Temple of Fear (18 page)

He saw Johnny Chow then, behind him. The man was standing on top of a car and screaming at the mob streaming past. One of the spotlights on a police car picked him up and held him steady in a bar of light. Chow kept waving his arms and haranguing and, gradually, the mob's flow began to slow. They were listening now. They had stopped running.

Tonaka, standing near the right fender of the car, was splashed by the spotlight. She was all in black, slacks, sweater, her hair done up in a kerchief. She stared up at the screeching Johnny Chow, her eyes narrowed, an odd composure about her, paying no heed to the crowd that jostled and pushed about the car.

It was impossible to hear what Johnny Chow was saying. His mouth opened and words came out and he kept pointing around him. But the mob had stopped running now. It began to thicken and clot. They were listening again. From the police lines came a shrilling of whistles and the line of cops began to fall back. A mistake, Nick thought. Should have kept them on the run. But the cops were far outnumbered and they were playing it safe.

He saw the men in the gas masks, at least a hundred of them. They swirled around the car where Chow was preaching and they all carried some sort of weapon — clubs, swords, guns and knives. Nick caught a flash of a Sten gun. This was the hard core, the real trouble-makers, and with the weapons and gas masks they meant to lead the mob through the police lines and into the Palace grounds.

Johnny Chow was still yelling and pointing toward the Palace. Tonaka watched from below, her face impassive. The men in gas masks began to form a crude front, shifting into ranks.

Killmaster glanced around. The jeep was caught in the press of the mob and he was looking over a sea of angry faces to where the spotlight still limned Johnny Chow. The police were showing restraint, but they were getting a good look at the bastard.

Nick eased the Browning out of his belt. He cast a glance down. No one in all the thousands was paying him the slightest attention. He was the invisible man. Johnny Chow was the cynosure. He was in the limelight at last. Killmaster smiled briefly. He would never get another chance like this.

It would have to be fast. This mob was capable of anything. They would tear him into bloody bits.

He guessed (he range at about thirty yards. Thirty yards with a strange gun he had never fired.

The police spotlight was still pinned on Johnny Chow. He wore it like a halo, unafraid, reveling in it, spitting and shouting out his hate. The ranks of armed and gas-masked men formed into a wedge and began to move toward the police lines.

Nick Carter brought the Browning up and leveled it. He took a quick deep breath, let half of it out, then pulled the trigger three times.

He could barely hear the shots over the mob's sound. He saw Johnny Chow spin atop the car, grab at his chest, then fall. Nick leaped from the jeep, as far out into the throng as he could push himself. He came down into a writhing mass of shoving bodies, struck out with his good hand, smashing a space clear, and began to work his way to the fringe of the mob. Only one man tried to stop him. Nick put an inch of hunting knife into him and kept going.

He had worked his way into the partial shelter of a hedge lining the beginning of Palace lawn when he caught 'the new note of the crowd. He crouched in the hedge, disheveled and bloody, and watched the mob charge the police again. The cadre of armed men was in the van, led by Tonaka. She waved a small Chinese flag — all her cover gone now — and she ran screaming at the head of the tattered, irregular wave of humanity.

A scatter of shots came from the police. No one fell. They were still firing high. The mob, again enthusiastic, mindless, came on behind the spearpoint of armed men, the hard core. The din was terrible and bloodthirsty, a manic giant screaming out his kill lust.

The thin line of police parted and the horsemen came out. Mounted police, at least two hundred of them, rode hard at the point of the mob. They were using sabers and they meant business. Police patience was at an end. Nick knew why — the Chinese flag had done it.

The horses smashed into the crowd. People reeled and went down. The screaming began. The sabers rose and fell, catching sparks from the spotlights and tossing them like bloody motes.

Nick was close enough to see it plainly. Tonaka turned and tried to run to one side to elude the charge. She tripped over a man already down. The horse reared and plunged, as frightened as the humans, nearly unseating its rider. Tonaka was halfway up, fleeing again, when the steel-shod hoof came down and pulped her skull.

Nick ran for the Palace wall that stood beyond the lawn fringed by the hedge. No time for the postern now. He looked like a bum, like a rioter himself, and they would never let him in.

