The Golden Serpent

Chapter 3 A Chinese Fist

As Nick Carter was about to leave the airport in San Diego, a compact, hard-faced man, who had been lounging about the entrance, spoke to him. The man had an unlit cigarette in his mouth and he was fumbling in his pockets. As Nick approached he said, “Pardon, buddy. You got a match?”

Nick, who had been wondering about his pickup, produced a large, kitchen-size match and struck it on his shoe. The man nodded slightly. “I’m Sergeant Preston, sir. Marine C.I.C. I’ve got a car waiting.”

The Sergeant took Nick’s bag and led him to a jazzy little sports roadster. As the AXEman tried to squeeze his big frame into the bucket seat he said, “I’ve often wondered what would happen if the wrong guy happened to be using kitchen matches on a particular day. It could result in a lulu of a mixup.”

The Sergeant proved humorless. His cold eyes flicked over Nick without a smile. “Not likely to happen, sir. Very few men use them.”

It was a beautiful July day, all gold and blue and breezy, and Nick relaxed. “Where are we going, Sergeant?”

“Not very far with me, sir. Seven or eight blocks, then I drop you off.”

A few minutes later the driver turned off Chula Vista Avenue onto a quiet side street. He stopped beside a long black sedan. “Here you are, sir. There’s a gentleman waiting for you.”

The gentleman was Hawk, looking thin and tired in the vastness of the rear seat. He appeared to have been sleeping in his seersucker suit, and his old brown straw hat was limp and soiled. His shirt collar was dirty and his tie had been pulled into a Gordian knot. His face, the color and texture of old parchment, cracked around his unlit cigar as he greeted Nick.

“You look fine,” said Hawk. “Nice tan. As though you had just stepped out of a bandbox. As usual.” Hawk was given to such old-fashioned expressions.

Nick sank into the seat beside his Chief and looked the older man up and down. “That’s more than I can say for you, sir. You look a little beat up.”

Hawk gave a command to the driver, who wore chauffeur’s livery, and closed the glass partition. “I know,” he said. “I feel beat up. I haven’t been lolling on any beach watching the bikinis go by.” He rolled his cigar to the other side of his mouth and added, “But I don’t begrudge you, my boy. You’re going to earn that vacation — retroactively, you might say.” He stared at Nick with a hint of good-natured malice in his shrewd old eyes.

Nick lit one of his gold-tipped cigarettes. “Rough one, sir?”

Hawk nodded. “You might say that, son. Maybe rough, maybe not, but sure as hell complicated. If I allowed myself profanity I would call it a many-faceted sonofabitch! That’s why I wanted to see you before we go to the briefing — get a few things straight. The deal is, Nick, we’re lending you to the CIA. They asked for you specifically and of course I had to go along.”

Nick repressed a grin.

Hawk rolled down a window and tossed away his chewed cigar. He popped a fresh one into his mouth. “Their budget is four times ours,” he said with satisfaction. “Yet they have to come to us when they get in a real jam. I knew they would, of course. What I didn’t expect was that the head man, in person, would come to us. He’s here now, in San Diego. We’ll be meeting him at the Naval Air Station in a few minutes. I thought you had better know. Better than just walking in and meeting him cold.”

Nick Carter nodded. He knew what was troubling his boss. “I’ll mind my manners,” he said gravely. “I’ll speak only when spoken to, and I won’t forget to ‘sir’ him. Okay?”

Hawk shot him a glance. “Never mind the levity, son. And you know I’m not worried about your manners. It’s just that, well, you know how CIA and AXE see things a lot differently sometimes. It figures. We’re in different lines of endeavor, so to speak. All I want you to do is listen. Listen and digest and be polite. Play along. Then we’ll do it our own way. Understand?”

Nick said he understood. It was not the first time the situation had arisen. AXE was a small, tight, compact outfit with very definite ideas on how to do its job; CIA was a great sprawling complex of men and facilities and functions, with aims and motives usually different from those of AXE. Some friction was inevitable.

On the way up from Acapulco Nick had been doing some thinking. Now he asked, “Does this mission have anything to do with that wave of phony five-dollar bills?”

Hawk nodded. “Right the first time. I’m surprised that you know about that. You mean you tore yourself away from your fleshpots long enough to read a newspaper?”

Nick shook his head and smiled. “Nope. Radio. I was in bed at the time.”

