The Weapon of Night (11 page)

“Hughes, with a face-lift!” he snorted. “What do you know! Why, I’ve seen the man around for years, and I never even suspected. None of us did.”

“Why should we?” the president said shortly. “It was his private business, I suppose.” His eyes narrowed suddenly and he turned a penetrating glance at Nick. “Or perhaps it shouldn’t have been.”

“Perhaps it shouldn’t,” Nick agreed. “Now let’s break this up and get what rest we can. You sure you want die first shift, Parry?”

The Chief of Security looked exhausted to the point of dropping, but he nodded vigorously.

“My responsibility,” he said crisply. “And I’ll have two men with me all the time. Three hours more isn’t going to kill me. Then you can take over. Take all your men down with you, if you like.”

“Thank you, but I’d rather have them at the exits,” Nick replied. “I take it you’ll give me a couple of standby men as well?”

“Sure will,” said Parry. “You’ll get a fresh pair when I go off.” He gave a short laugh totally lacking in mirth. “I hope they can be trusted. Still, I’m pairing them off as best I can and one man can watch the other. Same when Pauling comes On duty. And that should take care of the night. I’m off now. See you down below at two.”

He left the president’s luxurious office and headed for the power-control room. It was here, the joint session had decided, that further trouble was likely to occur if anything at all was going to happen. For the grim thought of sabotage was in the air.

The meeting broke up rapidly. Pauling and the president were to doss down on the couches in their respective offices, Julia was to sleep on a cot in the women’s First Aid Room and Nick would take a catnap in one of the “relaxation areas.”

Only it didn’t work out quite that way. The sofa in the big room with the color TV set was big enough for two, and two were using it. One small light burned dimly in the corner of the room.

“This is a helluva time to make love,” Julia said drowsily. “One large Russian dignitary still missing, one sinister stranger lurking darkly about the plant with God knows what evil thoughts in mind. And you —”

“And I have my own evil thoughts,” Nick murmured, feeling the softness of her lithe, bronzed body and loving her returning touch. “As long as we have time, let’s use it sensibly. I know our Valentina well, and she wouldn’t mind.” His deft hand removed a flimsy strap and Julia lay bare and beautiful.

“I don’t mind myself,” she whispered, helping him with a shirt button, “but shouldn’t we be doing something?”

“We are doing something,” Nick said softly. “And don’t you give a thought to mysterious strangers, Iuv. There aren’t any. It’s just a question of paying out a little rope — and waiting for the hanging.”

“Ah, so romantic,” she murmured ironically. “If that’s all you can talk about, don’t talk . . .

Neither of them talked, except to mouth the small, soft words of love and to speak each other’s name as if the name itself were a caress. They sought and touched and found what they were seeking, and then their bodies flowed together like a turbulent river.

“My love, my love,” Julia breathed softly, and her body melted under his. His hands slid over her and traced the velvety contours of her fluid beauty and his lips were fire against hers. There was a tension in them both that cried out for release and soon the slowly rocking movements and the tender touches became a frantic, unbearably delicious rhythm. He made it last, for both of them. He knew how; they had been there together more than once or twice before, and each knew how to thrill the other to the point of wild explosion.

Her dark hair was loose over her shoulders and her eyes were shining and with the sort of rapture that always made him want to give her the ultimate in pleasure, that always made his senses reel and all his nerve ends twang as though she was stroking each one of them with her electric touch. As now she was . . . but she was doing more than stroking and he was past the point of merely tingling. He was on fire, so was she; and they fused together in a long moment of soaring, burning happiness. And then they plunged, still joined, into a pillow-soft pool of release and floated languorously as if on a warm, receding summer tide.

They lay clasped together for a while in a silence broken only by their uneven breathing and the pounding of their hearts.

Neither of them had forgotten how they happened to be there, nor that there was a disappearance and several deaths still to be accounted for, but both of them were used to living on the edge of hell and taking their happiness when they could find it.

At last, Nick sighed and stretched.

“Not enough,” he murmured. “Not enough. A day and a night on some warm, sandy beach, that’s what we need. Or a couple of days in a meadow, rolling in the grass. Or a week or so in some nice, soft haystack . . .”

“It all sounds very public to me,” Julia said practically. “Also a little scratchy. I thought you liked beds?”

“I do, I do,” Nick said warmly, and trailed his lips over the softness of her breasts. “See how I like beds, and what comes with them.” He kissed her full on the lips and lingered there until his pulses began to quicken too energetically, and then he forced himself to roll aside.

“Ah, well, strange things are happening,” he said, “and I’d better go do something about them.”

He rose with one fluid movement of his whipcord body and began to dress.

“But you’re not on shift yet,” Julia said, watching him.

“That’s right,” he agreed. “And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we were seen coming here together and I’m not expected to emerge until it’s time for me to take over from Parry. So I leave here well ahead of time and I do my own little bit of snooping.”

Julia started to pull her own clothes on. “What did you mean — there aren’t any mysterious strangers?” she asked, her slightly slanting, catlike eyes gazing at him through the dimness. “We agree there’s an accomplice in the building, right? And certainly there’s still something damn peculiar going on. Someone’s causing it.”