The wall was ancient and mossy, covered with lichen and with plenty of finger and footholds. Even with one arm he had no difficulty getting over it. He dropped inside the grounds and ran toward a blaze of lights near the moat. There was a blacktop drive leading to one of the permanent bridges and a barricade had been set up. There were cars behind the barricade, people milling around and a low-keyed shouting of military and police voices.

A Japanese soldier stuck a carbine in his face.

"Tomodachi,"
Nick husked.
"Tomodachi —
friend! Take me to Commander-san. Hubba! Hayai!"

The soldier pointed to a knot of men near one of the cars. He prodded Nick toward them with the carbine. Killmaster thought: This is going to be the toughest part — looking the way I do. He probably wasn't speaking any too well, either. He was nervous, tense, beat up and damned near defeated. But he had to make them understand that the real trouble was only beginning. Somehow he
had
to do that...

The soldier said: "You put hands on head, please." He spoke to one of the men in the group. A half dozen curious faces turned Nick's way. He recognized one of them. Bill Talbot. Attaché at the Embassy. Thank God!

Nick had not known, until then, how much his voice had suffered from the beatings he'd taken. He was croaking like a raven.

"Bill! Bill Talbot. Come here. It's Carter. Nick Carter!"

The man came to him, slowly. There was no recognition in his stare.

"Who? Who are you, fella? How do you know my name?"

Nick fought for control. No use blowing his top
now.
He took a deep breath. "Just listen to me, Bill. Who will buy my lavender?"

The man's eyes narrowed. He came closer and peered at Nick. "Lavender is out this year," he said. "I want cockles and mussels. Sweet Jesus, is it really you, Nick?"

"It is. Now listen and don't interrupt. No time..."

He rattled out his story. The soldier had retired a few paces but he kept the carbine trained on Nick. The group of men by the car stared at them in silence.

Killmaster finished. "You take it now," he said. "Quick does it. Philston must be somewhere in the grounds."

Bill Talbot frowned at him. "You've been misinformed, Nick. The Emperor isn't here. Hasn't been for a week. He's in retreat. Meditating.
Satori.
He's at his private shrine near Fujiyoshida."

Richard Philston had duped them all.

Nick Carter swayed, then caught himself. You did what you had to do.

"Okay," he croaked. "Get me a fast car. Hubba! There might still be a chance. Fujiyoshida is only thirty miles and a plane is no good. I'll go ahead. You organize things here. They know you and they'll listen. Call Fujiyoshida and..."

"Can't. The lines are out. Damned near everything is out Nick, you look like a corpse — don't you think, that I had better..."

"I think you had better get me that car," Nick said grimly. "Right this goddamned minute."

The big Embassy Lincoln bored through the night, heading southwest over a road that was good for short stretches, bad in most. When it was finished it would be a super-highway — now it was a mass of detours. He hit three before he was ten miles out of Tokyo.

Still, it was likely to be the shortest way to the little shrine at Fujiyoshida, where the Emperor was at this moment in deep meditation, contemplating the cosmic mysteries and, no doubt, seeking to know the unknowable. The latter was a Japanese characteristic.

To Nick Carter, hunched over the wheel of the Lincoln and keeping the speedometer on the highest number without killing himself, it appeared very likely that the Emperor would succeed in penetrating the mysteries beyond the grave. Richard Philston had a head start, plenty of time and, until now, had succeeded in decoying Nick and the Chicoms beautifully.

That graveled the AXEman. How stupid of him not to check. Not to even
think
to check. Philston had let it drop casually that the Emperor was in residence at the Palace — ergo! He had accepted it without question. With Johnny Chow and Tonaka the question had not arisen, since they had known nothing of the plot to kill the Emperor. Killmaster, with no access to newspapers, radio or TV, had been an easy dupe. It had, he thought now as he came to another detour sign, been simply routine on Philston's part. It would make no difference in the job that Pete Fremont had undertaken to do — and Philston was hedging against any last minute change of heart, betrayal or upset in his plans. So beautifully simple — send your audience to one theater and stage your play in another. No applause, no interference, no witnesses.

