AXE, of course, had also moved into Tibet in a small way. That was why he was here now, aching and flea bitten and feeling rather nauseated. The chief AXE agent in Tibet had been murdered — by a man calling himself Nick Carter. A man who looked and acted like Nick Carter! But his Doppelganger was a murderer, which the real Nick certainly was not. Killer, yes. Murderer, no. And that, thought N3 wearily now, had been his double’s first real mistake.
Hafed came and squatted in the entrance of the tent. It was too dark to see but Nick could visualize the guide’s face, swart and button-nosed and slant-eyed and covered with a curling, greasy beard. The smell of Hafed came to him now in the gloom.
“How is it going?” Nick queried tiredly. “The men still going to quit?”
Hafed moved farther into the small tent. “Yis — they not go any more than this place. They are Sherpa and this not their country, you understand? They also much afraid of Chinese soldiers.”
Nick struggled to remove the yakskin coat, then fumbled in the pockets of the quilted suit for cigarettes. Hafed lit them from a faintly glowing punk-cord. “Better not to show light,” he said. “Chinese soldiers have very sharp eyes, I think.”
N3 cupped his cigarette in his palm. “What do you think, Hafed? Are there any Chinese around?”
He could sense the man’s shrug. “Who knows, sar? Perhaps. But it is karma. If the soldiers come, they come — that is all. We can do nothing.”
“On the map,” Nick said, “this area is marked as having an undefined border. I don’t suppose that means anything to the Chinese!”
Hafed chuckled grimly. “No, sar. Nothing. Is better for them — in such places they put their flag and say so sorry but this now our land. It is their way.”
N3 smoked his cigarette and brooded. He didn’t give a damn for the Chinese at the moment, except as they were behind, must be behind, this Doppelgdnger bit! Anyway he was too tired to think; his head felt light, like a balloon that might detach itself and float away any minute.
Hafed went away for a moment and came back with a huge cup of tea heavy with tsampa. “Better you drink this,” he commanded. “I think you not feel good, sar? I watch all day. You sick.”
Nick forced some of the tea down. “You’re right,” he admitted. “I feel lousy. And that’s bad— I can’t afford to get sick.” He grinned feebly as he spoke. Hawk wouldn’t like it. An AXE man never allowed illness to interfere with a mission.
“Is all okay,” Hafed said comfortingly. “You just have mountain sickness — all foreigners have it, I think. Is the altitude is all. You be all right in two, three days.”
They smoked for a time in silence. Nick fished a bottle of Scotch from his pack and spiked their tea. The warm, peaty-tasting whisky made him feel a little better. Hafed spread his bed roll beside Nick and lay down, scratching vigorously. He gurgled contentedly over his tea and whisky. Outside the wind was beginning to howl like a great white wolf after prey. The cold began to pry into N3’s marrow, and he knew there would not be much sleep for him that night. Perhaps it was just as well. He needed time to think, to catch up with himself. Since Hawk’s phone call had pulled him away from a warm bed and a hot woman he had been going at a frantic pace. Rather absurdly the refrain of an old Gilbert and Sullivan tune ran through his brain. In parody. An AXE agents lot is not a happy one!
Perhaps not. But it was the lot he had chosen. And, despite all his bitter griping at times, he knew it was the life he wanted and loved. So why complain when he was hauled from between a pair of velvety thighs in the dead of night and sent to Tibet!
An AXE jet had gotten him from New York to Washington in less than an hour. It had been a crazy chaotic night. His boss, Hawk, was livid and tired and disheveled and in a rage. AXE headquarters, behind the innocent facade on Dupont Circle, was in an uproar. Hawk, an unlit cigar rolling in his tight mouth, had spoken with Nick betweentimes as he shouted into half a dozen phones.
“You,” he snapped, pointing the cigar at Nick, “are somewhere in Tibet right now. You are on official business, top secret, and you contacted our head man in Tibet — a Buddhist monk by name of Pei Ling. You milked him for all the information you could, but then you made a mistake. There was something you didn’t know — your own Golden Number!”
N3 had long ago shaken away the daze of sleep and the drug of Melba O’Shaughnessy’s kisses. His icy mind was clicking like a computer.
“So that’s where the impostor slipped up? He didn’t know his Golden Number?”
Hawk had grinned a little smugly. “He didn’t even know there was a Golden Number! Chinese Intelligence is good, I admit, but we still have a few secrets. And the Golden Number, thank God, is one of them. They’re smart enough to know that they couldn’t foresee everything, but I doubt if they expected their man, this phony Nick Carter, to be blown so soon. It’s a hell of a break for us — now you can get right on his track. I don’t have to tell you the orders— seek out an destroy! You leave in half an hour — there will be no time for briefing and no time to arrange a cover. You’ll have to work naked, as yourself. On your own. By guess and God. Find this bastard, son, and kill him before he can do a lot of irreparable damage.”
“It could be a trap,” said Nick. “To draw me within killing distance.”
Hawk’s false teeth clamped on his cigar. “You think we haven’t thought of that? Of course it’s a trap! But that is probably only a part of it, boy. They wouldn’t set up an elaborate deception like this just to kill you. There has to be something else — something bigger. You’ve got to find out what that is — and you’ve got to stop it.”
Killmaster lit one of his gold-tipped cigarettes and watched Hawk with narrowed eyes. He had seldom seen his boss so upset. Something really big was brewing, no doubt of that.
Hawk was at a wall map, pointing. “This phony you is heading due east. We’re projecting, of course, guessing if you like, but I think we’re right. If we are, and he does go east, then there is no place to go in that desolation but the Karakoram Pass. And that leads into northern Kashmir. You begin to get the picture?”
Killmaster smiled and crossed his long legs. “All I know is what I read in the papers,” he said. “And I read tonight, on the way down here, that India and Pakistan are getting ready to sign another cease-fire agreement. U Thant seems to be making a little headway.”
Hawk went back to his desk and sat down. He put a pair of scuffed shoes on a leather-backed blotter. “Maybe there will be a cease-fire and maybe there won’t — there certainly won’t if the Chinese have anything to say about it. Right now we’re doing a lot of wild guessing, I admit, but it is almost certain that this phony agent is being sent into Kashmir, or India, or Pakistan or wherever, to keep the war going. The Chinese Reds have got to keep that pot boiling — they stand to gain a lot. Just how they plan to do it we don’t know — that’s your job to find out.” Hawk fixed Nick with a hard little smile. “It’s really not at all complicated, son. Just find this double of yours and kill him! That will clean up the whole mess. Now you’d better go and talk to Transportation — you leave in twenty minutes. You’ll have everything behind you, as usual. The CIA, FBI, the State Department, all of them. Ask for anything you want. If you have time, of course. There’s not much of that. And stay out of trouble — don’t get mixed up with any foreign police. You know we can’t acknowledge you. You’re completely on your own in this one, my boy. Carte blanche. A free run — so long as you don’t involve this government.”