The Weapon of Night

CHAPTER TWELVE And Then There Were…?

Julia sighed luxuriously and stretched out on the bed beside him like a waking kitten. Her tanned fingers stroked the length of his body and her breasts rose and fell voluptuously as if they had just been treated to a delicious experience. Which, indeed, they had.

“Sinful,” she murmured huskily. “Fiddling while Rome burns. Why are we so sinful, Carter?”

“Because we like it,” Nick said cheerfully. He grinned at her and tousled her hair, and then rolled lightly off the bed to land on his feet on the thick carpeting of the motel room. “But sin time’s over for a while, sweetheart.” He flicked a switch and flooded the room with light. “Tune in to AXE H.Q., will you? And find out what’s going on in the world. I’m going to take a shower. My bones tell me we’re going to see some action soon.”

She watched the rippling muscles of his athlete’s body as he padded nakedly into the bathroom, and gave a little sigh as she turned on the AXE radio. His head was still heavily bandaged from the Montreal explosion and now he had a new thick patch of adhesive on his shoulder. Another day, another scar. And each new assignment brought another duel with death. Some day — maybe on this job, maybe on some other — death was bound to win. Those were the odds. And he had been playing this deadly game for far too long already.

So, for that matter, had she.

Julia pulled her flimsy robe slowly about her tawny shoulders and the crackling voices of AXE’s general wave length told her of LSD in a Jersey reservoir and air pollution in Springfield. Here, a radiation scare, there, a little hot box found; somewhere else, an angry citizens’ meeting that degenerated into a riot. All day long the news services had been spreading the word that the situation was under control. But the word was vague and unconvincing… because it was not quite true. There was still one shadowy figure unaccounted for. And still unanswered were the basic questions: Who is doing this to us, and why? To what end? Was this a war of nerves, or a prelude to attack?

She, Julia Baron, knew more about the who and what and why than any woman in the United States, with the possible exception of Valentina Sichikova, and even she, Julia, was uneasy about what she did not know. How much worse, she thought, shivering slightly and pulling the robe more closely around her, not to know anything at all — to be looking out into the night and wondering what unknown menace waited there.

Nick was singing in the shower. She smiled faintly to herself and rose from the bed to gaze through the window. It was dark outside with the darkness of early evening in late fall, but splashed with brightness from a million lights in homes and along the highways. She found herself praying that they would stay lit.

The hissing splash of the shower stopped and only the voices of AXE communicators filled the room. Nick padded in, wrapping a towel around his waist, and squatted on the floor with a soulful look on his face.

“Dear God,” Julia said resignedly. “Breathing exercises at a time like this?”

“Your fault,” he said cheerfully. “You take my breath away.”

He concentrated for long moments and she watched him in silence, admiring the masculine beauty of his body and loving every line of it.

At last he rose and flicked two switches on the AXE radio, one to kill the voices and the other to open the channel through which his own messages were to come.

“Enough of that,” he said, toweling himself briskly. “It’s depressing to listen to, and pointless. Sorry I asked for it.”

“That’s the least of what you’ve asked for, Nick,” she said quietly. “Are you ever going to get out of this business?”

“There’s only one way out of it,” he said shortly, and began to dress.

He glanced at his watch as he strapped it on. “About time for the President’s speech,” he said. “Let us sincerely hope that he can produce both soothing and effective words for “mah fella countrymen.” Too bad we can’t tell the truth about what we already know.”

“Proof,” she said shortly, and snapped on the television set.

“Yeah, proof,” he added bitterly. “Chinese bodies all over the lot, and we still need proof!”

“—live from Washington,” the announcer’s voice boomed loudly. Julia turned the volume down. Then she began to dress in her usual brisk way as the voice from the handsome face on the screen went over the events of the past few days.

“And now — the President of the United States.”

There was a flurry of activity on the rostrum as mikes were adjusted, cameras moved in closer.

Nick and Julia sat side by side upon the bed.

