The Weapon of Night

CHAPTER EIGHT Nine Minus Two Leaves — Eight

And there was no sign of violence.

Julia closed the door and leaned against it.

“I suppose this room has its own little elevator cage,” she murmured.

“Something of the sort,” Nick muttered. “It has to.”

And he knew it must be a fairly simple device or there would not have been time for what had to have been done.

Yet, there was no escape hatch through the floor or ceiling. He had checked before and now he checked again. And still found nothing.

“If we just wait…?” Julia mouthed at him.

He shook his head. “Can’t leave him any loopholes. Got to find him where he is.”

There was a row of storage cabinets across the room from him, set against the wall. These, too, he had looked into with the guards earlier in the evening, and they had told him nothing but that the plant kept plenty of spare parts. The cabinets were wide but shallow and their shelves were neatly stacked with tools and labeled boxes.

Now he scrutinized them with care. Especially their locks. The cabinets were kept unlocked during the day, and when he had last seen them two or three had stood slightly ajar. He had inspected them all, opening those that had not already been open, and it was obvious that only a very small midget could have wedged himself between any of the shelves. And even then he would have had to push aside the contents. Yet, none of the shelves had been disturbed, and there was no midget in sight. But Nick had been interested in the width of the shallow cabinets — a width that brought to mind another less capacious opening.

Now all the doors were closed and locked.

And he saw something that he had not noticed before. Maybe he had missed it because the doors had already been unlocked and some of them open, or maybe because he had been so busy peering inside looking for an assailant he had not really expected to find; maybe because his mind had not really been on locks at all.

But now it was, and now he saw it.

The lock and handle of one of the doors bulged outward slightly, as if the door had been dented from the inside. And the outer plating of the lock was absolutely new. It gleamed, it shone. AH the others had the dullness, almost rustiness of several years of use.

Julia arched her eyebrows and looked questioningly at Nick.

He clamped his ear against the sturdy metal of the cabinet door and reached for his lockpicker as he listened.

There was no sound from within. He had not really expected that there would be. And yet there was a suggestion of sound from somewhere through the door, as if the cabinet itself were a listening ear or a conductor of a very distant, hollow thread of noise. Not loud enough even to be heard within the power-control room; certainly not loud enough to be heard through the virtually soundproof doors into the corridor.

Nick motioned Julia to absolute silence and went to work on the lock. It was indeed new, and it was as sturdy as the complicated locks on the main doors throughout the plant… incredibly sturdy for a lock to a simple storage cabinet.

At last, it gave. He eased the door open cautiously, and it opened as if freshly oiled. Rows of boxes still stood undisturbed upon the shelves. He pushed at them. Most of them were small and light. But they did not move.

“Why, they’re attached to the shelves!” Julia whispered. “Why in the world…?”

“I’m a bloody fool,” Nick muttered. “Should have realized it before. They’re stuck there so they won’t fall off, of course.”

The thin beam of his pencil flashlight probed the inside of the cabinet. The boxes contained junk parts, leftover material which could have very little use. Which meant, thought Nick, that the cabinet itself would need to be opened rarely, if at all. And yet it had been open earlier in the evening, when he had looked into it after being slugged.

Minutes passed as he made his probing search. He glanced at his watch. Eight minutes now since he had burned his way into the room. Well, that should give him time enough — if he could only find the thing.

And then he saw it. A small, sliding knob at the rear of the cabinet, half-hidden by the cardboard flap on an open box.

“Julia,” he whispered, “kill the lights in the room — there’s a switch at the door — and tell those guards out there to keep absolutely still and silent.”

Her eyebrows questioned him but she glided quietly away without a word. The lights went out, all but the thin beam from his flashlight, and from behind him he had heard the low murmur of her voice. Then silence. He felt rather than saw her come back to him in the darkness.

“It’s a door,” he murmured. “I’m going through; you’re staying here.”

He slid the knob aside. There was the slightest of clicks, and the shelves swung inward several inches. A dim and ghostly light shone through the opening, and he heard a thin sound like the echo of a distant voice. And now that the false back of the cabinet was open so that its edge was revealed, he could see the marks upon it — as though someone had levered it open, literally beaten it open, from the other side.

It was the one last answer that he needed. He knew for certain, now, how and why the power had gone out. But how ironic that he should have been trapped in an elevator cage!

He pushed the shelf-door back, stepped into the wide but shallow cabinet, and looked down into space.

There was a crude ladderway leading downward toward the glow of light, and at its foot there was a narrow passageway through which a brighter light spilled.

A smell of raw earth rose to meet his nostrils as he descended. But what interested him more than anything was the one stair that was splintered as if by a sudden heavy weight, and the fragment of dark cloth that clung to one of the splinters.

