Safari for Spies

Pierre Gets the Creeps

The old herbalist had not been dead for very long. About as long as the plainclothesman in the lane, maybe, but not as long as the man with the permanent grin. And he had not died easily.

His legs were halfway out of the bed and the bedclothes were thrown back as if he had been getting up when someone had stopped him with two downward slashes of a knife and then left him for dead.

That was their mistake. The old man had bled copiously, and the still-wet blood made a pattern on the pathetic old nightshirt that showed that he had struggled to an awkward half-lying, half-sitting position and twisted to one side. Nick’s light slid from his body to the small table at the bedside. Its single drawer was open and revealed a typical old man’s collection of pills and cures obtained from the nearby modern drug store and some loose papers. Most of them were bills and receipts and some were blank notesheets. A couple of them had fluttered down to the floor. Nick turned the light on them and saw that they were also blank. Near them, almost under the bed, lay a chewed, blunt stub of pencil.

The light flickered back across the bed and the agonized face stared up at Nick accusingly. After trying to sit up the old man had fallen back on the bed and his scrawny arms lay limply by his sides. But the right hand was loosely open and the left was clenched into a fist. An edge of paper protruded from the gnarled black hand. Nick forced back the clutching fingers and withdrew it.

It was a pitiful attempt at a message. Nick stared at it for moments before he managed to decipher the painfully formed words. There were only two of them, and they seemed to be: Eyes Dakar.

Eyes... Dakar. He burned the words into his mind while he stuffed the paper into his pocket and made a lightning inspection of the room. There was nothing there but an old man’s carelessly kept clothes and few personal things. The single window looked down on the dark, back lane. Nothing stirred.

Nick left the one dead man and went back across the tiny landing to the other. He had left no messages, but Nick found a card identifying him as Alfred Gore, Electrician, Hotel Independence. The room smelled of blood, alcohol, and something else that Nick could not identify. An empty glass beside Gore’s chair reeked of the local whiskey, and so did the man’s horribly stained shirtfront. Laszlo of the Green Face and bulging eyes had evidently entertained him well before saying goodbye. There was no sign of the bottle or anything else... Bulging eyes. Eyes, Dakar. ‘Eyes’ had gone to Dakar?

And had covered his tracks behind him. Covered them with blood.

He had also taken with him anything that could possibly have been of any value to Nick, barring the scrawled note he had not known about. And of course the telephone extension that had been so handy for relaying information received from the Hotel Independence.

Maybe there was something of interest in the shop.

The watchers on the Avenida Independencia were still at their posts, blobs of thick darkness in the thinner darkness. Nick left them at their fruitless vigil and quickly made his way downstairs. He double-checked the backdoor latch to make sure that no one could steal in while he was in the front room, and then opened the door to the shop.

Something small and somehow rather horrible scrunched beneath his feet as he drew back the curtain and stepped into the musty little room. Beetle or roach, he thought, without dwelling on it, and moved silently toward the dim light at the front of the shop so that he could both use its faint glow behind him to look around and also shield his flashlight beam with his own body. Something scuttled across his feet as he reached the front door. Suddenly he was conscious of other sounds in the room — slithering, scurrying, fluttering sounds — as his passage through the room awakened something and annoyed it. Like the something that had scuttled softly across his feet.

The pencil beam of his flashlight swung low around the room, picking at the dusty shelves and searching for the eerie presence. He was the only human being in the room, unless...

His light jabbed at the floor. Something made one of those infinitesimal little movements and stopped a yard away from him. The probing flashlight sought and found it. The thing looked back at him. It had a reddish brown body slightly larger than a silver dollar, and eight long, reddish furry legs. A slight chill touched Nick’s spine. He saw a menace in miniature, a creature called “Red Devil” by the bush natives because its vicious spider’s bite stabbed like a pitchfork, burned like the flames of hell, paralyzed and killed.

It moved thoughtfully towards him, eyes glinting balefully in the pencil lightbeam.

Nick’s first thought was to crush it underfoot. Then he remembered the incredible speed with which these horrors could move when aroused, and how Hank Todd had died, writhing, after he had tried to step on one in the Uganda bush. It also occurred to him, in that same instant, that there were other things slithering around the room.