“I’ll bet.”

“They don’t seem to be passing them in Mexico,” Nick said.

Hawk nodded. “That makes sense. If we’ve got this thing doped right, the bad stuff is coming from Mexico. They wouldn’t want to foul their own nest. But there is a lot more to this than just the counterfeit bills. A hell of a lot more. Most of it I don’t know myself yet. That’s why we’re going to meet Mr. Big. He dropped all his other chores and flew out here to talk to you personally. That, son, will give you some slight idea of just how important this mission is!” Nick whistled softly. Not a man to be easily impressed, he was impressed now. It looked as if he would be returning to Mexico muy pronto. This time he doubted if there would be any Angies...

Half an hour later Nick and Hawk had been locked into a snug, map-lined room in a sub-basement of the Naval Air Station. Outside a red light was burning over the door. Nick had been introduced, had shaken hands, and had undergone a searching scrutiny by a pair of coldly intelligent eyes. The head of the CIA was a big man, husky, with a nose that might have been flattened in a fight or football, a pugnacious jaw, and a mop of flaming red hair.

Nick sat quietly and waited. Smoking was permitted and he lit a gold tip and amused himself by watching Hawk try to restrain his natural militancy and pride in AXE. Hawk was a fire eater and saw red at any hint of condescension. Try to patronize Hawk and you were in trouble. The trouble here, Nick thought, was that although the men held equal rank — CIA was senior. And Hawk knew it.

Hawk and Nick remained seated while the CIA chief paced briefly, a pointer in his hand. He hesitated a moment before a map, then came to stand before Nick. “Do you carry a cyanide pill, Carter? Or any device that will give you a quick and easy death?”

Nick met the cold eyes steadily. “No, sir. I never have.”

“You will on this mission. You’re going to hear things in this room that are beyond top secret. The fact is that we don’t have an adequate label for these things — call them top secret and you still don’t quite get it. Do I make myself clear?”

Hawk, a little gruffly, said: “Carter’s clearance is the same as mine, Rad. You know what that is.” It was as high as they came. Hawk, along with the CIA man and a few others, was on a level with the President in security matters.

The CIA chief nodded. “I know, David. But he will carry a cyanide pill, or an equivalent. He will use it if he is taken and made subject to torture. I’m senior, and I’m in command of this mission by direct orders of the President. Cyanide is an order!”

Hawk looked at Nick, who thought he detected a slight flutter of wink as his boss said, “You will carry cyanide, Nick.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay,” said the CIA man. “Let’s get on with it. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. I think the best way is for you two to listen while I run through the whole thing. Save your questions until afterward. You can take notes if you like, Carter, but burn them before you leave this room.”

Nick smiled. “No need for that, sir. I remember very well.”

“All right. Here we go. For convenience, and to help you remember, I’m going to divide this briefing into two main parts — the facts, what we actually know; and the educated guesses we’re making, the hypotheses. As you must know, in any operation such as this we have to go by guess and by God and hope we’re right.”

The big redheaded man went to the desk and picked up something. He handed it to Nick. The AXE agent examined it carefully. It was a golden bracelet in the form of a serpent with its tail in its mouth. Nick ran his fingers over the thing and detected minute flutings, or ridges, just in back of the flat head.

The CIA man was watching him. “You feel them, eh? They’re hard to see. The workmanship is poor, but those little ridges are supposed to be feathers.”

Nick took a small magnifying glass from his pocket and examined the bracelet again. He could see now that it was only gold plate, and slovenly made. He put the glass away and handed the bracelet back to the CIA man. He had known the symbol instantly.

“That’s the Feathered Serpent,” he said. “The symbol of the old Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl.”

The CIA man seemed pleased. A grim smile hovered on his hard face for a moment. He tossed the bracelet back on the desk. “Right. It is also the symbol, or insignia, of a new political party in Mexico. They use the bracelets as we use campaign buttons. They call themselves the Radical-Democrats, or the Serpent Party, and just to give you an idea of the party line — they’re yelling for the return of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to Mexico!”

Even Hawk was jolted out of his usual composure. “What? That’s incredible! They must be a bunch of nuts.”

The CIA man shrugged. “Not so nuts, maybe. Of course the leaders don’t believe that nonsense themselves — but it sounds good to the peasants in the poor districts. That doesn’t concern us now — what does concern us is that our experts think the bracelets are made in China. And I don’t mean Taiwan!”