He reached bottom. There was no time now, nor any need, to inspect the scuff marks in the dirt at the foot of the ladder. Someone had lain there, and someone had risen, but that no longer mattered. Only the sounds filtering through the lighted passageway could matter to him now… two voices, murmuring, both of them deep and low.

Nick padded silently toward the brightness and stopped where the passage widened into a small crude room occupied by the two people who were murmuring to each other.

One was Comrade Valentina Sichikova of Russian Intelligence.

The other was J. Baldwin Parry, Chief of West Valley Security.

“That is good, Comrade, very good,” said Parry, and his voice was almost loving. “So you told them about the nine of us yes? Ah, so. That was only natural. But what about this Egyptian you say has certain dangerous information — what is his name, do you recall?”

Valentina’s wide features wobbled sideways in an expression of regret.

“Not now,” she said. “Not now. But wait — it will come to me. Let me think a moment. Patience, Comrade. Patience.”

For one blinding, awful moment Nick’s faith hit bottom. She, Valentina — his Valentina — had set this whole thing up to blab to one of the Nine….

And then Valentina moved and Parry moved with her, and Nick cursed himself for a doubting fool.

Her arms were tied behind her back and there was a heavy chain around her ankles. And Parry had a hypodermic needle in his hand.

“I have no time for patience, Comrade,” Parry said softly. “I cannot believe your elephant’s memory has failed you. We fight the same fight, your people and mine. We must co-operate. I must know who else suspects anything about us. I must know who there is to recognize us. I must know this man’s name and where he is. Time is short — I must know, I must know, I must know! Who is he?”

Valentina yawned prodigiously. Her eyes opened suddenly in a bright and beady stare. “No, you are no Comrade, and our fight is not the same as yours. There is a lake nearby, you Chinese devil. I say go jump in it!”

Her bound feet lashed out and struck solidly against Parry’s crouching form. He snarled like a dog as he stumbled back and struck out viciously with the thin whip in his left hand.

“Fat bitch! I have other methods — drugs to make you scream for mercy, but you will not even scream because that great gawping mouth of yours —”

“Silence, pig!” Valentina roared, and this time her huge body moved like a battering ram and slammed hard into Parry.

Neither of them saw Nick’s flying tackle — but Parry felt the steel-trap grip around his lower body as he staggered back, spitting with rage, from Valentina’s ramrod blow. He dropped on the crude earth floor like a sack of ballast.

“Ho, ho, ho! That was pretty, Nickska!” Valentina roared.

But Parry was not finished. He writhed like an outraged python in Nick’s clutch, and his digging, clawing hands were the hands of a man well-trained in the art of killing.

They rolled over together. Nick slammed an axe blade of a punch at Parry’s temple and found raw earth instead as Parry squirmed aside. Nick caught at the wrist that came at him and twisted savagely, hauling himself to his feet as he tightened the armlock until Party dangled over his shoulder like a drunk being hauled home after too much party. Then something snapped. Parry yelped shrilly and Nick let him drop, slicing a neck punch at him on his way down. He lay flat, like a man out for the count, and Nick’s foot arced through the air in what should have been the knockout chin kick.

But Parry was quick. You had to give him that. He lurched aside and one hand snaked deep into a pocket, and then there was a sharp bark of sound and a smell of burning cloth. Nick felt the bullet crease his thigh, and then he jumped — hard down on Parry’s fallen form, hard down on the one hand in the pocket. This time his kick went straight and true. Parry’s head snapped back and he gave a sort of belch, and then the man was silent.

Nick took a deep breath and turned to Valentina.

“Thank God,” he said, and knelt beside her with Hugo in his hand. “Let’s get these cords off you and onto him.”

“Thank you,” said Valentina simply. “I knew that you would come, my friend.”

Her clothes were torn and covered with dirt; her face and arms were bloody. But she smiled, and when her arms were free she put them lightly around him and kissed him on the cheek.

“It was my fault, Nick. The cage, I had to go up in it, because I felt something was bound to happen then and I was most curious to know what it would be. And I made much trouble for you. I am so sorry.”

“Not your fault,” he said, twisting cords around Parry’s wrists. “It was planned from the beginning. Parry would have managed something — he and his comrade in the cage.”

“Ah! The watchtower cage,” said Valentina, realization dawning. “So there was another one. But this one — this one, of course, was the one I recognized.” Her pudgy hands stroked over Parry’s face, roved over his eyebrows and underneath his beard. “Of course, I was not sure at first,” she said. “But here are scars. Do you see them? This man’s face was once a little different. Not too very different, of course, or they would not have chosen him, nor would I have known him. But I very much suspect that the real J. Baldwin Parry was killed some months ago. This man is Chang Ching-Lung — who left Moscow about a year ago.”

