Hood of Death (20 page)

Her ability at love-making electrified him. Call it relief from tension, credit it to the martinis, remember that she had been carefully trained to captivate men — it was still the greatest. He told her so at 2:00 a.m.

Her lips were wet against his ear, her breath a rich, hot compound of sweet passion, alcohol and a meaty, aphrodisiacal woman smell. She replied, "Thank you, darling. You make me very happy. And — you haven't enjoyed it all yet. I know a lot more" — she chuckled — "delightfully strange things."

"That's what makes me sad," he answered. "I've just really found you and I won't see you again for weeks. Perhaps months."

"What?" She raised her face, the skin glowing with a moist, hot, ruddy sheen in the light of one dim lamp "Where are you going? You're seeing Daddy tomorrow."

"No. I didn't want to tell you. I'm leaving for New York at ten. Catching a plane for London and then probably on to Riyadh."

"Oil business?"

"Yes. It's what I wanted to talk to Akito about but I guess that's out, now. When they squeezed me that time Saudico and the Japanese concession — you're familiar with that deal — didn't get it all. Saudi Arabia is three times the size of Texas, with maybe 170 billion barrels in reserves. Swims on oil. The big wheels have a lock on Faisal but there are five thousand princes. I've got
my
connections. I know where to tap out a few million barrels a month. Profit on it say — three million dollars. A third to me. I can't miss this deal..."

The sparkling black eyes were wide against his own. "You didn't tell me all this."

"You didn't ask."

"Maybe... maybe Daddy could make you a better deal than the one you're going into. He wants oil."

"He can buy all he wants from the Japanese concession. Unless — is he selling to Reds?"

She nodded slowly. "Do you mind that?"

He laughed. "Why? Everybody does."

"Can I call Daddy?"

"Go ahead. I'd much rather keep it in the family, darling." He kissed her. It took three minutes. Damn the hood of death and his job — it would be so much more fun just to — he gently disengaged. "Make the call. We haven't much time."

He dressed, his keen ears catching her side of the conversation. She told Daddy all about Jerry Deming's marvelous connections and those millions of barrels. Nick put two bottles of fine scotch into a leather bag.

An hour later she directed him down a side road near Rockville. Lights glowed in a medium-sized industrial-commercial building. The sign over the entrance said MARVIN IMPORT-EXPORT. Going down a hall Nick saw another small sign that was very unobtrusive,
Walter W. Wing, Vice-President, Confederation Oil Company.
He carried the leather bag.

Akito was waiting for them in a private office. He looked like an over-worked businessman, now, some of the mask was loosened. Nick thought he knew why. After the greetings and recap of Ruth's explanation, Akito said, "I know there is not much time, but perhaps I can make your trip to the Mideast unnecessary. We have the tankers. We'll pay you a dollar seventy-four a barrel for everything you can load for at least a year."

"Cash?"

"Of course. Any currency. Anywhere. Any split or arrangements you wish. You can see what I'm offering, Mr. Deming. You are in complete command of your profits. And thus your destiny."

Nick picked up the bag containing the scotch, put the two bottles on the desk. Akito smiled broadly. "We seal the deal with a drink, eh?"

Nick sat back, unbuttoned his coat. "Unless you still want to have another try at Adam Read."

The hard, dry planes of Akito's face froze. He looked like a below-zero Buddha.

Ruth gasped, stared in horror at Nick, turned to Akito. "I swear I didn't know..."

Akito brushed her silent with a chop of his hand. "So it was you. In Pennsylvania. On the boat. The notes to the girls."

"It was me. Don't move that hand again on your feet. Stay completely still. I can execute you in an instant. And your daughter might get hurt. By the way — is she your daughter?"

"No. The girls are ... members."

"Recruited for a long-range plan. I can vouch for their training."

"Don't pity them. Where they came from they might never have had a full meal. We have given them..."

Wilhelmina appeared with a snap of Nick's wrist Akito stopped speaking. The frozen expression did not change. Nick said, "The way you are talking I assume you pressed a button under your foot. I hope it is for Soong and Geist and the others. I want them too."

"You
want
them. You said
execute.
Who are you?"

"You've guessed. N3 of AXE. Rated one of the three Killmasters."

"Barbaric."

"Like a sword chop on a helpless prisoner's neck?"