Hawk was thinking: so it is the Dragon after all.

The CIA boss picked up the bracelet again and spun it on his finger. “This was taken from a dead man. He crashed his plane in Texas and a Ranger saw the crash and found the wreckage. He found something else, too. Two suitcases loaded with counterfeit five-dollar bills. We were notified immediately and got right to work. I think our men have done a tremendous job. We sealed off the area and went over that plane with a glass, you might say. I think we’ve milked it for all it’s worth.”

He went to a map and with a red crayon drew a small circle in Texas near the Mexican border. “The plane crashed here, in Big Bend Park. Luckily for us it didn’t burn. From the amount of gas left in the tanks we were able to plot a back trail for the plane. Within a certain radius, of course. That helped a little, but it was only a start. From the dried mud, and some twigs and leaves on the undercarriage, our men managed to narrow it down a bit more. Most important was the mud — it came from gold-bearing earth. We found very faint traces of gold ore.”

“There’s a lot of gold in Mexico,” Hawk said. “And it’s a hell of a big country.”

The CIA man’s smile was cold. “Exactly, David. A hell of a big country. But we got a little lucky. By reverse projection we could establish a possible takeoff point for the plane that crashed — always within a certain radius, naturally. But we were looking for gold country, and for country where the vegetation matched what was found caught in the undercarriage, all within the imaginary line based on the gas consumption of the plane. We think we’ve found it.” The CIA man drew another red circle, larger this time, on the map. Nick went close to study it.

The demarcated area was on the west coast of Mexico, roughly parallel with the mouth of the Bay of California. The red arc ran inland through Mazatlan as far as Durango, then curved north into the Sierra Madre range. The line came back to the Bay at Los Mochis, on the alternate Pan American Highway.

Nick Carter stared at the CIA man. “That is a hell of a lot of territory — for one man.” He knew, of course, that he was going to have to do this alone.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” The CIA man made a dot on the map. “Right here, between the villages of La Cruz and Elota, there is an airstrip. It’s privately owned and being used now — I’ll tell you about that later — but formerly it was used to fly out gold shipments. That’s gold mining country around there, or used to be. Our best information is that it’s mined out now. Deserted. And it is also pretty wild country. Bandit country. I’ll tell you about the bandits later, too.”

Hawk walked to the map now, a cigar drooping from his thin mouth. “That’s the only airstrip around there?”

“As far as we know. We’re pretty certain that the plane that crashed must have come from that strip. Everything fits. The earth specimens, the vegetation, the gas consumption.” The CIA man pointed to the larger circle again. “The counterfeit is being made, or at least distributed, somewhere in here.”

Hawk was looking skeptical. “Maybe. But it seems a little too simple to me. That plane, I mean, flying over the border with a load of queer money in broad daylight. Just asking for trouble. Those counterfeiters are a lot smarter than that — look at how they plastered the country with those bills before the T-men woke up. No. Something’s wrong with that picture.”

The CIA man rubbed his thatch of red hair. Of a sudden he looked tired and strained. “You’re right, of course. That’s, been puzzling us, too. But we’ve got a sort of a theory about it. The pilot’s name was Antonio Vargas. A renegade type, from what we can get out of Mexico City. He was booted out of the Mexican Air Force some years ago. And he had a reputation as a drunk. We’re inclined to think that maybe he was working for himself this time — he just snatched a load of counterfeit and took off. Maybe he had cooked up some sort of deal in the States. That’s not really important to us now.”

Nick ran his finger around the red circle. “You want me to go in there and see what I can find?”

“We do,” said the boss of the CIA, “But that is only your primary mission. There is a lot more to it than you’ve heard so far.” He glanced at his watch. “I suggest we take ten, gentlemen. I could use a drink.”

Nick settled for sandwiches and a beer. Hawk and the man from CIA took bourbon and Scotch respectively. When they had finished, the CIA man relaxed at his desk and lit a cigar. Hawk began to gum a fresh one. Nick sat near the wall map, studying it, and smoked a cigarette.

Neither he, nor Hawk was prepared for the bomb.

“The Chinese Reds,” said the CIA man in an ordinary conversational tone, “have a fleet of six nuclear subs. Snorkels. Some of them are capable of carrying midget subs, of launching and recovering them at sea. We think one of those subs is lying somewhere around the Gulf of California right now.”

