Run, Spy, Run

But there were times when you had to fight fire with fire, or knife with knife, or blast with blast. And maybe this would be one of them. Even before seeing Hawk he had been certain that he would become even more deeply involved, somehow, in the weird business of the explosion. He had stopped, briefly, on his way into town from the airport. Frankie Gennaro was retired now, but he still liked to tinker down in his basement and use his skillful hands. The little flashlight key-chain was a minor masterpiece. The chain unscrewed and came out like a pin from a grenade. When it did, the gadget was transformed into a door-opener too deadly to use among friends. Frankie's instructions were: "Pull, throw, and run."

Nick swallowed thoughtfully.

Flight 16. That was a puzzler. A man blowing up after stepping off an airliner. Hawk and his new assignment… Yes, the old man must be right. Four recent explosions, all connected with aircraft and at least three with foreign diplomats, were a coincidence that spelled out "plan," not "accident." Bombs on planes were more than accident or even murder. There was a hideous callousness in wiping out a planeload of people when you were after only one of them. If you were. But what about this morning? Hawk was probably right about that, too. The bomb must have gone off behind schedule. A snafu. What had gone wrong? That strange clicking sound. Steel Hand looking at his artificial fingers before the explosion. Surprise. Did his hand blow him up? Didn't he know what he had in his hand? Maybe it wasn't the hand. Then what was it?

Nick took a deep breath. Time enough to think about that when the assignment officially began with the arrival of the facts and figures in Hawk's package. Until then he was still the innocent bystander of Flight 16, one Nicholas Carter who had completed his business in Jamaica and walked down an airstair to stand on the brink of hell. Only Hawk and a handful of trusted cops knew that Carter was N-3 of AXE. If the world thought Nick Carter was a private investigator or a business executive, fine. Just so long as it didn't know that the tall man with the hard jaw and even harder eyes and the label "Carter" had anything to do with AXE.

There was Rita Jameson to consider.

Damn! He should have thought of it before. Nick reached for his watch and strapped it on as he glanced at the time. Too late to call London now. Max would be out of his office and on the town. If it was true that he had spoken to Rita about Nick, then he would have told her what he thought he knew: that Nick was a private detective, who enjoyed a challenging assignment.

Rita. Lovely, troubled, in need of help. Or else a clever counter-spy who had somehow discovered that he was more public avenger than private eye. If that was the case, she was either somehow involved with the bombings or had coincidentally chosen Flight 16 to con him into a trap. He shook his head. That would be one coincidence too many.

Room 2010 slowly darkened as he sat there sunk in thought. The small blue tattoo on his right forearm, near the inside of the elbow, glowed faintly in the gathering gloom. He stared down at it and smiled a little ruefully. When Hawk had organized AXE, the tattoo had come with the job. Along with the phone code, the danger and the fun. One little blue axe, and a man was committed for life to the job of secret agent for the U.S. Government. Hawk's undercover agency had its own unorthodox ideas about "give 'em the axe" to enemy spies and saboteurs. But along with the axe and the code and everything else had come a deep-rooted sense of caution, a suspiciousness that reached out to every wide-eyed bellhop, every garrulous cabdriver and every lovely girl. Certainly it had played hell with romance on more than one occasion.

Nick rose, snapped on the lights and started to dress.

A few minutes later he was formally attired in a dark charcoal grey suit, powder blue tie and laceless black shoes. He inspected his face in the bathroom mirror. The scrapes and bruises of the day's misadventure were scarcely visible. Makeup, he thought, can do wonders, and he grinned at his image. He combed the thick, dark hair away from his forehead and told himself to get it cut in the morning, right after he'd talked to Max.

Back in the bedroom, he pocketed Pierre and slid Wilhelmina and Hugo into their accustomed places. Then he moved to the phone to call Hadway House and Rita Jameson.

His hand was reaching for it when something happened to the lights in Room 2010. Every one of them went out with alarming suddenness. Silently, swiftly — disturbingly.

Someone called out in the next room. It wasn't his room only, then.

A window made a click of sound.

That was his room.

Nick Carter stood stock-still in the new darkness, abruptly conscious of a deadly fact: someone else was in the room with him.

Someone who had not come in through the front door.

Death in a Dark Room