Run, Spy, Run

There was the highly-strung, over-age blonde in the Paris clothes, with the small freckle-faced kid who kept running to the water cooler. There was the matron with the impossible hat, and the frail little fellow who squealed "My dear!" every few minutes and waved his fingers when he talked. Hardly anybody stood out from the crowd. An ordinary lot.

Except the man with the steel hand.

He had intrigued Nick from the moment of departure from sunny Jamaica. Clearly, he was not the type to write the imploring "Please please please help!" What type was he? An odd bird.

Short, squat, very wide in the shoulders, wearing expensive but poorly cut clothes. Bald, Brynner skull, small eyes ringed with pouches, indicating poor health or fatigue — tension? — rather than age. And then that hand…

The man had done nothing during the flight but sip tea and smoke short, thin cigarettes. From his seat, Nick had identified the pack as Rayettes, a type favored by Latin Americans. Yet the man was smooth-faced, fair of skin, and very nearly American looking. Or maybe Russian. But with the British tea-drinking habit. There she was again, the stewardess, dispensing tea from that bottomless server. Mmmm. Most attractive girl. Seemed to know the man. She smiled and chatted as she filled the upheld cup in the robot hand.

The hand was fascinating.

Tragedies of war had brought about fantastic advances in artificial limbs. It was engrossing to watch the bald man maneuver his tea and Rayettes with those gleaming, non-human fingers. He hardly used his good left hand, as if openly defying his disability.

Steel Hand, so far, has been the only non-routine aspect of Flight 16.

Nick stirred restlessly. The girl on the aisle looked at him sideways, sliding her glance over his handsome face and down the lean, whipcord length of his body. He was almost too good looking, with that classic profile and the firm, cleft chin. Those icy eyes looked cruel and dangerous. Until he smiled. Then the firm, straight mouth split into a grin and laugh-lines rayed out from much warmer eyes. Damn! He'd seen her staring again! She buried her nose in the book.

He'd seen her staring only because he was watching the hostess coming up the aisle and thinking that she had fine, firm hips, that the blue uniform was most becoming to her, and that he felt like some coffee.

"Hello," he said, as she came between them. "Does this line ever serve coffee, or would that be un-English?"

"Oh, of course, I'm sorry!" She looked a little flustered. "I'll bring it right away. It's just been such a day for tea-drinkers…!"

"Yes, I noticed. Especially your friend, hmm?" Nick glanced down the aisle at the man with the artificial hand, then back at the hostess. She was looking at him, somehow, too intently.

"And a Remy Martin with the coffee, if I may?"

"Why not?" she answered, smiling faintly and moving away.

Nick felt a frown gathering on his forehead.

Plane crews — out of uniform — often came to the Montego Room and the Henry Morgan Bar of the Cayman for entertainment. Why hadn't he thought of that? Well — didn't prove anything. Hundreds of people drifted in and out of that hotel last night.

Rita Jameson surveyed him from her vantage point in the commissary alcove, admiring the lithe, limber body in Seat 6E. Could anyone quite so good looking be really reliable? She poured the coffee and cognac and moved swiftly down the aisle.

"I wonder if you could help me with something," he said, very quietly.

She raised her eyebrows.

"I'll try."

"Somebody on board this plane sent me a note and forgot to sign it. Somebody who seemed to be in trouble."

A muscle twitched at the corner of her mouth. He poured the cognac into his coffee and pretended not to notice.

"Do you have any idea how I could find out who it was? I'd really like to help."

"I don't know," she said. "I'll think about it. I'll see what I can do."

Her face was without color or expression as she hurried back to the tiny galley. You're a damn fool, she told herself fiercely. Can't you make up your mind?

Nick Carter peered out of the port window. Not much time left, if there was going to be any action. He couldn't see it yet, but he knew that the Manhattan skyline was looming up as fast as the four engines could manage the balance of the distance into Idlewild. Mr. Hawk would be waiting to hear from him — Hawk, a voice on the telephone or a coldly impersonal face behind a cigar. A man he had never failed, and prayed he never would. An enigmatic yet dynamic personality, a man with his authoritative finger in every espionage pie indigestible to the United States Government.

He wondered about the stewardess.