Jump over it and run like hell? Can’t get out of the front door — curse those useless watchers of Abe’s. And God knows what other lurking things were waiting to sink their fangs into him while he fumbled with the curtained back door.

The creature stopped and looked at him. A soft hissing sound came from the rear of the room. Nick played the beam of the flashlight quickly over the floor, praying that Red Devil wouldn’t take a flying leap at him in the darkness.

His first thought was one of amazement that he had managed to cross the room without stepping on anything more than a beetle. But it was probably his footsteps that had snapped them all horrifyingly to attention.

A second red devil was emerging from behind the counter, followed by a lizardlike creature Nick had never seen before. Red devil number two scuttled under the rear door curtain and stayed there, an armed guard covering the only possible exit. The floor between it and the first spider seemed to be twitching with strange life — spiders, beetles, lizards, scorpions of enormous size, and snakes. Jesus Christ, what snakes! Two — no, three, four — tiny, squirming, spitting bundles of death. Gaboon vipers, was it? The hell with the name. They were vipers, and they were murder.

A bat swooshed above his head. Nick started very slightly, and the devil near his feet zigzagged closer to him. The whole floor rippled and shuddered. It seemed to be converging on him like one vast, wallowing monster.

The flashlight, in its travels round the room, had found the shelves and counter and the tiny beasts and one straight-backed grimy chair that must have been used by clients waiting for some weird prescription of dead herbs and living venom. It might yet be Nick’s salvation.

He moved his feet cautiously and let the thin-beamed light play over the floor. The floor between him and the curtained door was writhing and hissing with strange life. He had time to curse himself for reacting too slowly to the slithering, shuffling sounds — yet it was only seconds since he had come into the room. Then the creatures closest to his feet — the first red spider, and a vicious little fork of lightning that he knew to be a viper — were moving in with horrible swiftness. He heard the hiss, and then he jumped.

The ancient chair teetered, fell back against the nearby wall, and straightened, creaking ominously. Even before it stopped its wild staggerings Nick had found his balance and was reaching into his pocket for the only tool that could possibly help him. As he found its reassuring, smooth, round shape he thought with grim humor of his own predicament. Ridiculous, he told himself, as he clamped the light between his teeth and his strong fingers twisted the small shape of Pierre. Like a woman scared of mice, leaping on the nearest chair.

But the things that shuffled and hissed around the chair legs were more monster than mice, and some of them could climb. Red devil number-something was already reconnoitering the left front leg and showing every sign of getting ready to climb it.

Nick held his breath and gave Pierre one final twist and tossed him lightly into the center of the writhing room.

The deadly gas pellet waited his usual thirty seconds before going silently to work. Pierre held a small but highly concentrated substance that sucked the air and gave back high-powered poison; Nick had seen strong men die of Pierre in seconds after the preliminary half-minute. But he had no experience with Pierre’s effect on animals, insects and snakes.

While he waited, lungs full of musty air and his mind on creeping things and “Eyes... Dakar” he swung the flashlight beam slowly around the room and wondered how he’d let himself be caught. From his new height he could see the open cages and the empty tanks behind the herbalist’s counter. Green-Face-Frog-Eyes must have had himself a nasty little ball before leaving for Dakar and killing a policeman on his way out. But why hadn’t he, super-sleuth Nick Carter, been aware of these skittering, scuffling things before? He swore at himself as he asked the question, and realized at once that he had only looked for human occupants before going on his way up stairs. And Eyes must have left long enough before so that the creatures would have quieted down. Or shortly enough before so that they were not yet free...?

The flash beam licked the floor beneath his feet. A viper spat back at him. Its tiny body twitched as though readying itself to jump, and the vicious spitting mouth opened and closed against the thickening air.

