The Black Death

Chapter 13

Half an hour later, dressed as high rankers in the Haitian Army — decked in plumage finer than even Sutton Place doormen — we entered an elevator and started downward. No sweat. No interference. P.P., at my urging, had dispatched every available guard and officer to the gate, to patrol the fence and organize pursuit of the invasion forces. I had an inward chuckle about that. Some invasion force! Lyda, Hank Willard and Duppy.

I washed my face and took out the contact lenses. The uniform was a miserable fit — I had to slash a lot of seams with the stiletto — but I was the very model of a modern major general. In Papa Doc’s army. P.P. outranked me, the old bastard.

I was walking a very thin plank and knew it. Killing the girl had cowed them both, which was my intention, and I had to act before the shock wore off. And before Thomas, the black, began having second thoughts. I thought I could trust Thomas, to a point, but I did not give him a weapon. I left the Tommy gun in the suite and herded them into the elevator with the Luger.

As we descended Trevelyn took off his glasses to clean them and for the first time I saw his eyes. Small, set too close to his nose, with a sly bird-like dark twinkle, they told me nothing that I didn’t already know. P.P. was an amoral man, not immoral. A constitutional psychopath who inherited a fortune in millions and built it into billions, and became the slave of those billions. He was a sincere man. He really believed that his billions gave him the right, the burden and the duty, to call tunes for the world. A sort of reverse noblesse oblige.

I herded them through corridors and sub-basements, P.P. shuffling in the lead on arthritic legs, to a large room where there was a turntable for narrow gauge tracks emerging from a tunnel. On the table was a small electric car with three padded leather cross seats.

I indicated the car with the Luger. “Goes to the Citadel?”

“Yes.” P.P. lurched painfully into the car and sank back; with a sigh. He wasn’t faking his pain or his decrepitude. The old boy had just about had it. I wondered how it felt to leave all those billions behind.

Thomas, now a full Colonel — and looking smart and handsome in the uniform — took over the controls Thomas was having second thoughts. Not about his own plight so much as about me. Thomas was just beginning to realize to fully and actually know, that I had killed the girl in cold blood. He had to think that, since he couldn’t know my real reasons for the killing. And he knew I was AXE and he knew what that mean!. Thomas was wondering what I would do to him when I no longer needed him.

“Take her away,” I said. Thomas touched a lever and the car glided into the tunnel, running smoothly with a near silent whir of electric motor. I sat in the rear, covering them the Luger on my knee and out of sight below the side of the Cap P put on his dark glasses and peered at me. He appeared to have recovered some of his cool, but I sensed that it was superficial. The knowledge that I was AXE had put a deep gut fear into him.

He surprised me when he said, “It has come to my attention that some of the natives, from time to time, put a voodoo curse on me. Do you believe in the efficacy of such charms, Mr. Bennett?”

I thought it time to give him another shock. Things were going smoothly, greased by fear, and I wanted them to continue that way.

“My real name is Carter,” I said. “Nick Carter. Thomas made a sound in his throat and gaped at me. P.P. stared at me and his claw-like hands twitched and he shriveled a bit into the garish uniform. There was a quaver m his cancer-ruined voice when he spoke.

“The Nick Carter! Of course. I should have guessed that.”

I grinned at him. “Now you know. As to the efficacy of voodoo curses — until recently I didn’t believe in them. Now I do.”

“You do?”

“Of course. Simple. I’m here, P.P. I am the obeah!”

P.P. fell silent. He folded his hands in his lap and stared down at them. Thomas, dumb struck, stared at me with eyes that grew larger by the second.

We whined along the narrow rails. The tunnel was tall and broad and well lighted by overhead bulbs caged in wire. There was a dank smell of recently finished concrete.

I brought the Luger into view. “How long till we get to the Citadel?”

“Half an hour’s ride.” P.P. shrugged his puny shoulders. “The cars are slow. I have been meaning to get new ones, faster ones, but there has been so much that needs doing. A new power plant, for instance. Mine is no longer adequate now that this tunnel has been completed. But when a man is dying he tends to postpone matters. Now, of course, it is not really important.”

“Valdez stays in the Citadel all the time? He never comes to your place? You used the decoy to create the illusion that he commuted? And to give anyone who wanted it a good shot at him?”

