“Enough!” The fat man shuddered tremendously. “Spare me these frightful details. I do not care to hear of your atrocities. What became of the man Carter?”
“But surely you will be interested in the finesse of my deed.”
“Silence!” The big moonface twisted with distaste and anger. “And do not try to tell me how bravely you suffered with your miserable shoulder. I want to know what further attempt you made to find Carter, and what happened to him.”
Laszlo’s sickly face looked hurt and sullen.
“He disappeared. There were radio reports that he had been abducted from his hotel room. I naturally assumed that Rufus’ men had found him.”
“Well, your natural assumption was wrong!” the fat man barked. “Or do you think it was his ghost who showed up in Duolo and took over the camp? And killed Rufus, or whatever he did to him? Can you explain why we have heard nothing from our own sources in Nyanga since your idiotic, fright-born killings in the herbalist’s shop and your equally idiotic flight to Dakar? No? I thought not! Stop trembling like a cowardly fool and put your sodden mind to work.”
The froggy eyes were glazed and the slim, killer’s hands were shaking. “Rufus dead?” Laszlo whispered. “Then who will take Nyanga for us?”
“Rufus is nothing,” growled the fat man. “We will find another Rufus — in Nyanga, or some other country. He is not important. Unless...” He leaned forward and stared piercingly at Laszlo. “Unless your careless tongue has slipped and you have told him where our headquarters are. Because if you have, and if he is still alive, then our entire African operation falls apart. And I will take you apart with my own bare hands.” The menace of his big, slightly sing-song voice lashed across the room.
“No-no-no!” Laszlo babbled. “I told him nothing, you must know that. I have always talked about you as if your orders come directly from Peking. He thinks you went back there after giving him the money and technicians. I was always careful to relay your messages as though...”
“You had better be right, Laszlo. You had better be. You have made enough mistakes. And one of them was to let Carter get as far as the Hop Club. There is one way to redeem yourself, and one way only.”
“Yes-yes? Yes?” Lazlo darted his head like a snake and waited eagerly.
“Find Carter,” the mountainous man said icily. “Find him quickly and bring him here to me.”
“But how can I find him?” Laszlo hissed desperately. “As far as I know, he has disappeared. He may be dead; he may have left the country.”
“You are a fool. He is not dead, and I can guarantee that he has not left Africa without trying to find out who was backing Rufus.” He frowned suddenly. “I can only hope that Teng and Chan had the grace to kill themselves before anyone could question them. They must have been seen in that mountain camp... But they are soldiers. They know what to do. Not like you, you miserable worm!” He banged his huge fist on the desk in a burst of rage. Laszlo flinched. “You! You have done nothing right. Find Carter, and I may — I may — decide not to punish you as I would like to. Don’t ask me where to find him — that is your problem. You can be sure he is no longer in Dakar. And there is nothing left for him to do in Nyanga, thanks largely to your bungling.” His thick voice was bitter and his huge face was a gargoyle mask of loathing. “So your task should be easy.”
Laszlo swallowed and his body shook. “But where?” he whimpered. “How?”
The vast fist slammed down again on the immense desk top. The fat man rose abruptly and the huge chair fell back behind him.
“I told you not to ask me that!” he roared. “But I will tell you, since that prying, spying creature must be found or he will ruin us! Show yourself. Make yourself public, as you have so successfully done before. Make him find you; he will want to find you. Dangle yourself like bait in front of him. Lure the shark. Where? you ask? Where?” The fat man’s face darkened into purple. “Where else but Casablanca? Don’t you think that you have let him find out enough by now so that he will come straight to Casablanca?”
The stubble-faced seaman who sat at the waterfront bar looked nothing at all like Nick Carter except for the muscular toughness of his body, and he was beginning to feel less like him as the hours and days went by. “Our man in Morocco” had been a mine of information about smuggling and narcotics and had offered a long list of places frequented by people specializing in either one. He had also provided the names of several brokers, importers and small shipping companies who seemed to prefer dealing with the East rather than with the West, and Nick had painstakingly enquired into every one of them. But so far the score was zero.
He ordered another beer and decided for the hundredth time that his best bet was to keep haunting the dives and the back streets in the hope of making contact with someone who would talk too much, try to sell him something, maybe lead him where the action was. It was a long shot, but not as long a shot as his even greater hope — that somewhere in these sinks and dens and flophouses he would catch sight of Green Face.
His eyes roamed casually around the noisy, smoke-filled barroom. There wasn’t a single customer in it that he would trust within reaching distance of his pocket, but neither was there one — not only here, but in any of the other dives — that he could remotely associate with Green Face or dope traffic or a mystery man known to him only as the Big One or the Fat One.
He and Liz had come to Casablanca the day after the meeting in Julian’s hospital room. With Abe, he had spent the remainder of the long day in fruitless questioning and investigation into the nature of the Red Chinese operations in Nyanga, and the whereabouts of Green Face and the Fat One. The day ended, as all good days should, in bed. After a while Nick and Liz had emerged from their haze of happiness, and she had asked him then if she could come with him to Casablanca.
“You’re a sucker for punishment, aren’t you?” he said admiringly. “Don’t you realize it could be dangerous? No, Liz, you’d better not come.”
“What can happen?” she murmured, brushing his ear with her lips. “I’ll stay quietly in the background. Anyway, after Duolo, I can put up with anything!”
He felt her large, firm, luscious breasts against his body and gave in without a struggle. But he did insist that they stay at separate hotels — he in a dump to suit his disguise and she in the comfortable Transatlantique — and arrange to meet with the greatest of caution.
And so she was window-shopping and taking sight-seeing tours from her hotel while Nick prowled the seamier parts of the city in his search for Green Face.
Two men who had been huddled at a corner table talking in low whispers got up and made their way — looking secretive and conspiratorial — out of the dingy bar. Nick suddenly decided to follow them. What the hell, he wasn’t accomplishing anything here, and they might just lead him some place he hadn’t thought of going.
They did. He followed them for several blocks before they scuttled furtively into a shambling house Nick knew — by hearsay — to be the local brothel. He gave up in disgust and headed slowly for his own hotel, intending to call Liz. But his route led past the Transatlantique, and he glanced automatically at its lobby doors as he passed. Several people were going in. And there was something very familiar about the back of one of them. Nick stopped and stared.