It was the first time Nick had ever seen Hawk look truly shocked. Frightened. “Nuclear subs? Good God! You’re sure there’s no mistake?”

The redheaded man shook his head. “No mistake. I wish there were. They’ve got them, all right. Capable of launching missiles, too. Only they haven’t got any missiles. Yet.”

Nick felt his guts tighten. Chinese subs prowling the Pacific coast! It was not a pretty picture.

The CIA man was looking at him. “That’s why I insist on the cyanide,” he said. “You have to know about the subs so you can do your job properly, but you mustn’t talk if you’re captured and tortured. It cost us a few million dollars and the lives of six agents to find out about those subs. The Chinese have guarded that secret the way we guarded the atomic bomb. But we found out. We know where those subs are. But the Chinese don’t know that we know — and they must never find out! If they do find out they’ll move the subs, they’ll just disappear, and we’ll have to start all over again. Above all we must keep them thinking that their secret is safe.”

Again the CIA chief went to the map. He touched the Gulf of California with the glowing tip of his cigar, leaving an ash smudge. “I said the Chinese have six subs. So they have. But only five are where they should be at the present time. We’re guessing that the other one, the sixth sub, is lying around this vicinity somewhere. We think that it is somehow tied in with the counterfeiting — and also with the Serpent Party. And I’ll admit we’re getting pretty hypothetical now. Still, we’ve got a few clues and—”

“The paper,” Hawk broke in. “That nearly perfect paper the phony bills are printed on. The Chinese invented paper!”

The CIA man nodded. “It’s a possibility that we’ve considered. That they’re running in the paper for the bills. But the Chinese didn’t make those plates, or so our experts tell us. But more of that later. Right now let’s concentrate on this sub we think is messing around off the Mexican coast.”

The CIA man swished the dregs of his Scotch around in his glass and gazed at the ceiling for a moment. “We’ve got a lot of monitoring stations around the world, as you know. Some in places that would surprise even you, David. Well, for the last two months we’ve had indications that a sub, not ours, has been working up and down our Pacific coast. But they’re cagy as hell — they change positions constantly and their transmissions are very short. Until a couple of days ago we couldn’t get anything like a fix on them. Then we got a break, they used their wireless for a longer time than usual, and we did get sort of a rough fix.” He pointed to the map. “As near as we could get it — off the tip of the Baja peninsula and about fifty to a hundred miles off the Mexican coast. That’s a lot of ocean, of course, and we don’t have much hope of finding them, but we’re trying. A dozen destroyers are working the area now.”

Hawk asked, “Are we with the Mexicans on this? Nick has to know that. Are we keeping them informed?”

The CIA Director did not answer for a moment. An enigmatic look was frozen on the hard features. He caressed his battered nose with a forefinger as he stared back at Hawk.

“Not exactly,” he said finally. “Not to the fullest extent, at least. Officially the CIA is helping them keep an eye on the Serpent Party, which doesn’t appear to concern them much, but they know nothing about the rest of the problem.”

Hawk nodded dourly. “I thought not. This is going to be a regular ‘black’ operation, then?”

The Director’s smile was faint. “Yes. That’s why you were called in. I, we, defer to you people in handling these things, these ‘black’ operations as you call them. You people in AXE are the experts, after all.”

Hawk flipped his chewed cigar at a wastebasket and fumbled for a new one. “Just so that’s understood.” He inclined his head toward Nick. “When my man is on the ground, and takes over, he will be allowed to do things his own way?”

“Within the limits of his instructions,” the CIA man said. A little stiffly, Nick thought. “He is not to exceed them.”

Nick felt, rather than saw, Hawk’s wink. “Okay,” said his Chief. “Let’s get on with it. I take it there is more?”

“Much more. To get back to the Chinese sub we think is lurking about. As I explained, we’ve gotten a partial fix on her. But there have been two sets of rather mysterious transmissions in that area. One from the mainland, on a rather weak set — weak, but capable of reaching the sub. Another, from the sub, we think, to practically anywhere in the world. Very powerful beam. So again we have a lead pointing to that part of Mexico. We think the land station is working the sub, and the sub is relaying the messages. To China, most likely. They’re arrogant bastards, too. They’re using a straight code. In English!”

He picked up a yellow flimsy from his desk and looked at it with a show of distaste. “This is a fragmentary message that our monitors got. They use the standard wireless procedures, never any voice. Listen to this.

