Mike Strange was working on her single-engine plane. Expertly she checked tires and filled the gas tank, readying the craft for takeoff.
Nick Carter strode toward the terminal. No one else was out. It was midnight, not a popular time for the town flyers who used the airport for excursions into Wellington and Auckland, crop dusting, herding cattle, and sightseeing tours for the few international tourists who were intent on discovering the backcountry of ruggedly beautiful New Zealand.
Carter walked through the terminal, nodding at the lone man behind the desk who looked up at him sleepily. The telephone booth was at the back of the room, beside a rack of tattered, well-read magazines.
David Hawk, head of AXE, was not expecting Carter's call. It was 7 am yesterday in Washington, and Hawk would be leaving soon for the office. He was always the first there. Carter had interrupted his routine.
"I thought you were on vacation," Hawk said irritably.
"So did I," Carter said. "I found Mackenzie."
"You called just to tell me that?"
"I found him dead."
In the distance, Carter heard the click of Hawk's butane lighter. Hawk had one weakness — cheap cigars — and he gloried in them. He'd just lit the first cigar of the day.
"You found nothing about Rocky Diamond then?" Hawk said, exhaling noisily.
"Nothing. But something else has come up that I thought might interest you."
"Well?"
Hawk's impatience was legendary. He relied on his people — he had to — but he was always suspicious, even of his favorite and most outstanding Killmaster, Nick Carter.
"Blenkochev is in New Zealand." Carter told him.
It was a simple statement with enormous implications.
In Washington, Hawk was silent.
At last Carter heard him draw and puff on the cigar. Hawk and Blenkochev had begun their careers in army intelligence during the war, and now both men headed their own powerful espionage agencies. They were old adversaries, each painfully aware of the other's brilliance and cunning.
AXE rumor had it that once, long ago in Ethiopia, Blenkochev had left Hawk wounded in the desert to die. Another time, the story went, Hawk had captured Blenkochev, tied him up, and turned him over to other agents for shipment to the United States. Each had managed daring escapes. Now that those days of face-to-face combat — and immediate success and failure — were over, the two leaders pitted their agents against one another in a longstanding war of wits, training, and technology. It was a giant chess game of world-shaking possibilities, and the two main players were Hawk and Blenkochev.
Hawk cleared his throat.
"You've seen him?" he said.
"A photograph at the Wellington airport. He was with a Russian medical expert."
"Tell me what you know," Hawk said, his voice cold as the Arctic.
Carter related the events of his long day in the New Zealand backcountry, and of Mike's tale of the mysterious death in the Soviet embassy.
Hawk sighed, and Carter could see in his mind the AXE leader's chin jut with growing anger and concern as he gripped the cigar even tighter between his teeth.
"We know about the attaché already," Hawk said finally. "Our flyer could figure in, but I don't see how yet. He's private, but he has friends here in Washington who knew enough to annoy me into checking on him. A lucky break for us, though. It put you in a position to find out about Blenkochev." He paused. "All right. Blenkochev's not in New Zealand for the fun of it. This is much more important than what appears on the surface. I want to know about that disease. Where it came from. What it is. And who or what Silver Dove is. See if there's a connection to the missing flyer and the attaché's death. You got that, N3?"
Blenkochev's presence colored ordinary events in the espionage world into the potential of international threat.
"I understand," Carter said.
"Sorry about your vacation, N3. Can't be helped."
Carter thought briefly of the fishing gear in Mike's trunk.
"We're off to Wellington now," he told his superior. "Mike came up in a plane."
"Good. I'll contact our AXE stringer there and see that you get your equipment. It'll probably take a few hours. Then check into the computer. I'll have our people here feed in everything they have about Rocky Diamond."
There was a pause again as Hawk puffed distractedly. He was thinking about the past.
"Keep in close touch, Nick," he said at last, "and stay out of Blenkochev's way." His voice was full of warning.
Mike was waiting in the cockpit of her small single-engine Cessna 180. She waved to Carter as he came onto the tarmac. Overhead lights reflected off the plane's silvery wings. Ahead, small colored lights showed the takeoff strip that extended about the length of two football fields.
"You put my gear on board?" he shouted up to her over the roar of the craft's motor.
"Didn't dare forget it," She laughed.
He hoarded, and she cased the throttle forward. The plane sped down the runway and into the star-studded night. The sky was unusually clear for New Zealand, a country known for its dramatic weather. In the fourteenth century, the Polynesian Maori who settled the land called it Aotearoa — Land of the Long White Cloud.
"You took a long time in the bathroom," she observed as she leveled the plane. She was as good a pilot as she was a driver. She rode the updrafts smoothly. "How was Hawk?"
He smiled. He wasn't surprised that she knew his real purpose in going into the airport terminal.
"Feeling fine. Sends his regards."
She laughed again as if the world were hers. She had an exciting assignment, and an even more exciting companion to share it with. Later she'd think of the danger involved.
She circled the plane over the town in a long, slow, unnecessary loop. Suddenly she pulled back the throttle and arched the craft up in a deep curve toward the top of the sky. The moon flashed by.
"Enough, Mike!" Carter protested. "Let's get on with it. This assignment's interrupting my vacation!"
She giggled and leveled the plane once more.
"You going to shave that beard?" she teased.
They flew south now toward Wellington. It was the second-largest city in New Zealand, about 320,000 stalwart souls living in the windswept capital that governed a land roughly the size and population of Colorado.
"I'll think about it," he said and settled back into the seat. His fishing equipment was behind him, stacked on the floor. She had remembered it all.
She put a hand on his thigh and squeezed. Warmth spread through him.
"I'm a Coaster," she said. "Grew up on the west coast, the wet side of the New Zealand Alps. We know about fishing, hunting, farming, you name it."
"South Island," he said, nodding. "When you get a new pair of leather boots, you have to oil them every day and store them off the ground. With luck, they'll last you two weeks."
"That's right," she said, and returned the hand to the throttle, smiling. "It was glorious. Glaciers, mountains, and the sea. The vegetation's so lush that it smothers the harsh lines of the land. We average a hundred inches of rain a year. The punga ferns crowd the roads and shut off light." She looked out into the starry night. "Everything was so simple there. Us against the elements, but at the same time we lived in harmony with them. This country is a paradise. Whatever climate or geography appeals to you. Just remembering that those Russians stormed the jail, and that Blenkochev is here, makes my stomach turn. What can they want with New Zealand?"
"As you say, it's a wide-open country. That alone could be the attraction."
"Our government isn't really equipped to deal with them. It's not like Washington or London or Paris or Zurich where international agents come and go like tourists."
"Sometimes disguised as tourists."