He hoped Liz was still asleep.
Still as stealthy as a black cat, he let himself in through the window.
Liz was not in bed.
He found her in the living room sipping a cold beer and glancing at a magazine.
“You’ve been gone for simply hours,” she said. “I woke up, I was thirsty, and I missed you. Have a bottle. You look thirsty, too.”
Wordlessly, he took a beer bottle and flicked off the cap.
“What in the world have you been doing,” Liz asked, managing to sound not so much nosy as politely interested, “to get a hole burned in your pants?”
“Getting ready for Dakar,” he said. “Cheers.”
The Silent Visitor
The Hotel Senegal in Dakar was all that Rufus Makombe had said it was, and more. So much more that as soon as Nick got to his room, after his swift morning flight from Abimako, he began to wonder if they weren’t overdoing things a little. He also thought over the short list of people who had known he would be staying at the Senegal, and wondered if he shouldn’t have obeyed his initial impulse to check in at the Majestic under one of his many imaginative pseudonyms.
He was thinking all these things in a series of simultaneous flashes as the bellhop, carrying his one bag, locked the door behind him, dropped the bag, and said almost as musically as Stonewalclass="underline" “Put your hands up, white Yankee, and do not make a sound. You will die instantly if you call out.”
Nick turned slowly with his hands half-raised and saw the muscular dark figure and the long-nosed gun with its cumbersome silencer. Cumbersome or not, it was a type he knew would stifle harsh reports sufficiently to let them pass unnoticed in this busy, chrome-plated palace on Dakar’s noisiest street.
“You fool!” Nick hissed. “You treacherous blind fool!” His arms dropped to his sides. “Don’t you even know who you’re working for?” The gun faltered almost imperceptibly and Nick pressed his flickering advantage. “Tell me the words that were agreed upon or you will die like the creeping rat you are.” The liquid eyes clouded with puzzlement but the gun steadied and pointed inexorably at Nick.
“There are no words...” the big man began. Nick cut him off with an exclamation that spat across the room.
“No words! You ignorant ape! Is that how much you know about our operations here? Pah! Put that foolish gun away at once or you will suffer for your idiocy. The Cause will not put up with such bunglers as you. Didn’t you understand your orders, pig?”
The gun drooped hesitantly and Nick leapt. His sinewy hands caught hold and twisted agonizingly. The gun came free in his right hand and he slammed it lightly against the big man’s temple. The fellow staggered and fell back. Nick drew back his leg and slammed his weighted heel, against one flailing limb. It caught the shin where he’d intended, and the big bellhop screamed and dropped.
“Now,” said Carter menacingly. “Perhaps you will understand that you do not trifle with your superiors. Stop your whining and tell me instantly who caused you to make this unthinkable blunder. Weren’t you told that the white Yankee made arrangements to check into the Majestic? And that I have come from headquarters to find out where he goes and who he sees? Sit up and talk to me as you have been taught. As I hope you have been taught.”
The big man groaned and pulled himself painfully to a sitting position.
“I thought — they told me — who are you?” he stammered.
“I ask, you answer!” Nick snapped at him. “What were your orders, and who gave them to you, that you did not know my true identity?”
“Laszlo, Laszlo!” the man said earnestly. “He said the American Carter might come here and I was to...” he stumbled over his words and his eyes wandered over Nick’s shoulder and pulled themselves away with visible effort. Nick twisted a swift look behind him and jumped simultaneously.
The flying figure that burst from the bathroom doorway missed Nick by inches and crashed into the big bellhop. Two big, muscular bodies sprawled on the floor and the first one cursed obscenely. The second extricated himself with a leaping turn and faced Nick in a crouch with his weird weapon raised. Nick flicked himself out of reach and pointed the bellhop’s gun.
“Get back!” he ordered. “Get your hands up or I’ll shoot.”
The man lunged at him. Nick cursed softly and aimed for the bunched shoulder that was one great weapon in itself, starting from the straining neck and extending to the pointed tip of the odd weapon in the massive hand.
The gun clicked uselessly.
Nick cursed again and flung it viciously across the room as he wheeled sideways and let the man come at him. His body bent slightly forward, his steel-and-whipcord arms lashed out to push and pull in a series of swift moves so smoothly coordinated that they seemed like one. The wooden striking blade of the flat club — used like the hard edge of the hand in Karate — soared forward and down. Nick let it come toward him, then he pivoted and grasped the bulging arm that held the club and swung it downward like a pump handle. The left arm and foot flailed wildly in the air. Nick completed the twist and the man somersaulted floorward like a wheel ripped from its axle and rolling crazily. The man made a sound like a watermelon splitting open. Nick scooped up the sword-shaped club and tossed it after the gun. In this kind of fight he preferred to use his hands. And feet. He kicked viciously at the groin. The man gave a groan like a mighty belch and jerked convulsively, drawing up his legs and clutching himself like a caterpillar curling itself into an aching ball.
Nick saw the movement near the bedroom door from the corner of his eye. His first assailant was raising himself painfully to one knee and pulling a knife from inside the jacket of his loose uniform. Nick watched the arm go back and start forward before he moved, and then he moved like greased lightning. The knife hissed past his ear and buried its thin blade in the hard wood of the closet door. Nick leapt up from his low crouch and flicked the knife straight out of the wood and snapped it back at its owner in one smooth motion. It caught the killer-busboy as he scrabbled painfully toward the door just as he reached upward for the doorknob. His upraised chin had made his thick neck an easy, irresistible target. He gargled horribly and fell to the floor clutching his throat and hiccuping.
The second man was slowly uncoiling at Nick’s feet. Nick, avoiding the man’s outstretched, grasping hands, slid Hugo out of his slender sheath.
Hugo was a deceptively small Italian stiletto that concealed its deadly ice-pick blade in a thin bone handle until released by the flick of a finger on a tiny switch. Then Hugo would spring into fighting position, and fighting for Hugo was killing. Unless, of course, Hugo succeeded by gentle persuasion instead of dealing instant death.
Nick flicked the small trigger and Hugo darted out of hiding like a snake flashing out its tongue.
“Now sit up with your hands behind your back. Come on! Move!”
The man sat up slowly, making little grunting noises and seeking a weapon with his eyes. When he saw the gun and his swordlike club at the far end of the room well out of his reach, he lost interest in them and stared hopefully at Nick’s feet, his shoulders bunching reflexively as if his arms were itching to get at his captor.
Nick’s gray eyes were cold, cruel steel as they gazed down at the captive.
“Now you’re going to tell me where you get your orders,” he said quietly in French. “You’re not leaving here until you do. Understand?”
The dark head nodded, but there was a contemptuous smile on the fleshy lips.
“I don’t think you do,” Nick said. He strode to the bedroom door and locked it, keeping his eyes on the silent, cross-legged figure. “No one will be let in or out of this room until I have finished with you. And I will not finish with you until you have told me what I want to know.” He moved back to his victim and looked down at him, thoughtfully fingering Hugo’s tapering point. “It may hurt.” He waited. The man said nothing. “Who sent you?” Nick said sharply. “Start with that and start now. Or I’ll start.”