The Code (3 page)

"The look on your face is a little frightening," Pat said.

I gave her a grin that failed to reach my eyes. "I'm not exactly the boy next door."

Then I put on the clothes that went with the role of Ned Harper, donned the Luger, slipped a zippered jacket over it, and examined myself in the mirror. As far as I could tell, I looked like a down-at-the-heels truck driver. When I drifted into the town where Sheila Brant was hiding out, my story would be that I was looking for work.

"I'm not supposed to ask this," said Pat, "but what happened to N1 and N2?"

"Their luck ran out," I told her. Like David Kirby's, I thought.

I snapped shut the suitcase AXE had furnished me. I was ready to leave. All I had to do was say goodbye.

The redhead saved me the trouble. "I know. Ships that pass in the night and all that. Stay lucky, Nick."

I drove into Bonham, Idaho, at two o'clock in the afternoon. The town had 4,700 inhabitants and this looked like the day 4,695 of them had decided to stay home.

Turning in at a gas station that advertised instant service, I pulled up to the tanks. The instant service failed to materialize. I got out of the car and went inside, where I found a man napping behind a desk cluttered with dust, roadmaps, cracker jars, and boxed auto parts. I rapped my knuckles on a clean edge of the desk.

His eyes cracked. "Yessir?" he yawned.

I pointed to my car. "I want some gas."

"Oh," he said as though the possibility hadn't occurred to him.

While he yanked loose the hose and thrust the nozzle into the Ford's almost empty tank, I stood nearby and glanced along a drowsy street brightened by the pale sunlight of late spring.

I saw no traffic signals, no neon signs. Bonham looked like a Norman Rockwell painting of a small town. I felt out of place, my assorted deadly weapons strapped to my body and locked in the trunk of my car. Bonham looked nothing like the spot a Mafia chieftain's former mistress would choose to hide out. That was probably the very reason Sheila Brant had chosen it. Give her credit for brains, I thought.

I flexed my tired shoulders. I had been driving fast and for long hours every day since I left AXE's base on the Carolina coast. Later in the day I'd be contacting the AXE agent who'd been watching Sheila to make sure i she didn't skip out on us.

The service station attendant was getting around to swabbing the car's windshield. "You've got enough dead insects on here to fill a bucket," he complained. "You must have driven all night."

"Yeah," I said. He was observant, if not instant.

"Tourist?"

"No," I said.

His head turned and his eyes weren't sleepy anymore.

"I'm a truck driver," I said. "I'm hoping to land a job here."

"Any special reason you picked Bonham?"

"I like small towns."

"There's lots of other small towns."

Damn, I thought. He was certainly curious. I said, "I like the looks of this one."

While he was checking the oil, I went into the men's room and slid the bolt on the inside of the door. I splashed cold water in my face. I was tired from being glued to the seat of a car so long, I told myself, or the service station attendant's questioning wouldn't have irritated me.

He knocked on the door. "Hey, mister, I need to see you."

I unzipped my jacket so I could reach the Luger quickly, then opened the door. "What about?"

"About Sheila Brant," he said, then grinned. "I'm the agent you're supposed to meet, N3."

I had never seen my contact and I was taking no chances. "What are you talking about?"

Pushing the door shut, he dipped a hand in his pocket and produced a cigarette lighter identical to mine. He pitched it to me. "I've talked to a couple of people who worked with you in the past, Carter. I thought I recognized you from their descriptions. Then I raised the hood of that battered car you're driving and spotted a motor that's a piece of art. Some of Hawk's gimmickry, I told myself. My name's Meredith, by the way."

I turned the lighter over. What looked like a manufacturer's serial number on the bottom was actually a code that identified the owner as an AXE operative. "All right, Meredith. But I'd be more careful if I were you. Don't forget that the cause of this whole business is the loss of a damn good agent." I didn't press the matter further. It wasn't my place to chew him out "What's the latest on our girl Sheila?"