The familiar figure filled the screen and solemnly gazed out upon his audience of millions.

“Mah fella Amurricans,” the well-known voice began, and there was benevolence and confidence in its calm tones, “a great man of our own times and our own country once told us that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. I am here to tell you tonight that we in this great country of ours have nothing to fear, not even fear itself—” The voice abruptly died.

The lips went on moving but now no sound came from them.

“God, what’s happening!” Julia cried, as the light in the room became a weird yellow glow. The image on the screen slowly faded and disappeared, and the yellow glow became pitch-blackness.

Nick was on his feet, grabbing the AXE radio.

“This is it!” he rapped. “Don’t move from here. Let you know if I need you. Look after yourself.”

His lips brushed her cheek in the darkness and the radio beeped at him.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I brought candles. You come back. Please, Nick — come back.”

“I always come back,” he said, and then he was gone.

Julia turned on her own transistor radio and the two battery-powered lamps they had brought with them. Then she opened the curtains and let the light play out across the grounds of the motel. Already she could hear the chop of the approaching helicopter. Headlights from the cars parked outside the cabin doors began to turn on, two by two, and in the glow of their light she could see Nick racing past them toward the wide oval lawn in front of the motel.

The town of Buffalo was in total darkness. Wherever Julia turned there was darkness, a frightening, eerie blackness broken only intermittently by shafts of light from ears.

Nick ran with the radio to his car and his eyes on the sky. The winking lights were already lowering toward him.

Hawk’s voice pounded at his ear… extremely serious power drain over the same area last November, plus Washington this time. Standby crews ready, started immediate instrumentation check. Nothing definite, as yet. Parts of Canada out, most of New York, Michigan, Massachusetts. Pennsylvania, part of Texas, for the love of—! Hold it a minute.”

Nick held, positioning the radio inside his jacket as he waited and pulled the miniature flare gun from his pocket. It spewed light over the lawn and the “copter chugged down toward him with its sling ladder swinging.

“Report from Washington,” said Hawk, and now his voice held an odd kind of excitement. “Blackout there nothing to do with the rest. Device found near local power station: electronic timer. Could have been set at any time. Likely the same with Texas, too. We’re checking. That leaves the Northeastern chain, as before. State police, national guards-men, et cetera, all in operation as you suggested. Emergency systems — Wait!”

Nick used the waiting time to swing himself into the sling seat of the ladder and wave upward. The ladder rose rapidly.

“Carter!” Hawk’s voice roared in his ear. It sounded exultant. “Instrument check indicates tremendous flow of current to the north, as before. Not finely pinpointed as yet, but odds are great that the trouble started within the area of the Falls. Seems that the Green Point power plant was the first to go. Happens to be a major link in the chain and only too easily accessible from outside though proof against remote devices. It looks as though your hunch was right. Get moving!”

“I’m moving,” said Nick, swinging himself into the chopper.

“Where to, old buddy?” asked AXEman pilot AI Fisher.

Nick told him.

Al stared at him as if he had lost his mind.

“You crazy, Nick? What makes you think that’s where he’ll go? And how in the hell are we going to find him if he does?”

“Not we — just me,” said Nick. “You’ll drop me. Now get the lead out of your pants and let me see you fly this thing.”

He busied himself with a few small preparations as they gained speed and altitude. When he was through with them he looked down at the darkness below.

Already, it was less oppressive than before. The airport was awash with light. Great beams of brightness cut through the city streets, and several buildings gave off a cheerful glow. Banks of moving lights trailed solidly through the streets. And even as he watched, new patches of brightness sprang into brilliant life.

He allowed himself a momentary flash of satisfaction. At least this time they had been ready for it. Every resource in the country had been mobilized ahead of time, every available man in uniform alerted, every cop, every fireman, every guardsman, every training unit, warned to stand by and man emergency lighting systems in cities and villages and along the nation’s highways; every responsible state official briefed, every sound truck put on a standby basis, every capability of an enormously capable nation called to a state of readiness in a few short hours — except the millions of private citizens who had been living off rumors all day. They had not been warned — in case of false alarm, in case Judas had decided to postpone his curtain scene.