“Is that so?” Nick said softly. His fingers poked around in Parry’s slack-jawed mouth for the escape pill he suspected might be there, but there was nothing. “Well, he brought a friend with him, scarred in much the same way. But he’s no longer with us.” He told her, briefly, about the man called Hughes while he searched through Parry’s pockets, about the decoy helicopter flight and about the gassing. “So I was pretty sure,” he went on, “that you had been brought down, not up. And after the business of the power failure I was almost positive. Parry, I figured, was the only man who could have slugged me with that spanner. Easy enough for him to lie down and pretend he had been hit, just the. way he pretended he’d been gassed. The way I saw it, you’d been dumped in here and hidden away somehow, then gotten free to throw the switches.”

Valentina grinned. “So you got my signal. I thought that you would understand. I was only afraid that you might not still be in the plant, that you had perhaps taken off on some wild-duck chase…

“Goose chase,” Nick corrected automatically, staring at the small rectangle of stiff paper in his hand.-

“So, goose chase. But anyway you were still here. Next thing, though, Chang-Parry bursts into the power room and I am still so groggy from his dope, also partly tied, that I cannot fight back in my usual style. We fall together against the switches and some of them I bend. Then comes his hypodermic needle and — whoof! Out I go again, and I suppose he drops me down those stairs just before you got here. So that part is over now. But tell me, Nickska — why were you so sure that I did not take off in the helicopter?”

Nick chuckled softly. “Valentina, honey, I saw its twin and I just had to know. I don’t know what power in the world could have squeezed you into that little spotter craft through its regular man-sized hatchway. It was too small for you, that’s all.”

“Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!” Valentina slapped her thigh delightedly. “But what is that little paper you have there in your hand?”

“Airline ticket,” Nick said slowly. “Yesterday’s date. Montreal to Buffalo.”

“Yesterday,” Valentina rumbled. “Montreal. Yes, that is quite interesting…. Someone comes?”

“I come,” said Julia from the dimness of the dirt passage. She moved into the light and beamed at Valentina. “Greetings, Comrade,” she said warmly, “I’ll tell you later how very glad I am to see you. But in the meantime, Carter, we have a minor crisis on our hands. People are milling about in the control room demanding to come down here. Shall I hold them off with my trusty derringer, or should I let them in? There’s half a dozen guards, all brandishing their guns; there’s Weston, Pauling and our own Charley Hammond. All looking very grim and white around the gills.”

“For God’s sake, not all of them,” Nick said, rising from Parry’s prone body. “Weston, Hammond, and one of the guards. There’s no room for any more. And have someone rouse the medic, while you’re at it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Julia smartly, and vanished down the corridor.

Parry’s body suddenly jerked to life. His head darted sideways and his mouth opened wide in a biting movement.

Nick whirled and kicked out savagely at Parry’s head.

But Parry’s teeth were already clamped on one corner of his shirt collar and they fastened there with the bite of a mad dog. Nick fell on him and wrenched with desperate strength. The collar tore in Parry’s teeth, the corner came off in his mouth. Nick’s fist slammed hard against his cheek and the jaw opened fractionally; and as it did, Nick fastened one hand tight around the man’s throat and thrust his other roughly between the clamping teeth.

There was a little gurgle from Parry as a tiny crunching sound came from inside his mouth.

His voice was muffled, but the words were clear enough.

Too late, too late,” he mumbled thickly, and threw his head back galvanically with Nick’s hands still clawing at him. His face twisted hideously; he jerked, and then he slumped back, dead.

Nick pulled himself away and his arms dropped to his sides. There was no point in saying anything, but his face mirrored his despair and self-contempt.

Valentina sighed with gigantic disappointment, but the look she turned on Nick was one of sympathy and affection. “It is a loss in one way,” she said softly. “But still we have gained much. Think — two down, and only seven to go.”

“Only seven,” Nick said bitterly. “And he could have told us where to find them.”

“I think he would not have,” said Valentina gently.

Feet clumped down the passageway and three men looked in on them. The chatty guard, Plant Manager Weston, and AXE’s Charley Hammond.

“For the love of Christ, what’ve you done to Parry?” Weston cried.

“It’s not Parry,” said Nick. “I’ll explain later. At least we have Madam Sichikova back with us. Charley — you have news?”

For he had not posted his men at the exits as he had said he would; instead he had issued quiet instructions that they search the plant with Weston only as their guide. Even if Weston could not be trusted, either, he would have to show them everything they asked to see.

Charley Hammond nodded. “News, all right,” he said tightly. “Bad news. Weston can tell you better than I how much is missing, but this much I can say — there’s enough uranium and plutonium missing to blow up the entire world a dozen times and take the moon with it. If it’s ever used that way. If not — there’s helluva lot of radioactive material on the loose somewhere.”

