowly. “And I don’t think I’ll ever really know.”

The second came from Nick himself.

“By the way,” he said to Hakim, “just what was it you said you teach at the University? The Seven Lively Arts?”

“That’s right.” Hakim grinned cheerfully. “Ambush, Burglary, Disguises, Mugging, Stabbing, Strangling, and Diversionary Tactics. Other elements, too, of course, but those are basic. Please, Miss Ashton! I assure you I am harmless. It is seldom I get the opportunity to practice what I preach.” He managed to focus both eyes on Nick’s startled face. “I am a criminologist,” he said. “It has long been my belief that the only way to beat the criminal at his own game is to know his every trick.”

“And you know them,” Nick said, almost reverently. “Man, you really know them!” He threw back his head and laughed with pure delight.

And even while he laughed he thought: AXE could use a man like this. I’ll talk to Hawk.

Julian Makombe stared at them from the pillows of his hospital bed. His face was drawn but his eyes were alert — and filled with horrified disbelief. He looked from Nick to Liz to the stranger called Hakim and to his wiry, trusted Chief of Police.

“I cannot believe it!” he said. “It can’t be true! My brother Rufus and the Red Chinese! You have made this up, you must have. He has never — and I know this, because he is my brother — I know he has no interest in politics or power. Jefferson, what is this madness?”

Nick touched a switch on the tiny wire recorder. “I would not have believed it either,” he said quietly, “of my own brother, or yours.”

The small machine hummed softly. An eerie voice floated across the hospital room.

“Are you the leader, Rufus? Are you sure that you’re the leader?”

“I am the leader!” Rufus yelled metallically. “I am the leader!”

Julian drew in his breath in a choking gasp, and listened.

I will be President, I will be all Nyanga... Julian and his Russian friends... They are nothing — they will die... I have more powerful friends... The gods and the Chinese... They do as I tell them...

The damning words washed over him. Nick watched and pitied, and clicked off the recorder.

“Is it all true, then?” Julian whispered. “Abe — Chief Jefferson — is it true?”

Abe nodded soberly. “I saw it all. I heard it. Mr. President, it’s true. I am sorry.”

Julian sighed. He turned his gaze to Nick. “And so you killed him,” he said flatly. His tired eyes flickered over to Liz. “I cannot forgive him for what he has done — to all of us. To all of you. But I wish... I wish that I could have spoken to him.”

“You will be able to,” Abe said briskly. “You will be well long before he is, but he is far from dead. Merely incapacitated. He’ll live.”

Julian achieved one of those curious reversals common to those weakened by illness. He turned his head to Nick and said: “He would be better dead. You should have killed him.”

Nick rose from the bedside.

“Perhaps,” he said quietly. “But I could not bring myself to kill the brother of the man who asked me here to help him.”

Julian stared at him. Something of the shadow lifted from his gaunt face. “I expected an unorthodox ambassador,” he said, “but nothing quite so extraordinary.” He sighed, and then the suggestion of a smile touched his lips. “I hear you disappeared from your hotel room in Dakar?”

“I did,” said Nick. “Ambassador Carter came to an inexplicable end. I don’t know what Dakar is coming to.”

“Neither do I,” Julian answered gravely. “But you can be sure that I’ll send my condolences and thanks to your State Department.”

They left him, then; left him to the nurses and the doctors and his thoughts.

The immensely fat man sat behind the desk and stared across it. Disgust and loathing exuded from his yellow, moon-shaped face as the sibilant voice snaked about his ears.

“I wasss unfortunate,” said the other man, in his peculiarly nasal tone that was half-whine, half-hiss. “The first time I wasss naturally interesssted in the other man, that ssskulking Arab...”

“I already know about the first time,” snapped the fat man. “What about Dakar — what went wrong there?”

The man with the green face shrugged and stuck out his lower lip.

“What could I do? My arrangementsss were already made, to have that Carter brought to me and questioned, but Rufusss wasss determined to have him killed at once — all he wanted to do wasss get rid of him and not bother about finding out how much he knew or who elssse he might be working with.”

