Double Identity (12 page)

Into this mess Nick Carter had walked! Unsuspecting. Hawk hadn’t known the details in time to warn him. Might not have warned him anyway— Nick had a job to do and he was on his own. It was a thing his chief was capable of—withholding information that might only complicate matters. It was a judgment call—and Hawk never erred on the side of making things safer and more comfortable for his agents. It was his theory that such solicitude only made them lax.

Nick could find but one small crumb of comfort—he was only two days behind the impostor now. It occurred to him that the man might still be in Karachi.

The twenty minutes were up. The moon ducked behind a cloud and it was very dark. Nick, walking on the grass, went to the white gate and vaulted it. Bannion was just behind him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Stay and watch,” Nick whispered. “Be careful. I don’t expect you to take any risks or get in any trouble for me. But if anyone comes snooping, a police car, or anyone, I’d appreciate a warning.”

“I whistle pretty good.”

Nick remembered the jackal. “Whistling’s too obvious. How’s your jackal howl?”

Bannion’s teeth flashed in a grin. “Not bad. I scare the kids with it sometimes.”

“Okay then. That’s it. After you signal, and if you think there is any danger, you take off! I don’t want you caught.” Bannion would talk, of course.

“I don’t want to
get
caught,” Bannion agreed. He chuckled. “Not until I get the rest of the money anyway. But every cop in Karachi knows my jeep.”

“We’ll risk that,” said Nick. “Now keep quiet and hide. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

The house was low and rambling, much like a ranch house in the States except that one wing had a second story. Maid’s room, Nick thought as he studied the house from the shelter of a hedge. It was dark and quiet. He wondered briefly what had happened to the maid. Cops still holding her? Gone to relatives in India?

A tiny censor in his brilliant, superbly trained brain began to click and glow. But for once he ignored it, so intent was he on his purpose.

Nick moved across a cement porch without sound. He found a French window open, the jalousie raised. A second censor clicked in his brain. This time he paid heed. How come the window so conveniently open, so beckoning? Sloppy police work when they had sealed the house? Could be. Or could not be. So—he was being paid danger money for this mission.

N3 checked his weapons. Pierre, the gas bomb, was safe in the metal cartridge between his legs. Surely he wouldn’t need Pierre tonight. Hugo, the stiletto, was cold against his forearm. Sam Shelton had been killed with a stiletto, remember!

N3 checked Wilhelmina, the Luger. He jacked a cartridge into the chamber, muffling the sound beneath his borrowed airman’s jacket, and flicked off the safety. He went into the dark room beyond with a single fluid motion that was without sound.

Nothing. A clock ticked dutifully away, though its owner had no more use for time. It was blacker than a dictator’s sins! Nick felt his way along a wall, his fingers detecting flocked wallpaper.

He reached a corner and halted, counting the seconds, listening. After two minutes he dared the pen light he always carried. The thin beam disclosed a big desk, files, a small safe in another corner. He was in Shelton’s office.

Cautiously he approached the desk. It was bare except for a blotter, a telephone, and some sort of an official form pad. Nick held the light close and scanned the pad. It was a new one with only a few sheets missing. Nick picked it up gingerly—he had no means of knowing how clever the Karachi police were with fingerprints—and read the small black lettering. It was in gobbledy-gook. Officialese! U.S. Lend Lease style. It was a pad of requisition slips.

The dead Sam Shelton had been special attache for APDP—Arms Procurement and Distribution Program. There was a huge transshipment depot on the Indus northeast of Karachi.

N3 scanned the pad again. He turned it in the air so the little beam of light played across the top sheet at an angle, bringing up indentations, the impression of what had been written on the preceding sheet. Even without special technique he could make out a long list, written in a small hand, and at the bottom the heavy swirl of a signature.
Sam Shelton.

Excitement began to build in the AXE man now. He thought he was getting close—close to finding out what the fake Nick Carter was after. He twisted the pad this way and that, trying to make out more of the writing. He was positive that one of the faintly limned phrases was—
Consigned to—

Damn! He needed a heavy pencil, a soft lead, to brush over the impressions and bring them up. The desk top was bare. Nick found a drawer, the top drawer, and slid it softly open. There should be—

For a micro-second the man and the snake stared at each other. It was a krait, eighteen inches of instant death! Cousin to the cobra, but much deadlier. Death in less than a minute and no serum could save you.