“It’s disastrous, unthinkable!” Weston burst out, and the guard looked on open-mouthed and wide-eyed. “Someone must have been systematically stealing it in special.containers. We didn’t notice it before — we keep it in that row of steel and concrete chambers that I showed you earlier, and we don’t use them all at once. Chambers A and B are the ones we’ve been using for the last few months. But C and D and E we haven’t touched; we haven’t needed to. They should be full — but they’re practically empty! But how — why — who? I don’t understand. The thing’s impossible!”

“With a couple of traitors in your midst, and maybe more than a couple,” Nick said grimly, “and a pair of helicopter! on the roof, and the phony Parry with all the freedom in the world to come and go, I don’t think it’s so impossible. You’ve told the president?”

“Yes. God, he’s running round in circles,” Weston said feverishly. “Calling New York, Washington, his wife, the bloody lot.”

“That’s got to be stopped at once,” Nick said sharply. “There’ll be a national panic before he’s through. Let’s get the hell out of this dungeon and knock some sense into his head. Hammond — you stay down here with Julia and search around to see if there aren’t any other hidden doors or stolen supplies of God knows what. And I want to impress on the lot of you — each and every one of you, in this room and anywhere else in the plant — that not a word of what’s happened here must be permitted to leak out. Not a word. Least of all, about the missing material. Get me? Okay, let’s go up and’ make sure the president understands that too… and makes it an order. Nobody, nobody, is going to talk.”

But somebody did.

The first to open his mouth was a talkative guard named Brown, Joe to his buddies — and he had plenty of them. When he reached his home after going off shift at two that morning he woke his wife and told her all about it. After all, she was his wife, and a wife is to be talked to, right?

Hazel Brown could scarcely wait until morning to call her very best friend. So what could hurt, telling just one very good friend? And who could keep such startling news to herself?

“Ginnie! You know what? There’s been the most shocking robbery at the plant. Not money. Uranium! Plutonium! Honey, do you realize that’s radioactive material and nobody knows where it went. And do you know what else….”

Joe woke late and took his car for a tune-up at his favorite service station. It was his favorite because it was run by an old pal of his, an ex-guard at West Valley, and he couldn’t see any harm in telling old Max about it as long as he swore him to secrecy….

Ginnie Nelson whispered something to her neighbor over the back fence….

Martha Ryan had a party line….

Max had a brother who ran a saloon….

None of them knew that several hours earlier, in California, a small boy had picked up a wooden box in a parking lot and played with it before his big brother came along and took it away from him and turned it over to the police, nor that the police had turned it over to experts who viewed it with great alarm.

Neither did they know about the tin box that had been planted in a Denver hospital, or about the patients who were slowly dying without knowing it themselves. The patients, and the doctors, and the nurses.

Nor did Nick know about any of that until much later.

At the first light of the morning after the events at West Valley he was driving back to New York at breakneck speed. Valentina slept soundly in the back seat; Julia and Charley Hammond talked together in low voices. There was an AXE car ahead, an AXE car in front, an AXE helicopter overhead and chaos back at the plant.

The signal on the dashboard beeped.

Nick flicked the switch. “Carter. Come in,” he said.

“Hawk, here,” said the answering voice. “Much of what I have to say to you will keep until you’re sufficiently rested. And I’ve got plenty to say to you, N3, believe me. But right now I have someone else with me who wants to talk to you. Go ahead, H19.”

H19? Nick thought. Now what the hell? There is no H19.

“Greetings, N3,” said a voice that sounded oddly familiar. “H19 here with a whole new batch of feelthy peectures. But perhaps you’re not in the mood for them right now, my friend.”

“Hakim!” Nick yelled. “You cross-eyed old son of a bitch!” And his face split into the kind of grin he had not worn in many hours. “What are you doing here — or there — or wherever you are? And what’s with the H19 routine?”

“I am now a Secret Agent,” Hakim said sepulchrally. “Mr. Hawk has given me a temporary assignment. I am especially sent for to unbotch your mistakes.” Then his voice changed; it was low and serious. “We will talk more later, Nicholas. But I have one bit of news that I think might interest you. It is this: I remembered who it was that I saw watching the surgeon von Kluge at that Cairo party. He left the country on the following day, destination unknown — many visas on his passport, including Canada. Not the U.S., but Canada is close enough. I described him to your Mr. Hawk, who was particularly interested in his artificial hands.”

“Artificial hands!” Nick sat bolt upright in the driver’s seat and Julia swung away from Hammond to stare at him.

“Yes, artificial hands. Two of them, and quite good ones. Apparently, he is much changed otherwise, but according to the description I was able to give, Hawk thinks he knows the man. His name was given to me as Martin Brown, his occupation, traveling salesman for some highly specialized equipment company which sent him often around the world. But it seems quite likely that his occupation is something entirely different, and that his name is not Martin Brown — but Judas.”