“Talon — weight — topaz — willow — greensleeve — track — martini — bo — that’s all we got of that particular transmission. But as you see it’s code, not cipher, and we haven’t a prayer of cracking it.” He grinned without mirth. “We’ve got some good men in China, but they haven’t yet managed to steal the master code book.”

Hawk chewed his cigar for a moment. Then, “You’re positive this is a Chinese sub? Not the other people’s?”

The Director tossed the flimsy aside. “That was a possibility at first, but we had the tapes analyzed at the National Security Agency in Fort Meade and they tell us it is definitely a Chinese fist.”

Nick knew that every country, every military or para-military organization, had its own peculiar way of sending code, of handling a key. You could usually tell the nationality of a radioman, or at least that of his outfit, by the way he handled a key. This individual style was called his “fist.”

Nick asked a question: “These transmissions — do they use a bug, tape, or manual?”

The Director glanced at another slip of paper. “The shore to sub transmissions are manual, very slow and amateurish. The sub to God knows where transmissions are sent by a bug, automatic key, and done by an expert.” He glanced at a watch strapped to one hirsute wrist. “Come to the map now, gentlemen, and I’ll tell you about a few more complicating factors in this operation. Matters which will have to be handled very delicately. They involve a very important American citizen, or should I say citizeness, who just happens to have a castle right square in the middle of the area we’re interested in.”

“A castle?” It was Hawk, skeptical.

“The real McCoy,” said the CIA man. “Makes Camelot look like a stage set. It was built in the early part of the century by some millionaire publisher who wanted to get away from it all. There have been several owners since then, but the one who owns it now, the lady we’re going to have to be very careful with, is known locally as The Bitch. You’ll recognize her real name, I’m sure, when I tell you...”

Nick listened intently, missing nothing, yet in another and independent part of his mind there was the ghost of sardonic laughter. He had but recently finished a brushup course in the newest developments in “electronic intelligence,” during which the instructor had made it very clear that the day of the individual human agent was nearly over. The gadgets were fast taking over. Spy satellites were circling the globe at 17,000 miles an hour. An agent could sit with his feet on the desk, nursing a tall drink, and count the ICBMs in Kazakhstan. He could monitor the traffic between the Kremlin and a Russian sub in the Arctic. The magnificent U-2 jets were already obsolete. And, according to some people, so were human beings.

Nick Carter knew better. So did Hawk. The CIA Director was proving it at the very moment. There came a time, inevitably, when the devices and gimmicks were not enough. When there was a specific dirty job to do, usually involving killing or being killed, and then only a human being would suffice. A man. A real blood-and-guts man with muscle and brain to suit the occasion. When the dangers and the difficulties snowballed and assumed the aspect of the unbeatable — only such a man could win.

The CIA man was saying, “You’ll go in tonight, Carter. Sort of a wetback in reverse, you might, say. Just remember one thing — from the time you’re put ashore until you are picked up you will be strictly on your own. Planning has devised a good heavy cover for you, and it should work, but if it fails and you get into trouble we won’t be able to help you. The Mexican Government is not being advised of your presence in their country, so you’ll have to avoid the Federal Police as best you can. Above all, if what we suspect is correct, and the Chinese are involved in this, you must not be made to talk! If you are taken and tortured you must kill yourself before you reach the limit of your endurance. Is that very clear?”

N3’s nod was a little curt, his smile a little sour. It was very clear indeed. Wasn’t it always? He was probably the best all-round “killer” agent in the world — and nearly as expendable as the guy who cleaned the AXE offices.

Hour after hour the briefing went on, until even Nick’s supply of nervous energy began to flag. Hawk became irascible, nearly petulant, insistent on each small detail of preparation. The CIA Director maintained a massive calm — easy enough when it wasn’t his man that was going in.

It was well after dark when Nick boarded a cutter at a deserted pier. A submarine was waiting for him in the outer harbor. Hawk was with him. The CIA man was already flying back to Washington.

Hawk, dry as an old leaf, held out his hand. “Buena suerte, son. Take care.”

Nick winked at his boss. “I was just thinking, sir. If I can get my hands on a few million of that lovely counterfeit let’s you and I go to Pago-Pago for the rest of our lives. Nothing but gin and brown-skinned maidens under the palms.”

“Dream on,” said Hawk.