He slowed the Lincoln to a crawl as he went through a village where candles made a thousand saffron polka dots in the gloom. They were on Tokyo power here and it was still out. Beyond the village the detour continued, muddy, saturated by recent rains, better suited for ox carts than for the low-slung job he was driving. He slammed the gas pedal down and spun her on through the clinging mud. If he got bogged down it was the end.

Nick's right hand was still tucked uselessly into his jacket pocket. The Browning and the hunting knife were beside him on the seat. His left arm and hand, numb to the bone from wrenching the big steering wheel, settled down to a steady relentless ache.

Bill Talbot had shouted something at Nick as he pulled away in the Lincoln. Something about helicopters. That might work. Probably not. By the time they got matters organized, what with all the chaos in Tokyo and everything knocked out, and by the time they could get out to the airfields, it was going to he too late. And they didn't know what to look for. He knew Philston by sight. They didn't.

A helicopter, flapping into the tranquil shrine, would scare Philston away. Killmaster didn't want that. Not now. Not after he had come this far. Saving the Emperor was number one — but getting Richard Philston once and for all was a very close second. The man had done far too much damage in the world.

He came to a fork in the road. He missed a sign, rammed on the brakes and backed up to catch the sign in his lights. All he needed was to get lost. The sign said Fijiyoshida to the left and he had to trust it.

The road was good now for a stretch and he let the Lincoln out until he was doing ninety. He rolled the window down and let the damp wind blast at him. He was feeling better now, beginning to come around and into his second store of reserve strength. He careered through another village before he knew it was there and thought he heard a frantic whistle behind him. He grinned. That would be one indignant cop.

A sharp left turn raced up at him. Beyond it was an arching, narrow, one-car bridge. Nick saw the turn just in time, clamped on his brakes, and the car went into a long, sliding, tire-screeching, right-hand skid. The wheel lashed at him, trying to tear away from his numbed lingers. He fought her out of the skid, cornered into the turn with a wrenching scream of springs and shocks and ruined the right rear fender as he just made it into the bridge.

Beyond the bridge the road went to hell again. It made a sharp S turn and began to parallel the Fujisanroku electric railway. He passed a big red car standing dark and helpless on the tracks and caught a dim instant flash of people waving at him. A lot of people would be stranded tonight.

Less than ten miles now to the shrine. The road got worse and he had to slow. He forced himself to be calm, fighting back the frustration and impatience that gnawed at him. He was not an Oriental and every nerve cried for immediate and ultimate action, yet the bad road was a fact that must be faced Patience. To ease his mind he allowed himself to think back along the tangled path he had been following. Or, rather, the path he had been pushed along.

It was like an enormous, intricate maze in which four dim figures stalked, each intent on his own plans. A black symphony of counterpoint and double-double-cross.

Tonaka — she had been ambivalent. She
had
loved her father. Yet she had been pure Communist and, in the end, had set Nick up to be killed at the same time as her father. It must have been that way, only the assassin had botched it and killed Kunizo Matu first and so given Nick his chance. The cops could have been coincidental, but he still thought not. Probably Johnny. Chow had set up the killing, against Tonaka's best judgement, and had phoned the cops as a secondary measure. When it hadn't worked Tonaka had asserted herself and decided to pull Nick back into the web. She could have been waiting for orders from Peking. And working with a maniac like Chow could never have been easy. Thus the fake kidnaping and the breast sent to him along with the note. That meant he had been followed all along and had never once spotted the tail. Nick grimaced and slowed nearly to a stop for a gigantic chuck hole. It happened. Not often, but it did happen. Sometimes you were lucky and the mistake didn't kill you.

Richard Philston was as good as Nick had always heard he was. It would have been his idea to use Pete Fremont to plant the Eta story in the world press. At the time they must have been planning on using the real Pete Fremont. Maybe he would have done it. Perhaps Nick, playing the role of Pete, had spoken truly when he said a lot of whisky had gone under the bridge. But if Pete had been ready to sell out Kunizo Matu hadn't known it — and when he decided to use Pete as cover for Nick he had walked right into their hands.