Silence but for the small whine of the car. P.P. twined his yellowed fingers. Then: “Yes to all your questions. I have not seen Valdez, face to face, for weeks. He has insisted that it be that way, that he be allowed to work in peace. But you are laboring under a delusion, Mr. Carter. Valdez does not want to be rescued. He will not leave this place. I have already paid him ten million dollars, deposited in a Swiss bank, with another ten million to come when he successfully completes his work. You can see the odds against you.”

I smiled at him. “Valdez will come with me. Or—”

I did not have to finish it. P.P. nodded and shrugged. “Or you will murder him, too. Of course. I thought those might be your instructions.”

The car rounded and approached a well-lighted platform. A guard in a black uniform was pacing back and forth, a rifle on his shoulder. I lowered the Luger out of sight.

“Not a word or a move out of you two,” I said. “I’ll handle him. Thomas, you take the musette bag. Careful of it. Drop it or bump it and we all go sky high.”

Thomas nodded and worked his lever. The car glided to a stop by the platform. The guard approached us. I smiled at him and nodded to P.P.

“Help Mr. Trevelyn,” I said. “He isn’t feeling very well.”

He made no move to obey. He was big and black, wearing the same dark uniform, but there was something different about him. He was grim and uneasy, confused by our sudden appearance, yet it was more than that. Then I got it. This wasn’t P.P.’s man! Whose, then?

I did the only thing I could. I lashed at him, “Come on, man. Move! We’re in a hurry to see Dr. Valdez.”

Reluctantly he bent over the car and extended a hand to P.P. I laced him over the ear with the butt of the Luger. He fell into the car. I looked at Thomas. “Tie him with his belt and gun sling and gag him. Hurry.”

I prodded old P.P. with the Luger. “Let’s go, pops.” I gave him a hand up. Even with his paunch he didn’t weigh over a hundred.

P.P. looked down at the unconscious guard. “I don’t understand you, Mr. Carter. Why not simply kill him?”

“I decide who I kill and who I don’t.”

“But the girl? Poor Betty? Surely—”

“Poor Betty was KGB,” I told him. “A dumb American commie who did what she was told to do.” I watched his face. “She suckered you, P.P. Betty was Kremlin all the way.” Some of it had been in Hawk’s precis. The rest — guesswork to a certain extent. But Duppy’s file, Diaz Ortega’s file, read: almost invariably works with a female partner. Usually an American or European. Usually white. Never uses black or Russian females. See file Bettina Smid, born NYC, 1939… The cross reference meant they had worked together before. Duppy had signaled someone in P.P.’s mansion. It couldn’t be a coincidence. If it was, and I was wrong, I would burn a candle for her.

Trevelyn’s mouth hung open. His teeth must have cost him thousands. He gaped at me. “You mean that all this while I have been—?”

I wagged the Luger at him. “Yes. Think about it on the move. Where is Valdez?”

“Down this tunnel.”

We were under the Citadel. The tunnel was new, and some of the storerooms were new, but a lot of it was old dungeons and caves. Some were well lit, some dark. In some of the lighted rooms I saw stacks of crates and boxes and several long shiny missiles mounted on steel horses.

P.P. slogged ahead, dragging his feet. Thomas walked level with me, where I could keep an eye on him, lugging the musette bag like it contained eggs. In a way it did.

“How much farther to Valdez?”

P.P. stumbled to a wall and gasped for breath, holding on to a light bracket for support. “Not too far. Around the next bend. But I don’t think I–I can’t—”

I grinned at him. “Yes you can, P.P. Think positive. Be like the little engine.”

Before we rounded the bend we passed a brilliantly lit cave cut into the solid stone of the mountain. There was no guard on the entrance. I halted our little party and peered in, hiding the Luger behind my leg.

The cave was long and deep. Six long narrow tables stretched from end to end of the cave. On each table was a missile. Longer, thicker, fatter, than any missiles I had seen up to now. They were all painted black. Men were working around the missiles, polishing and making deft adjustments — with small shiny wrenches.

I watched P.P. He was staring with a very odd expression on his ravaged face. He began to shake. I saw him clasp his hands and squeeze them to keep his fingers still.

I jeered at him. “What’s wrong, P.P.? Something new been added — something else you didn’t know about?”

