The Golden Serpent

Chapter 8 Sex in the Morning

Killmaster came awake as he always did, abruptly and in full possession of his faculties. He did not move and he did not open his eyes, but he knew where he was, how he had gotten there and why he was there. His head ached a trifle and his stomach was queasy — after-effects of the deadly mescal — but he did not really have a hangover.

He could hear Gerda von Rothe breathing softly beside him and her leg, plump and pneumatic, lay warm against his own. Nick moved away just enough to break the contact. The woman stirred and muttered something in her sleep. He could not make out the words, but she spoke in German.

He became aware of soft music seeping into the room. It was muted, very low, and had been there all along. He lay unmoving, eyes closed, trying to induce a semi-trance and sort things out in his mind. But the music kept intruding and he knew it would continue to do so until he had identified it. It was a Freudian thing he had about any environment in which he found himself — he must know it in depth. Scan every factor which might contribute to his life, on death! Dot every “i” and cross every “t.” He was really a practical ecologist, as Hawk had once put it, studying cause and effect with the object of staying alive.

At last he identified the music — The Bartered Bride by Smetana. He felt faint surprise. After last night, and into the early hours of this morning, spent coping with the silver-haired Amazon beside him, he would have expected Wagner at least. Perhaps the Ride of The Valkyries. Nick sighed in not unpleasant remembrance. Gerda had certainly given him a ride! The woman was insatiable. If she was in truth seventy years old — he was glad he had not met her when she was thirty. He would be dead this morning.

With a finger he removed the night matter from his eyes and opened them. He stared at the ceiling. It was a good sixty feet above him, arched and groined. If he had needed a reminder that he was in a medieval fortress, a fairy castle stolen from the Rhine, the ceiling would have done it. Banners and pennons hung limply from the arches, each bearing the white lily of cosmetic fame. It was a jarring note.

Nick let his slightly bloodshot eyes roam around the bedroom. If you could call an acre of tesselated floor a bedroom. There were several tall windows, with mullions, covered now with messaline drapes, not more than fifty feet from him. He wondered what the windows overlooked. A possible escape route?

The bed in which he was lying was enormous. It was a boat bed, fashioned in the form of a huge golden swan. Baronial living, this. Nick thought briefly of the other men who had been brought here by The Bitch. They must have serviced her in this very bed, just as he had last night. What had become of them? He thought he knew — dead men could not tattle of strange amours!

He became aware of a strange whirring and clicking overhead. A moment later a picture flashed on the creamy blank wall farthest from him. There was a projector up there in the arches, as well as the speaker for music. Both worked automatically. He remembered last night, after The Bitch had brought him to this amazing room by way of a secret passage — and made him take a cold shower — how he and the woman had lain in bed and watched the pictures flash on and off the wall. Erotic pictures, if you cared for euphemism. Pornographic, if you stuck to truth. They had been exciting, Nick recalled, and of good quality. But trust the von Rothe to have nothing but the best, even in pornography.

The thing must have an automatic timer, Nick conjectured, since now it was showing quite innocuous landscapes. There was the Matterhorn, a shot of the Arctic, with polar bears, and then the Tower of London. A flash of a baseball game. Mickey Mantle was just stroking a homer. Nick lay and watched with some interest. Quite a fascinating gadget. The Bitch had murmured, last night, that she preferred it to the stasis of paintings.

The projector made a mistake. It flashed a decidedly lewd picture on the wall. A man and three women indulging in sexual acrobatics. Nick grinned and repressed a chuckle. The machine was mixed up — there were obviously night pictures and day pictures, bed and non-bed pictures.

“The damned thing needs repairing,” said a sleepy voice beside him. “It’s always getting mixed up. I’ll switch it off.”

Killmaster was tempted to say, “Gutem Morgen, schön Fräulein.” But he remembered in time that he was Jamie McPherson, poor ignorant Jamie with no education. Here to do a job for the Fräulein von Rothe. A slight job of murder.

So he said: “Good morning, Gerda. You’re right — that machine is mixed, up. It shouldn’t show pictures like that so early in the morning. Might give a fellow ideas.” He summoned the best leer of which he was capable at that hour.