Akito's features dulled for the first time. The door opened. Chick Soong was a step into the room, looking at Akito, before he saw the Luger. He fell forward with the speedy grace of a Judo expert as Akito's hands flashed out of sight below the desk.

Nick placed the first bullet where the Luger was aimed — just below the triangle of white handkerchief in Akito's breast pocket. His second shot caught Soong in mid-air, four feet from the muzzle. The Chinese had a blue revolver coming up in one hand when Wilhelmina's shot took him right in the heart. As he fell, his head hit Nick's leg. He rolled on his back. Nick picked up the revolver and pushed Akito away from the desk.

The older man's body fell sideways from the chair. No more threat there, Nick noted, but you stayed alive by not taking anything for granted. Ruth was screaming in a full-throated glass-crash of sound that in the small room ripped at the eardrums like a cold knife. She ran out the door, still screaming.

He grabbed the two bottles of scotch-and-explosive from the desk and followed her. She ran down the hall toward the back of the building and into a warehouse section with Nick twelve feet behind her.

"Stop," he roared. She bolted down a corridor between stacked cartons. He holstered Wilhelmina and reached to grab her when she burst into an open space. A man naked to the waist was jumping down from the rear of a trailer truck. The man yelled, "What...?" as the three collided.

It was Hans Geist, and his mind and body reacted swiftly. He pushed Ruth aside, slammed a fist into Nick's chest. The man from AXE could not avoid the smashing greeting — his momentum carried him right into it. The scotch bottles burst on the concrete in a glass and liquid shower.

"No smoking," Nick said as he swung underhand at Geist's gun and then went to the floor as the big man opened his arms and closed them around him. Nick knew what it's like to surprise a grizzly bear. He was crushed, pounded and bounced on the cement. He couldn't reach Wilhelmina or Hugo. Geist had been around. Nick twisted to fend off a knee pounding at his testicles. Banged his skull into the man's face as he felt teeth biting at his neck. This guy played for keeps.

They rolled, grinding glass and whiskey into a greasier brown substance that coated the floor. Nick pistoned his elbows, expanded his chest and shoulders, and at last got his hands clasped together and shot them up — thrusting, prying, driving with every sinew and muscle and delivering all the power of his tremendous strength.

Geist was a powerful man, but when torso and shoulder muscles ram against arm strength, there is no contest. His arms flew out as Nick's locked hands surged up. Before he could close them again Nick's lightning reflexes decided the issue. He chopped the side of one iron-hard fist on Geist's Adam's apple — a clean blow that hardly touched the man's chin. Geist collapsed.

Swiftly Nick searched the rest of the small warehouse, found it empty, and cautiously approached the office section. Ruth had vanished — he hoped she wouldn't get a gun from Akito's desk and have a try. His keen hearing detected movement beyond the corridor door. Sammy came into the large room, preceded by an automatic of moderate size and with a cigarette clipped in the corner of his mouth. Nick wondered if he was a nicotine slave or watched old gangster movies on TV. Sammy went down the carton corridor, bent over the moaning Geist amid the shattered glass and stench of whiskey.

Staying as far back in the passageway as he could Nick called gently, "Sammy. Drop it or you're dead."

Sammy didn't. Sammy fired the automatic wildly and dropped his cigarette into the brown compound on the floor and Sammy went dead. Nick went twenty feet back along the cartons, blown by the force of the explosion, holding his mouth open to protect his eardrums. The warehouse was a mass of brownish smoke.

Nick staggered for a moment as he went through the office corridor.
Wooh!
That Stuart! His head was ringing. He was not too stunned to carefully check each room on his way to Akito's office. He entered it cautiously, Wilhelmina focusing on Ruth who sat at the desk, both her hands in sight and empty. She was crying.

Even with shock and horror smearing her boldly drawn features, with tears streaming down her cheeks, shaking and gasping as if she might retch any instant — Nick thought,
She's still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

He said, "Relax, Ruth. He wasn't your father anyway. And it isn't the end of the whole world."

She choked. Her head nodded violently. She was struggling for air. "Don't care. We... You..."

Her head fell forward onto the hard wood and then tilted on its side. The beautiful body had become a rag doll made of soft cloth.

Nick leaned forward, sniffed and swore. Cyanide, most likely. He holstered Wilhelmina and put a hand on the sleek, smooth hair.
A nd then there were none.

We are such fools. All of us.

He lifted the telephone and dialed Hawk.