Carter Nick : другие произведения.

Saigon

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  WHEN SPY MEETS SPY.
  
  An unforgettable game of counterintelligence pitting America's super-secret AXE organization against the Chinese assassination bureau, BITTER ALMONDS… and Killmaster himself against a female double-agent whose technique was irresistible.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Death and The Fair One
  
  He Got His Job Through The Vietnam Times
  
  La Dolce Vita Vietnames
  
  Meet Mr. Fang
  
  Saito, Where Are You?
  
  Miss Antoinette Cleans House
  
  The Inexperienced Spy
  
  Friday Night
  
  And Saturday Morning
  
  Ready — Gel Set — Go!
  
  Almost Everything Is Jake
  
  Claire Has Company
  
  I Couldn't Help It General; I Lost My Head
  
  Killmaster Meets The Lady
  
  Love Is Love But War Is Hell
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Killmaster
  
  Saigon
  
  
  
  
  Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Service of the United States of America
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Death and The Fair One
  
  
  
  
  The blue-green skies of Vietnam shed their brilliant gleam over scenes of sheer postcard beauty and stark horror.
  
  Paddy fields rise gently in curving terraces at the foothills of the mountains which border the La Farge plantation in Communist-held North Vietnam. To the south the wooded hills slope down toward splendid cities and soft sandy beaches that stretch like mammoth carpeting tacked onto the South China Sea. Inland, yet embracing a deep inlet of the sea, lies the harbor capital of Saigon… four hours and fifteen minutes by air from Manila, two and a half hours by air from Singapore, and light years away from the La Farge plantation on the northern side of the partition line.
  
  Madame La Farge lay back under the steaming August sun and thought about it. The heat and the remoteness of Saigon were among the few things left for her to think about.
  
  For Claire La Farge, an excursion into Saigon could once have been accomplished in a series of seventy-mile-per-hour sweeps over the improved roadways and dizzying corkscrew passes in her custom-built Royal Roadster. Once, but not any more. Madame La Farge was virtually a prisoner in her own castle in the foothills. For one thing, the Roadster was no longer hers. Ho Van Minh had admired its aging beauty and commandeered it for his staff car. For another, Madame was under orders to restrict her movements. And finally, even supposing she had been free to travel, she could see no good reason to go dashing over hill and dale through the ragged lines of conflict drawn between the North and South. Vietnam, these days, is no place for making unnecessary trips. Even in the friendly southern mountains, where big-game hunters cross the thick forest in search of leopard, tiger and wild boar, the most dangerous of all Vietnamese creatures is to be found: the Viet Cong guerrilla.
  
  So Madame Claire La Farge no longer traveled.
  
  And yet she was no ordinary woman. No one expected a beautiful Frenchwoman to be ordinary, and the Madame was no exception. She was a widow, breathtakingly lovely; once a devoted young wife with no thought but to quietly adore her handsome husband, and now a tough-minded businesswoman who ran Paul's plantation with a firm but gentle hand. The vast legions who helped her maintain the richest lands in the territory viewed her with love and respect. When they called her the "Fair One," as all but one or two of them did, they paid tribute not only to her beauty but to the scrupulous fairness and honesty that had attracted Paul La Farge to her in Hanoi almost twenty years before this cruel August day.
  
  Claire turned over in the sun. There are two seasons in Vietnam, and both of them are summer. One is dry and one is wet. The sun was shining after thirteen days of torrential, steaming rain. Everything on the plantation was going as well as could be expected. There was nothing whatever to do, and no novelty in sight except the sun.
  
  So Madame La Farge sunbathed in the nude. Not to be wanton and certainly not to shock the help. Merely to take advantage of the sun and be as comfortable as possible.
  
  Her body, stretched out on Paul's own version of an elegantly comfortable patio hammock, was long, bronzed and abundantly curved. Even in her exquisite nakedness she looked unmistakably French. Indeed, Madame Claire La Farge was the very embodiment of French femininity at its marvelous best, a romantic dream in the gorgeous flesh. Even now, with her breasts rising like twin-crested hills into the baking sun of a land so far from France, she seemed Forever French. Her short-bobbed black hair swept back from a classic forehead. A slender nose with delicately pinched nostrils divided high cheekbones whose message of aloofness was contradicted by the full, sensuous mouth — a mouth that now found little to make it curve into a laugh — but which had known laughter in its time. She lay like a sun goddess, surrounded by the low stone wall which ran around the southern tip of the patio which the help had erected in the long-ago when the plantation, and Madame, were both quite young.
  
  But the wall served as little protection from whatever might come. It had been built as a decoration, a low dividing line between the lands and the La Farges' private life. Paul had been the only protection she had ever needed.
  
  Now, at 36, Madame had nothing to protect her but a screen, and the old Army.45 tucked casually between the pillows of the hammock. Paul La Farge, the handsome, laughing devil of the war years and French Intelligence, had been dead for ten cruel and empty years. His code name had been La Petite Fleur. La Petite Fleur! She could still smile when she thought of it — that laughably fragile label for a man of great muscular strength, well-versed in every phase of hand-to-hand combat and coldly merciless in his dealings with the enemy. But warm and gentle with her… strong, warm, gentle, passionate… a memory of strength and sweetness, love and laughter…
  
  He had met her in Hanoi at the end of World War II, wooed and won her even though she was more than ten years younger than he and surrounded by panting young suitors. Then he had taken her to the plantation his family had owned for half a century and left to him to run. And he ran it well, as he did everything, but he had another and more important job to do. He was still La Petite Fleur of French Intelligence. And the French were fighting bitter battles to keep the Communists from wresting control of Vietnam.
  
  Now the North was lost to them. So was Paul.
  
  La Petite Fleur had done his undercover work for the French Government for eight long, hazardous years. A dozen times he had been close to death, and a dozen times he had slipped through his enemy's fingers to come home to Claire and the plantation. At last, only weeks before the bloodiness of Dien Bien Phu, his superiors sent him orders to lie low for a while, be an innocent French planter and nothing else until fresh orders came. He hated the thought of inactivity, but Claire was relieved. They needed time together, a short breathing spell.
  
  Then came the assassin's bullet crashing across the darkness of the Vietnamese night.
  
  Claire La Farge was a widow at an age when women most need their men to love them.
  
  Now she had only the plantation and her memories of Paul and his great love. Only heat, rain, rice and tea to occupy her mind.
  
  She stirred again in the sun and sighed. That wasn't true. She had other things to think of. The people who worked her land, for instance. They needed her. Without her guidance the L4 Farge lands would be an unproductive shambles within a matter of seasons. She had had a choice. "Get out and stay out. Let your lackeys fend for themselves." "Stay here. Let them keep their jobs. The house is yours, and such food as you need. But the rest is ours. The land produces for us." So endeth speech by North Vietnamese General Ho Van Minh.
  
  So she had stayed. In Paul's home. But, in fact, even the plantation was no longer hers. Time was marching on, going nowhere, taking her youth along with it. Giving her little to think of but the heat, the rain, the rice, the tea, her plantation hands, the produce going to feed the enemy, the terrible business of the Vietnamese conflict that threatened to plunge the world into the holocaust of World War Three…
  
  Claire swore to herself. Nothing to think about! She had the world itself to think about and she lay here like a lump of clay, useless. Frustration burned within her as hotly as the sun. And burned itself out in a sudden blaze. She was restless, that was all. Maybe she could persuade Minh to let her go into Saigon for supplies. In fact, she had already set the wheels in motion by sending him a message. The trip would do her good. Apart from that, there wasn't a damn thing she could do about the world situation and the communist menace. With Paul gone, it didn't matter any more. Nothing mattered any more.
  
  The sun beat down, sending its rays like a lover's fingers into the warm recesses of the Madame's curved length on the unmoving hammock. She kept her eyes locked against the glare even though heavy sun glasses with jewel-crested harlequin rims shielded them. The torrid waves of close atmospheric pressure held her in flaming hot fingers. Her body shivered briefly with a sensation of love and almost forgotten passion. If only she could once again find a man like Paul to make her feel as she did under the caress of the sun…
  
  She did not see the tall shadow that fell across the patio beyond the screen, but she heard the soft footstep that brushed the silence. She did not stir, neither did she reach for the.45.
  
  "Yes, Saito?"
  
  She knew his step, the light catlike tread of the giant who had been with Paul since fleeing the Japanese mainland in 41 to fight against the warmakers among his own people. After the French collapse of 1954 he had remained in Claire's employ. It is thought that it was he who first called her the "Fair One" and gave rise to a living legend.
  
  "My lady, there will be no safe conduct for you to Saigon. The General is not of a mood to offer you the courtesy. And I beg that you do not try to undertake the journey in some other way."
  
  There was worry in the soft, gentle voice of the foreman. The Madame, quick to sense the wants and needs in her people and ever ready to honor their unfaltering concern for her well-being, did Saito the courtesy of sitting up and giving him her whole-hearted attention. He could not see her from behind the screen, but he could hear each move she made and he knew that she sat up to listen to him. He also knew that she was naked. But he made no attempt to look around the screen and she had no thought of reaching for her silken robe. Saito, as her foreman and trusted manservant, was rendered the supreme compliment: her certainty that her virtue, her very being, were safe when he was near.
  
  "So the General is being difficult," she said, without surprise. "But you are worried, Saito. May I ask why?"
  
  "There is trouble in the land."
  
  "There is always trouble in the land. What is it that so disturbs you today — the General?"
  
  For all her French inflection, the Madame's Vietnamese rang true and clear. Though Saito understood her native French as well as English, it always seemed to her more natural to speak the local tongue.
  
  "Not only the little General." Saito's voice was tinged with scorn. He had disliked Ho Van Minh on sight and had found no reason to change his mind. "Something has angered him so that he refuses completely to let my lady step foot off the plantation. He even dared to threaten punishment should you disobey him."
  
  "Did he, now?" she murmured thoughtfully. "And what important news have you for me?"
  
  "That he means it this time, Madame. There have been bombing raids and several battles of late that have not gone to his liking. And it is true that it is even more dangerous than before to venture forth. The skies are becoming full of planes that drop men like seeds into the fields and there are death traps on all the roads. And word comes from Saigon that there will be more demonstrations there, more bombs. Communist pigs and sign-bearing animals will walk again and kill again. Do not become restless, Madame, I beg you. The journey is impossible."
  
  She understood the worry in him. It was true that she was headstrong, and more than once she had defied the General. But even that was no longer worth the effort.
  
  "Do not alarm yourself, Saito. I shall remain where I am."
  
  "It is well, Madame. Do you still wish to have speech with the General?"
  
  She looked at the screen as though she could see Saito standing behind it. In her mind's eye, she did see him, a completely atypical Japanese — far too tall, far too Western-looking. He was a good six feet tall and blockily built, his enormous arms dangling apelike at his sides. The Black Belt was his, as were countless other honors in Judo, Kendo and Karate. No one had ever bested Saito. And no one ever would, except his late master's lady. For all his imposing stature, he was like a small boy when it came to Claire La Farge.
  
  "No, Saito. I will not trouble the busy General. I have no interest in crossing the 17th Parallel if it means so many tiresome difficulties. What difference does it make, after all? No, I shall remain here, seeing no one, being only the Lady of the Plantation." Her tone mocked her words, for no one knew better than she that the Lady was a helpless captive.
  
  Saito bowed behind the screen. "My lady, as always, shows good sense."
  
  She laughed. He, too, sounded just a little mocking. They both knew that she did not always show good sense. But there was no lack of respect in his faint mockery.
  
  "Has The Times of Vietnam arrived yet, Saito?"
  
  "Within the hour, my lady."
  
  "Bring it to me when it comes. With a glass of sugarcane and orange. That is all, Saito."
  
  She knew that he was bowing his way across the patio even though he knew his courtesy could not be seen. A comforting giant, she thought, to have at one's side. Not like a husband, though; not at all like a strong, loving husband… Madame La Farge shut her thoughts tightly away and concentrated on sleep. The sun would help. It would touch her nakedness warmly, hold it like a lover's embrace and drain all the fight out of her…
  
  The sun did help. She drowsed.
  
  Somehow she sensed the shadow falling across her body even before she heard the sound. It was later. She could not tell how much later, but the sun told her it was less than the hour she had expected to wait for Saito. And she knew by the footfall that the shadow was not Saito's; that this was someone who had stepped across the La Farge threshold for the first time. She opened her eyes slowly, and this time she did reach for her robe. The shadow falling from behind the screen was coming closer. Her hand stole beneath the pillows for Paul's.45.
  
  The man staggering toward her was dying. She had seen enough of death to know its face immediately.
  
  He came lurching toward the swaying hammock, half-dragging himself across the flagged stones of the patio. She sat up quickly, drawing the robe around her and pointing the.45 firmly at the ragged intruder. She was not afraid. Vaguely alarmed, curious, but not afraid. A wounded guerrilla, she thought, and waited for the man's demand for help.
  
  The derelict halted, a pitiful sight in torn broadcloth breeches and leather vest flapping open to show a stained, sweaty, yellowish body. She saw taut skin stretched over bone and wiry muscle, veins and tendons that were distended knots, a face that showed the agony of his wasted frame. His face was predominantly Indo-Chinese, but she could see the Frenchman within the racked and tortured body.
  
  He swayed at the foot of the hammock. And there was something strangely familiar about the twisted features.
  
  "C'est vous, Madame La Farge? Je suis…"
  
  She could only nod as he fell to his knees before her, his hands clawing at something at his waist. His black, badly-trimmed hair hung wildly from his scalp and the parched lips moved wordlessly. The torn and bleeding fingers fumbled clumsily, trying to take something from its hiding place and urge it on Madame, but the body was incapable of doing what the brain commanded.
  
  She reached toward him.
  
  "Madame…" the voice croaked. "Message! Not… not… not…" He staggered back, his words an indistinguishable hiss of dying sound. Then his voice rose. "Not so!" it seemed to say. And: "Vive la France!"
  
  This last was an agonized but somehow triumphant shriek. The Madame was too late to catch the corpse that fell across the foot of her sun hammock. It was only then that she saw the dreadful scars through the torn fabric on the man's mutilated back.
  