The woman ignored him. She leaned to fumble beneath her side of the bed. The picture faded from the. wall and the music stopped. Nick made a note of that. Control buttons beneath the bed. For the music and projector — and what else? Call it intuition, or the seventh sense he had developed over the years, but he was thinking that she must have some sort of alarm system.

Gerda von Rothe sat up in bed and faced him. The royal purple sheet of finest silk, no ersatz for this lady, covered her only to the waist. Her big torso was tawny, tinted with the same golden sheen as her face, and there was not an ounce of flab on her. Her face, even with the lines of sleep still on it, was a scimitar of arrogant beauty, the mouth wide and the eyes like emeralds. Her breasts were large and heavy and very firm, with long red nipples and brownish halos. They pointed directly at Nick now, like twin cannons. She made no attempt to cover herself.

“You were drunk last night,” she accused. Her green stare was hard. She ran a big hand through tousled silver hair. “It will not happen again, do you understand!” It was not a question.

He nodded. “I understand. I’m sorry about it. I had a bottle of tequila in my pack and well, I just had too much I reckon. But it turned out all right. I got here, didn’t I?”

The scarlet mouth curled. “That is not the point, fool. I am paying you to do a job for me. You must not botch it.” She bit hard into her lower lip and stared at him for a long moment. “It will go hard with you, Jamie, if you bungle it. If they don’t kill you first, I will. You must be sure to understand that. For one thing, if you do drink and botch it, they will kill you without doubt. Both Harper and Hurtada are very tough and they know how to handle guns. It is not going to be easy to kill them.”

So at last his victims had names! Nick had no intention of killing them or anyone, unless it lay in the line of duty, but it was good to know whom he was supposed to kill. Harper he knew about, of course, and he could guess that Hurtada was the mestizo — the Chinese, rather, who was passing as a mestizo. He wondered just how much of the truth The Bitch intended telling him?

Nick repeated the names. “Hurtada and Harper? Them’s the guys I knock off, huh? You said you would make a plan, Gerda. Maybe you better tell me now. I need to know a lot, everything there is to know, if I ain’t going to botch it like you say. How soon you want these characters killed? When? Where? How? You see what I mean?”

Her smile was faint. “You are learning, Jamie. At least you did not ask why I want them killed. Nor would I tell you. Call it a... a sort of a palace revolution. Do you know what that means?”

“No, I don’t guess I do. But you got the palace for it, all right.”

“So I have, Jamie. And that is just the point — the old fool who built this castle was a romantic, a man born out of his time. He must have been raised on Scott and Ouida — but of course that means nothing to you.”

“No. It don’t.”

“Of course not. But the point is that this castle is huge. There are places where even I have not been — and there are dungeons and secret passages and a great many hidden, out of the way nooks. Places where a body would never be found. You will explore the castle today, Jamie, and find a suitable spot, or spots. If they do not suit you there is always the ocean. I’ll leave that up to you. But you must kill Harper and Hurtada separately, if you can, and nobody must see you do it. That is very important. I want them to vanish into thin air, with no trace. How you do it is your business. After all, you must expect to do something for twenty thousand dollars.” The Bitch rolled over close to him and stroked his biceps with her fingertips. “I was right about you, Jamie. You would have made a marvelous gladiator.” Heat glowed in the green eyes now. Nick groaned inwardly. The Bitch was in estrus again. He felt a sudden overwhelming desire to go to the bathroom.

He slipped from under the sheets on his side of the bed. “Sorry, but I got to see a man about—”

“Wait,” said the woman sharply. “Wait!”

It was too late. Nick’s bare feet touched the floor and all hell broke loose. Gongs clanged all around the room and in the arches of the ceiling. The AXEman stared, showing more surprise than he felt, as Gerda von Rothe slipped her hand beneath the bed and threw an invisible switch. The harsh clangor ceased. The woman frowned at Nick for a moment, then, with a rare good humor, she smiled. “You can close your mouth now, Jamie. It was only the alarm. When it’s on no one can approach the bed or leave it without setting off the gongs. The floor is wired.” Her smile faded to petulance. “But of course it will bring Erma, damn it!”

“Who’s Erma?” Nick was still putting on the bewildered act. Secretly he was very pleased. It was good to know about the alarm; not so good to know that you couldn’t get out of bed with it turned on. That was going to cut down on his own personal and private prowling — unless he could find a way to trick the alarm.

