Run, Spy, Run

"No, I don't think so, Cane." Hawk's voice was grim. "Who could have guessed that the whole of AXE would be down on his neck if he killed one airline hostess and one playboy private eye?"

He reached into a pocket and withdrew a set of keys. Handing them to Nick, he said: "Front door. I'm afraid you'll both have to stay here tonight. It's the safest place in town for you. There are two army cots in the bedroom. That's the best we could manage. Set them up as you wish."

Hawk walked slowly to the door, then turned suddenly to face them.

"Oh, Miss Baron. You'll have to leave the Jaguar. We'll look after it. You'll find a thermos of coffee in the kitchen and some cigarettes. You both should try to make the best of a somewhat embarrassing situation. Miss Baron, you're here because Washington wants you in on the operation. It's up to Cane to decide your value and call the shots. I, personally, am very proud to have you with us — I know your services to this country. So please cooperate with each other. Keep Lyle Harcourt in one piece." He unlatched the door. "Mr. Judas is no joke. Good luck to you."

In the brief silence that followed. Carter and Julia Baron surveyed each other with measured looks.

"Cooperate with each other! The old buzzard. I'll see about those cots. You can have the bedroom. I'll sleep out here."

Nick left Julia standing in the middle of the blank living room, looking like a newly arrived tenant wondering why the moving van was late.

His survey showed him that Hawk had done all he could to offer them comfort without spoiling the illusion of an unoccupied apartment. Heavy shades were pulled down everywhere. The bathroom's frosted window was locked and barred. The cots were made up and looked almost good enough to sleep in. The thermos was comfortingly warm and the cigarettes were Players.

He carried one of the cots into the living room and set it up. Julia drifted past him into the bedroom and made suitcase-opening noises. She came out carrying something filmy and gave him a quick glance before closeting herself in the bathroom. He stripped down to his shorts and put his clothes on top of the two-suiter.

Julia emerged, looking a good five years younger than the femme jatale who had strolled so confidently into Yankee Stadium and waited for him, later, in the dashing Jaguar. The dark hair was loose over her shoulders and her face was scrubbed and as smooth as a child's. Yet her cat's eyes were far from childlike. Nick saw a lovely young woman with a tawny skin, high, proud breasts and a tall, exquisitely shaped body draped loosely in something that only a woman, and a very beautiful woman at that, would regard as something appropriate to sleep in.

She saw a tall, hard-faced man with an almost classic profile and a magnificently muscled body. An Apollo with a knife-scarred shoulder, wide-set steel gray eyes, and a crew-cut that somehow managed to look unruly.

"Julie, you are beautiful. How about some coffee?"

"I'd like that very much."

"Here, you maneuver these nasty little cups while I clean off the grime."

He vanished into the bathroom and splashed briskly for a while. When he came out the coffee was poured into the two plastic cups and Julie was sitting on the bed. He sat down beside her and they sipped the still-scalding brew.

"So you're O.C.I.?" he began formally.

"Uhuh." Her eyes slid over his body, then turned quickly away.

Carter noticed the glance and enjoyed the feel of it.

"Suppose you fill me in on your own immediate background. What you saw and heard in Peking; things like that."

She told him rapidly, in the crisp, incisive style of one accustomed to giving vital reports and having them listened to. Nick's mind absorbed every word, though his eyes wandered from hers down to her lips and then to the firm, exciting breasts that rose and fell with her measured breathing as if issuing invitations.

When she had finished her story she asked him: "Who is Rita Jameson? Hawk didn't tell me about her."

He told her. Her eyes widened with horror as he described the scene in Central Park. She reached over and touched him gently when his forehead clouded with the memory of what he thought was his own guilt. He found his breath quickening.

"Was she very beautiful?" she asked.

"She was," he answered seriously. "Much too lovely to die like that." He looked into the almond-shaped pools of her eyes. "But not as lovely as you. Some gentleman prefer brunettes." It seemed to him her breath had quickened, too. He uncoiled his whipcord body and got up from the bed, reaching for her hands with his.

"Perhaps we'd better get some sleep. We have to be up very early."

He pulled her gently to her feet.

"Perhaps we should," she murmured. She freed her hands from his and very lightly encircled his neck with her marvelously tawny arms. "Goodnight." Her lips brushed his. The arms stayed where they were. His own arms rose as if on hidden strings and reached around her, past the provocative firm softness of her magnificent bosom.