  Madame La Farge did not scream. Paul La Farge had trained her too well. She clapped her hands three times with sharp, stinging emphasis. Saito would hear, and come.
  
  Swiftly, she knelt and felt the man's heart. Death again. Like older, even harder times. French mixed with English, and the face of an Indo-Chinese… He had known her. Where could she have known him? Her fingers ran lightly over his body, looking for the message. No pockets, no paper, no locket around the neck.
  
  The dead hands were still clutching at the soiled trouser band, at a belt, made of rope strands curiously knotted. Gently but firmly she pried the locked fingers of the corpse apart. The message must somehow be tied up in that belt.
  
  Not so, as he had said. Not so. Unless it was threaded into the crude weave, held together by those thin, irregular knots, there was no message in the belt. But there had to be.
  
  She took the belt off the dead shell of the man who had died for France and scrutinized it thoughtfully, hearing Saito's sandals making slapping leathery sounds from within the house.
  
  "Not… not… not… Not so…!" Nots. Knots. There were many ways of hiding messages. This was one. And now she knew the man.
  
  Merciful God! she thought. Why was Paul La Farge dead? He would know exactly what to do.
  
  Madame La Farge's raven-black eyebrows knit in a furious scowl. Curse this man, dying at her feet with his unintelligible knots. They meant nothing to her, and there was nothing she could possibly do about them. This whole awful incident was a tedious nuisance.
  
  Nevertheless, her heart had lifted in the strangest way. This man had made his way, deliberately, to the wife of La Petite Fleur. And Paul had never let a man down in his life.
  
  Saito bounded into view from behind the screen. Madame La Farge waved him toward her, her mind flying. There was so much to do.
  
  At last.
  
  
  
  
  
  He Got His Job Through The Vietnam Times
  
  
  
  
  "Who was he, my lady?"
  
  "Andre Moreau. I had not seen him in more than ten years. Who is working near the house, who could have seen him come?"
  
  For all that the Madame trusted her plantation staff, she knew that at least one or two gave their loyalties to the Viet Cong. They could not be blamed for believing what they had been so carefully taught.
  
  Saito shook his head. "No one, my lady. All are working in the eastern fields. And he would not have come so far if he had been seen." Saito bent down, and his big hands turned the twisted body with incredible gentleness. "He was murdered, my lady. Slowly, by torture. They must have wanted something from him very badly."
  
  She nodded grimly, her lovely face set with a purpose it had not known for years. "We will have to dispose of his body without going to the authorities. Because his enemies are our enemies. And they must not know that he came to us."
  
  Saito straightened up and folded his massive arms. "It will be done. The fields will serve. There is much fallow earth. It will be put to good use."
  
  "Yes, but later. We will have to take him into the house now and wait for darkness before burying him. I shall have to leave that to you. For now, there is more pressing work to do."
  
  "Speak and tell me."
  
  "Moreau was with French Intelligence. While La Petite Fleur was alive this was always a place of sanctuary. That must be why Moreau came here, and he trusted me. That means I must try to get to Saigon and contact whoever remains in French Intelligence. There must still be somebody there who…"
  
  "No, my lady." It was unlike Saito to interrupt her. The hard set of his expression was also unlike him.
  
  "No? What do you mean?" she demanded. "I am quite sure that the French Government still has agents in Saigon, and I am equally sure that La Petite Fleur would have wanted me to contact them."
  
  Saito managed to shake his head and nod at the same time. "I know nothing of French Intelligence but without doubt my lady is right about their presence in Saigon. But I beg to say that the Master would not have wished you to go into Saigon at this time. It is always dangerous. Now it is impossible. You will recall that the General…"
  
  "The General!" Madame tossed her head impatiently. "He is a fat fool, unimportant. His threats are nothing to me. He will most certainly not stop me going into Saigon. Come, now, Saito, let us put this unfortunate being in the house and make our plans for going. You will see me as far as the border and then I…"
  
  "No, Madame." Saito stood like a rock in front of her. "You will not be going. If someone must go to Saigon, then I shall go. The Master gave me orders many years ago. They still stand. I will not permit you to endanger yourself. With respect, my lady, I cannot let you go."
  
  She stared at him, her eyes flashing angrily. He was implacable. But she had to go.
  
  "If you must presume to argue with me," she said coldly, "at least you can wait until we have attended to the dead."
  
  She saw the hurt in his eyes and turned her own away.
  
  Within minutes the body of Andre Moreau was stored in the cavernous wine cellars of the La Farge house to await the night when the hills would be dark and an excellent cover for grave-digging.
  
  Afterwards, Madame and Saito talked again. She had never seen him more determined; she had seldom been so angry. But at last she made herself realize that he would not let her go even if he had to hold her back by force. He would be gentle, but he would use force. The thought of making Saito go to such extremes made her give way at last. He would win in the end, and she would have gained nothing but a dreadful constraint between them.
  
  "Very well, then. Let us forget these last few moments and be about our business."
  
  Saito's slitted eyes looked wisely from his smooth, strong face. If he showed any expression at all, it was one of relief. "Command me, my lady."
  
  "You will make your way to the city with the utmost care and go to the offices of The Times of Vietnam." Saito raised his narrow eyebrows expectantly. "You will place an advertisement in the newspaper. It will say to whoever can read its message that La Petite Fleur has risen from his grave with a call to arms. Now prepare yourself."
  
  Saito bowed and withdrew.
  
  The Madame gazed out through the great French doors at the measured roadway between the lawns fronting her property. The Royal Roadster should have been standing there, polished and waiting, ready to take the lady of the house wherever she wanted to go. But it wasn't. The richest woman in North Vietnam could not cross an artificial border and drive south to Saigon. Suddenly her luxurious prison had become more oppressive than before — and yet more of a challenge. With Paul dead, it had not mattered much. Until now.
  
  Toward evening the hot rain began to fall again. It made the burial more unpleasant, yet easier. Claire La Farge stood on the dark hillside with her drenched clothes clinging to her body. Poor Moreau. Brave Moreau. A battered corpse, lying like a dog in the Vietnam hills. Whatever it was that he had given his life for must not be tossed carelessly away. If it was worth his life, it was worth hers. Again she cursed her immobility. She should be the one to go into Saigon. But since she could not, she would keep Moreau's message until the right man came to find it.
  
  Saito was ready for his hazardous trip through two armies to reach the city. He stood tall and proud in his costume of long trousers, cloth jacket and coolie hat. He also carried a gun, as most men do in Vietnam these days, and could present himself as farmer, laborer or guerrilla, depending on the moment.
  
  Madame gave him funds and brief instructions. "Go now, Saito. Tell no one what has happened until someone contacts you. Then say only what I have told you to say. Let yourself be seen in Saigon. But be very, very careful. I shall keep the message here and guard it with my life."
  
  He bowed. "Rather, guard your own life, my lady, knowing that I will die if evil should befall you."
  
  She held out her hand for him to kiss. Then he was gone, a great panther of a man gliding through the rain-steamed night.
  
  Madame Claire La Farge held her head erect and her firm shoulders back. She felt powerful and alive again. The code name La Petite Fleur rang like a salvo of guns in her head. It was almost as if agent Paul La Farge had come back to life to rule her universe once more.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Three days later the ten-thirty edition of The Times of Vietnam bore a rather ordinary item in its Personal Column. An item no more poignant, no less provocative than dozens of other such entries which ran daily on those pages:
  
  I must see you immediately. La Petite Fleur.
  
  
  
  Nearly everybody in Saigon reads The Times. There are forty newspapers and no one can possibly read them all, so nearly everybody reads the Times. Monsieur Raoul Dupré was one reader. Dr. Nicholas Carter was another.
  
  Raoul Dupré had been living in Saigon for more than twenty years. Nick Carter had been absorbing the chaos and contradictory beauty of it for six days, almost as long as he had been a Doctor.
  
  No one in Saigon seemed to give a damn why he was there, or even that he was there. His story of being an advance member of a team of the World Health Organization's medical observers seemed to have been swallowed like choice bait, and even the most important of the South Vietnamese authorities received him cordially between riots, flying bullets and sudden job changes. Even if they had suspected he was a spy they probably wouldn't have cared. Nearly everyone in Saigon — besides being a reader of The Times — is spying for somebody, has spied, will spy, or counts spies amongst his closest friends. There are so many entrants in the cloak-and-dagger field that they tend to cancel each other out, thus saving the authorities no end of trouble and permitting them to attend to the serious business of trying to keep the beleaguered nation from exploding.
  
  Nick Carter, therefore, was able to spy away to his heart's content. On this sultry August morning he sat at a sidewalk cafe glancing at the newspaper and watching the people of Saigon go by. His last trip to the Vietnamese capital had been three years before. Superficially, it was unchanged. Much of it still looked like downtown Paris; the rest still looked like downtown Orient. Parisian shops and restaurants lined broad boulevards fringed with luxuriant trees that should have been baked brown by the torrid heat but somehow succeeded in giving off cool, green shade. The people were their usual mixture of smooth-faced priest, Parisian beauty, slant-eyed seductress, workworn laborer, stylish French face, overlaid on Oriental heart. But now they were tense and hurried, their glances furtive and their voices strident.
  
  He skimmed the pages of The Times, seeing in print the tragedies and confusions he had seen for himself during these last few days. His mission in Saigon was simply to see for himself, and report to Hawk, what was going on in that complicated, strife-torn city, and whether or not there was something that AXE could do to assist the American efforts in Vietnam. Hawk, the wizardly old battle-axe who headed America's super-secret intelligence agency, had given him few instructions. "Keep your eyes open. Contact such undercover organizations as you can. Get to know the Government officials through your U.N. contacts. Try to find out who's on whose side. Follow up anything that strikes you as offbeat."
  
  And there was something in the Personal notices of today's newspaper that struck AXE's top agent as very offbeat indeed.
  
  I must see you immediately. La Petite Fleur.
  
  
  
  Nick had been involved with the various forms and practitioners of espionage since the early days of the OSS. He had known of a famous French agent who had gone under the name of La Petite Fleur. And he knew that La Petite Fleur had been dead for many years. Nick's tanned, regular features drew into a frown. There was no reason why this simple ad should have any meaning for him; anybody could use the pseudonym La Petite Fleur. But he had learned to distrust coincidences of this sort.
  
  He folded up his newspaper and took a pedicab back to his middle-priced room at the middle-priced Saigon palace hotel. Once there, he locked himself in and opened up a very expensive bag containing an even more expensive piece of equipment known as Oscar Johnson. Oscar was a shortwave radio accustomed to transmitting in code.
  
  The message that reached Hawk's Washington headquarters some time later included a quotation from The Vietnam Times and a request for more information regarding La Petite Fleur.
  
  The reply, Nick knew, would be some time in coming, and it would not come via Oscar. There was not much he could do in the meantime but go on with his undirected snooping and perhaps pursue his fragile contact with Antoinette Dupré. Maybe it was time he got to know her father just a little better. For Raoul Dupré was the one man Hawk had told him he must meet.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Raoul Dupré — gentleman, tea-plantation owner, and wealthy French expatriate — was known and respected as all three in the Little Paris section of Saigon. On the surface, the Saigon of Dupré bore many traces of Mother Paris; the streets and supper clubs rang with the patois, customs and sophisticated rhythms of the City of Light, and the bon vivants of the epicurean world were no different from those in the European homeland. It is a saying that when you are French you take France with you wherever you go. Saigon is proof positive of the axiom. The majority of its inhabitants, of Vietnamese or other Asiatic stock, have somehow been powerless to prevent the metropolitan area of Saigon from becoming a Paris in microcosm. Despite the war raging so close to its outskirts, Saigon saw the daily airplane flights of Airvietnam unload tourists by the score, come to sample Parisian Saigon with its European-style hotels, department stores and nightclubs. There was a museum and a zoo and numerous cafes, and even the Thong Naut Theatre which showcased plays, revues and folk singers in the approved metropolitan manner. You could eat Chinese, drink French, live Vietnamese, and dance all night in any language. For movies, you could watch Richard Burton make love to Elizabeth Taylor in dubbed French or with Vietnamese subtitles. Afterwards you could go to the Folies Vietnamese.
  
  This was the small, sophisticated world of Raoul Dupré, eminent social leader of Saigon. But Monsieur Dupré had two secrets.
  
  Either of them, intermingled as they were, could have cost him his life to the Viet Cong or their bosses among the Red Chinese. The agents of the Communist Vietminh, or "People's Republic of North Vietnam," would have burned his small intestines in blazing oil if they had known that he was one of the key men in the French Intelligence system which covered the entire territory with a fine line of espionage. He probably would not have been able to convince them that the line was very fine and thin indeed, and that he himself was now almost powerless as an active agent. Nevertheless he did have knowledge that was eagerly sought.
  
  His other secret, one not so well-kept as he imagined, was the wild and loose love-life of his only daughter, Antoinette. For a dynamic man of forty-five engaged in life-or-death work, a nineteen-year-old sexpot offspring who fancied that all her life was dedicated to la dolce vita and la vie de bohéme could be a greater handicap than being blind in one eye and lame in one leg. Toni was a trial, an incredibly beautiful and exasperating trial. Since the day when her native mother had died giving birth to her, Raoul had responded to her every cry and indulged every whim. Like doting male parents the world over, he attributed Antoinette's shortcomings to her motherless youth and "growing pains." Once in a while, though, he was not so sure.
  
  "Toni, ma petite," he would say. "Go slow, my child. You have plenty of time to live. Taste wine quietly, let it age slowly first. You will see how much better it is."
  
  "Papa," she would laugh him off with a toss of her gleaming dark hair, "I was meant for men and love. Let me love my way."
  
  Her way — although she never told him the truth of it — was to try three men one night on the sandy beach two hours drive beyond the city. By the light of a full moon, she allowed her abandoned body to be pleasured and punished by three strapping Indo-Chinese sailors. What could Raoul do but agree to the terrible abortion that kindly old Dr. Wong offered to perform? Toni had cried; she said she had been raped; she promised to be careful of the company she kept. But she learned no lessons. And Raoul himself learned no measure of wisdom. Neither was he able to render any. Toni became known as the easiest, richest wanton in all of Saigon. And Raoul endured the parties, the scandals, and the mad social whirls which enveloped his town house and plantation.
  