The huge double doors of the bedroom were flung open with a crash. Nick saw who Erma was. She was Miss Five by Five of 1966. She could have played fullback for the Green Bay Packers. Her hair was yellow, streaked with gray, and coiled around her head in a massive coronet. She wore a man’s sport shirt, with the tail outside her pants. Not slacks, but regular men’s trousers. Her biceps, displayed by the short sleeves, were nearly as big as Nick’s own, and looked as hard. Her face was red and blobby and Nick could have sworn she had cauliflower ears. Just at the moment he was more interested in the Luger she clutched in one square hand. It looked a bit like his own 9-mm. that he had not been permitted to bring, but this weapon had not been stripped and appeared brand new. It was sighted dead on his naked belly.

Nick decided to play it for laughs. He wanted The Bitch to continue thinking of him as a cool customer, if a little dumb. He said, as he slowly put up his hands, “Don’t shoot — don’t shoot! I wasn’t doing nothing, really. It’s all a mistake.” And he winked at Gerda.

Erma looked from Nick to her mistress. The Luger did not deviate from its unwinking scrutiny of Nick’s belly button. Erma had yellow eyes, yellow like a cat’s.

“It’s all right,” Gerda von Rothe said. “It was a mistake, Erma. He didn’t know about the alarm and I forgot to turn it off. You may go.”

Erma looked at Nick. Her yellow gaze started at his feet and moved very slowly upward. Her eyes lingered for a long time taking in every inch of his body before her big wet mouth twisted in disgust. Nor was there any mistaking the blaze of hatred in the yellow eyes when at last she looked the AXEman full in the face.

Erma swung around and marched out of the room. The big doors crashed shut. She had not spoken a word.

Nick looked at The Bitch. “That woman don’t like me,” he said.

She laughed. “No. She hates all men. She’s in love with me — and something of a nuisance at times. But she has her good points. For one, she is an excellent bodyguard. She used to be a wrestler in Germany. I would not advise even you to take liberties with Erma, my Jamie.” The Bitch patted back a yawn. “But Erma is not a bad sort — every now and then, when I am on the point of death from boredom, I let her make love to me. It keeps her happy for months.”

Killmaster played it dumb. He was supposed to be an unsophisticated jerk. “I don’t get it,” he said. “She’s a woman!”

“And you’re a big handsome ape,” said the woman almost fondly. “With an ape’s brain. Go on to the bathroom if you must, then hurry back. I find myself in need of you again.”

She pointed an imperious finger at Nick. “You were good last night, I admit, but I am sure you are better when you are sober. Now hurry.” It was an order.

The bathroom, Nick reckoned, was only about a quarter the size of the bedroom. All the fixtures were of solid gold. There were magnificent Turkish rugs scattered on the mosaic floor. There was a small swimming pool instead of a tub, a dozen huge mirrors, and the sanitation facilities were Oriental. A glittering tile slit trench with a chromium bar for squatting. Much more conducive to good health than the Western style.

Both heating and lighting were indirect. There was no way out of the bathroom except the door. This he had needed to know.

Nick sank into a bath chair by the pool and pondered for a moment. The Bitch was going to give him the run of the castle, so he could learn the terrain, as it were, and plan the killings. He would be watched constantly. He would bet on that! But he would cross that bridge when he got to it.

Nick glanced at his wrist watch. He saw the hour hand twitch and spin as the DF went to work. That hidden transmitter was sending again!

The AXEman faced the bathroom door, studying the watch, trying to get a fix in relation to the bedroom. He visualized the room and remembered the tall mullioned windows. They would be to his left as he went out. And now the hour hand was pointing in that direction, quivering slightly. He must see what lay outside those windows.

“Jamie!” It was a bellow.

“Coming,” Nick muttered under his breath, “coming, Oh noble Bitch. Thy good and faithful servant obeys. Spare me the lash, Oh Bitch of Bitches!”

His grin, just before he opened the bathroom door, was hard and more than a little cruel. He found himself wishing El Tigre all the luck in the world with his project of rape. Thinking of El Tigre made him glance at his watch again. The DF was still working, but the minute hand was at five of something. Noon, hadn’t it been? El Tigre and his men were due at dusk. That should be about nine in this season. El Tigre was trusting Nick to clear the way for his attack.

