"Yes, sir." Putnam said. This was great.
They got up to the third floor without incident, and Putnam helped Carter down the corridor and into his office, where he locked the door before he flipped on the light.
It was a tiny cubicle, but it had a small couch along one wall. He settled Carter back on the couch, doused his hand in disinfectant after pulling off the blood-encrusted handkerchief, put a splint on the badly broken finger, and finally bandaged the bites.
He poured Carter a drink of brandy from the bottle in his desk, lit him a cigarette, then sat back and watched him.
"You said you wanted to make some phone calls?" Putnam asked when it seemed as if Carter was beginning to recover.
"Right. Have you sent off my film?"
"It'll leave at midnight tonight. Should be in Washington by late morning. Your… office knows it's coming."
"Do they know where I am?"
"Yes, sir."
Carter sat back with his cigarette, seemed to think a moment, then looked up. He seemed very determined.
"Are you game to help me a bit more, Putnam?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. Anything you say."
"Get me that Washington number again, then take a walk for about five minutes."
"Yes, sir," Putnam said. He got communications again and placed the call. When it started to ring, he handed the phone across and left the office.
The phone was answered immediately.
"Carter, blue bird seven-three-zero."
The line went dead. Two minutes later David Hawk's voice came on. "I just got word you were in Montevideo. Are you all right?"
"A little shaken up. I've sent up some film. You should have it in the morning." Quickly and succinctly Carter told Hawk everything that had happened.
Hawk thought about it for a moment. "Ziegler knows you're after him, and he knows you're obviously not a newsman. It'll make him nervous. Maybe he'll make a mistake or two."
"My thoughts exactly, sir."
"Did you get a good look at the equipment you were photographing?"
"Yes, sir."
"Hang on — I'll put Cairnes on and maybe he can give us some ideas." Moments later the connection was made. Hawk was speaking to the chief of AXE's technical section. "Carter is on the line. He's taken a look at some equipment. See if you can make head or tail of it."
"Go ahead, N3," Cairnes's nasal voice said.
Carter explained in detail everything he had seen in the warehouse.
"A nuclear reactor or reactors, I'd guess," Cairnes said. "The big one was probably a waste water eliminator, standard for a breeder reactor. Steuben and Sons are the biggest manufacturers of that kind of equipment. But…"
"But what, Bill?" Hawk asked.
"That equipment could be for other purposes as well. Steam movement. Hot water transport. Even sewage disposal. Hell, there's no real way of telling without more information."
"Nick?" Hawk asked.
"I can leave for Mainz by morning. I'll have to get my things from Buenos Aires. Juan can do that for me. The embassy here can arrange my travel."
Someone knocked at the door, and Putnam snick his head in. Carter waved him in.
"I have to ring off now, sir."
"Keep in touch." Hawk said. "I'll have our people in Bonn keep an eye out for you."
"Yes, sir," Carter said, and he hung up.
Putnam had brought a couple of sandwiches and a few beers with him. "The commissary wasn't locked, and you said you were hungry."
Carter took one of the sandwiches and a beer. "I'm beginning to like you, Putnam… a lot."
Putnam beamed.
"We have a lot of things to get done tonight," Carter said. "I hope you're used to staying up all night."
"I can manage, sir. Just name it."
"First, I'll need to have my things brought up from the Sheraton in Buenos Aires. Tonight. Next I'm going to have to contact a man by the name of Juan Mendoza, who'll have to take a message to a friend for me. Then I'll need a doctor to set this finger, and I'll need to speak with the charge d'affaires for travel arrangements."
"Back to the States, sir?"
"No," Carter said.
Twenty-four hours later, Carter sat on a bench at the north end of Messerschmidt Park in Mainz, Germany, staring at the Steuben and Sons facility just across the street.
Mainz had been one of the principal Allied bombing targets during the war because of the Krupp munition works that had been located here. From the looks of it, Steuben and Sons had also been a part of that targeted industrial complex. A two-story-high wall of masonry still surrounded the plant to protect it from flash fires ignited by bombs in the city. The pads that had once held antiaircraft guns were still visible on the turrets at the comers of the walls.
Carter had already made a complete circuit of the factory's perimeter and had found the enclosure complete. The only way in or out was by the front or rear gates, or a single metal door. And the back gates seemed unused. Debris had been piled up over the top on the inside.
He crushed his cigarette on the sidewalk, then went back to his rented car parked around the corner from the main entrance. It was 2:10 in the afternoon. He pulled up near the corner so that he could see the main gate, then shut off the ignition and lit another cigarette.
At three the shift changed. A river of people streamed out one side of the front gate, while the evening shift streamed in. Most of the evening crew came by trollies that stopped at the corner, but a good number drove, filing the parking spaces along the park for several blocks on either side of the plant.
By 3:20 the streets were deserted again, and Carter was about to go back to his hotel to wait until dark, when a battered Volkswagen rounded the corner and sped up the street in his direction. A man dressed in workmen's clothes was driving. The car stopped short in the next block, and the driver tried to wedge into a parking space, but it was too small, and he continued on, turning the next corner.
He was circling. And he was late for work.
Carter jumped out of his car as the VW emerged on the far side of the park and disappeared again behind a line of brick houses. When it did not appear at the next street, Carter sprinted through the park, across a deserted playground, and over a ten-foot-tall wire-mesh fence. This put him at the rear of the brick houses, and when he made it to the front he found the car hastily jammed between a microbus and another VW. The driver was rummaging for something in the back seat.
Carter climbed in on the passenger side, his Luger drawn. The man's eyes widened.
"Is this a robbery?" he stammered, "I have nothing. I am late for work."
"Drive," Carter ordered in German. He raised the gun, and the man started the car, eased out of the parking place, and drove down the street.
There were too many houses there. Too many possibilities for someone to see what was going on and report it to the police.
Carter directed the frightened man to drive into the park and to stop behind the restroom building. There were only a few people in the park, all of them too far away to see what was happening. Carter brought the man into the empty men's room, where he made him take off his clothes. They switched clothes, then Carter bound and gagged the hapless worker in a stall.
The workman might have to stay there for a few hours, Carter decided, but he'd be okay.
Back at the man's VW, Carter clipped on the workman's ID badge, then he drove back out of the park and found a spot for the car two blocks away from his own car. He put on the workman's hard hat, grabbed his lunch pail, and headed up the street. At his own car he pulled out his camera and stuffed it in his pocket, then continued around the corner to the front gate.
He was Dieter Mueller from nearby Wertheim. Thirty-three years old, dark hair like Carter, and only a bit larger and heavier, so the clothes looked all right. Unless the gate man looked closely at the employee badge, or personally knew Mueller, there would be no problem.