But apparently he had not.

Nick’s brief glow of satisfaction cooled into a cool appraisal of the situation. He had no more idea than anyone else where Judas was and where he would head. He only had a hunch, based on the flimsiest of evidence that easily could turn to dust in his hands as the night wore on.

When he had boarded the ancient cruiser at the rotting wharf he had seen a set of oilskins neatly folded on the wheelhouse shelf. Afterwards when the boat had been discovered abandoned with its dead, the oilskins no longer were there.

“Does a man need oilskins to go swimming?” he had asked himself.

No, he had decided, that isn’t what he does with them.

The sound of the falls drowned out the gentle chopping of the helicopter as Nick lowered himself to the ground and waved the ladder away. He was across the Canadian border and the Green Point power plant lay exact 2.2 miles away from him. A man could walk it. And even if the man used a car for part of that short distance he would still have to walk for a good ten to twelve minutes from there to reach the one short strip along the roaring river from which he could make his getaway.

It had been short, quick ride from Buffalo by AXE-powered helicopter.

Nick scrambled down the Slope, glad of the boots and slicker that guarded him against the cool night wind and the icy spray. It was a cold, dark November night, and the lights of Ontario were few and far between. Niagara Falls was still in total darkness, but for the dim glow of auxiliary lighting from the other side.

He reached the water’s edge and glided along the bank beside the first stretch of relatively calm water, hunting by faint starlight for the boat he was sure must be there.

But it was not there.

He knew that, after the first few moments, because there were few places where a boat could be left and he had checked all of them in the dimness along the riverbank. Maybe farther downriver…?

No! Judas would need to have the boat handy.

Nick turned upriver, back the way he had come, threading his way through bushes and boulders as sharp needlepoints of spray that stung his face and, building into showers, poured down over his body. Perhaps Judas had intended to steal the Maid of the Mist, he thought. If so, the bastard was out of luck, since she was already laid up for the season and undergoing repairs. Anyway, Judas would have known that.

Nick frowned as he peered through the flying spray. No boat, then. There could hardly be one moored under the falls — it would get completely waterlogged in minutes, supposing it was physically possible to get it there. Then what… There could be no escape through the thundering water unless Judas intended to shoot the rapids. But Judas must surely know he could never live through that. Maybe he intended to plunge over the falls in a barrel. It would be just like Judas to have devised something new in barrels; crashproof, unsinkable, insulated against shock and weather, equipped with automatic weapons to belch out instant death to all unwelcome visitors.

The wild idea was somehow a compelling one. Nick edged his way backwards out of the chilling shower of blinding spray and craned his neck to stare up at the lip of the falls. His mind picked up thoughts of water wings and personalized jet flying packs, then came back to brood on barrels. It WAS possible. It would take a little planning, of course, but —

He gaped upward, not quite believing his eyes in spite of what he just had been considering. For in the murkiness of night and spray, the thing that came tumbling down from 150-odd feet above him had neither size nor shape, but it was something alien to the water and it bounced and rolled and tumbled as if with a galvanic life of its own.

And then, as the blur came closer and soared down past him, he saw that it was neither barrel-shaped nor man-sized. It was nothing but a suitcase.

A suitcase. One of the matching set of ten, maybe?

It was far beyond his reach and traveling swiftly through the roaring waters. But what it meant was far more important than what it had inside. It could mean that Judas was near and had dumped his bag to travel light.

To where? Where was he?

Nick strained his ears through the deafening crash of the rushing water. It was useless, quite useless. Too noisy to hear Judas, too dark to see him.