As he made his way back to the swan bed he shot a covert glance at the tall windows. The DF was still reacting, pointing in that direction; it was a long transmission, then. Much longer than usual. Maybe the CIA could get a better fix. Maybe even the boys in Homer could get a fix. Yeah, maybe. A lot of things could happen before any possible help could get to him. Help? Foolish boy! This was a solo job — so he had undertaken it and so it must be. He either won or lost it all alone. Except for El Tigre. Nick had no illusions about El Tigre.

Gerda von Rothe was waiting impatiently, a full-blown golden Venus on the swan bed. Her hard plump legs were parted and Nick saw then what he had not seen before — the little swatch was as silver, as glimmering and iridescent, as the mane above. By God — could she possibly really be seventy years old!

The Bitch was an immediate person who did not believe in foreplay. She seized the AXE agent with an. amazingly strong grasp and thrust him beneath her. “You underneath,” she said curtly.

And so it was. She took her fill of him, screamed a little, then slumped off to one side. “I will sleep now,” she said quietly. “For a little time I will sleep. So it is always with me. You will not disturb me for anything.”

And sleep she did. The perfectly natural sleep of a satisfied animal. Nick listened to the deep regular breathing for a moment, put a tentative foot out of the bed, then drew it back. Give her five minutes. And hope to God she had not switched on the alarm again. He needed a little luck just now.

He lay with his hands clasped beneath his head and stared at the ceiling. The speaker was mute. The projector was blind. He wondered what had happened to his clothes. His “cover” clothes, the filthy long johns and the rest — and where was the Webley? He was buck naked in a witch’s castle. Surrounded by alarms and dogs and guards — and don’t forget Brünnhilde with the Luger. She would just love to put a slug in him.

The AXE agent crinkled his eyes and hummed, very softly — “They’ll never believe me when I tell them, and I’m certainly going to tell them — dum-dum-da-dum—”

Five minutes had passed. The woman still slept. Nick eased out of bed. The alarm did not sound. He went to the tall windows, pulled the drapes and stared out. There was no escape this way. To his right and left he could see crenellated towers. Between them, below the windows, the scarp fell away sheer to the foam-washed rocks below. Those jagged gray teeth, he guessed, were a good two hundred feet down. No exit!

To his right, to the north, he could see a complex of low white buildings, so situated in a natural declivity in the cliff that they had not been visible when he spied with the glasses. They would not, he thought, even be visible from the road. They were squat, one-story affairs — five of them — and looked fairly new.

As he watched he saw two men in long white gowns leave one of the buildings and walk to another, talking and gesticulating. The long gowns were such as laboratory technicians might wear. Nothing so unusual there, Nick conceded. The buildings could be laboratories where The Bitch worked out new formulas for skin creams and other aids to beauty and eternal youth. Could be. What made it unlikely was the little tableau he now saw enacted.

As the two men reached the door of a building an armed guard stepped into sight and stopped them. Nick wished fervently for his glasses, yet his own superb eyesight served well enough for him to see that this guard was different from those on the gate. This man was either a mestizo — or a Chinese! He was dressed in khaki shirt and shorts, knee socks and what looked like heavy army shoes. He wore a flat, vizored cap without insignia. But it was the guard’s manner that most impressed the AXE agent — there was a military snap and stance about the man as he examined credentials.

Nick Carter whistled very softly. There was Chinese military personnel in Mexico. And the security was tough — those two men had had to show credentials just to pass from one building to another. As though they were captive workers not to be trusted out of sight.

Behind him Gerda von Rothe stirred on the swan bed and moaned in her sleep. Nick ran for the bathroom.

He took a bath in the pool, splashing and swimming a few strokes, and showered away the soap. He was keen and alert now, the mescal only a bilious memory. He found a small cabinet with its own special shaving mirror and light, containing everything a man might need for his toilet Everything was expensive, the very best. Nick grimaced at himself in the glass as he stroked away the black stubble. It figured. He was betting there would be some men’s clothing around, too.

