Run, Spy, Run

Aunt Jemima, innocent-looking devil with the destructive force of TNT, was an apparently ordinary flour which could be kneaded, raised, and actually baked into bread. Even if moistened, it was still effective. Stinger was a fob-pocket gun with a three-by-half-inch tube; a short, automatic pencil in appearance. The tube contained a .22 cartridge, activated by a tiny lever on the side. One squeeze of the lever with your fingernail, and you could kill a man. Casey Jones was a magnet fastened to a box device containing a photoelectric cell. All it took to trigger treacherous Casey into explosion was a swift cutting-off of light, such as the dimout incurred when a train entered a tunnel. The electric eye would react to the sudden darkness and trip the explosive. Hedy was a decoy, rather than a weapon, a screeching firecracker-type device which gave off enough attention-getting clamor to allow an agent to create a diversion anywhere he chose while the real scene played elsewhere.

There were sundry other niceties in the OSS catalog. Nick detailed them with care and Julia listened. It was becoming increasingly clear that Flight 601 would take a lot of surveillance.

"That's about it," Nick finished. "There may be refinements, but those are the basic elements. Want to cash in your ticket?"

"I wouldn't if I could," she said quietly. "I've seen Harcourt at the U.N. I'd hate for us to lose him."

"That's why we're going to have to be on our toes every minute," Nick said. "Do you have any kind of weapon, by the way?"

"You bet I have. But I feel like a babe in the woods, after all that… I've a small traveling clock grenade, useful for bedsides in strange places. A small .25 that looks like a cigarette lighted. And a nailfile that's made of Toledo steel and cuts like a razor. I've only used it once — so far."

Nick could feel her shudder in the dark. Then she said: "What about you?"

He laughed. "Wilhelmina, Hugo, and Pierre. And a little grenade gadget that I haven't yet named and probably never will. If I don't use him, he doesn't deserve christening. And if I do — well, then he's dead."

"Wilhelmina who?"

"The Luger. We're a walking armory, we are."

She sighed and lay back on the cot. Her eyes searched for his in a darkness that was no longer absolute.

"Do you have any L-pills?" she asked quietly.

He was surprised. "No. Do you?"

"Yes. I've seen what's happened to some of us. I don't want to end up like that. If they ever get me, I want to die my way. I won't brainwash, and I won't talk. But I don't want to end up a babbling, mindless… thing."

Nick was silent for a moment Then he said: "I'd like to say, 'stick with me, kid, and you'll be fine.' But I can't guarantee anything but trouble."

"I know that" She reached for his hand. "I know what I'm doing, even though sometimes I hate it."

The cigarettes were dead, the coffee finished.

Nick stroked her fingers as if counting them.

"It's getting late. We'd better get some sleep. Now. In the morning, you leave first I'll help you get a cab on Broadway, then I'll clock out of here about ten minutes later. I'll meet you at the airline weighing-in counter, looking like a hungry lover. Which, I might add, won't be hard. You look breathless and expectant, as if looking forward to our assignation but wondering what mother would think if she could only know." She laughed quietly. "And then, for God's sake, when we get on the plane you'll have to tell me how we're supposed to have met! What is your cover, anyway?"

"I am an art teacher at Slocombe College, Pennsylvania," she said dreamily. "Destiny — and your best friend — brought us together. It was like a bolt of lightning from a summer sky… Oh, well. Tune in tomorrow for the next thrilling installment. I do draw rather well, by the way."

Nick smiled and kissed her, putting his hands lightly on her silky shoulders.

"Goodnight, then. You might as well stay here — I'll have the bedroom."

He rose silently.

"Peter," she called softly.

"Yes?"

"I still don't want to sleep alone."

"Neither do I," he said huskily.

They didn't.

* * *

Dawn was lacing the sky with a ladder of fleecy clouds above the vast expanse of Idlewild as Nick Carter's taxi drew up before the Air America Building.

Julie Baron had pecked his lips in hasty farewell and tucked her long legs into the back of her airport-bound cab. Nick instructed the driver and had watched the Yellow Cab take off. He had gone back to the apartment and checked every inch of it before locking up. The little pile of cinders in the fireplace had become a light powder, as shapeless as dust. Nick carefully collected cigarette butts and ashes into an empty pack of Players. Habit was so strong that his check-up of the place was as natural as breathing.