"She's still here, playing it cool. I've tried to avoid getting too close so I wouldn't arouse her suspicion. I took this job because I was afraid the townspeople would begin to wonder why I was sticking around. I'm staying at the hotel. I'll see you there tonight and we'll talk some more." He hesitated. "I understand I'm to be the backstop on this assignment and I'm looking forward to working with you. Don't judge me by what just happened. I'm usually not so casual."

"I hope not," I said.

I drove slowly along the town's main street, noting the location of the two-room police station, the post office, and the economy size city hall. You could have packed the whole town in a shoebox, I thought. Tucked between two larger buildings was a cubbyhole bar with a sign reading "Cold Beer" propped in the window. Four storefronts down I found the hotel, a relic of days when Bonham had been a railroad stop and had been larger and more prosperous. Now the two-story building needed paint and I saw that screens were missing from some of the upper windows.

As I got out of my car, I took a good look at the restaurant across the street from the hotel. Sheila Brant did not come on duty until 4 p.m. and if business didn't pick up, she wouldn't be needed even then. The place appeared to be empty of customers.

I entered the dim lobby of the hotel, where the furniture bore a quarter-inch of dust and the wear and tear of advanced age. There was no elevator, only a flight of stairs, and the potted plants I walked past needed water as much as Bonham needed a breath of new life.

The desk clerk greeted me as if he was a politician greeting the deciding vote. He said they had long since closed down their dining room, but I could get a good meal at the restaurant across the street "Try it, you'll like it," he said.

In my room, I peeled off my clothing and gear and took a shower. Although my features didn't show it, my insides were coiled like a spring. Turning in my mind was the thought that I was near the girl who could give me some answers about David Kirby's death.

From my second-floor window I had a good view of the restaurant. As I buttoned my shirt and put on my trousers, I thought about Sheila Brant. I wondered if she had managed to escape from that cottage in the Keys on her own or if the killers for some reason had permitted -her to leave alive.

Meredith had given me the number of his room, which was a few doors from mine. I walked down the corridor to it. Meredith appeared to be the genuine article, but I was the suspicious type and I was going to check him out.

What with my AXE training and a great deal of practical experience as well, I had become an expert at picking locks. The door to the hotel room proved no challenge at all. A twelve-year-old could have sprung the lock with a penknife.

I turned the knob, and stepped quietly inside the room. A man was seated in a chair near the window. He gave me a broad smile. "It would have been just as easy to knock."

I couldn't think of a clever opening line. All I managed was, "Who are you?"

"Meredith, of course. And you must be Nick Carter."

If he wasn't Meredith, he was a hell of a good liar. He seemed completely at ease. "I've been waiting for you. I guess you just got in," he said. "Have you seen the girl yet?"

"Not yet."

If he had known he was the second Meredith I'd met in the past hour and a half, he wouldn't have been so relaxed, I thought. I produced a cigarette. "Got a light?"

"Sure." He felt around in the pocket of his wrinkled brown coat. He was a round-faced man, beginning to bald and go to fat, but appearances don't tell anything. AXE agents come in all sizes, shapes, and ages. "Here you are, Carter."

He handed me a book of matches.

"Don't you have a lighter?" I asked casually, lighting my cigarette.

"Never carry one. The damn things are always running out of fuel."

I grinned and tossed the matches back to him. "I guess if I could pick the lock, so could you."

He crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair, his hands cupped on his knee. His eyes hadn't left me since I entered the room. "You mean you don't believe I'm Meredith?"

Unzipping my jacket, I said, "I know damn well you aren't."

His relaxed smile was still in place. He had plenty of poise. "What did I do wrong?"

"The important thing is that you did it. Who are you really?"

"I'm the man who's carrying your death warrant," he said. With a deft movement, he pulled up his trousers leg with one hand. With the other he plucked a revolver out of a scabbard strapped to his calf.

I dropped to one knee as he drew. His revolver was equipped with a silencer and I heard a soft cough as the gun went off. The bullet thudded into the wall.

I flexed my arm and the stiletto popped into my hand. I threw it as he moved to get me in his sights again. The knife sank into his throat and quivered like a dart. His eyes bugged and he leaned over as though he intended to look under his chair.