She was awake when he came out of the bathroom. She gave him a small smile as he came to within six feet of the bed and stopped. There was approval in her glance, Nick thought, approval and something else. A hint of regret? Was she going to hate to kill him after he had done her dirty work?

“I had no idea,” said The Bitch after a moment, “that you were so handsome under that beard. Your face matches the rest of you, Jamie. You are positively a ravishing brute.” Her green eyes swept lightly over his body without lingering and Nick breathed a little easier. She was satiated — at least for the moment.

“I can’t do much this way,” he told her. “I need some clothes. Where are mine?”

“I had Erma burn them, of course.” She pointed. “Press that button set into the wall near the bathroom door.”

Nick did so. A panel slid back in the wall to disclose a long, deep closet. Neatly arranged on hangers was a long row of men’s suits and slacks. Dozens of both. They bore London, Paris, Rome and New York labels. Nothing but the finest for La Perra’s studs, thought Nick.

A third of the closet was devoted to shelves on which were stacked shirts, socks, underwear, costly ties still in their boxes. Beneath the shelves were at least fifty pairs of shoes of every size and type. Everything was new. Naturally. When she got rid of her itinerant paramours she would bury them — if she bothered to bury them — in the clothes they wore at time of death.

“Select anything you want,” she said from the bed. “Get dressed and- remain here until I send for you. Then we will have breakfast and talk some more.”

She left the bed and slipped on a robe and put her feet into high-heeled mules. She went toward the double doors. Over her shoulder she said, “Remember, Jamie — do not try to leave until I send for you. There will be a guard outside. It is for your protection. There may be spies among my own people, and I don’t want Harper and Hurtada to know you are here until the last minute. When it is too late. We must be very careful.”

As she opened the door Nick caught a glimpse of an armed guard sitting in a chair tilted back against the wall. He leaped to his feet as The Bitch came out. He wore a dark gray uniform, a highly polished Sam Browne and the silver insignia of the lily glinted on his cap. Peeking from the buttoned-down holster was the heavy butt of a .45 automatic.

Nick saw the man click his heels and salute the woman as she passed. She paid no attention. Then the door swung shut.

As he went about selecting his clothes, Nick Carter was very much deep in thought. The more he learned about this strange setup the screwier it got — yet he could, was just beginning to, catch a glimmer of what was going on. Like a figure seen through several feet of semi-opaque water, as through a glass darkly, he was beginning to make out the outline of events. It appeared to be, indeed, a palace revolution.

Two distinct sets of guards. One set was military and — he was betting on it — Chinese; the other set was para-military and owed allegiance to Gerda von Rothe. She had been expecting help — Neo-Nazi help. Harper and Hurtada had forestalled that, so the von Rothe had taken a daring gamble — Nick’s smile was cold — and retained what she thought was a beautiful, and mindless brute to protect her. Protect her? He had to chuckle at that. She needed protection the way a tigress or a black widow needed it.

The fact remained that he had stumbled into a minor civil war, an internecine struggle for stakes about which he knew very little — except that they must be high. Terribly high.

Nick selected a pair of gray Daks, suede shoes with rubber soles, a shirt of Irish linen with short sleeves and a light tan bush jacket. He knotted a white silk scarf about his throat and buttoned the jacket over it. Contemplating himself in a mirror he thought that perhaps he looked a bit too much the sophisticate — it was not his fault that he wore casual clothes so well — and was tempted to change, then thought the hell with it. The Bitch was going to be pretty busy. She would not have time to become suspicious. Probably she would not even notice, and if she did she would merely think it a case of a rough diamond coming out well when polished.

Nick could still taste the mescal in the back of his mouth. He went into the bathroom again and once more cleaned his teeth and gargled. He went to the tall windows again and looked out. The sun had gone now and a mass of black clouds was piling in the west. A storm was moving in from the Pacific. As he watched the somber ramparts of cloud build and writhe, he felt a sudden strange coldness in him. There were many ludicrous aspects to this mission, he admitted that, but at the end of the affair Death would be waiting. For whom? For how many?

Lightning scribbled pale fire across one of the looming thunderheads. Thunder came along, sullen and threatening. Nick let the drape fall and turned toward the door just as it opened. The guard crooked a finger at him.

“Come. You are wanted.”