  Only his work for French Intelligence steadied the keel of his life while he tried to tell himself that Toni would some day grow up and become the woman who befitted the role of daughter to Raoul Dupré.
  
  On the morning that the ad appeared in The Times of Vietnam, Toni did not appear at the breakfast table until close to noon. Raoul had been too preoccupied with thoughts of her to study the paper according to his usual custom. He worried his meal of tea, toast and curried eggs, wondering why she was even later than usual, and somehow feeling too ashamed to send a servant to her room.
  
  Dupré had three cups of coffee and studied the bamboo curtains that closed off the southwestern patio. They were getting shabbily frayed. He sighed. If Toni were truly feminine, these things would have been tended to long ago. But she was only female, not feminine. She had no interest in her home. Instead of doing anything for herself, it was simpler to command fat Maru to go down to the Market Center and buy whatever was needed. The help would do it all, if she would only order. But she did not even order. She was not only a lazy, sensuous child about her body but about everything else as well…
  
  "Bonjour, Papa. And don't be cross. Not today. The sun is too glorious for your scowling face. Smile, please!"
  
  There she was at last, radiant with her morning-scrubbed face and her own peculiar costume. Wooden clogs, straw hat, striped bikini, young body glowing with the health she did not deserve. The frown on Raoul Dupré's face died aborning. Toni was lovely, fresh as morning dew, but a girl of Paris. A gamine magnifique, his own wondrous, vital daughter.
  
  "So? You hunger at last, Toni? What time did you get in last night?"
  
  "Papa!" She sat down in the cane chair opposite his and crossed her silky legs. The full surge of her woman's breasts was bursting beyond the confines of her halter. "So bourgeois! Four thirty, I think it was. Does it really matter?"
  
  He tried to look stern. "I had hoped you'd learned your lesson, Toni."
  
  She poured herself a cup of tea from the blue porcelain pot.
  
  "Perhaps I have, Papa. But what is bothering you this morning? I know you too well, and I can see that there is something."
  
  He touched his lips with the embossed napkin at his right, trying to assume the proper severity. But it was always so difficult to be hard on this adorable pixie with her little girl's face and woman's body.
  
  "I do not care for your latest admirer."
  
  She pretended to think. "Who do you mean? That Pierre, who is staying at the Caravelle?"
  
  "No."
  
  "That nice American, perhaps? The one who has something to do with the United Nations?"
  
  Raoul thought a moment and formed a hazy mental picture. "He? No, that one I should not mind."
  
  "So." Toni eyed him mischievously. "Not he. Perhaps it is my friend Michele you do not like?"
  
  "Your friend Michele!" he exploded. "That creature! Your admirer, girl? I should certainly hope not! But why must you have this wild young girl friend go on scouting expeditions to round up all available males for your parties? Mon Dieu! Remember you are the daughter of Raoul Dupré. Conduct yourself as such, please, without the help of these gay, giddy women who only serve to make you look laughable in the eyes of all Saigon. Pfui! Michele!"
  
  Toni grinned at him. "Shame on you for a Frenchman, Papa! Pfui, indeed! But what is bothering you, mon père? Now I know it is not Mickee of whom you speak."
  
  "No," he said, swallowing another mouthful of cold coffee. "I refer to that yellow length of skin and bone you so aptly and charmingly call Won Ton. Won Ton, yes! Wanton I am sure he is. Just how wanton I dread to think."
  
  He was surprised to see his daughter flush scarlet and interpreted her reaction as anger. He tried to make amends by softening his rebuke.
  
  "Toni, there are so many better men. Why must you associate with this Chinese? Yes, yes, I admit he seems most charming. But he is Chinese, and there are social considerations. And these are dangerous times. One does not know exactly who or what your friend Lin Tong may be."
  
  He could see her stiffen. He knew her words would hold no reassurance for him. "Papa, I will not discuss him with you. He has a fine mind, and for that I admire him."
  
  "Of course he has; I know he has. But he is a Communist, is he not? Can you believe that he is only what he claims to be — a young man learning agriculture and business administration? I should like to know why he must come here to Saigon, in these troubled times, to study? Do you know why?"
  
  He knew that his breath was coming too quickly, but he could not control it.
  
  "I like him," Antoinette said stiffly. "I may even love him before much longer. And what can you do about that?"
  
  His heart thudded painfully, and he hated the shuttered smile that lit her face. "Toni! I absolutely forbid that! You cannot think of such a thing!"
  
  She threw back her head and laughed like a happy child, all stiffness suddenly gone. She was like that, Toni; cold and unapproachable one moment, warm and lighthearted the next. It was most dangerous.
  
  "Really, Papa? Have you found a way to forbid love?"
  
  He blustered, and that was not Raoul Dupré at his best. She had him, and he knew it. "I could make it difficult. I could cut your allowance, and then that Chinese gigolo…"
  
  "Has money of his own, and for my part I can live on love."
  
  "If he will have you then. And I could beat you — I would, Toni, I would, I shall…"
  
  "I would never forgive you for that. If you love me as my father should, why should you beat me for wanting to be loved?"
  
  "Toni, Toni!" He was defeated again. "What can I say to you that will make you understand?"
  
  She came around the table and encircled his head with her soft arms. "I do understand you," she said softly. "But you must do the same for me. I love you, Papa. Isn't that enough?"
  
  "No, my dear," he said, loving the feel of her hands. "You must respect me, too. I am your father. Your life is my life."
  
  "It is not," she said. Her tone was cold again. She took her arms away, turned and clacked out to the patio on her wooden sandals. The sound mocked him and her derriere seemed to vibrate insolently.
  
  Something died quietly, for the thousandth time, within his breast. He cursed softly and returned to his newspaper.
  
  He read it carefully, word for word, to shut her from his mind.
  
  And, miraculously, forgot her when he saw the Personal in the column on page 13.
  
  I must see you immediately. La Petite Fleur.
  
  
  
  A ghost from the glorious past had risen from the grave to summon him. With a summons that he must obey.
  
  
  
  
  
  La Dolce Vita Vietnames
  
  
  
  
  For once he could hardly wait for Toni to go out. It was difficult for him to think about anything but her when she was around, much less do anything he did not want her to know about. But after she had sunned herself on the patio for an hour she came in, changed, and went out without a word to him. He did not even wonder where she might be going.
  
  "Disrobe, my flower. I want you."
  
  "Yes, Lin Tong… my delicious Won Ton."
  
  "Spare the puns, my sweet. You do not flatter me. I may be edible, but I am made of something firmer than soup."
  
  "As I can see." Antoinette Dupré laughed and began to slip out of her clinging pongee shift. She never wore anything under it. Lin Tong had watched her for the last five minutes, letting the want grow in him until it had to be satisfied. For the third time that day. Lin Tong enjoyed his agile appetite; it was no sooner sated than it came back again to make his nerve ends tingle and his muscles pleasantly tense.
  
  His quiet little apartment just off Saigon's main thoroughfare was tastefully expensive and disarmingly cozy; a discreet and proper place, ideal for the seduction of Dupré's sensation-craving daughter. That had been the assignment, of course, the plan of action devised by Brother Arnold (decoded name Choong Quong Soong), but it had turned into sheer amusement. In a way it was a pity that he had to use the narcotics to ensure her interest in his manly body, but the assignment was too important to chance losing her and she did have a reputation for getting easily bored and finding other beds. This way, he knew she would keep coming back to him. And also, he felt a curious sense of excitement when he saw her stimulated by the drug. It was almost as if he had taken it himself, or as if her unnatural ecstasy touched something sensual in him that could not be touched by flesh. It was a job, but…
  
  But she was beautiful for an impure Occidental, damn her. Limber, lovely, pulsating with desire. He rather liked her personally, which was too bad, in a way.
  
  She was hooked properly. In more ways than one.
  
  She stood on the thick rug, her dress lying at her feet. "How about a trip first?" she breathed, a little hoarsely.
  
  He was tempted briefly. But it was too soon; he would have to make her wait a little longer. "No. You don't need it to enjoy me, do you?"
  
  "No," she admitted, coming to him in the half-light of the richly curtained room. He pulled her down on the bed next to him, reveling as always in the strangely thrilling combination of her childlike loveliness and astonishingly full body. Her nakedness could take his breath away.
  
  He tingled as the softness of her thigh touched the hardness of his. She kissed him with a little licking motion, and he smiled up at her. She placed a warm hand across the flat muscled plains of his stomach and rubbed slowly downward in a circular movement that made him think of other things than Brother Arnold's plans.
  
  "That is not quite necessary at this point, my sweet slave. But since I find it most pleasurable, you may continue."
  
  "Beast!" she hissed savagely, crushing her yielding body against his leanness and biting his ear. He cursed and pinched her right buttock. She squealed and released his earlobe from her teeth.
  
  "Lin Tong, my wanton one," she pleaded. "If you want me, take me now."
  
  "I do, I will," he murmured. "In only this do I obey you. Remember that. You are mine, my creature."
  
  "Yes, yes!" she whispered urgently. "Do it now. Quickly, quickly, quickly…"
  
  He turned and threw himself upon her.
  
  She struggled fiercely, as if combating him, as if surrendering her body to him was the intent furthest from her mind. He liked her that way, fighting like an animal and inflicting tiny hurts all over his long body. He fought back, held down her threshing legs and thrust hard. She fell beneath him on the bed, the wall of her resistance crumbling and dissolving into a warm yielding that engulfed them both. The dim-lit room, the plans of governments engaged in undercover international affairs, the nagging fear of failure and disgrace, all were swept away in a tidal wave of sexual assault. Toni screamed once in the gloom, only to lapse into a series of halting moans and short obscenities about the wonderful things he was doing to her body.
  
  Lin Tong did them all with great skill.
  
  Her muffled groans became little cries of delicious pain.
  
  For Lin Tong it was the most enjoyable assignment of his life.
  
  "Mmmmmm," she moaned. Her body jerked galvanically and words of passion spat from her trembling mouth.
  
  "Be quiet," he said gently, already gloriously spent. "You talk like a woman of the fields."
  
  She went limp and sighed. For a moment she was silent, catching breath, and then she laughed. "I am of the earth. Can't you tell?"
  
  "I can only tell that you are a daughter of Eve and you have an abundance of… of apples."
  
  "Worth having?" She was smiling, but already she was becoming restless.
  
  "Infinitely worth having," he said dreamily.
  
  "But now you will give me the needle, my Won Ton?"
  
  He drew away from her and looked at her face. "Must you have it?"
  
  "I must."
  
  She watched him pad across the room to the tallboy where he kept his kit of syringe, gauze and narcotics. She felt tired and yet alive. Her body was bruised but not yet sated. There was a hunger in her for other pleasures, for magic carpet rides and dizzying flights above the stars, for skyrocketing explosions of wellbeing and then sweet oblivion. For a blessed nothingness, far from the dullness of the tea business, the unspeakable weather, a complaining Papa, and the whole dreary problem of who was Buddhist, Catholic, friend, foe, Communist or…
  
  Lin Tong came back. The needle he held glinted briefly, caught by a beam of sunlight escaping through the lowered blinds.
  
  "Please!" Her voice was a frenzied whimper.
  
  He complied swiftly. Then he sat back and watched the needle take effect, feeling that strange excitement that was partly sensual and partly anticipation of what she might say. For the lovely lady sang like a bird when the subtle poison of the needle swept her senses away. And there was so much to learn about Raoul Dupré, whom he was so certain belonged to French Intelligence.
  
  But he had to have the proof of it for his superiors.
  
  And while Toni herself did not know for sure that her father was with French Intelligence, she had far more useful information to offer than she realized.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Raoul Dupré sat ensconced in his book-lined study, recalling the past and trying to decide on a present course of action. The atmosphere of the room helped him think. In contrast to the bamboo world of Vietnam, the study was a symphony of mahogany and teak furnishings, most of which Dupré had imported from Paris to keep his sense of nationality intact. It was too easy to lose one's identity in a land where the language, customs and the mores were only imitation Parisian. He needed something other than his occasional homesickness to remind himself that he was, and always would be, a loyal Frenchman.
  
  The advertisement had disturbed as well as thrilled him. Paul La Farge was dead. But La Petite Fleur must surely still live on in Madame Paul La Farge. Claire La Farge. He had never met her, but Paul had often talked about her in the old days and Dupré had heard something of her since her husband's death. She had worn her widow's weeds with dignity and no fevered hands had torn her from her mourning. No doubt she was still true to the memory of Paul La Farge. But how — he began to wonder — had she managed to stay on in Communist North Vietnam for all these years? Why had they let her stay? What had she become? Or was she dead, and this some cunning trick? Dupré was thoroughly perturbed. The call to battle held an ominous note. Exactly what could this summons mean?
  
  As far as he knew, Intelligence had left Madame alone, apparently neutral in this troubled land. But perhaps they were still using her. Or what else could the use of the famous code name on an ad in the newspaper mean? He must find out immediately. It could be risky, but it must be done. He could not contact Madame La Farge — even supposing he knew how — without first knowing her position with French Intelligence. Headquarters would be able to tell him. But there was one thing he could do before calling them on the direct, emergency line.
  
  He picked up the receiver of his standard study phone and called The Times of Vietnam. If there was one thing he was sure of in his unsure life, it was that his telephone was not yet tapped.
  
  He gave his name as Tran Xuan Cam and spoke in perfectly accented Vietnamese.
  
  "I wish to enquire about an advertisement that appeared in this morning's Personal Column," he said easily. "The one signed La Petite Fleur. It is possible that it may be for me, but I cannot be sure until I know who placed it. Were any instructions left regarding answers?" He paused, trying to think up a rebuttal to a possible argument such as: "We are not authorized to give out such information."
  
  To his surprise the reply came readily and without argument.
  
  "Yes, sir. We are instructed to say that answers must be addressed to one Saito in care of the Long Hue Hostel." The voice sounded as if it disliked mentioning the name of so lowly a place. Then it brightened, its owner being struck by a cheering thought. "But you are too late, sir. The advertisement has already been answered. At least an hour ago."
  