“What happened in Dakar?”

“I am telling you. We agreed that I was first to try to force the American to talk, but Rufus kept getting in the way. He would keep sending his killers after Carter, and alerting him so that he became ten times more cautious than he was before. It made things most difficult for me.” The whining voice was querulous. “It was hard enough — as it was.”

“And the Hop Club? How did you miss him there?” The fat man shifted impatiently in his gigantic chair. The rolls of fat that reached from his shoulders to his ears bobbled like agitated jelly. “Come, Laszlo, you have not done well. Explain how you failed the second time.”

“How could I know it was him?” Laszlo hissed indignantly. “He came disguised as a drug peddler from here, from Casablanca. I did not even know who he was when I went after him, and then he shot me in the ssshoulder, the ssswine! After that, bleeding as I was, I got the ssstory from that fat — that is to say, from Madame Sophia. She had even mentioned the Big One in Casablanca, the ssstupid old drab! And when she saw our radio operator was dead, and the police came pounding at the front door, she got frightened and threatened to tell some wild story that would save her neck and hang the rest of us, give away our entire operation. So of course I had to kill her, and I jussst barely managed to get away before the police came through to the back.” His frog-lidded eyes drew together in a frown as he recalled his narrow escape. Then they brightened suddenly. “You may care to know how I managed with Madame Sophia, whom as you know is of a size considerable compared with me. I selected the stabbing knife, the one with the long blade, and positioned it — thus!” He shot his right cuff and a gleaming spike appeared in his hand. “Then I jabbed at the soft underbelly...!”

“Enough!” The fat man shuddered tremendously. “Spare me these frightful details. I do not care to hear of your atrocities. What became of the man Carter?”

“But surely you will be interested in the finesse of my deed.”

“Silence!” The big moonface twisted with distaste and anger. “And do not try to tell me how bravely you suffered with your miserable shoulder. I want to know what further attempt you made to find Carter, and what happened to him.”

Laszlo’s sickly face looked hurt and sullen.

“He disappeared. There were radio reports that he had been abducted from his hotel room. I naturally assumed that Rufus’ men had found him.”

“Well, your natural assumption was wrong!” the fat man barked. “Or do you think it was his ghost who showed up in Duolo and took over the camp? And killed Rufus, or whatever he did to him? Can you explain why we have heard nothing from our own sources in Nyanga since your idiotic, fright-born killings in the herbalist’s shop and your equally idiotic flight to Dakar? No? I thought not! Stop trembling like a cowardly fool and put your sodden mind to work.”

The froggy eyes were glazed and the slim, killer’s hands were shaking. “Rufus dead?” Laszlo whispered. “Then who will take Nyanga for us?”

“Rufus is nothing,” growled the fat man. “We will find another Rufus — in Nyanga, or some other country. He is not important. Unless...” He leaned forward and stared piercingly at Laszlo. “Unless your careless tongue has slipped and you have told him where our headquarters are. Because if you have, and if he is still alive, then our entire African operation falls apart. And I will take you apart with my own bare hands.” The menace of his big, slightly sing-song voice lashed across the room.

“No-no-no!” Laszlo babbled. “I told him nothing, you must know that. I have always talked about you as if your orders come directly from Peking. He thinks you went back there after giving him the money and technicians. I was always careful to relay your messages as though...”

“You had better be right, Laszlo. You had better be. You have made enough mistakes. And one of them was to let Carter get as far as the Hop Club. There is one way to redeem yourself, and one way only.”

“Yes-yes? Yes?” Lazlo darted his head like a snake and waited eagerly.

“Find Carter,” the mountainous man said icily. “Find him quickly and bring him here to me.”

“But how can I find him?” Laszlo hissed desperately. “As far as I know, he has disappeared. He may be dead; he may have left the country.”

