White Death

Five

In Wellington, wind surfers sped across the harbor as the daybreak sun brushed streaks of yellow onto the gray sky. Crowds of barrel-chested men in shorts jogged determinedly into a pitched gale, getting fit for rugby, the national sport.

Tall palms snapped back and forth, hardy survivors in one of the windiest cities in the world. Wellington gets over a hundred days a year of winds greater than forty miles an hour. Citizens joke that they have to stake down even the cabbages and pumpkins that they grow in their backyard gardens.

Nick Carter thought about this as he rode along Highway 1, past the bay of Port Nicholson, toward the hospital in downtown Wellington that Mike Strange had specified. She lay uncomplaining in the back seat of the old Cadillac, her head in Carter's lap, her eyes closed. The inhabitants of Wellington — of all New Zealand — were known for their hardiness, and for their stoicism when faced with disaster.

The highway ended at the town hall, and the driver continued around the bay toward the center of the city.

"Sorry about the little lady," he said for the sixth time with his broad Midwest U.S.A. accent. He'd answered the SOS call first, an insomniac owner of a meat market — Harold's Butchery — whose nighttime avocation of radio listening either entertained him when he couldn't sleep, or — he laughingly admitted — kept him awake long after he was relaxed enough to doze off.

"Shell be all right," Carter reassured Harold, and Mike, and himself.

"Broken ribs," Mike agreed, her eyes still closed. "I've had worse."

"One of the great things about New Zealand is the socialized medicine. You sick? The government picks up the tab," the driver went on, and snapped his fingers. "Came all the way from Chicago for paradise, and by God I found it!"

"Moved the Cadillac with you?" Carter asked.

"A beauty, right?" the driver Harold said. "A sixty-eight, and she's prime." He patted the dashboard. "Poor thing. She does have a nasty habit of collecting parking tickets. The Great Clobbering Machine — that's New Zealand's government to us — does have a few faults, but a clever fellow can get around them. Nonpunitive, you know. Half the time you get off."

"Ingenuity is admired here," Carter said.

The driver laughed.

"Don't I know it!" he chortled. "That's why I moved here. Paradise!"

The Wellington Hospital was not far from the Parliament building and the Beehive, the structure mat housed the nation's government offices Harold swung the Cadillac around to the emergency entrance, hopped out, and returned shortly with two men pushing a gum.

"A chariot for you, little lady," he said grandly and pulled open the back door.

With old-fashioned courtesy, he escorted the group into the hospital, kissed Mike's cheek, look Carter to the admissions office, slapped Carter on the back in farewell, then disappeared like a spirit from another era out the door.

Astonished, the woman behind the desk stared quizzically after the vanishing man.

"Miss?" Carter said politely.

The pale room smelled of antiseptic. Metallic sounds, talk, and rolling gurney wheels came from the hall. Several people waited nearby, some dozing in their chairs, others nervously turning pages in magazines they pretended to read.

The nurse looked at Carter, saw his dirty clothes, his sooty face, his disheveled hair, his too-short beard.

"What happened to the woman you brought in?" she said.

As he talked, she filled out forms.

"It will be a while," she said as she completed the last blank line. "One of the doctors will let you know."

He signed where she pointed.

"Sit with the others," she said. "It takes a while sometimes."

She gestured for Carter to take a chair with the group of discouraged, waiting people.

Instead he went to a telephone booth and made two calls: one to the AXE stringer in Wellington, the other to New Zealand intelligence.

Then he went outside and smoked.

The panel truck was painted white. The large black script said New Zealand Linen. Two men unloaded bundles wrapped in plastic and labeled sterile. Carter watched them work. They were efficient but slow. No one seemed to mind. They traded jokes with doctors and nurses. They were known and liked here. They carried bundles into the hospital, stacked them on a gurney, then returned for more bundles.

At last, the shorter man — swarthy with a handsome mustache that curled up at the ends — didn't return with the other. There was a difference of perhaps a minute, then he ran back out and joined his fellow worker.

Carter ground out his cigarette on the pavement and sauntered into the hospital toward the men's room. The nurse behind the admitting desk was busy with charts. The telephone rang. As she picked it up, Carter slipped into the men s room and locked the door.