  Raoul's heart dropped to his feet. Saito! The message was from Claire La Farge, and someone had picked it up before him. In his alarm he let his anger rise.
  
  "My good fellow, I am not enquiring after a position that has been filled. It is clear now that the message was for me. May I ask who else was asking for it?"
  
  "That information, sir, I am not empowered to give," the voice said huffily. "And I have no way of telling for whom the message was intended."
  
  Raoul belatedly controlled his anger. "I can assure you that it was indeed for me, and it is of the utmost importance that I know who else…"
  
  "All enquiries are confidential, sir. I have told you all that our policy permits." The voice was smug.
  
  "But…"
  
  "No!" said the voice triumphantly. The sound of a slammed receiver crashed against Dupré's ear. He hung up slowly and tried to think it through.
  
  As far as he knew he was the only man in Saigon who should have been interested in the name La Petite Fleur. All of Paul La Farge's other wartime contacts had dispersed, one way or the other; some dead, some home in France, some in other countries, only one or two at Headquarters. And Headquarters would not have seen the ten-thirty edition of The Vietnam Times. Someone else had intercepted a message that must have been meant for him.
  
  Saito, he remembered, had been Paul's devoted slave. Obviously the Madame could not come to Saigon herself to seek for help, not with her Communist landlords controlling things. But how completely did they control Madame? Saito's very presence could be a baited trap.
  
  Dupré walked slowly over to his solid mahogany desk and opened the center drawer with the small golden key he carried on his watchfob. It was time, if not past time, to set the machinery in motion.
  
  He produced a small telephone set from the drawer and plugged it into the wall. Quickly he dialed the number he wanted. Quickly it answered.
  
  "Pardon," he began, "I have a question regarding the northern fields. Do you have a La Farge listed on your rolls as a prospective purchaser in the lands we discussed last month?"
  
  "No," the reply came. "I would not say so."
  
  "Or perhaps a La Fleur? It is possible I have not read the name correctly."
  
  The voice was faintly puzzled but emphatic. "No La Fleur."
  
  "Ah. Then I am mistaken. But is all well with the lands? The rain has not damaged the crop beyond repair?"
  
  The answering voice was definitely puzzled. "Not to our knowledge, certainly. But I shall enquire at once."
  
  "Please. It is most important that you confirm as quickly as possible."
  
  "Five minutes."
  
  "Good. I'll await your call."
  
  Raoul Dupré hung up and lit a panatela from the silver box on his desk. The phone rang as he inhaled deeply for the third time.
  
  "Monsieur?" the voice said.
  
  "I'm listening."
  
  "No. Absolutely no. Positively. We certify a No on all three counts. In fact, in regard to your last question, the lands are presumed to be quite safe from a business point of view."
  
  "Thank you."
  
  Raoul Dupré studied the phone for a full minute before disconnecting it and replacing it in his desk drawer. It gave him no further answers. He locked the drawer and returned the key, on its fob, to his vest pocket.
  
  The information received from his liaison agent with French Intelligence had not told him how to treat the urgent summons in the Personal ad signed by one of France's immortal secret agents, La Petite Fleur. But it did tell him that Madame La Farge was not working with French Intelligence. Neither was she known to have defected. Rather, her plantation was still considered «safe» for French agents to use in time of trouble. It seemed that no one but Madame La Farge could be behind the printed plea for help.
  
  Dupré pressed a buzzer signaling fat Maru, who had served with him in one capacity or another for nearly twenty years, and gave him crisp instructions.
  
  Later he would have to make another very special call to an even more secret number.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Toni was in ecstasy. Lin Tong's room had become a paradise of fluffy clouds and azure skies through which she floated, bodiless, unimpeded by restraints of any sort. There was no Papa, no frowning Society, no moral level to maintain. It was as if the vast universe were below her, small and infinitesimal, not worth the worry of an airborne being.
  
  "Do you love me now, my love?" Lin Tong's voice caressed her naked body.
  
  "Oh, yes, I love you — how I love you."
  
  There was a pause in this timeless world of velvety softness, where all was unbearably pleasurable and maddeningly sweet.
  
  "More than other men? More than your father?"
  
  A little twinge of something like pain shuddered through her. "Papa! Oh, God, yes. He is my prison, my jailer. You, you I love. Not he."
  
  "Why is he so harsh with you, my gentle Toni? Why does he just sit there like an ogre in that study of his? Does he not talk to you, my sweet?"
  
  "Talk to me! Ah, yes, to scold. But I can tell you what he does there in that study…" Antoinette Dupré was more than willing to talk about her august parent to the man she thought she loved.
  
  Lin Tong, affectionately called Won Ton by his talkative Toni, leaned forward and listened. In exchange for her confidences he had no intention of telling her that he was called the Executioner by his colleagues in the terrible organization known as Bitter Almonds, the killing arm of the Red Chinese Intelligence Service in Vietnam.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Dr. Nicholas Carter of the World Health Organization was having a considerably less successful day. Or rather, Nick Carter of AXE had drawn a blank.
  
  When he had called the Dupré home a fat voice had told him that Miss Antoinette had not yet risen for the day. On his second call he was told that Miss Antoinette was out.
  
  For the third day in a row his projected trip North with an Army medical team had been postponed. Red tape here, snafu there, official incoherence somewhere else. Tomorrow, Dr. Carter, they had promised him. Or maybe Saturday or Tuesday. Disease and death is always with us; no need to be impatient. There was nothing for him to do in the meantime but go on picking up rumor, gossip, and the strident sounds of anti-Government demonstrations. He was bored, frustrated, and innately curious.
  
  So he answered the ad in The Vietnam Times.
  
  
  
  
  
  Meet Mr. Fang
  
  
  
  
  The clerk was very helpful, much to Nick's surprise. "You are to contact Saito at the Long Hue Hostel. Thank you, sir. Good day."
  
  It was so simple that Nick felt he was making progress. Unfortunately, he was wrong.
  
  Since he had no excuse at all for mixing into the affairs of La Petite Fleur, whoever he or she might be, it seemed most unwise to just phone up and say "Hello, there, Saito. Saw your ad and thought I'd call." Anyway, the Long Hue Hostel didn't have a phone.
  
  It was an unpretentious building only a block or two away from the business center, but in the wrong direction. Tourists would avoid the locale instinctively, even though the street was shabbily clean and its inhabitants were clearly not cutthroats. It was just a non-touristy street, that was all. And any stranger stood out like a sore thumb. The hostel itself seemed to have been ingeniously built so as to allow its tenants to see without being seen. Anyone making enquiries in its foyer could be fingered from a dozen different angles before he'd even spotted the reception desk.
  
  Nick walked past it once and decided to make other arrangements. A lad loitering alongside the canal agreed to offer an invitation on Nick's behalf.
  
  Actually Nick didn't even want to talk to this Saito. Not yet. Just see him and mark him down for future reference. And maybe find out who else had reacted to the name of La Petite Fleur.
  
  He felt conspicuous even in the rumpled suit he'd thought was suitable for Nicholas Carter, M.D., and let his returning messenger walk past him and out of sight before catching up with him. By then he was sure that the boy was not being followed.
  
  "He would not come with you?" asked Nick.
  
  "No, Monsieur. It is a mystery." The boy grinned, enjoying his encounter with this foreigner. "He was not there. But he left a message."
  
  "Oh? For whom — for me?" Impossible, of course, but a natural question.
  
  "For anybody who asked, Monsieur. He is to be found by one who knows him, and one he knows himself, in the market on Nguyen-Hue Street."
  
  That sounded like two people, but presumably it meant a mutual recognition between this Saito and his caller.
  
  He thanked the youth and paid him. Then he took a roundabout route to Nguyen-Hue Street and the huge flower market, wondering how in the world he was going to spot a man called Saito in the crowds that always milled around the stalls.
  
  Two hours later he was still wondering, and almost ready to give up. His only clue was that «Saito» was a Japanese name. He peered through banks of flowers at Oriental faces until he saw a small Japanese lurking behind every exotic blossom, and then he gave himself a rest. A small cafe bordering the market served the strong local beer ice-cold. Nick drank it gratefully and let his gaze wonder idly down the long, brilliantly colored block. There were farmers from Central Vietnam, seamen fresh off the river junks, Vietnamese women with pantaloons and Parisian accents, faces of all hues and casts.
  
  By the time another half-hour had passed he was ready to admit defeat. He would somehow have to spot Saito at the hostel, or drop this whole ridiculous quest. It served him right for trying to stick his nose into other people's business.
  
  It was then that he saw someone he had seen before. A short, very fat man who walked hurriedly with waddling steps and looked quickly to all sides. Nick had seen the man open the door of Raoul Dupré's house several nights before, when he and several other friends of the evening had dropped Antoinette after a party at the Caravelle Skyroom. The fat man had struck him as being the old retainer type, one who ran the house, lorded it over the rest of the servants, and felt the entire responsibility for the household on his shoulders. Maru…? Yes, she had called him Maru.
  
  His interest quickened as the fat man hesitated and then stopped. A long figure uncoiled itself from its squatting position between stalls and showed itself to be a tall, muscular man, with only the slightest trace of Japanese in his bland features. The two men scrutinized each other and spoke briefly. Nick rose from his chair and wandered slowly over to a nearby stall. The two men he was watching started to walk away, Maru several yards in the lead. The man who must be Saito followed lazily, as if he just happened to be going in that direction anyway.
  
  Nick followed behind, just as casually.
  
  The trail led straight to Dupré's elegant home.
  
  Maru waited inside the gate for the tall Japanese to catch up with him. Together they went into a side entrance of the house.
  
  Nick strolled slowly around the house, wondering if he should call at the front door and find out if Miss Dupré had come home. But it seemed a pointless move. It was most unlikely that he'd find a handy keyhole to put his ear to. So once again he went back, frustrated, to his hotel on Duong Tu-Do. There were two messages in his mail slot. One was notification of a telephone call from an unnamed lady who would call again. The other was an overseas cable.
  
  Upstairs in his room he read Hawk's cabled message.
  
  MAKING ARRANGEMENTS TRIP NORTH WITH MEDICAL TEAM. REMAIN IN SAIGON PENDING ARRIVAL DOCTOR LINCOLN.
  
  FINCH.
  
  
  
  "Finch," this time. A bird by any other name always turned out to be Hawk. The head of AXE, so dry and laconic most of the time, never seemed to tire of his thin little jokes about birds coming home to roost, or laying eggs, or whatever he could think of at the moment. He also had a passion for gadgets. Doctor Lincoln was a gadget; one that had nothing to do with medicine. He was Hawk's latest method of sending information.
  
  Nick poured himself a double shot of Scotch from his traveling flask and sat down to review his armory for the umpteenth time. Six days here already, and he hadn't used it yet.
  
  Wilhelmina the Luger. Check. Hugo the stiletto. Check. Pierre the gas pellet. Check. And Hawk's newest bit of lethal fun.
  
  Nick studied his fingernails. More accurately, he focused his attention on the index finger of his right hand. Another Hawk joke come home to roost.
  
  "For your armory, Carter," Hawk had said. "You will now be able to finger a man and kill him at the same time."
  
  "This modem age," Nick had said admiringly, grinning at the leathery old man's evident pride in the horrible little device. "Suppose you hold still while I try it out."
  
  "It has already been thoroughly tested," the chief of AXE informed him coldly. "Be careful of that release mechanism, Carter. Use the thumb to flick it. Keep that safety on until you need to use the thing or you're liable to die while scratching your own head."
  
  "I won't scratch," Nick promised.
  
  He stared at the miniature killer now. It was a perfect extension of his normal index finger, adding only a fraction of an inch to the finger's usual length. A flat tube ran back from the cap fitted over the nail. When the safety was released and the finger jabbed into anything, a hollow needle protruded from the cap and injected, under pressure, the most virulent poison that AXE's laboratories could come up with. The inevitable result was immediate, painful death. And when the finger was pulled back from making contact, the needle reloaded itself from its own deadly reservoir.
  
  Hawk had smiled with grim pleasure. "You don't even have to waste time reloading your weapon. It's at the ready all the time."
  
  "A tiger in the tank, huh?"
  
  "Dragon, I think, is more appropriate. South Vietnam is your next stop."
  
  In his hotel room in Saigon the man called Killmaster finished checking out his weapons. The last one didn't need a name, because it wasn't really a weapon. Nevertheless it was a tool: a key. Without it message-sending Dr. Lincoln would be useless. Might as well call it Abe.
  
  And then there was that finger. He decided to call the finger weapon Fang.
  
  After which decision he poured himself another shot of Scotch, bolted the door, and peeled off all his clothes.
  
  For some reason he thought fleetingly of Antoinette Dupré, but then he put all such thoughts aside and concentrated on his Yoga exercises.
  
  Self-control had to be bought at a severe price; there was nothing easy about the trials he inflicted on his body to be sure that it was always in prime condition. He flexed his stomach wall and began. Measured intakes of air filled out his chest with his deep, steady breathing until the upper half of his body stood out like a mountain range and his waist was no more than the width of an arm in thickness. Tingling muscles rose in harsh relief along his chest and thighs and shoulders. The cords in his neck looked like sturdy piano wiring.
  
  When he had held his breath for five full minutes — beating by a minute the acknowledged record — he slowly expended the wind from his lungs. The blood raced through his body and the weariness of a useless day drained out of him.
  
  His contortions of the next half hour would have amazed a watcher unfamiliar with the stimulation-relaxation principles of Yoga and intoxicated any admirer of masculine beauty. It was a pity that there was no one to watch.
  
  A thin, fine sheen washed his bronzed, athletic body, gleaming over smooth skin and battle scars alike. His head felt as clear as a sky full of stars, and he felt an almost overwhelming need to do something with his reborn energy.
  
  Carter's luck was in. He was pulling his T-shirt down to meet his boxer shorts when the knock sounded at his door.
  
  Wilhelmina, Pierre, Hugo and Fang were ready. But so was the Carter body. Anyway, what U.N. medical observer would greet a caller with a weapon?
  
  "Who is it, please?" he called, and padded softly to the door.
  