I was fishing. I didn’t know anything. Yet there was no question that the black missiles had somehow shaken the old man.

He shook his head and muttered, more to himself than to me. “There is something wrong here. Something I don’t understand at all.”

I gave him a little push. “Right. Let’s go find Valdez. Maybe he can explain.”

We trekked on down the tunnel. It took a right angle turn and ended in a large scooped-out cavern. The cavern was full of desks and filing cabinets and drawing boards. Maps and sheafs of blue prints hung from the walls. At the very end of the cavern a man sat at a desk, his face limned in the drop light. He watched us approach.

I herded Thomas a little forward so that both he and P.P. were in front of me. I whispered. “Do just as I tell you. Keep quiet. I’ll handle everything.” I screwed the Luger into P.P.’s spine a bit. “That is Dr. Romera Valdez?”

“Yes. That is Dr. Valdez.”

There were only the four of us in the cavern. A clock I showed a little’ after four. Dawn soon. From behind us, far down the corridor, came the faint tinkle of metal on metal. [For some reason my scalp began to crawl.

The man at the desk turned easily to face us. He did not rise, but crossed one long leg over the other and lounged * against the desk, one arm resting on a half-open drawer. He wore a gray lightweight suit, white shirt and blue tie in a I meticulous knot, blue socks and well-polished black shoes. His thick hair was tinged with gray and heavily pomaded. A pencil thin bristle of moustache covered a long upper lip. His nose was long and straight, jib sharp, and heavy sallow lids I hooded dark eyes as he watched us. He wore a gold wrist I watch and the fingers of his right hand bore several gold rings. He looked exactly as Lyda Bonaventure had described I him.

We came down an aisle flanked by desks and drawing! boards. A dozen feet from Valdez I said, “Okay. Stop right here.”

I peered between Thomas and P.P. at the man seated at the desk. He made no move to rise. Made no move at all. Just watched me with those hooded eyes. He had a certain type of Latin male beauty, aging a bit now, and I saw how Lyda could have loved him.

Something was wrong and I knew it and it bugged me. But I couldn’t place it. I tried the light touch, but I was careful to let Valdez see the Luger.

“Dr. Romera Valdez, I presume?”

He inclined his head very slightly. “I am Dr. Valdez. Who are you, sir?”

I told him who I was and why I was there. He listened, expressionless, his dark eyes examining the three of us. Behind that smooth aquiline facade a lot of thinking was going on.

I wagged the Luger at him. “We better get moving, Doctor. We’re running on a very tight schedule and the worst is still ahead of us. I’m hoping that you know a safe way out of the Citadel.”

His smile displayed perfect teeth. “I do, yes. But I have no intention of going with you, Mr. Carter. You, and Miss Bonaventure, and your superiors in the United States Government, you are all laboring under a delusion. I have no desire to be saved, as you put it. I am perfectly content here working for Mr. Trevelyn and Dr. Duvalier. I am well paid and well treated. I have, fortunately, come to see the error of my ways, of my former thinking. I am very afraid, Mr. Carter, that you have wasted your time.”

Before I could answer old P.P. broke in. He had been fidgeting and breathing hard, like he had something heavy on his mind, and now the words gushed from his diseased throat in a torrent.

“That woman, Valdez! That Betty you got for me… she… Carter here says she KGB… explanation… I can’t think… and those black missiles… I never knew of them.… I demand, Valdez… I demand…”

Habit was too strong for the old man. Dying, tortured by pain and perversity, captive and helpless, he still thought himself the money god and that his whim was law. He ranted to Valdez. Valdez realized that bluff was hopeless and went for broke. I got caught like a sitting duck, the truth eluding me for the split second it took Valdez to reach into the drawer and come out with the machine pistol. Just too late I flopped on my belly, remembering the musette bag and grabbing for it as Thomas took a burst in the belly and folded down on me. Dying from bullets intended for me.

I rolled over frantically, trying to get behind a desk, the Luger extended at arm’s length and spitting at Valdez. He was standing now, wide legged, bracing himself against the desk as I hit him, swaying, but hosing away with the machine pistol. The old man caught a clutch of lead in the throat, drastic surgery, and spun around and fell across the black. Bright red arterial blood spurted from his mouth.

