Run, Spy, Run

It was a pity that the occupants of the bed were such unappreciative spectators. The marvelously fashioned specimen of male architecture that was Nick Carter deserved a living audience for his daily exercise. True, he often had one. In Jamaica, for instance, the glossy eyes of the Countess had followed every move of his supple body. For no matter where he was, Nick found the time to coordinate every nerve and muscle in his body to the physical science of Yoga. Fifteen concentrated, straining minutes of complete muscular control enabled a man to breathe miraculously under abnormal conditions. Trained him, too, to contort his abdomen and hips to an almost impossible degree of narrowness, so that he was capable of squeezing himself in and out of areas denied the average man. Exercises for eyes and ears and limbs and heart and diaphragm, tried and tested throughout the years, had made Nick Carter a man who never had an earache, an eyestrain or a headache. The muscle exercises were the fieldwork in his campaign for perfect control; the Yoga philosophy of mind over matter consummated the feat. There is no pain, Nick had told himself again and again. Soon this had become a fact. There was no pain — even during one endurance-straining ordeal when his arm had been nearly crushed in a death struggle with the mammoth murderer, Tilson of Berlin. Tilson had died of a broken neck at Nick's hands. Hawk, who seldom allowed himself to be impressed, had never ceased to marvel at how Nick had managed to accomplish the deed with a mangled arm.

Yoga was also responsible for Nick's great prowess in more amorous exercises. In love as in war, the superb masculine body performed with grace and power.

Nick snapped erect, his labors over. A fine sheen of perspiration covered his litheness. He flicked the towel over his body and let it fall as he went over to the bed.

Wilhelmina, Hugo and Pierre could do things that even Yoga could not do.

He inspected his trio of lifesavers. Three delicately balanced instruments that were the great equalizers in the war of Spy versus Spy.

Wilhelmina was a 9mm. Luger, the spoils of World War II. She came from the SS Barracks at Munich. Nick had killed Colonel Pabst, a Himmler aide, to get her, and not only because he considered the Luger the finest hand automatic weapon ever devised: Wilhelmina was a very special Luger. The Colonel had gone in for some refinements. Wilhelmina was stripped to no more than barrel and frame, making her feather-light and easy storage for the waistband of the trousers or the taper of a hip beneath the tail of a coat. She had killed for Nick — several times.

Hugo was a killer of different style but equal experience.

Hugo was an Italian stiletto, a lethal miracle fashioned in Milano by an admirer of Cellini. A razor-thin ice pick blade and a bone handle no thicker than a heavy pencil. A blade that lay concealed in the haft until the flick of a finger on a tiny switch whipped the deadly steel from its slot. Hugo was even easier to hide than Wilhelmina. And quieter.

Pierre was a ball no bigger than a marble. But Pierre was a specialist in death. A French chemist, working for Hawk, had devised an ingenious little implement of destruction in the form of a round pellet containing enough X-5 gas to kill a roomful of people. A turn of the two halves of the pellet in opposite directions set off a thirty-second timer that made speedy departure a necessity. Nick was very wary of Pierre. He had to be carried carefully. True, his outer casing was virtually indestructible and the two halves responded only to a twist of considerable dexterity and pressure, but Pierre was too deadly a genie to take any chances with.

Nick checked these weapons daily. As with the Yoga, it was good to be on your toes with the equipment you waged your wars with. The war of espionage and international chess kept a top operative busy even when not actively engaged in the battle or the hunt.

And now there was a fourth weapon. It lay in his pants pocket with the everyday jumble of coins and keys.

Nick pulled on his shorts and took a flask out of his briefcase. He poured a generous shot into a bathroom tumbler and slid comfortably into a lounge chair, feeling just a little foolish about his latest acquisition. An arsenal of gimmicky weapons, for God's sake, as if he were a boy scout boasting a knife with sixteen blades!