  And a woman's sultry voice said brazenly:
  
  "Let me in, cheri… I don't mind if you are naked!"
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Lin Tong was still working on Antoinette Dupré. With his body, his Communist-trained mind, and — drugs.
  
  His room was definitely the best place in town to get the information he desired.
  
  "But that is a very strange way for a tea salesman to act," he said, letting himself sound faintly puzzled.
  
  "Wha…? Tea salesman! He owns a plantation, my funny Won Ton love," Toni gurgled drowsily from the warm nest of his bared shoulder.
  
  "Of course he does. And I'm the ghost of Fu Manchu." Toni roared appreciatively. He was such a groovy Chinaman. No wonder square Papa disliked him.
  
  "You're no ghost, my love, my sexy love," she sighed, stroking his muscular chest. "But don't underestimate Papa. He does own a tea plantation. And all sorts of other things. He's frightfully rich and influential. Much, much bigger than you and me. Why, France couldn't do a thing in Saigon without hearing from him first."
  
  Lin Tong laughed. "Sweetheart, for that he'd have to be a master spy at least," he said lightly.
  
  Toni raised her eyebrows and looked at him thoughtfully. An idea seemed to brighten her already too-bright eyes. "Do you know, I think he is. That's just exactly what I think he is! How very clever of you. That would explain so many things."
  
  "Oh, come, Toni! You can't be serious." His heart had leapt so suddenly that he was sure she must have felt it. "He's not the kind of man to take a risk like that. Who would he be spying for? The French? They're finished here!"
  
  "Oh, don't be too sure of that," she said, with a faint flicker of patriotism. "He has plenty of contacts with the French. They haven't given up. He sees all kinds of people."
  
  "What people, Toni love? And what did you mean, 'that would explain so many things?»
  
  "Oh, things, things, all sorts of things. Funny locked-up telephone, trips, messages, all sorts of things. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the very heart of French Intelligence, that Papa of mine. No wonder he's so worried about me!" She began to laugh uncontrollably. "Funny, funny, funny. He so tight and me so loose. Funnee!"
  
  If she had been less far gone it might have been a sobering thought. But the wondrous drug spreading through her veins had let the reins in Toni's brain fall to the ground. Lin Tong smiled to himself in the darkness. She was mentally unhorsed.
  
  He would still need proof, of course. But now he was one long step closer to getting it. Toni would help. If properly guided she might be able to find out for him a lot of things worth knowing. Like the whereabouts of the French spy named Moreau, who had vanished with some very important information. God knows what it was, but it was creating hell's own havoc among the Chinese Intelligence chiefs. Bitter Almonds had passed the word along to the Executioner. Find Moreau. Get back the stolen information. No matter what the cost.
  
  He pressed his mouth to Toni's warm lips, sated though he was, and his hands explored her body passionately.
  
  Toni moaned. "Oh… oui, oui, mon cheri…"
  
  Pah, these stupid French. Make love to them and they would give you anything. Even the chieftaincy of Bitter Almonds, if he worked things right. It was high time that Brother Arnold — the overbearing slob — stepped down, anyway. Lin Tong was just the man to show the old fool a thing or two and take his place. Let the Executioner succeed where the rest of Bitter Almonds had failed, and the top spot would be his. It was only a matter of time and patience.
  
  He called on all his skill to make twin passions rise again. At last he said gently: "You must leave now, Toni. I have work to do. And I want you to do one small thing for me."
  
  "Leave?" she said wistfully. "Please, please don't make me leave you. I want more — more everything."
  
  "Soon, my Toni. When we are both ready."
  
  "I am ready now."
  
  "Ah, no. You must not be too demanding. But we play a little game, yes? To satisfy my curiosity? You find out more for me about your father. Who visits him, what he says to them, little things like that. I have a feeling that he and I might do business together if you can prove to me that he is with French Intelligence. Perhaps we will discover a mutual interest that he will not yet reveal because he so dislikes me. You will help me, Toni?"
  
  Her unnaturally bright eyes were suddenly worried. "I am not sure if that would be right, Won Ton. Are you asking me to spy on my own father?"
  
  "Spy! Have I not explained? Of course it is right. It must be right, because if you do not do it for me, who else will send you off on the little trips you need so much? Hmmm? No more clouds of ecstasy, my Antoinette? Do you not need me any more?"
  
  Her face mirrored the swift surge of fear within her.
  
  "Oh, God! Of course I need you. Don't take — yourself away from me. I need you for everything."
  
  "You enter at your own risk, Mademoiselle," said Nick, sliding the chain lock off the door.
  
  "Oo, la la," the voice cooed huskily. "Is that a warning or an invitation?"
  
  Nick's right eyebrow shot up into his hair. No Dr. Lincoln, this, unless Hawk's jokes had improved immeasurably. He opened the door and stepped aside quickly.
  
  The woman standing on the threshold was incredible.
  
  If she had not been so beautiful her outlandish attire would have made her look ridiculous. But she was tall and shapely, almost as tall as Nick in her dangerously high-heeled open shoes, and somehow gloriously pagan in her unbelievable costume. Purplish-hued, culotte-styled pantaloons outlined a pair of fabulous legs. Above them, a magenta bolero framed a blouse of some silken stuff that was so close to being transparent that it might have been made of spun window glass. Nick blinked, taking it all in. A superb curve of bosom seemed to strain against the bolero. Bold, dark eyes smoldered provocatively, and an ebony pony tail swept a rich column of hair down her right shoulder.
  
  She oiled her way into the room, closed the door and leaned against it. Her hips, even in repose, looked irresistibly enticing. "Monsieur Carter," she crooned through sensuous wide lips, "I have come for you."
  
  "So I see. And what do you want with me, Mademoiselle?"
  
  "Just you."
  
  "What a delightful idea," Nick said. "Is this part of the Palace's American Plan?"
  
  She threw back her head and laughed. "Toni was right. Certainement, you are interesting!" Her eyes traveled lingeringly over his half-naked body, approving the almost classic features and the fine display of athlete's muscle. He let his own eyes wander just as boldly.
  
  "Interesting? Now you flatter me. But what does Toni have to do with this pleasant visit?"
  
  "I will explain. May I sit down?" He waved her to a chair. But she walked, instead, to the bed, kicking off her high sandals en route.
  
  What ho, thought Nick. This is all so sudden. But it seemed like a pleasant enough interlude as it stood. And it was still early enough in the Saigon game to play things by ear.
  
  She made herself comfortable on the bed. "You remember Toni Dupré? Most men do. She has been wanting to see you again, but she has been rather busy lately. You, too, I gather. I have been trying to reach you on the telephone, but there has been no answer."
  
  "Forgive me," he said gallantly.
  
  She smiled languorously. "Later. When you give me reason. Toni, now. She gives the only parties in Saigon to be given properly. Or improperly, for that matter. All attractive, single men are invited. Even all attractive married men if they are so inclined. People come and have what you Yanks call a ball and everybody is happy. Okay? You will see. You come to 14 Duong Versailles on Friday night at nine, and the sky's the limit. Tell me, do you drink, or make love?"
  
  Nick rubbed his nose reflectively. "I am quite good at both," he said with all due modesty.
  
  The lady laughed softly. "Which would you rather do now?"
  
  "I'm afraid I haven't anything to drink," he lied hopefully.
  
  Her smile was satisfied. "Then come and he down next to me and let me feel that splendid body."
  
  His eyebrows shot up again. It was not the first time his body had been so blatantly sought, but it had usually been for some reason in addition to his masculine charms. "What, without even being introduced?" he said.
  
  She reached out a slender hand and clasped his wrist. "Michele is the name. Mickee, some people call me. And sometimes, the Americans, they call me Mike. You call me what you please. But do come closer."
  
  He studied her and saw her pelvis moving ever so slightly. Damn! but she was a piece, all right. Could anything so easy be safe to play around with?
  
  He sat down on the edge of the bed. Michele made a move with her inviting mouth. "Coward," she murmured. "Closer."
  
  The least he could do was find out if she was really dangerous.
  
  Nick inclined toward her. "You asked for it," he said, as seductively as he knew how. At least she was a contact with the Duprés, and that in itself was interesting. Not to mention her other qualities… She closed her eyes and tilted her mouth. Nick laughed in his chest and kissed her lightly on the lips. He might as well have grounded electricity.
  
  She galvanized fiercely, forcing a hammerlock on his neck and urging his face down to her bosom. For a brief second he misinterpreted the movement and his hands reached for her throat. But then her warm lips were biting into his naked deltoid, smothering him with hot kisses. Aah! If little Mike was any sample, he must go to Toni's party…
  
  He held her off, his hands pinioning her wrists. "Do you know what you're getting into, Michele?"
  
  Her low laugh told him that she knew. "Lock the door and come back to me," she murmured. "Let me take these clothes off and I will show you what a woman can do for you. You wonder about me? I am Saigon. My father was Chinese, my mother a nun who never took her final vows. They knew how to live. And so do I. For the moment, and everything it has to offer."
  
  "Aren't you afraid of me?"
  
  "Why should I be?"
  
  "For all you know, I could be wife-beater, killer, rapist, pervert, homicidal maniac…"
  
  She shook her head. "What would I care? Do you not realize that I enjoy each new experience? Ah, you are shocked." He wasn't, but he tried to look it. "But you are not any of those things. Not with that face. Those are gentle eyes. I know. I have seen many of the other kind. I would like to know yours better."
  
  Whatever her true purpose, it was decidedly worth looking into.
  
  He padded across the room to lock the door and check the windows carefully. No lurking assassins there, to catch him when his guard was down, nor any chance of anyone climbing up the blank-faced wall.
  
  She was waiting for him on the bed, busy with the bolero and the Paris-styled pantaloons. "Do you really round up talent for Toni's parties?" he asked. "Or are you perhaps a stranded showgirl looking for a passing sailor?"
  
  "Stranded showgirl? I do not understand. Toni is real enough, you know that. So am I. We, Monsieur Carter — Nickie — are the orphans of the international set. We throw our parties and have our fun while our famous fathers keep busy with local politics. They are bores and they have no time for us. It is a situation which Zest Magazine should do a series on some time. We are underprivileged."
  
  "My heart bleeds for you," he said, watching her roll her silken underwear down her sleek body. "But don't you think there's anything you can do to help the other underprivileged? There seem to be a good many of them out here."
  
  "Ah, I see. Doctor Carter. I had forgotten." She peeled off a filmy little thing with two full cups. "You mean roll bandages, take care of homeless children, hold off the march of Communism, all that. Some other time, Nickie. Not now. Ah! Forget all that, cheri. Make love to me!"
  
  "Just like that? We meet, we go to bed?"
  
  "Just like that." She laughed throatily, her eyes on him. "Why not? You are quite interested right now, c'est vrai?"
  
  Who wouldn't be? He was only human. He reached for her and found a softness that turned hard beneath his caressing hand. She gave a sigh of pleasure and shifted her delicately soft curves to meet his muscle-hard body. Her pink tongue flicked suddenly between the perfect teeth.
  
  "You will see." She murmured the promise. "I can do more for you than any woman you have known. Touch me. Hold me. Do you know what it is like to be completely wanton? Wild, free, like a creature of the fields…?"
  
  "Show me," he commanded.
  
  And she did.
  
  
  
  
  
  Saito, Where Are You?
  
  
  
  
  Raoul Dupré selected another panatela from the silver box and rolled it between his aristocratic fingers.
  
  "You realize," he said carefully, "that I am the only man in this city who should have been able to answer that advertisement?"
  
  Saito bowed. "Madame did not know who would be left here to answer. I do not know who the other man might be. But it seems that there is danger here."
  
  Dupré nodded. "The message, the information, whatever the thing was, must stay with Madame until it can safely be restored to the proper hands. It will take time to plan. The Communists would sacrifice a regiment to find out what happened to Moreau."
  
  Saito nodded. "That means I must go back to Madame at once. I promise with my blood that I will guard her with my life."
  
  The Frenchman looked uncomfortable. His cigar remained unlit.
  
  "I am sorry, Saito. She has joined the good fight once again. So have you. And because you have, you must understand that you will have to remain here while plans are made. You will not be able to go back to Madame until someone can go with you. That will take a little time."
  
  It took more than a little time for Raoul Dupré to convince Saito that he must stay until an expedition could be arranged with the tall Japanese as guide. It would not do for him to explain that he could not handle this situation by himself, and that Saito must stay here until La Petite Fleur's old comrade had received instructions from above.
  
  When Saito had gone off with Maru to the servants' quarters, his face a study in rebellion, Dupré finally lit the panatela. When it was drawing smoothly he unlocked the drawer that held his special telephone and called the very special number. French Intelligence had said something about an American organization, called AXE, that was interested in developments in Saigon. Very well, let AXE come in and cut through some of his problems right now.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Antoinette Dupré let herself into her father's house. She was thirsty. Maru did not answer the imperious ringing of the buzzer in her private living room. She cursed and made her way with leaden feet to the enormous kitchen. Maru was not in the service pantry where he was supposed to be. She was helping herself to a cool drink from the smaller of the two refrigerators when she heard the quick footsteps in the service passage.
  
  "Damn you, Maru!" she said furiously. "Why aren't you here when I call you?"
  
  She heard a slight gasp of surprise, and turned. Maru was not the only one who had halted in the passage outside the kitchen door. The other was a tall, immensely muscular man in farmer's dress.
  
  "I am sorry, Mademoiselle," said Maru. "I did not know that you had come home. Is there something…?"
  
  "There was," she snapped, disliking herself for her shortness but unable to change it. "But I've done it for myself. You are too late. Who is that man? What does he want?"
  
  "He is the new gardener, Mademoiselle Toni. Now excuse please." He bowed. "I am to show him to his quarters. I return immediately if you require me."
  
  "I told you I don't want you."
  
  Maru bobbed his head and continued on his way down the service passage. The tall man with him bowed gravely to Toni and followed Maru with silent, gliding steps.
  
  Toni slammed the refrigerator door. New gardener! Mon Dieu, what some people contented themselves with doing! That man was built like an Oriental Hercules — Her thoughts turned a sudden corner.
  
  Gardener? Coming through the house from her father's study? Strange. Raoul Dupré was not in the habit of interviewing lowly laborers in that secret room of his. Hmm.
  