There was a white, plastic-wrapped bundle on the back of the tank. He opened it. He took out the towel roller, fitted it into the towel case next to the sink, and pulled the white roll down so that it was within easy reach of any handwasher. He pulled out diversionary washcloths and pillowcases, and smiled. The Washington shipment had arrived.

He reached back into the plastic and picked up Wilhelmina, his remarkably accurate 9mm Luger. He balanced his old friend in his hand, then attached its holster at the small of his back and slipped the Luger in beneath his fishing vest. Suddenly he felt dressed.

Then he picked up Hugo, his pencil-thin stiletto, and slipped it from its special chamois case. The blade gleamed in the overhead light. He flipped Hugo into the air, and caught it in a neat slide back into its case. He attached the case to his right forearm so that at the twitch of a muscle Hugo would slip into his hand.

At last he picked up Pierre, his tiny gas bomb. He hefted it, and his fingers curled familiarly around it. The bomb snuggled in his palm perfectly. Hundreds of times Pierce had made Carter's escape from certain death possible. He attached the sphere high up on his inner thigh, where it fit like a third testicle.

In the minor, Carter looked at his sooty face. He washed, brushed his fingers through his hair, and grinned. The vacation took on even more distance, but he would keep the beard until he had his time off.

He knew that to anyone else the only difference in him from when he entered the bathroom was that he was more tidy. But he felt an enormous difference — the physical presence of his old friends. They were a shield and an invitation. He thought of the assignment, of Blenkochev.

Again he reached into the plastic sack. He picked up a small radio that looked like a Sony Walkman and a wallet containing identification, cash, and credit cards. He walked out of the bathroom and closed the door.

"She's punctured a lung," the young woman doctor explained to Carter. "A rib fragment. Not a big hole, you understand." Her voice was full of sympathy.

"She'll be up and around soon then."

"Yes. That's it," she said, grateful for his understanding. Even in paradise she'd had to tell too much bad news to too many loved ones. Now she was uneasy relating even an optimistic prognosis when she wasn't sure of the reception. She was still young; in ten years she'd either be hardened, or make grateful peace with her humanity.

"How long will she have to stay?" Carter asked.

The doctor smiled.

"If all goes well, only a week," she said. "She hurts more from the ribs than the lung, but the lung is what we've got to watch."

"I understand. May I see her?"

"Of course, but she's groggy from painkillers. She may not recognize you."

"I'll take the chance."

There were two guards outside Mike's hospital door. They were dressed in ordinary business suits, old and comfortable suits that complemented their casual slouches and disinterested faces. One or the other occasionally wandered up the hall, said hello in a hospital room, or talked to the volunteers who wheeled candy and good cheer along the antiseptic corridor. They were New Zealand intelligence, and they recognized Nick Carter.

"She's asleep, poor girl," the older one said. He had a talker's mouth and bright eyes. "Did give us a fright. I don't know whether to thank you for saving her, or knock your damned teeth in. If she'd died there, she wouldn't keep scaring our bloody wits away. Of course, then we'd lack for complaining, wouldn't we?"

He grinned charmingly, but worry hovered around the bright eyes. Whoever had set the explosives in Mike's Cessna might try to eliminate her again.

"She's lucky you're here to watch," Carter said and opened the door.

Both guards peered in around Carter, checked the room with hawk eyes, then nodded. He closed the door. Across the room, Mike lay small and unmoving on the narrow hospital bed.

Alone, he stood beside her, then took her hand. Intravenous tubes ran into her left arm. Her mass of chestnut hair spread out in a rich fan on the pillow. There was a pallor about her that made one think of death, but that was only the trauma of the injuries, Carter told himself. She would live.

"Nick." She smiled reassuringly. Then she frowned with thought, and look a breath. "I'm going to miss everything." Even in her weakened stale she was indignant.

He chuckled. She was beautiful, talented, intelligent, and stubborn. Life was ten percent inspiration, ninety percent perspiration. Mike was a winner.

"Sorry," he said. "Looks like you get the vacation. I'll lake notes and tell you all about it when it's over."

Her eyes snapped.

"I'll be out of here tomorrow!" she promised, then her face pinched with pain.