He started climbing laboriously up the steep slope to a rocky, bush-tangled outcropping from which he could command a better perspective of the falls and the river. Heavy spray drenched him to the bone as he climbed, and washed away the last traces of his enthusiasm. Suddenly he was convinced that Judas could not possibly come this way, that even the suitcase was a false hope, just a piece of garbage carelessly dumped by nobody in particular, maybe hours or days before and many river miles away.

Nick pulled himself onto the outcropping and stared up into the darkness, thinking. He must be near, said the insistent voice in his mind. He must have taken the oilskins for a reason. But suppose he was not going to try heading downriver. Suppose he was going to try to cross it. Not by Rainbow Bridge, though. That was heavily guarded at both ends. So that left… That left the impossible.

Nick frowned again. There was an elevator descent from Goat Island, between the Canadian and American Falls, to the Cave of the Winds. From the Cave of the Winds there was an opening to a narrow, low-railed bridge — little more than a catwalk — that traveled a short distance behind the splashing curtain of the falls. But that would not be too much help to Judas. Even supposing he somehow had succeeded in getting to Goat Island, disposing of its guards and activating the locked elevator, he still could not reach either shore by that tiny bridge, which was hardly more than a walk, and it reached nowhere near the banks on either side.

He was still chewing over possibilities and impossibilities in his mind and straining his eyes into the darkness when light hit his face like a sudden, savage blow. Brilliant, multicolored lights blazed and swirled as if the falls had been transformed into a great bubbling rainbow. He blinked rapidly and refocused, and for one split second he saw a bulky figure with startled and rainbow-hued face sliding down the bank some thirty feet away from him. Then it disappeared like a wraith, deep into a cascade of tumbling water.

But that was impossible! There was nothing there but the raging water and certain death by drowning.

Or maybe a cave…?

Nick was clawing his way along the cliffside on the trail of the incredible. The bulky figure had been Judas, and he had plunged into that boiling cauldron, so there had to be some hiding place.

Within seconds Nick was at the spot where he had caught the fleeting glimpse of Judas. He stared into the leaping turmoil of water. But that was all he could see, just water, roiling and plunging and lashing him with its spray. The famous lights of Niagara Falls played a pictorial symphony before his eyes, but they showed him nothing.

He clutched the rock face and edged forward into the drenching drapery of falling water, breath held and eyes half-blinded by the gigantic, everlasting shower. To one side of him there was slippery rock and he felt along it with desperate hope. But there was no cave. He was half-drowned before he realized that there was no hiding place but the water itself. And it was pouring down before his eyes between him and the fleeing Judas.

There was only one possible answer. He groped back toward the bank and wasted more precious minutes before finding what he sought. His fingers told him what his eyes could not see through the cascade — he felt the end of a length of sturdy nylon rope attached securely to the out-jutting root of one of the enormous, indestructible trees that raised their giant heads high along the bank. Judas had made good use of his spare time that day.

He drew a deep breath and headed back into the downpour, this time following the rope. Cut it? — No — no way of telling whether Judas was still clutching it or not, with the water buffeting it in all directions and communicating its pressure through his hands.

The ground began to slope beneath him. He tightened his grip on the rope as the driving water clawed at him with a new burst of savagery, and it was just as well that he did because in that moment his feet were swept out from under him and he was dangling by his hands. He groped forward, swinging his feet for footholds, and found none. So that was the way it had to be; he was a monkey swinging from a rope, as Judas must have swung before him.

He clenched his teeth at the thought of a Judas waiting for him at the other end with a sharp knife ready to slash the cord and send him plunging into the wet hell that churned below. But he had no choice. He had to use the bridge that Judas had built, or lose him altogether.

Hand over hand, he followed the deadly rope trail. Sometimes the water spewed up under him; sometimes it dropped far below into a seething abyss. Once in a while he managed to draw breath as the curtain of water sprayed outward and past him. But, strain his eyes as he could, he caught no sign of Judas.

The damned rope seemed to be going on forever. His arms felt as though they were coming out of their sockets. How in hell had Judas managed this with his artificial hands? but they were tricky, those hands, maybe even better adapted for this kind of thing than human flesh.