A red devil appeared suddenly on the wooden seat beneath Nick’s feet and tacked dazedly toward him. This time there was nothing to do but try to smash the creature. Nick raised his left foot and let death slither beneath it. The red devil sidled swiftly toward the standing right foot and Nick brought his free leg down in a lightning movement that would have befuddled any quick-thinking man. But the red spider was not a man. Some instinct made it dart free of the descending foot and scrabble up the outside of the right trouser leg. Nick’s foot came down uselessly on the wooden seat and the thing clung to the fabric of his pants. He swung his leg suddenly and violently as if he were kicking off a football game, and still the thing clung to his right trouser leg. Nick brought his leg far back, past the side of the chair, so that the thing was clinging to cloth separated from Nick’s vulnerable flesh by an inch of space. He felt it scuttle up to his knee, where the cloth was tighter and only its thickness separated him from death.

If he tried to strike it off, it would bite with deadly savageness. Wilhelmina would blow his knee to bits. Hugo could miss. The creeping bastard was still horribly alive and accurately swift. It was a wonder that it hadn’t bitten yet. Feeling Pierre quite badly now, most likely. Any second now it could fall off and die.

It didn’t. It tickled his knee and slithered up his thigh. Nick felt cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He held the lower part of his body still and relaxed, as his Yoga training had taught him, and reached slowly and carefully into his jacket pocket for the only other weapon he had.

He drew it out silently and brought it up against the slight but awful weight that settled on his upper leg. His left thumb flicked urgently against the tiny, corrugated wheel and the harsh flame of his cigarette lighter bit into his thigh. But first it bit the red-brown killer that clung to him like a demon lover, and the thing jerked hideously as the glossy back and furry legs caught fire. The killing flame showed the shriveling, convulsively kicking obscenity turning black, red sparks glinting at the base of its short hairs. It dropped onto the floor, a charred ball with eight bare, glowing legs. Its light went out.

Nick brushed out the small fire on his pants leg and willed himself not to feel the burning pain nor to breathe the acrid air. He stroked the flashlight beam across the floor. Ten little, nine little, eight little spider devils, seven little, six little, five little killer vipers, four little, three little, two little scorpions, one little green lizard dead. They drooped like dying leaves in the beam of his flashlight. At last the scuttling, fluttering, slithering noises stopped.

He waited another twenty seconds or so before stepping down from his perch into the sea of dead and crumpled things. Someone was walking slowly along the street outside. The footsteps stopped as he listened. Stopped and came back and stopped again, just outside the window. He could see the dimness of the room thickening slightly as the figure blocked out most of the little light that filtered through the junkpile window from the street. It was one of Abe’s men, and he had his nose almost pressed against the pane. Looking for a flickering light, no doubt, thought Nick. Well, he isn’t going to see it.

Nick bent into a low crouch and crept across the squishing floor beneath the level of the window. When he had cleared it and reached the shallow side of the room beyond the front door he straightened up and sidled to the back of the room, keeping one eye on the window and trying not to notice the repulsive sounds that came from underneath his feet. No one outside could possibly have heard them, but to him they sounded like bodies splattering on a sidewalk below the thirty-seventh floor.

He paused at the curtained door and watched Abe’s man turn and walk on. By this time Nick’s lungs were beginning to feel like overextended balloons and his ears were hearing the singing of a distant surf. He’d have to get outside — or to an open window — in a hurry. He chose the latter as he pushed aside the curtain and opened the inner door; there was no knowing what he might meet in the lane.

The stairboard creaked as usual as he raced up to the landing and threw himself into the old man’s room. The dead eyes seemed to watch him with acute dislike and disapproval. Nick dropped to his knees at the partly open window and sucked in the cool night air. When his breathing became normal he raised the window as far as it would go, and then crossed into the other room to open the shutters and the shutter-type windows. To anyone watching it would seem a normal enough thing for a man to do in the middle of the night if he woke up in a stuffy room. A fresh draft swished across the upstairs landing. He wished he could open the back door to be sure that Pierre’s lethal fumes would have dispersed by the time Abe’s men decided to investigate the place, but that was much too chancy. Given the slightest break, Pierre would have enough time to leave quietly by the windows. He himself would probably have to do the same, and do it now.

Two of Abe’s watchmen on the Avenida Independencia were standing together and conferring. Then one walked away and joined the third for another brief conference. Nick wondered if the men at the back were supposed to do the same. They must surely have periodic checks with each other.