  Michele stood at the threshold, fully dressed, a sloe-eyed happiness suffusing her bewitching, pagan face. She glowed with satisfaction.
  
  "You promise you'll be there, Nickie?"
  
  "I'll be there. Wild dragons couldn't keep me from it. Say — what about Papa Dupré? I hear he's something of a heavy father. Is he going to be there too?"
  
  "Oh, Dupré!" She shrugged her lovely shoulders. "He'll be there for a while and then he'll disappear into his study. He hates these parties, but he doesn't interfere. It's a pity, in a way, that he doesn't keep a closer watch on Toni."
  
  "Why?" Nick stared at her. "I thought you were two of a kind. You don't mean you disapprove of her!"
  
  She laughed and tossed the dark pony tail back over her shoulder. "Hardly. I am many things, but not a hypocrite. No, you misunderstand. Once Toni sees you again, I am in trouble. She may have a boyfriend of the moment, but that means nothing. She is hot, that one. And you will be too much for her. She will take one look at the party, scream with pleasure, and add you to her collection."
  
  "Then I will not be collectible," Nick said gallantly.
  
  Michele looked wistful. "You are kind, my Nickie. But could you say no to the Brigitte Bardot of Saigon?"
  
  He laughed and kissed her lightly. She clung to him for a moment and then turned suddenly, swept through the door, and slammed it shut.
  
  Nick dressed slowly. Chances were he wouldn't say no to the Brigitte Bardot of anywhere. Nevertheless he was less interested in either Antoinette, Michele or Brigitte, than he was in Papa Raoul Dupré.
  
  But as he straightened his tie and combed his unruly hair he couldn't get the unusual Michele out of his mind. The aroma of her lingered in the room… soft, subtle, aphrodisiacal.
  
  And he couldn't help thinking that her approach to strangers — especially an American agent called Killmaster by his enemies and friends — was just a little bit abrupt.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "You are a fool to call me from the house, Toni!" Lin Tong said furiously. "How do you know there is no one listening?"
  
  "Because I know where they all are," said Toni coldly. "Give me credit for some little sense, will you? Of course, if you are not interested in knowing about this man…"
  
  "Of course, of course! I just want you to be careful. For your sake, more than mine. Who is the fellow? Where does he come from?"
  
  "I don't know yet. Maru is very vague. When do I see you, Won Ton… lover?"
  
  "Remember the game we're playing, my flower? Bring me a little information, I give you a little — fun. And so far you have told me hardly anything."
  
  "But how can I…?"
  
  "Find out, Toni love. You'll find a way. I depend on you, my sweet. Just as you depend on me." His voice was very gentle. "If there is anything of interest, you can tell me at your party."
  
  "Only then?" She was dismayed.
  
  He laughed softly. "Only then. And I leave without you if you have nothing new to tell me. Goodnight, Antoinette."
  
  The telephone clicked in her ear. Damn him, damn him, damn him!
  
  But she had to be with him again, and soon. Somehow she would get him what he wanted.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Madame Claire La Farge lay sunbathing on the patio again. It was hotter than ever and the clouds looked as though they would burst before evening. She was wondering about Saito. Had he arrived safely in Saigon? Had he placed the message in the paper? Had anyone answered it? Who? If only she had known a more direct way of seeking help, or at least who was left in Saigon who could be of help. But all the men she'd ever met through Paul had been introduced to her as Jacques and Pierre and Raoul and Henri and Bernard, and she had not the faintest idea who they really were or where they were. All she could do was hope that someone — the right someone — would read the Personals and contact Saito.
  
  The waiting was hard, and getting harder as the hours dragged by. Saito should be on his way back by now.
  
  The Madame was impatient. But she had learned long ago to wait. Paul had taught her that, too. And since his death she had waited patiently for something, someone, to come along and fill the empty, lonely years. Nevertheless, it was hard to wait. Particularly since she felt uneasy without the comforting giant nearby to answer when she called.
  
  The trees bordering the patio seemed to sigh heavily as a sluggish breeze wafted over them. Madame La Farge sighed tiredly. Waiting to get back into the mainstream of life was the hardest kind of waiting. It was like counting the years and months and days before a prison sentence was to end.
  
  Where was Saito now? You never could tell how things would be in Saigon. The city was like a bubbling cauldron of riots, shootings, death, arrests and intrigue in these troubled days. Anything could happen to any man on any sort of errand.
  
  Not Saito. He would be back soon.
  
  A clock chimed somewhere inside the house. Another hour passed into nothingness.
  
  Perhaps he had never even reached Saigon.
  
  She stirred restlessly. Time was slipping away rapidly and nothing had yet changed. The nagging thought that something had happened to Saito grew slowly into conviction. It was deadly, lying here in the fading sun and estimating what his chances might have been as he traveled back and forth over the imperiled countryside. Not only deadly, but stupid. She got up abruptly and pulled on her blue silk robe. No, indeed; nothing had happened to Saito. Even if his journey should take longer than she had expected, there was no reason why she could not take care of herself. Both Paul and Saito, each in his own way, had taught her how to use the defense mechanisms of her willowy body. Also, she reminded herself furiously, she had a perfectly good mind of her own and no need whatsoever to lean on others.
  
  But she was worried about Saito for his own sake. And she missed Paul. She always missed Paul, but even more than usual at times like this. For all her courage and resourcefulness she was, first and last, a woman. Her loneliness made her feel incomplete.
  
  She walked into the coolness of the house and took a long, cold shower. Afterwards she dressed in a loose, cotton shift and poured herself a cooling drink. Lowering clouds threatened the patio, so she sat on the screened-in porch and watched the sky darken. Halfway through her drink she heard the sound of a distant motor approaching through the stillness.
  
  Saito coming back? Not he; not by car. The sound came closer. She recognized the motor of her own Royal Roadster.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  General Ho Van Minh of the Fifth North Vietnamese Army, most of whose legions were encamped in the hills barely five miles south of the La Farge plantation and therefore uncomfortably close to the 17th Parallel, was in an angry mood. The General's tent, an enormous fly-topped canvas staked out over an area ten yards in circumference, had become a combined hospital and madhouse. Ding Wan Chau's wound was responsible for both.
  
  Chau, until three days ago, had been the General's brilliant and trusted aide-de-camp. Now he lay slowly dying on a pallet in the General's own tent. A sniper's bullet had slammed into the small of Chau's slim back. It paralyzed at once and soon began to fester. With every moment the young man — once so brave, so cool, so clever, and so handsome — was slipping deeper into ugly oblivion.
  
  The General was violently upset with this monstrous turn of events. It was bad enough that his latest force of guerrillas had penetrated to within almost twenty miles of Saigon only to be wiped out by their guerrillas. That was the nature of this war. It was worse that his own battalion had been driven back from the border to their hideout in the foothills without having gained an inch of soggy brown earth. But it was unthinkable disaster that some swine with a sniper's rifle had deprived him of the services of the one man he relied upon. Ding Wan Chau. Wonderfully intelligent. Enviably cunning. Endlessly inventive. Unfailingly reassuring. So much more clever than the General, and yet so loyal to him. So desperately needed by him.
  
  The General stalked about the tent like an enraged cockatoo. He was a short, neatly built man just beginning to get paunchy about the middle, enormously strong despite his apparent slightness, and notoriously quick-tempered. He had even been seen to stamp his foot in anger. But no one dared laugh at so unmilitary a gesture. The General was also notoriously vengeful. And quite as ingenious as Ding Wan Chau when it came to devising interesting forms of punishment.
  
  Frightened subordinates and orderlies skipped out of Minn's path while his personal physician, Men Lo Sung (one of Red China's best), sought to create a medical miracle.
  
  It was useless. The beautiful young man had been as good as lost since the second the bullet had bit into his back. Ding Wan Chau, his spine shattered into painful fragments, was only minutes from death.
  
  General Minh cursed the guerrillas, the snipers, the weather, the war. What a war! If only a man could take a bold stand and rush that border in force; use the Chinese heavy equipment that was waiting for God knows what in those caves there in the hills; bomb, kill, burn, blast, and the devil with playing games with the Americans and all foreign interventionists — and may a thousand fiends tear out the guts of the creature who had shot young Chau!
  
  "Well?" he barked, rocking to a halt before the doctor. His hairless face was a mask of rage.
  
  "He dies, great one."
  
  "Then the devil take him and my love. He is no good to me dead. Bah!" He ground his heel into the dirt floor of the tent, scarcely aware of the word he had used out loud. "Whose infernal will was it that guided a killing bullet into his spine? Snipers! What more detestable employment is there for a soldier?"
  
  No one answered him. His listeners stared dumbly at the earth, closing off their ears and minds to Ding Wan Chau's death rattle.
  
  He stopped and gave the order as coldly as if his dead friend had been a mangy dog that had crawled into his tent to die. No need to show his emotions through his eyes. He walked with his head down. Get the body out of here, that was it!
  
  The body had gone and he was still staring blindly at the opening of the tent when an aide from the radio shack appeared and stood at attention. The General's mind clicked back to "On." He motioned and the man stepped forward, extending a square of message paper.
  
  It was an official communiqué direct from Field Headquarters — of the Thirteenth Chinese Army.
  
  So. The big bosses to the North had word for him.
  
  CQA 1104
  
  MOVE WESTERN FLANK THREE MILES FURTHER NORTH. MAINTAIN POSITION HILLS ABOVE PLANTATION LA FARGE UNTIL INSTRUCTED FURTHER. REGARD NEW PLACEMENT AS POSSIBLE BREAKTHROUGH AREA BUT DO NOT REPEAT DO NOT TAKE ACTION SOUTH PRIOR TO NEW ORDERS. INSTEAD REGROUP FORCES FOLLOWING RECENT HEAVY CASUALTIES.
  
  CQA1105
  
  ENEMY AGENT ANDRE MOREAU ALIAS TON THIEN OANH ESCAPED HANOI VICINITY HEADING SOUTH WITH STOLEN LIST VITAL TO VIET MINH PEACE PLAN. MAKE EVERY EFFORT APPREHEND THIS MAN APPROXIMATELY FIVE SIX FRANCO-INDOCHINESE FEATURES SCARRED BACK FLUENT FRENCH ENGLISH VIETNAMESE. INTERROGATE VILLAGERS STRANGERS TRAVELERS. URGENT THAT HE BE STOPPED RETURNED TO VIETCLAW.
  
  
  
  The General cursed fluently, if not coherently. Interrogate villagers strangers travelers! What did they think he was, a census-taker? Move Western flank three miles further north, following recent heavy casualties! So they blamed him, did they? Kicked him further North to cool his heels for their instructions? Did they think he had called these losses on his own head? Damn them for a bunch of cross-eyed fools. But — Enemy agent heading south. Through here?
  
  His thoughts blurred and re-formed into a fascinating pattern. Enemy agent heading south. Regroup forces above La Farge plantation. Ding Wan Chau cut down by a sniper's bullet. Heavy losses of late. Indeed. Was it, now, a sniper's bullet? If it was, ten snipers would have their entrails dragged out to be eaten by the ants for the outrage of the assassination. But how interesting, that an enemy agent should be on the loose at the same time. The La Farge plantation. The La Farge plantation.
  
  Ho Van Minh's tiny eyes glittered. A ravishing woman, Claire La Farge. Politically neutral, it was said. But how could a Frenchwoman be neutral? Moreau was obviously French. Heading south. Sniper's bullet? Moreau's bullet. Ding Wan Chau dead. Ha! Sniper's bullet? His mind was a kaleidoscope of distorted pictures. Vengeance is mine, saith the Dragon. He killed, she knows!
  
  He channeled his madness into a quiet cunning. She would be the first subject of his interrogation. If all was as it should be at the La Farge plantation, he would have his little bit of fun and then arrange to move his forces according to the plan. But if not — he could foresee quite a bit of excitement in the future.
  
  His heart beating almost as wildly as it used to beat for Ding Wan Chau, he sent for his Sergeant driver and the Royal Roadster.
  
  Fifteen minutes later he was at the front door of the La Farge house, wondering why it was someone other than Saito who answered his brusque summons.
  
  Claire La Farge received him on the screened-in porch. She could see a strange light in his eyes that she had never seen before.
  
  Rain began to splatter on the roof.
  
  "Where is your visitor Moreau?" Minh said abruptly.
  
  A stab of fear went through her and settled painfully in her chest. "Visitor? Have you taken leave of your senses, General, as well as of your manners? Perhaps when you have calmed yourself you will have the goodness to explain the meaning of this intrusion." The thumping inside her chest almost choked off her words. Minh would surely see her anguish and know it for what it was.
  
  But he seemed not to notice. "You are haughty, Madame. You forget that this is war. Do you deny that Moreau is here? He was seen making his way to the house."
  
  No, surely he could not have been. Why should Minh wait three days to confront her with this if Moreau really had been seen?
  
  "That is ridiculous," she said coldly. "There has not been a visitor to this house, apart from yourself and your soldiers, for the past five years and more. Who is this Moreau? I have never heard of him. Look through the house, if you like. Search the sheds and the fields. Let me know if you find anyone. I should be delighted if you did; I would enjoy the company of a gentleman."
  
  "You would not have the opportunity, Madame. He would not stay here long after I had found him. Besides, how can you be sure he is a gentleman?"
  
  His eyes, she noticed, were no longer quite so glitteringly mad, and his tone had lost its menace. She was almost glad that Moreau lay dead in the fallow earth rather than hidden in some closet to await discovery by this peculiar little man with the high, harsh voice and restless hands. Something told her that he would derive much pleasure out of other people's pain.
  
  "You called him by a French name, did you not? Then he is a gentleman. Now shall we forget our differences for the moment, General — a drink before you drive back in the rain?" This time she was positive that there was something very wrong with him. Ordinarily he would have leapt at the invitation. But he ignored it.
  
  "Let me see Saito, then. Where is he? If you claim you have not seen Moreau, perhaps he has. Send for him."
  
  Her heart dropped again. "He is not here. Since you would not allow me to leave my own house I have had to let him go to the village of Hon Du to barter for goods we have run short of."
  