His own hands were numbed by the time the roaring of the water suddenly changed character and he emerged through a fringe of spray into an area of calm behind the liquid wall. The end of the rope was attached to the little catwalk outside the Cave of the Winds. He swung toward it gratefully.

Then he saw Judas.

Judas had not stayed to cut the rope behind him. He was at the far end of the catwalk, half-obscured by spray and weirdly lit by the muted colors that filtered through the water. Apparently he had not had too much spare time that day, for he was still busy building the next section of his bridge.

Nick sucked in his breath at the sheer audacity of the man, at his maddening calmness and incredible skill under such fantastic circumstances. He must have been down here many times before without having been spotted, and he must have done quite a bit of practicing. He was shooting at something that Nick could not even see, but could only guess at.

It had to be the railing of the catwalk behind the American Falls.

The rocket-borne line snaked out again as Nick watched. This time it must have hit its target and looped tautly around it, because Judas gave it a sharp tug and then laid his weapon down beside him.

Nick lowered himself onto the narrow metal walk and reached inside his dripping slicker for his Luger.

Judas tied the end of his line to the catwalk railing. Now he had another bridge to swing across. Spray blanked him out for a moment as Nick crept toward him. Then he was in the clear again, and this time there was a knife in Judas’s hand and Judas was coming back to cut the first of his lines.

Even in that dim and eerie light and across that misty distance Judas was an easy target. Nick crouched low on the slippery walk and squeezed Wilhelmina gently.

And then a shift of the wind suddenly immersed him in a blanket of water and momentarily obscured his vision. He thought he heard a cry, but he could not be sure.

Silently, he crept on through the cold, shimmering shower, crouching low and listening. The scene cleared abruptly as the wall of water fell away, and there was the catwalk with no one on it but Carter.

Spray played gently over the far end of the walk and over the taut line that waited to be used. Beyond it was darkness, tinged with faint color.

Nick ducked instinctively. Judas now knew that someone was after him, and Judas had not left. He was somewhere in that darkness…

The shots burst low at the level of Nick’s knees. He rolled galvanically, screamed once, and fired one wild shot back in the direction of the little bursts of flame. Judas was over the edge of the catwalk, his body in the water, aiming up at him. There was no chance at all of hitting him.

Nick fired once to show that he was still in there pitching. Then flame seared his thigh and he rolled over once again with a loud and agonized shout — and he slid into the water with the loudest splash he could manage. He ducked his head and waited.

And waited…

He started edging his way through the churning water alongside the catwalk. Wilhelmina was soaking-wet and useless, but that did not matter any more. Judas was on his way. Judas had bought Nick’s little death scene with shout and splash, and now Judas was doing his monkey trick across the rope.

Nick knew he was right by the time he had worked his way to the end of the catwalk. Judas was gone, and the rope was still taut and quivering.

Deep in the water, Nick drew Hugo from his sheath. He stared through the spray and caught one brief, dim glimpse of a monkeylike figure swinging high behind the crashing screen of water, well on its way to the catwalk on the American side. Then the vision vanished.

Hugo’s razor-edged blade bit deep into the rope.

Nick raised himself in the water and drew a deep breath.

“Goodbye, Judas!” he yelled exultantly, and the last strand parted at Hugo’s biting touch.

The end of the rope whiplashed back at Nick, but he scarcely felt it. Through the rushing roar of the water he heard a high-pitched scream, and he thought he heard a louder splash above the bubbling din. And then there was nothing to be heard but the thundering of the falls. The rope was limp in his hands.

“It is not, you understand, my favorite pastime,” Valentina Sichikova said apologetically. “But at least I did not have to hurt the man — apart from that small concussion I gave him in that motor cabin. Oh, motel, yes? So. Motel. I play soft music to him, one note, one note, one note, and I use a little drug. That one note, you see, is like the dripping water of the Chinese torture. Too much of that no man can stand. I could not listen myself. Until he talked.”