“Right, on all counts,” Nick agreed. “But not a stranger. Don’t forget that Valentina recognized someone who was with us. And kick this around in your lovely head, sweetheart — don’t you think that Valentina-abducting and sabotage are a little too much for one day’s work? Why should the inside man, the accomplice, want to blow the power — hours
after
Valentina had been snatched? Seems pointless. There wasn’t much damage, and nothing significant happened during the blackout. What was it for? And I can’t buy coincidence. So I’m telling myself that the two things are directly connected. And I mean
directly.
I think we can definitely accept the idea of an accomplice who is still with us. Let’s not give Hughes too much credit for swiftness and resourcefulness and all that kind of thing. Let us assume a man who used a gas mask on himself, who manipulated the cages from below after Hughes had done his shooting on the roof and taken off,
and
who turned the gas off when the “copter had gotten a good head start. Because, you know, if Hughes had turned it off, we would have come around a whole lot sooner than we did. Okay, assume a man like that, and I think you must assume more than an accomplice. Certainly you have a man who’s no stranger to this place.”

Julia drew a comb through her mane of raven hair.

“All right, so he’s not an accomplice then,” she said agree-ably “but the master planner himself. Yet, I wonder why he didn’t go with Valentina.” Her cat’s eyes narrowed and darkened. “You don’t think she’s dead?”

Nick was silent for a moment. Wilhelmina the Luger slid into her usual holster. Hugo the stiletto slipped into his chamois sheath on Nick’s forearm. Pierre the gas pellet nestled innocently in Nick’s jacket pocket.

“I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “Hughes could easily have killed her and left her body in the cage. No, there’s a more elaborate pattern here. Too elaborate to take at face value. I think they must have decided she’s more valuable to them alive than dead, so they hijacked her instead. For . . . questioning.”

“Questioning,” Julia repeated with a little shudder. “But where? And who, and how?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I think,” said Nick, “and I’ll tell you why I think so.”

He told her, briefly. Julia’s eyes widened as she listened.

“So I think you’d best come with me this time,” he finished. “And if I get caught napping again I want you to run like hell and scream your lungs out. You ready?”

“For anything,” she said, and her lovely lips were grim.

The lights in the main work area were blazing. The watchtower cage moved slowly up and down and the duty guards on floor and platforms patrolled in double force, but no one stopped them. Parry had given orders.

“We’ll use the stairs,” said Nick, and they walked unchal-lenged down the spiral stairway to the sublevel. Guards greeted them with nods as they entered the wide corridor that housed the workshops and the power-control room, and again they were not stopped.

Two men were on duty outside the closed door nearest the elevator shaft. They stood to either side of it, alert and armed and ready. And they looked surprised. One of them looked at his watch.

“Two hours to go before your shift, sir,” he said helpfully.

“I know — I’ve urgent news for Parry,” said Nick. “He’s inside?”

“Yes, sir. With his finger on the red button just in case he needs us.” The man smiled faintly. “But he won’t. We searched first, no one’s hiding. And no one can get past us.”

“I can,” said Nick. “I hope he told you that.”

“Well, he did say that you’d be coming on at two, sir, but—”

“But I’m here now, right?” said Nick. “And the lady and I have business with him. So open up, will you? You can come in with us, if you like.”

The guard shrugged. “Okay, you’re the boss. But we gotta stay out here according to orders. Like he told us, we been checking on him at twenty-minute intervals — we just done one check — and like he told us we stay outside the rest of the time until he calls us. So he ain’t gonna like —”

“He will like,” said Nick. “You’re in the clear. Orders from Uncle Sam. So open.”

“Yes, sir. Jerry — key.”

The second guard nodded and thrust a key into the lock. Then the chatty one took his own key and performed a second maneuver.

“For safety,” he explained. “Gotta use two keys, separate ones, kind of tricky, you have to know just how — Hey, wait a minute! Something’s jammed.” He pushed at the door and wiggled his key. “Jerry, you turn that key of yours again.”

Jerry tried again. “Mine’s okay,” he said.

“Well, Goddamn!” said the talkative guard. “Something’s stuck here, for Chrissake!”

“All right, quit that,” Nick said urgently. “And keep your voices down now. Lock all right last time you tried?” The laser pistol came out of its hiding place as he spoke.

“Sure it was — what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m getting in there. With the lady. And you two are going to stick to your posts no matter what happens.”

Metal spat and melted. The door around the lock curled like burning paper. A thin rim of light shone out at them through the opening, then a circle, then a sphere as the thick metal piece containing the lock dribbled into nothingness.

“The Chief won’t like this,” the chatty guard said nervously.

“No? But you’ll notice he’s said nothing yet. Now keep quiet and stay here. Julia — come with me. But stay a few paces behind.”

The door swung inward at Nick’s touch. He kicked it as far back as it would go and stared into the room.

The bent switches had been straightened and repaired. A sharp light bathed every corner of the room.

“No, Goddamn, that’s impossible!” blurted the guard. “Why, we were here —”

“Shut
up!
” Nick said furiously. “You’re supposed to be on guard at this door, so guard it and keep quiet!”

He stepped into the room and his gaze swept through it.

Like Valentina’s elevator cage after the gassing —

It was empty.

Chief of Security J. Baldwin Parry had disappeared.

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.