I caught him as he sagged toward the floor. He was heavy. I stretched him out and frisked him. His wallet contained five thousand-dollar bills and some identification that said his name was Coogan and he came from Denver. That didn't necessarily mean anything. His papers were probably as phony as mine. Stuffing his driver's license into my pocket. I stood up. Things were off to a bad start. Someone knew why I was in Bonham, AXE's security had clearly been breached.

I had to do something about the body. I couldn't leave it in the genuine Meredith's room. Making sure the corridor was empty, I chose a door at random and sprung the lock. Apparently the room was unoccupied. I picked Coogan up and carried him across the hall and put him on the bed.

No Chamber of Commerce would be interested in hiring me, I thought. I had been in town less than two hours and already a man was dead.

I went downstairs and struck up a friendly conversation with the desk clerk, who welcomed the opportunity to leave his crossword puzzle. I told him I'd met a man in the hallway, a round-faced, jovial fellow.

"That's Mr. Hobbs. A salesman. Checked in today. Room 206."

"What does Mr. Hobbs sell?"

"I don't believe he said."

After five minutes, I extricated myself from the conversation, mounted the stairs again, and picked another lock. Room 206 was empty except for a sample case. Mr. Hobbs had barely touched down before he took up his wait for me. I slapped the case on the bed and opened it. The only sample it contained was a stripped down rifle with a silencer and a scope. Mr. Hobbs, also known as Mr. Coogan and briefly as Meredith, had been selling death. The well-oiled rifle was the kind of hardware packed by a professional assassin.

I could guess at his game plan. He was to intercept me and kill me as soon as I arrived, pick off the girl from the hotel window when she came to work, then leave Bonham in a hurry. The lie about his being Meredith had been a quick ruse to pull me off guard and possibly to find out if I'd talked to the girl. Mr. Hobbs, or Mr. Coogan, had been a clever pro, cool-headed and good at his business. But even the best have their bad days.

I faded quietly out of room 206 and down the stairway. Because telephone calls from the rooms went through the hotel switchboard, I used a pay phone in the lobby to call Meredith at the gas station. "Don't walk in any dark alleys. The opposition has hit town," I told him when he came on the line.

"Damn. Have you got a fix on them? I mean, on who they are?"

"Just that they aren't amateurs."

"Well, no reason to be surprised," he said. "If we could find the girl, so could they."

"I'm afraid we led them to her," I said.

I could picture Hawk's reaction when I told him someone must have entered my quarters on the AXE base, rifled the Sheila Brant file, and used our information to get a line on the girl. He'd blow up like a sabotaged missile.

The events of the day had changed the situation radically. I couldn't play my cards slowly and patiently as Hawk had recommended. Sheila's life was in jeopardy. I had to make contact and win her confidence fast.

I was standing outside the hotel when she arrived at the restaurant. I watched her open the door of a red Volvo, and caught a glimpse of sleek thigh as she slid out of the car. The legs were as good as I remembered, the sexy walk even better.

She took note of me as she moved around the car with long, graceful strides. Apparently the sight of any stranger tensed her up. She paused, eyed me briefly, and I returned her gaze with my most winning smile.

After she'd vanished into the restaurant, I smoked a cigarette. I wanted to give her time to shed her coat and start waiting on tables. As I stalled, three motorcycles roared into town. The cyclists were as out of place in Bonham as I was. They wheeled past the hotel, looking me over through goggles clamped to their bearded faces. They wore jackets with leering devils painted on the backs. Their destination was the bar. Talking loudly, they dismounted and went inside. I knew they didn't live in Bonham. The town didn't hold enough excitement for their kind.

"Outlaws and bums," said the hotel clerk disgustedly. He was leaning in the doorway behind me. "They're part of a gang that comes through here a couple of times a year. Call themselves Satan's Brood. They camp out on the old fairgrounds. Folks in town would like to run them off the property, but the police don't want to stir up a riot."

I threw my cigarette away. If the bikers were regular visitors, that meant they were no concern of mine. I crossed the street to the restaurant, where business was picking up. I counted a total of four customers. All were men, and three of them couldn't take their eyes off Sheila. The fourth, I thought, must have been half-blind.