“Until he talked,” Hawk echoed. “And then you got the one key we were looking for. Your health, Madam Sichikova.” He raised his glass.

“Your friendship, Comrade,” she said quietly. “Long life and good companionship for all of us.”

“Long life, indeed,” said Hakim warmly. “Although how that may be possible in your line of buiness I cannot begin to understand.” He clutched his bound ribs with a theatrical gesture and made a hideous grimace. “My good mother warned me against taking up with dubious company. And see how right she was!”

“Your good mother should have warned me,” said Nick, patting Julia’s knee and ignoring Hawk’s reproving stare. “Her little boy’s a troublemaker from way back. Why, if it hadn’t been for you —”

“We wouldn’t be sitting here right now,” Hawk interrupted. “Heaven only knows what we would have been doing. Crawling out of some bomb shelter, perhaps, and staring at the ruins. Yes, this could have been L-Day. But it isn’t. So let’s run this fellow through to the end and then get out of here to celebrate in style.” He waved his glass around the comfortable lounge of AXE’s brownstone branch office near Columbus Circle and said, with unaccustomed bonhomie, “Office parties are all right in their place, but this occasion deserves the very best. A real old-fashioned, rip-roaring, capitalistic celebration!” His usually cold eyes were warm and he was smiling for the first time in many days.

Nick grinned at him and clinked glasses with Julia. The face on the TV monitor against the wall was bland and expressionless, almost trancelike, but the words burbled unrestrained through the pale, thin lips. Once Kwong Yu Shu had started to talk it had been difficult to stop him.

“… to use the natural resources of the country,” he gabbled. “Not necessary bring very much equipment, always find what we need wherever we go. Very efficient, very economical scheme. So we have small group, ten men…” He had told them that before, describing in great detail the clever departure of the nine from Moscow, their meeting with Judas in Egypt, the brilliance of their plan for changing their looks and quietly infiltrating the United States. Valentina’s little drug-and-music therapy, combined with the knowledge that he was very much alone in an unfriendly world, had brought Kwong to a state of uncontrollable volubility.

“It was plan by Judas and General Kuo Hsi Tang,” he sang enthusiastically. “First, campaign of terror to demoralize imperialistic dogs. At the peak of this, a vast blackout as final shattering blow and also as what you call a “dry-run.” If we succeed, then we ready to go ahead with plan for L-Day. L-Day may be two, three days after dress rehearsal. L-Day is landing day, day for landing with secret weapon under cover of darkness and terror. How to resist when panic is in streets, friend fighting friend, families dying from inexplicable dis-ease? Impossible! Oh, good scheme; very good scheme. And some day…”

“That’s it,” said Hawk, flicking the remote switch and fading Kwong Yu Shu back into oblivion. “My one regret is that he genuinely doesn’t seem to know anything about that secret weapon. But it does look as though we’re safe from it for a while at least, and we know a little something now about preparing ourselves for emergencies. Yes, I think we’ve nipped this thing fairly neatly in the bud. Shall we go?”

They rose, the five of them, and drained their glasses.

To the ten who couldn’t make it to the party,” said Julia wryly, still holding out her glass. “And to the five of us who nearly didn’t. They picked themselves an unlucky number, didn’t they? Ten, as in Indian boys, biting the dust one after the other until—”

“Until D-Day,” Hakim said quietly. “Death Day. And then there were none.”

Hawk chomped thoughtfully on his dead cigar.

“That right, Carter?” he said quizzically. “And then there were none?”

Nick stared back at him. “That’s right,” he said firmly. “None. But…” He shrugged. “Strange things have been known to happen.”

“Ah, come now, Nickska!” Valentina boomed. “You were sure at first. Why do you doubt now? It is impossible that the man could have survived that plunge.”

“Maybe,” said Nick. “But you never know, with Judas.”