I took a slug along my ribs that made me yelp.

I cosseted the musette bag — better a slug in me than in it — and lay on the floor and blasted with the Luger until the clip ran out. The machine pistol gave a final burp and quit.

I fumbled another clip into the Luger while I watched him die. He dropped the machine pistol with a clatter of metal on stone. He clung to the desk and swayed, fighting to keep his feet. He looked at the front of his nice gray suit, where I had put four in around his heart, and then he looked at me and he tried to speak and couldn’t make it. His knees hinged and failed and he spun across the desk and then slid to the floor.

I was soaked in blood. Mine and that of Thomas and the old man. I grabbed the musette bag and leaped for the desk. I grabbed the dead man’s head and wrenched it forward and saw the scars faint behind the ears and along the jaw line.

I heard shouts and the pound of running feet. I saw the iron door ten feet from the desk, set into the wall, now slightly open and stuccoed with concrete to make it blend into the wall. Valdez’ private entrance. My way out of the trap. I darted through it like a ferret into a rabbit hole and slammed it shut and dropped an iron bar into place. I had a few seconds.

The narrow tunnel slanted upward. I ran. In dim yellow light that flickered and faded and came back and then faded again. I was running for my life but I still caught the rhythm as the yellow bulbs faded and glowed. Code! Someone was working a transmitter with power from the same generator that supplied the lights.

I rounded a corner and saw a splotch of light on the tunnel floor ahead. It came from a cave. I ran on my toes, the Luger ready, and peered in. It was a radio room. A man was sitting at a transmitter, wearing earphones, pounding on a key. In one corner, where the cave had been vented to carry off the fumes, a small generator was roaring away.

I was behind the operator before he knew I was there. I slammed his skull with the Luger butt, and he went sleepy-by, and I eased him down and sat in his chair. Carter had just come up with a very sneaky idea.

I sent it in clear, in plaintalk, so that Papa Doc’s DF stations would be sure to read it loud and clear. There was no time for subtlety and I had to hope they would believe and not look for the gimmick. I sent it with a hard fist, pounding it out into the Haitian dawn:

Red Hammer to Black Swan — have taken Citadel — Valdez and Trevelyn dead — our missiles safe — proceed at once with invasion as planned — blacks all uprising and will rendezvous you Gonaives — strike hard and long live freedom — Bennett.

I sent it twice. With what Hawk has called my fiendish grin. It would be a good ploy if it worked, and Papa Doc and his Army and Air Force, and the Tonton Macoute, were going to be one busy bunch of bastards. Gonaives was the logical town for a rendezvous. It was southwest of the Citadel; I intended to run like hell to the northwest.

It was quiet but for the hum of the generator. I had a little time yet. I got a wad of plastique from the musette bag and shaped it and decided that the transmitter console was as likely a spot as any. I didn’t have any idea what the weather was like outside, and I had to guess and take a chance. I was using a barometric fuse.

I worked fast, not wanting to think about it, and hooked the detonator into the fuse and set it for high pressure. I gave myself as much margin as I could and it wasn’t much. Nothing happened and I was still in one piece and I eased the console shut and grabbed the musette bag and legged it to hell out of there. The plastique was new stuff, super, invented by the AXE people and roughly equivalent to ten tons of TNT. I wished to be far away when it let go. Where I really wanted to be was on the bounding main, heading Stateside, but I didn’t count too much on it.

I started down the tunnel again. Gradually the throbbing of the generator faded away. I came to an iron ladder set into the stone and leading upward through the top of the tunnel. Mist coiled down on me, and cold rain touched my face, and I breathed again. I had guessed right on the weather. That pressure fuse wouldn’t trip the detonator until the weather cleared.

There had been no pursuit, no effort to take me or cut me off, and until now I had been too busy to think much about it. Now I did and I heard the sound of gunfire funneling down the shaft and I understood a little. They were fighting up there. Who was fighting whom I didn’t know, any more than I knew why they were fighting, but it made me very happy. If they kept their little intramural war going maybe I could fade quietly away into the jungle and head Tor the coast.

I sighed. Before I could do that I had to get off the Citadel. I had to presume that my tunnel was blocked at both ends. I didn’t want to go back and I didn’t think it would be much healthier forward. That left the ladder. I started climbing.