The poor bloodsoaked bastard in the alley. First sight of him and they’d come crashing into the house. He’d have to stall them somehow, even if only for minutes.

Nick filled his lungs with air and ran down into the mustiness of the lower floor. He unlatched the back door carefully and looked out through a narrow crack before stepping outside. The night was silent. His eyes and his senses told him that he was the only living thing in the lane. Then he pulled the door wide open.

Abe’s backdoor-man was lying where Nick had found him. His blood was drying rapidly now in the rising breeze. The second of the rearguard watchers was out of sight, but Nick could hear two sets of quiet footsteps meet and stop. That made it seem that watcher number one checked with watcher number two; number two turned to number three; number three walked to number four; number four would look for number five and wouldn’t find him; number four would whistle to number three and together they’d find Carter with three bodies and a mouthful of explanations. That kind of predicament would be embarrassing for the special representative of a government already deep in dutch with the Nyangese and their Russian friends. Nick’s eyes skimmed the rooftops while he hoisted the unwieldy body. Maybe. Yes, he could make it if he had to. And he would almost certainly have to — it wasn’t likely he could get past two living men alert to danger.

He hauled the cumbersome shape down the lane and through the open doorway, setting it down gently just inside the door. As he closed the door he heard the footsteps start again. This time there was only one pair of them, and they were coming closer. Holding his breath against the lingering death-fumes of Pierre, Nick locked the door hastily and took the stairs in several light, loping bounds. From a vantage point in the old man’s room, near the window but hidden from outside, he looked down into the lane and saw Abe’s man saunter toward the back door and past it. In seconds he was out of sight, his soft footfalls fading, stopping, and then getting louder again. He paused somewhere near the window and Nick could hear him give a low whistle. Again he started to walk, this time hesitantly as though he were peering into the shadows. If he peered into the right shadow, he’d be sure to see the blood.

But he walked back past the door and repeated the low whistle. Nick risked a quick look to see him reach the end of the lane and just stand there, staring around like a lost sheep. Without waiting for him to come to his senses Nick pulled himself onto the high windowsill and chinned himself swiftly up to the outer lintel. From there it was only a foot or so to the roof, which looked flat from below and was probably — he hoped — cement-finished or asphalted. He propelled himself upward with his feet pushing against the window frame and his arms reaching from lintel to edge of roof. In a moment he was grasping the edge and hauling himself up on to it. It was asphalted. A herd of elephants could walk across it and not be heard. He crouched low on it and looked down over the edge. The lane was empty for a moment, but as he watched a second man joined Abe’s inept alley-watcher and the two of them pussyfooted warily into the lane with the exaggerated care of men walking on dinosaur eggs. Nick left them to their gruesome search and took off from his roof to the one next door at a silent running crouch. From there he could see that one of Abe’s watchers was still at the front but the second was moving around to take the place of the one who had joined the fourth in search of their buddy. And a useless bloody lot they were, too, Nick thought disgustedly.

But they probably weren’t trained for this sort of thing. Abimako’s crimes, until recent months, had never been much more than simple thefts and occasional brawls. Besides that, all of Abe’s best men were busy hunting for bomb-throwers and assassins.

His progress across the roofs was as silent and unseen as a sleek black cat setting out at night across the tiles. He lowered himself just as quietly at the end of the block and crossed the street out of sight of the police-watcher on the Avenue. After that he made good time back to Liz’ house, again approaching it slowly, cautiously.

He hoped Liz was still asleep.

Still as stealthy as a black cat, he let himself in through the window.

Liz was not in bed.

He found her in the living room sipping a cold beer and glancing at a magazine.

“You’ve been gone for simply hours,” she said. “I woke up, I was thirsty, and I missed you. Have a bottle. You look thirsty, too.”

Wordlessly, he took a beer bottle and flicked off the cap.

“What in the world have you been doing,” Liz asked, managing to sound not so much nosy as politely interested, “to get a hole burned in your pants?”

“Getting ready for Dakar,” he said. “Cheers.”