"Not tomorrow," he said quietly. "A week. And I don't want any of your magical escapes. Two of your friends are on the door. They'll keep anyone suspicious out… and, if they have to, they'll keep you in until the doctors say you can go."

"Some friends."

He laughed again. In three days she'd be plotting her escape. Within a day or two of that, depending on her strength, she'd be out. She was unstoppable.

"I've got to go, Mike. Sorry."

She looked at him balefully.

"Enjoy yourself," she said grumpily, then she smiled. "I'll be thinking of you. Care to kiss a fellow spy goodbye?"

Carter sat in the park near the hospital, the headphones of the small Sony look-alike over his ears. Lovers strolled nearby. Teen-agers laughed and giggled in the New Zealand summer sun. Children romped on the grass under the watchful eyes of mothers or older brothers and sisters. The traffic was moderate, slow as was the New Zealand habit. For a moment he thought he saw the yellow Mazda circling the park. A man in a tam-o'-shanter and small features was driving. It could have been the same one who'd left the first aid kit and radio after the Cessna's crash. No way to tell for sure.

Carter relaxed. He was just another park-goer enjoying the fresh air, warm sunshine, and a recording by the New Zealand Symphony. He pressed a corner of the machine. The music disappeared. A small keyboard slid out from the special AXE machine that used satellite electronics to hook into the mammoth AXE computer in Washington, D.C. He touched the buttons of the code he needed.

"Ah! Nick!" the sexy female voice whispered into his ears. "It's been too long. What can I do for you?"

Carter grinned and shook his head as he punched in his request. The sultry voice was one of Hawk's jokes.

"Rocky Diamond," the voice purred. She sounded like a cat who'd just licked clean a saucer of cream. "Real name Philip Shelton. An adventurer, born June 23, 1945, in Omaha. A graduate of the Air Force Academy, lowest marks in the class of 1967. Best known for his weekend passes. Put in his time with the Air Force, got out first chance he could.

"It was an honorable discharge," the husky female voice continued, "and few were sorry to see him leave. After that, he threw knives with a traveling Renaissance fair, punched cows in Wyoming, lived off a rich elderly widow in Los Angeles, and eventually drifted back to flying. His most recent work, as far as we can tell, has been for private contractors. He's 'for hire'. If there's a job that will pay him enough, he'll fly it.

"His character is unreliable, except where there's enough money to stabilize him for the job. He does have one asset, however." There was a smile in the mechanical sex-kitten voice. "He's very attractive to women. His sex life is exhausting. His favorite drink is a martini with a dash of Pernod. Sometime in the last ten years he's affected an English accent and English ways, and lives accordingly. He's precisely six-one-and-a-half and weighs one-eighty-five. Sometimes his hair is brown, sometimes blond. Rangy, athletic, and smokes a pipe." The voice paused, almost breathless from its relating of important business matters. "Is there anything else, dear Nick?"

Carter stifled an impulse to thank the lifelike voice. Instead he grinned, pleased. Hawk had found enough information for him to begin the search.

Nick Carter thought about New Zealand as he rode the quiet elevator up through the warehouse building near the Rail Ferry Terminal. The nation was isolated geographically from the rest of the world, and that isolation had been turned by the citizens into an advantage. They'd created their own brand of civilization, one that pleased them and worked, despite similar controversial attempts that failed in Europe.

In the warehouse, the air smelled of dust, lumber, and oily machinery. On the first floor, room-size crates were piled so high that cranes were needed to unstack them. The elevator that Carter rode alone jerked. The cables groaned as it stopped.

He stepped off onto a plywood floor of a secret office whose location was described to him only after his second phone call to New Zealand intelligence. In a good organization, all contacts were checked thoroughly.

He walked across a narrow deserted hall. The automatic elevator door closed behind him. It was a typical warehouse room. Dust was puffed up in the corners. A single overhead lightbulb shed dim light. But he noted the hidden cameras, the size of U.S. nickels, embedded to look like knotholes in the rough lumber planks that served as walls. Probably some of the planks slid away so that hidden computer-controlled guns could swing out when needed.

He went to the only door. He spread his right hand on the shiny brown plaque that said Office. The plaque heated briefly. He took his hand away. The door swung open, and Colonel Chester ffolkes, chief of New Zealand intelligence, extended his hand.