Both the man and the snake struck in the same instant. Nick was just a shade the faster. His action was spontaneous, without thought. Thought would have killed him. His nerves and muscles took over and the little stiletto flashed down to pin the krait to the bottom of the drawer, just below the obscene flat head.

The krait lashed in a furious death agony, still trying to strike its enemy. Nick Carter gave a long sigh and wiped sweat from his face, watching the fangs still flickering a half-inch from his wrist.

Chapter 7

Double Trouble

His nerves were back to normal before the krait stopped writhing. Careful to avoid the still feral mouth the man from AXE found a soft pencil and brushed it lightly over the pad. It was a trick every kid knew. As he stroked in the soft graphite, words began to appear. Soon he could read most of what was on the pad. N3 pursed his lips in silent speculation.

Sam Shelton, acting by the authority of his office, had turned over a lot of arms to the Pakistani Army. Evidently on orders from the fake Nick Carter. It didn’t have to be that way, but Nick had a sinking feeling that it was. His double had taken the top sheet from this pad. A requisition and consignment slip releasing arms to the Pakistanis. Dated day before yesterday.

Nick slanted his light on the pad and read a note scribbled on the bottom—the arms to be shipped up the Indus, by boat, to the Lahore front! That would look just great in the newspapers! Washington favoring Pakistan over India— breaking its own edict! It wasn’t true, of course, but that was how it would
look.
If it got out.

N3’s handsome, saturnine face crinkled in a wolfish grin. It wouldn’t get out—not if he had anything to say about it. It was just one more angle to this job—find that arms shipment and stop it! That must take priority even over killing his other self.

He scanned the paper again. Rifles—and Mis at that! Light and heavy machine guns. Grenades. Bazookas and light anti-tank guns!

Five million rounds of ammunition!

Nick Carter heard it then. A faint sliding sound somewhere in the house. In one rapid motion he flicked off the light, snatched the stiletto out of the dead krait, and ran on tiptoe to a wall near the study door. He liked something solid against his back.

The sound was not repeated. N3 waited, tensed and ready, breathing noiselessly through his open mouth. Not one of his superb muscles so much as quivered. He was an unseen statue—the perfect hunter doing what he was best at—the waiting stalk.

Five minutes passed in utter silence. The clock’s insistent voice was metronomic in the dark. Nick could count his pulse as it thudded in his temples. He began to realize what he was up against. A man who was supposed to
be
himself—and who was just as patient, as cunning, and as deadly! And that man, the impostor, was somewhere in the house now! Waiting, even as Nick was waiting. Waiting to see who made the first mistake!

N3 understood something else—his enemy had purposely made that noise. It had not been a slip, a mistake. His enemy had
wanted
Nick to know that he was in the house. That single small sound had been a challenge.
Come and get me!

That, N3 admitted, was the hell of it! He had to go after the other man. The fake agent had all the time in the world— Nick had none to spare. The double had come back to this house because he had reasoned that Nick would come here! And he was -confident, sure of himself, else he would not have signaled his presence. He had an organization behind him, too. A clear escape route laid out. Help within the sound of his voice. N3 had none of these things. He stood alone but for the growing anger and determination in him. The confrontation had come sooner than he had expected.

One other thing was clear. The arms shipment must be on its way. The Chinese agent had attended to that first, then doubled back to ambush Nick as he followed the trail. What queer bravado could have prompted the man to make a sound, to give himself away? A kind of twisted pride—or stupidity? Over-confidence?

Most unprofessional, Nick thought as he went back out the French window in a silent gliding motion. Unprofessional and dangerous. It’s going to get him killed!

For a moment he lingered in the shadows of the porch, listening. Nothing stirred near the house or in it. The planes had gone and the searchlights vanished. A
pi
dog howled dismally from far off—it sounded nothing like a jackal. Nick thought of Mike Bannion and hoped the little man was obeying orders and wouldn’t come snooping. And wouldn’t get hurt if, indeed, the man inside had helpers about.