  "So?" The small eyes narrowed. "Hon Du? Are you sure he has not gone to Saigon in your place, hah? Have you not sent him to Saigon because I refused to let you go?"
  
  "Of course I am sure!" she snapped. "You know very well that I would not send him where I cannot go myself."
  
  "Then I will have one of my men find him at Hon Du and bring him back."
  
  "There is no need for that. By the time your man gets there Saito will have started back."
  
  "Ah. So. When do you expect him?"
  
  She shrugged. "Tomorrow or the next day, I suppose. It is hard to say, with these rains. But he will be here soon."
  
  "I see." He stared at her, a half-smile twisting his face. "Then I will come back tomorrow to see him. And then the next day, if he is not yet back. And then, Madame, if he has still not returned, I will have more words with you. In the meantime, be advised that I am moving my troops three miles closer to your plantation for a number of strategic reasons that are none of your concern, but which will give us the opportunity to keep in even closer contact." He bowed ironically. "I will also have my scouts keep their eyes open for your Saito, to make sure that no harm befalls him should he inadvertently cross our lines."
  
  "How very kind you are," she said icily.
  
  He bowed again. "I look forward to our next meeting. I shall be back soon, Madame. To see both you and your loyal Saito."
  
  Moments later she heard the sound of her Royal Roadster receding through the pouring rain.
  
  How much did the General really know? The one thing she was sure of was that the General would keep his promise and be back very soon.
  
  
  
  
  
  Miss Antoinette Cleans House
  
  
  
  
  Nick let himself into his room and locked the door. In his pocket was the small, neat package he had picked up from the Embassy after receiving their call. It had come in with a batch of material delivered personally by a high-ranking officer of the U.S. Air Force.
  
  The package was a three-quarter-inch thick rectangle of brown paper wrapped firmly around something hard like heavy cardboard or thin metal. It was addressed to Dr. Nicholas Carter in care of the U.S. Embassy, Saigon, and the return address read: Lincoln Pharmaceuticals, Seattle, Wash. In fact the package was, in person, Dr. Lincoln of Washington, D.C. A number of warning stamps on Dr. Lincoln's exterior exhorted his handlers to keep the "Medicinal Samples" cool and handle them with care.
  
  He poured himself a drink and stripped the wrapping off the four-by-seven-inch package. Beneath the brown paper was a sturdy plastic container of the type used for carrying assorted capsules and sample tubes of antibiotics. It was locked, and there was no key in the narrow horizontal slot. But Nick already had the key.
  
  He slid the small, notched metal plate into the slot and concentrated every ounce of his attention on what was to come. It was about time it came, too; it had taken longer than he had expected.
  
  Something inside the small container whirred slowly and then picked up speed. Nick held it up to his ear and listened attentively. A thin, metallic voice rasped softly at him. Even though curiously shrunken and diluted, as if coming from a genie trapped in a metal jar, the voice was unmistakably Hawk's.
  
  "Listen carefully, now," it said, unnecessarily. "You will recall that this tape is self-destructive on completion of its cycle. I will relay this message only once. After the countdown to one I will begin. Are you ready?" Nick nodded involuntarily and grinned. He knew that Hawk had been itching to try out this tiny message gadget, and even through the minuscule speaker he could hear the enjoyment in the old man's voice."…eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two…"
  
  "Fire when ready, Gridley!" Nick hissed urgently, and lit up his waiting cigarette.
  
  "…one. Now. Item: Your radioed message. It was followed shortly by a communication from French Intelligence which gives a new direction to your assignment. Your trip north is no longer a general fact-finding expedition but a specific job behind enemy lines." Nick whistled. So AXE was rushing in where even the U.S. Army hesitated to tread. "More of that later. Item: La Petite Fleur. The man who used that code name, Paul La Farge, has been dead for over ten years. The name died with him. No one has used it since, until it appeared in the column you saw. Now. When the VietMinh, or Vietnamese Communists, gained control of Vietnam north of the Ben Hai river, they absorbed the area occupied by the La Farge Plantation. This plantation had been in the hands of the La Farge family since the French Occupation of the nineteenth century. Paul La Farge grew up in Vietnam. When he was fifteen his parents sent him to Paris, where he spent the remainder of his student years. In World War II he became a member of French Intelligence in Southeast Asia with the code name of La Petite Fleur. His parents died during the war. When he was demobilized he returned to Vietnam to take over the plantation. He also married, in Hanoi, a French girl named Claire Devereau, who was at least twelve years his junior. However, he still kept up his work with French Intelligence and maintained his old code name. But from the end of the war until his death by enemy bullet in 1954 he worked against the Communists in his own country and their Red Chinese advisors. When he died Madame Claire La Farge retreated into herself, withdrawing from all contact with the French or even the people of the nearby villages. She has devoted herself to keeping the plantation a going concern in spite of the proximity of Viet Minh forces. How she has succeeded in doing so is a matter of some interest to us. It may mean that she has reached a certain understanding with the Communists that could endanger the cause of the South, and thus of the U.S. forces in Vietnam. But so far as can be ascertained, she has shown no political inclinations whatsoever."
  
  Nick listened, fascinated. It seemed odd that La Petite Fleur's widow should take no sides in her late husband's battle. She must be a cold one.
  
  Hawk's voice crackled on.
  
  "In spite of what you may be thinking, Madame La Forge appears to be loved by the people of her plantation for her humanity and warmth. They call her the Fair One, in tribute not only to her beauty — which is or was, I am told, quite outstanding — but to her character. She appears to be that rare being — a truly honest woman. Appears, I say."
  
  Yes, Mr. Hawk. I get your point. Go on, please.
  
  "Item: Moreau. André Moreau. It is now known to us that for many years a French Intelligence agent named Moreau, previously associated with La Farge, has been working behind enemy lines and sending back information relating to Red Chinese influence in Vietnam. He has recently disappeared on a mission of the utmost importance, attempting to reach South Vietnam with a list of some kind. Now. Madame La Farge was mentioned to him by French Intelligence as a possible source of sanctuary in time of extreme difficulty. According to French Intelligence agent Raoul Dupré, Moreau did contact Madame before he died. She kept his information. Kept it, do you understand? The message in the Vietnam Times was her call for help from French Intelligence, a plea for someone to come and get the information from her."
  
  A strange way of doing business, Nick thought, exhaling. The rasping sound went on trickling into his ear.
  
  "Item: Raoul Dupré. You will make further contact with him at the earliest possible moment. French Intelligence has asked us to assist in this case. They feel that since their participation in Vietnamese affairs has become less active than ours, it is in our own interests to procure Moreau's information. Now. Dupré holds the key to the La Farge plantation, figuratively speaking. He will expect a man to approach him with a message saying, and I quote, Andre sends regards from Fiorello. You, of course, will take that message. You will then give him the usual truth identification.
  
  "Finally: Bear in mind that both the Chinese and the Vietnamese Intelligence agents have lately redoubled their efforts to smoke out all remaining anti-Communist agents in Vietnam. Knowing this, proceed to contact first Dupré and then Madame La Farge. Then take steps to determine the following: A. Did Moreau indeed contact her, and has she the information? B. What happened to Moreau? C. Has Madame La Farge gone over to the Communists and set a trap for Raoul Dupré? D. Has a trap been set by the Communists with Madame La Farge the innocent bait? Is she being used to unwittingly lure Intelligence agents into a Communist ambush? No, Carter, do not shake your head. Stranger things have happened."
  
  Nick put out his cigarette and wondered how Hawk could possibly have known he would look skeptical at just that moment.
  
  "Your job, then, is to find the answers to these questions and bring back Moreau's information. It appears to have been somehow knotted into a belt. For what use the knowledge may be to you, Moreau used to be an amateur anthropologist. The belt may somehow reflect his interests. But do not tamper with it, whatever you do. Bring it back intact. And in doing so, use that AXE wherever you can. This is no longer a French fight, Carter. This one is all ours."
  
  The voice died away into a faint sizzle of sound.
  
  Nick waited for a moment or two to be sure that the small container had finished its work. He knew that beneath its plastic finish the contents, already erased, were rapidly disintegrating. After a while he removed the combination key and tape-head without which the device was useless and started to methodically destroy the brittle plastic cover.
  
  So the wife of La Petite Fleur, he thought, had placed the Personal in The Times. Hawk's tape had left a few small questions unanswered, but no doubt Dupré could fill him in. So far the job seemed simple enough, if not particularly pleasant. Now if Claire La Farge had married Paul at the end of the war she would be a good forty-odd by now. Although Paul had been considerably older than she… Well, mid-thirties, at least.
  
  Warming up an aging French iceberg who might very well have become a stooge for the Communists was not the Carter idea of a stimulating assignment. On the other hand her beauty was, or had been, "quite outstanding." Frenchwomen, unlike so many others, often improved with age.
  
  It was a cheering thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Maru was astonished. First by the weather, which was suddenly incredibly beautiful for the end of August, and then by Miss Toni.
  
  Miss Toni was out in the garden snipping away at sprays of foliage and the few remaining blossoms to decorate the house for her soirée.
  
  To her intense annoyance — spray-snipping not being one of her favorite occupations — there was no sign of the "new gardener." She gathered up her trophies and made her way back to the house.
  
  "Vases, Maru," she ordered. "For the patio and the foyer."
  
  Maru slowly shook his head. Miss Toni taking an interest in the house! Wonders would never cease. He was further surprised, half an hour later, when he saw her fluffing cushions in the living room and straightening pictures in the hall.
  
  "But Miss Antoinette," he protested. "The houseman has already cleaned here this morning."
  
  "I see that," she said, running her finger across a picture frame. "What this place needs is a woman's touch. I want things to look especially nice for the party tonight. We haven't enough flowers, Maru. I should like you to go down to the market for me and select whatever seems most fresh and colorful. Also, I do not trust those caterers. They are too unimaginative. In a few moments I shall give you a list of extra delicacies I think we need. I'll ring for you when I'm ready." She nodded dismissal.
  
  Maru could hardly believe his ears. Miss Toni could always be relied upon to provide entertainment, liquor, and mountains of caviar, but to extend herself any further than that was unbelievable. As a rule he, Maru, had to take care of all the small details without a thought of help from her…
  
  "Oh, Maru!" she said suddenly. "Before you do anything else. Is there any chance of replacing those moth-eaten bamboo curtains on the closed patio? I know there's not much time before the party, but they really have to go. I've just noticed how terrible they look. Perhaps someone from Le-Loi Thanh…?"
  
  He nodded, delighted with her sudden interest.
  
  "I believe they are a standard item, Miss Toni," he said. "I shall measure them myself and bring the man back with me to fit them. It is possible that I can have them ready if I start at once." He bobbed his head and waddled to the patio. Perhaps she is turning over a new leaf at last, he thought happily.
  
  Good, good, good, thought Toni, sitting down to write her little list. That should keep him busy for a while. Long enough, at least, to scout the servants' quarters and find out where he had hidden that man. With a little subtle persuasion she might even be able to get some answers from the muscular giant. And if she were really lucky her father might take a quick trip out to the plantation while Maru was out. She knew the houseman wouldn't bother her; he had plenty to occupy himself with in the chaos she had left upstairs.
  
  The list took her no more than a few seconds. Maru was still measuring when she wandered down the hall into the huge, gloomy dining room and started planning where she should put the flowers. And a second bar and buffet here in the dining room, for a change? Good idea. She was almost beginning to enjoy her new role of homemaker when she heard the buzzer sounding from her father's study.
  
  Maru trotted down the hall to answer the crisp summons. Toni heard the low ramble of her father's voice and Maru's piping answer. Then Maru left the study and disappeared down the service passage.
  
  Toni waited, flicking the door frame with her feather duster. She supposed that something of the sort might reasonably be done to door frames. Her hands started to tremble as she waited.
  
  Maru came back with the tall man and barely glanced at her as he re-entered her father's study.
  
  Her father's voice rumbled again. Maru replied. This time Toni heard Dupré's answer clearly. "What! I don't believe you!" Maru piped up again and this time Dupré laughed. "Marvelous!" he said. "Come in…" his voice faded and the door closed.
  
  "Maru!" called Toni urgently. "Maru! Do hurry, please!"
  
  Maru waddled toward her down the hallway.
  
  "You must try to get those curtains — are you finished measuring? and I need time to arrange the flowers and things. Please go now!"
  
  Maru hesitated. He should not leave while Saito was in there with Dupré. Theirs was a very private conversation. But…
  
  "Please!" She stamped her foot impatiently. For God's sake, why didn't he go?
  
  "It's only that I thought I might help you with something here first, Miss Toni. I wouldn't want you to do anything too strenuous while I'm gone."
  
  "Of course I won't. The minute you leave I'm going out to get my hair done."
  
  Ah. If she was going out too, that was all right. "Yes, Miss Toni. The list?"
  
  She gave it to him with the money and pretended to get ready for going out. The nervous feeling rose like a tide within her. The precious minutes, wasting!
  
  At last Maru went out, satisfied that she would leave immediately after him.
  
  Toni ran lightly down the hallway to the study and put her ear against the heavy door. At first she could hear nothing but a low murmur. Then she heard the stranger's voice rise in what was surely anger.
  
  "No! I do not care about the belt, or this Moreau, or any of that! I must get back to my lady. She is too long alone."
  
  "Please! Not so loud. One more day, that's all I ask…" Dupré's voice faded. Toni held her breath. Snatches of phrases came to her.
  
  "…La Farge… wanted… to help. Madame…"
  
  "But why can you not go with me yourself?" The stranger again.
  
  "Hush, Saito! Because my orders…"
  
  So the stranger's name was Saito.
  
  Words rose and fell.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "…message… La Farge… American…" "American! How can I know……….?" "……credentials… contact me… be assured…" "……danger……" "……danger? …dead… belt……" "…close. Always… danger… wait no longer." "…tomorrow?.. tomorrow? I will… contact by then……"
  
  Toni's heart was beating rapidly. If her father suddenly opened the door and found her here — Better go. Lin Tong. Would he be pleased? Angry that she had not heard more? Better wait.
  
  She suddenly began trembling so violently that her arm struck against the door. To her it sounded like a pistol shot. No one else heard the little muffled thud, but she could not know that. She turned and ran lightly down the hall.
  