“You are a fool. He is not dead, and I can guarantee that he has not left Africa without trying to find out who was backing Rufus.” He frowned suddenly. “I can only hope that Teng and Chan had the grace to kill themselves before anyone could question them. They must have been seen in that mountain camp... But they are soldiers. They know what to do. Not like you, you miserable worm!” He banged his huge fist on the desk in a burst of rage. Laszlo flinched. “You! You have done nothing right. Find Carter, and I may — I may — decide not to punish you as I would like to. Don’t ask me where to find him — that is your problem. You can be sure he is no longer in Dakar. And there is nothing left for him to do in Nyanga, thanks largely to your bungling.” His thick voice was bitter and his huge face was a gargoyle mask of loathing. “So your task should be easy.”

Laszlo swallowed and his body shook. “But where?” he whimpered. “How?”

The vast fist slammed down again on the immense desk top. The fat man rose abruptly and the huge chair fell back behind him.

“I told you not to ask me that!” he roared. “But I will tell you, since that prying, spying creature must be found or he will ruin us! Show yourself. Make yourself public, as you have so successfully done before. Make him find you; he will want to find you. Dangle yourself like bait in front of him. Lure the shark. Where? you ask? Where?” The fat man’s face darkened into purple. “Where else but Casablanca? Don’t you think that you have let him find out enough by now so that he will come straight to Casablanca?”

The stubble-faced seaman who sat at the waterfront bar looked nothing at all like Nick Carter except for the muscular toughness of his body, and he was beginning to feel less like him as the hours and days went by. “Our man in Morocco” had been a mine of information about smuggling and narcotics and had offered a long list of places frequented by people specializing in either one. He had also provided the names of several brokers, importers and small shipping companies who seemed to prefer dealing with the East rather than with the West, and Nick had painstakingly enquired into every one of them. But so far the score was zero.

He ordered another beer and decided for the hundredth time that his best bet was to keep haunting the dives and the back streets in the hope of making contact with someone who would talk too much, try to sell him something, maybe lead him where the action was. It was a long shot, but not as long a shot as his even greater hope — that somewhere in these sinks and dens and flophouses he would catch sight of Green Face.

His eyes roamed casually around the noisy, smoke-filled barroom. There wasn’t a single customer in it that he would trust within reaching distance of his pocket, but neither was there one — not only here, but in any of the other dives — that he could remotely associate with Green Face or dope traffic or a mystery man known to him only as the Big One or the Fat One.

He and Liz had come to Casablanca the day after the meeting in Julian’s hospital room. With Abe, he had spent the remainder of the long day in fruitless questioning and investigation into the nature of the Red Chinese operations in Nyanga, and the whereabouts of Green Face and the Fat One. The day ended, as all good days should, in bed. After a while Nick and Liz had emerged from their haze of happiness, and she had asked him then if she could come with him to Casablanca.

“You’re a sucker for punishment, aren’t you?” he said admiringly. “Don’t you realize it could be dangerous? No, Liz, you’d better not come.”

“What can happen?” she murmured, brushing his ear with her lips. “I’ll stay quietly in the background. Anyway, after Duolo, I can put up with anything!”

He felt her large, firm, luscious breasts against his body and gave in without a struggle. But he did insist that they stay at separate hotels — he in a dump to suit his disguise and she in the comfortable Transatlantique — and arrange to meet with the greatest of caution.

And so she was window-shopping and taking sight-seeing tours from her hotel while Nick prowled the seamier parts of the city in his search for Green Face.

Two men who had been huddled at a corner table talking in low whispers got up and made their way — looking secretive and conspiratorial — out of the dingy bar. Nick suddenly decided to follow them. What the hell, he wasn’t accomplishing anything here, and they might just lead him some place he hadn’t thought of going.

They did. He followed them for several blocks before they scuttled furtively into a shambling house Nick knew — by hearsay — to be the local brothel. He gave up in disgust and headed slowly for his own hotel, intending to call Liz. But his route led past the Transatlantique, and he glanced automatically at its lobby doors as he passed. Several people were going in. And there was something very familiar about the back of one of them. Nick stopped and stared.

He’d have known that figure anywhere.