He left the porch and moved silently through grass on which droplets of dew were beginning to gather. He had replaced Hugo in the sheath and went with the Luger ready and eager. He would like to do this job silently, but that might not be possible.

There was a low garage attached to the house by a latticed breezeway. Nick waited patiently for the dying moon to show, then saw that he could get to the upper floor, to the single wing of the house, by means of the latticework. He studied the layout intently in the brief light. He would have to do it by touch in the dark.

The moon sailed behind a dark cloud. Nick pushed cautiously through a low hedge of Indian cactus and tested the lattice. It held his weight. He went up like a monkey, using only one hand, the Luger alert in the other. The lattice was new and strong and did not creak, though it bent and swayed alarmingly.

There was a narrow strip of gutter and roof between the top of the lattice and the window which was his target. N3 stepped forward lightly and ducked below the window level. This was the only upstairs room in the house—he had figured it to be the Hindu maid’s bedroom—and whether he was right or not didn’t matter. What did matter was that it was the obvious way into the house. For that reason he had chosen it—his enemy might not be expecting the obvious.

Or again he might. Nick Carter swore gently to himself. The bastard had the advantage for the moment—he was in there somewhere and he could afford to wait. He
knew
that Nick had to come to him.

And so Nick did! But N3 had a healthy sense of fear, or what Hawk called intelligent caution, which had kept him alive for a long time in a very precarious profession. Now he huddled beneath the sill of the window and considered if he should take the gamble the window represented. It was another of the moments of truth he must continually face.

Nick peered up at the window. It was closed but the jalousies inside were slitted open. Nick flexed the stiletto into his hand and reached up, using the weapon as a pry-bar. The window moved a fraction. Not locked on the inside. Nick pondered that for a moment, then pried again with Hugo. The window shifted upward a half-inch. Nick re-sheathed the stiletto and got his big fingers into the crack and lifted. The window went up with a faint grating noise.

Sweat glistened on Nick Carter’s face and stung his eyes. He had been half expecting a blast of gunfire in his face, or a knife between the eyes. He breathed out a sigh of relief and kept going. The window had made enough noise to be heard anywhere in the silent house—his man would know at once what it was. And where Nick was! It might draw him, but Nick doubted it. The bastard could afford to wait.

He held the faintly rattling jalousies aside and legged over the sill. The room was dark but he caught the smell immediately. Blood! Fresh blood! The moon flashed for an instant and he saw something on a bed—it looked like a crumpled pile of dark rags through which something light glimmered. The moon went out.

Nick scuttled on his hands and knees for the door. His fingers told him it was locked.
On the inside.
His enemy was in the room with him!

Nick held his breath. Absolute dead silence pervaded the room. When at last he had to breathe—yoga exercises had built his lungs to where he could do without air for four minutes—nothing had changed. Still the deadly, frightening silence and the smell of fresh blood. Whose blood? Who, or what, was the thing on the bed?

N3 breathed soundlessly by mouth and did not move. He began to doubt his senses. He had not thought there was another man in the world who could go as quietly, as stealthily, as himself. Then he remembered—this enemy
was
himself in a sense! The Chinese had trained this impostor well.

There is a time to wait and a time to act. Nobody knew the adage better than Nick. So far he was behind. He was losing. The enemy knew he was in the room—but Nick did not know where the enemy was. Force his hand. Put on the pressure. began to crawl around the wall, thinking hard, trying to see the ultimate trick if there was one, expecting any moment the blinding flash of a light in his eyes. The smash of a bullet.

His brain worked furiously as he moved. Had he somehow been swindled, tricked? Or tricked himself? Had the door somehow been fiddled with so that it only
appeared
to have been locked from the inside? Sweat chilled on him at that thought—if it were true and his double had men with him then Nick was in a trap! They could guard the window and door and kill him at their leisure—or merely hold him prisoner until the police came. That didn’t bear thinking about. The cops would think they had the real killer again! It would take weeks to disentangle the mistaken identity mess and Nick would be ruined as an agent for a long time to come.