  She must get a message to Lin Tong to come early this evening, even if he got angry when she called. Remember, now. Tell him. Belt… Moreau… my lady… alone… La Farge… message… American… contact… credentials… Madame… belt… danger… belt… La Farge… tomorrow… orders…
  
  The words turned over and over in her mind. Lin Tong would be able to make sense of them.
  
  Remember, now. Tell Lin Tong and he will reward you.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Dr. Nicholas Carter spent most of the day with the medical officers of the Ninth Vietnamese Army Corps. His Vietnamese was deplorable but he got along very well in French with a few Chinese words thrown in. He got along so very well that before long they were showing him maps pinpointing the areas of their heaviest casualties. In their enthusiasm for their work they showed him where their field hospitals were located; where they had lost Rescue Platoon B; where they knew the roads to be mined; where the jungle was too thick with both tangled trees and trap-springing guerrillas for their vehicles to pass; where the northern areas of South Vietnam were so firmly held by the Communists that to enter was to run a deadly gauntlet.
  
  Nick gravely absorbed their every word and every marked area on their charts, translating it to the map he carried in his head. It was a pity that he did not know exactly where the La Farge plantation was in that unmarked area north of the borderline, but no doubt Dupré would give him precise directions.
  
  On his way back to his hotel through downtown Saigon he stopped at several stores and bought a few items that he needed for his journey north.
  
  After fifteen minutes of Yoga he showered lengthily, rehearsed his forthcoming meeting with Dupré, and dressed for the soirée. A party to which a friend of Toni's had invited him should be the ideal backdrop to his meeting with Dupré.
  
  Or so he thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Inexperienced Spy
  
  
  
  
  Raoul Dupré's staid house rocked with drums and laughter.
  
  The master of the house stood in a corner of the patio as far away from the loud band as he could get without seeming to escape the party. His face was calm as he lit his third panatela of the evening, but his mind was turmoil. The man from AXE had not yet contacted him. He had promised to let Saito leave tomorrow. Toni had been marvelous all day, but now she had disappeared into some corner with that slab of slime, Lin Tong. In his house. Oh, yes. Bold Dupré of the French Underground. Stern Father. "I will not have that man in this house!" "My party, Papa. Would you prefer that I held it at his place?" He had lost again.
  
  A woman near him was already beginning to get drunk and thrust her bosoms at every passing male. Dupré shuddered. He had no quarrel with bosoms, but he did not like them quite so blatant. And they were all so young, these women and their men, but they were burning time like matches and their faces showed experience that even he had never had.
  
  Where, for the love of God, was Toni and that bestial man?
  
  She was outside in the garden whispering her desperation to Lin Tong. "You promised! You promised! Haven't I done what you asked? Isn't that enough?"
  
  Lin Tong shook his handsome head. "Not quite. You have done well, Antoinette. But let us play a little longer, eh? Someone — an American — will be making contact with your father. Or so I would think from those little scraps of conversation you picked up. Find out who he is, will you? I remember my promise, do not worry. But the night is long. Perhaps later, on the beach…" His strong hands tilted her chin to meet his face.
  
  On the other side of the house, Nick Carter walked on to the noise-mad patio and heard a delighted yell through the thumping of the rhythm section.
  
  "Nickie!" Michele ran to meet him. "I thought you would never come!"
  
  "How could I stay away when I knew you'd be here?" He ducked her smothering kisses and said, laughing: "Honey, please! Not in front of the children!"
  
  "Ah, these children are only just beginning, Nickie. You will see a. thing or two tonight. What will you drink?"
  
  "I have to greet my hostess first. Where is she?"
  
  "Oh, I don't know. In a comer somewhere with her latest lover. Let her stay there while you and I…"
  
  "All right, if you say so. But I think I should pay my respects to her Papa. I met him once, you know. Is he in some corner, too?"
  
  "Foo!" She made a little grimace. "Yes, he is. Scowling by himself. Oh, no. He is talking to that little Hawley from your Embassy."
  
  Nick followed her eyes. "Little Hawley" was not one of his contacts at the Embassy. Should be a useful cover for his meeting with Dupré.
  
  "Don't go away," he said. "I'll be right back." He picked his way through the swaying, drinking figures and headed for Dupré.
  
  Raoul saw him coming, the tall, bronzed man he had met very briefly several evenings before and whose hard, clear gaze had somehow impressed him.
  
  "Monsieur Dupré?" Nick extended a firm hand. "My name is Carter. Dr. Nicholas Carter. We met…"
  
  "Ah, yes, of course." Dupré took the outstretched hand and shook it. "I hoped that we might meet again. Dr. Carter, Mr. Hawley, Mr. Hawley, Dr. Carter." Hawley nodded politely. "Always glad to meet a fellow American," he said. "Staying long?"
  
  "Not very," Nick said. "Off tomorrow or Monday for a quick tour of the field hospitals. Your daughter was gracious enough to invite me, Monsieur Dupré…"
  
  "But not gracious enough to receive you, I notice," Dupré said crisply. "You do not have a drink. What will you have?"
  
  "I'll get it," Hawley said helpfully. "How about you, Monsieur Dupré?"
  
  He took their orders and struggled off through the thickening crowd.
  
  Nick glanced around. At the moment there was no one near enough to overhear them.
  
  "I'm glad to have this opportunity to meet you," he said. "I've just had a letter from an old friend, mentioning your name."
  
  "Oh, yes?" Dupré seemed no more than politely interested. But Nick noticed that his own gaze flickered quickly around the room.
  
  "Yes, Andre sends regards from Fiorello. He also asked me to return that dollar he borrowed from you years ago." He chuckled. "Compound interest should make it five by now, but I'm afraid you'll have to settle for a single." He dipped into his wallet and selected one at random. They were all perfectly legal tender and distinguished from other singles only in that each one's serial number added up to an even thirty. Actually the number (1+24+5=AXE or 30) was only a double-check for the recipient; the true message of the note was in the picture of George Washington, the man who chopped down a cherry tree with — what else? — an axe, and could not tell a lie.
  
  Dupré glanced at it briefly. "It looks like the same one I gave Andre," he said. "Old and sticky. You Americans are just as bad with your money as we French with our francs. But how did you come to meet Andre? Ah, yes! I think I have it. Not long ago you got a message that was meant for me, is that not right?"
  
  Nick nodded. This man knew how to use his brains. "That's right."
  
  "So that is it. Yes, now it all adds up." Dupré thrust the dollar bill into his pocket. "You have relieved my mind, my friend."
  
  At the far end of the patio, near the band, Michele had taken off some filmy garment and was waving it above her head while her hips wiggled athletically to the drumbeat. Her circle of finger-snapping, pelvis-jerking admirers was growing by the minute. A sort of frenetic enthusiasm permeated the place. Nick thought he caught a glimpse of Toni through the twisting crowd but he could not be sure. Hawley was still trying to make himself heard at the bar.
  
  "I gather that Madame is still at the plantation," said Nick. "Who actually put that message in The Times?"
  
  Raoul told him.
  
  "You trust him?"
  
  "Implicitly." Dupré nodded emphatically. "I am quite sure that everything happened exactly as he said it did."
  
  "Fill in the details, do you mind? Starting with Moreau's arrival."
  
  Dupré was halfway through the story when he saw Hawley coming toward them, anxiously balancing three glasses and spilling slightly as he picked his way between couples of abandoned dancers.
  
  "Sacre bleu! but I loathe these affairs," Dupré muttered. "We will talk again later. Much later, when all these people become completely oblivious. As they usually do. Your guide is extremely anxious to leave as soon as possible."
  
  "Does anyone else know he's here?" Nick asked. Dupré shot him a glance. "My own man, Maru. And Toni — I believe she has caught a glimpse of him. But she knows nothing about him."
  
  Hawley joined them. "Phew! Sorry to take so long." The three of them were discussing the complexities of Vietnamese politics when Nick suddenly felt that familiar skin-tingling sensation that told him he was being watched. Antoinette Dupré was near the bandstand doing something like a dance with a small dark-haired Frenchman who was doing his best to slide his hand down the low-cut U-line of her scanty dress. But she was paying no attention to her partner. She was looking straight at Nick. He smiled and raised his glass to her.
  
  "Your daughter," he explained to Dupré. "Will you excuse me? I think she wants to be rescued from her partner."
  
  Dupré looked across the room and grunted. "At least it isn't that Chinaman she's been going around with. I wish you'd rescue her from him."
  
  Nick raised his eyebrows. "If I get the chance," he said. Hmm. Chinaman, he thought, dodging the feminine arms that reached boldly for him as he passed. Wonder whose side he's on?
  
  Michele sprang at him from somewhere in the crowd and threw her arms around him.
  
  "At last!" she squealed. "What took you so long, cheri?"
  
  "Oh, you know," he said ambiguously. "I saw Toni around here a minute ago. Why don't you take me to her to say hello before we start to dance, and drink, and all those other things your promised?"
  
  "Oh, no!" Michele smiled impishly and shook her head. "First we dance. Very close, like this." She put her face down on his shoulder and rubbed herself against him. "For a long time. Then we drink. Then we say hello to Toni, quick before we leave. Then we…"
  
  "Mickee! Must you eat him alive so early in the evening? Leave something for me!"
  
  A small, tanned hand lay lightly on Nick's sleeve. The other was doing something that made Michele yelp and pull away.
  
  "Toni! You little bitch!" she hissed.
  
  Toni smiled demurely. "I always have to peel her off the more handsome of my guests," she said to Nick. "Go 'way now, big Mike. Jean-Paul is dying to climb all over you. Don't lose your chance."
  
  "Pah! You stay with him, if he's so marvelous. You don't have to steal my partner."
  
  "My guest, Mick. Let go of him."
  
  "Ahem! Ladies! No need to fight over me. I assure you there's quite enough of me to go around," Nick said modestly. "Miss Antoinette, how are you?"
  
  "Dance with me, Dr. Carter," Toni murmured seductively. "That should tell you how I am."
  
  Nick took her in his arms and winked at Michele. "I'll be back for you, honey," he promised.
  
  "Oh, no, you won't," she said bitterly. "Not if I know Toni."
  
  She knew Toni.
  
  Toni Dupré's grip tightened as the evening wore on. She went from "Dr. Carter" to "Nick, baby," in one breath, and that was only the beginning.
  
  She was one of the most beautiful small bundles of curves that Nick had ever held in his arms and she danced as though she was leading him to bed. But her face was more flushed than even the Carter charm warranted, and between the wild dancing sets she drank as though she hated the stuff but had to have it. Far too much of it. For long moments she would be silent, twining herself about him and swiveling her hips with a motion that was less suggestion than demand. Then she would break into a babble of scandalous disclosures about her guests and questions about what Nick was doing in Saigon. He gave her his brief story about the World Health Organization and adroitly led her back to the local gossip, thinking rather grimly that she must be a great burden to a father who was a professional spy. Perhaps it was just as well she had latched on to him. It would give him an opportunity to find out how much she knew about her father's work — and his visitor from the North.
  
  But she fielded his questions as neatly as he did hers and kept on demanding that he tell her more about himself. It was not long before he began to wonder why she had latched on to him.
  
  The room grew thick with smoke that did not all come from ordinary cigarettes. A girl leapt up onto the bandstand and danced half-naked and with complete abandonment. Some of the couples gyrating on the floor seemed to have crossed over into a wild world of their own in which there was no reality but that of their half-dulled, half-stimulated senses. Raoul Dupré was nowhere to be seen. Michele, Nick saw, had found a lap to sit on. The face that stared past hers into the crowd belonged to a rather good-looking Oriental. Chinese…?
  
  "I was given to understand that you had a steady boyfriend," Nick said lightly. "Big, muscular, jealous brute. When is he likely to pounce on me and beat my brains out?"
  
  Toni made a disparaging sound. " 'Steady! That is an Americanism. I belong to no one but myself. Besides, I am finished with him," she added, inconsequently.
  
  The harsh, pulsating music at last came to a halt with a sudden, ear-shattering clash. Toni led Nick to a small table against the wall and sent imperiously for drinks while her entertainers took over the cramped stage.
  
  Toni drank steadily, her eyes darting from Nick to Hawley to a stupefied American Army officer in mufti and back again to Nick. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, pretending to be mildly interested in the troupe of female impersonators who were performing incredible obscenities onstage. Dupré's daughter seemed to have no interest in them.
  
  She took a long swallow and suddenly thumped her glass down on the table. "Are you the American who was supposed to contact my father?" she blurted, and then took another hurried sip as if to brace herself for the answer.
  
  Nick stared. So she did know something. He made himself look vaguely puzzled. "In what connection?" he asked blankly.
  
  She made a little flapping gesture. "Oh, I don't know. He said some American was supposed to contact him about something important. Did you want to see him?"
  
  "I've already talked to him," said Nick, watching her reaction closely. "Thought you saw me."
  
  "Oh?" It was a little gasp. For a moment she looked like a confused child, half-jubilant, half-frightened. Her face was suddenly pale, he saw, and her hands were shaking so that the glass rattled on the tabletop. Another question trembled on her lips and then fluttered out halfway. "Does that mean that you…?" She gave up. "Oh, forget about it. It's nothing to me, anyway. Let's have another drink. Look at those fools up there pretending to be women. If they only knew! If they only really knew…" She drained her glass and her eyes flickered across the room to where the tall Chinese sat fondling Michele.
  
  Nick was fascinated. The Toni who was a child was trying to ask him something. The Toni who was a woman felt some sort of bitterness toward that good-looking Chinese. And there was somehow a connection between the two self-evident truths. He had to let her ask her question, and he had to give her a fair answer… so that she would tell him what he wanted to know.
  
  He took her hand and stroked it lightly, letting his fingers caress her palm and wrist and soft inner arm until he could see that his touch had stirred her senses. He dropped his hand beneath the tiny table and gently explored her thighs.
  
  "Why don't we go somewhere else?" he murmured. "Where we can be alone? I'm sure that you and I can find quite a lot to — talk about."
  
  Her eyes roamed over his face and down his body. Her breasts seemed to swell under his gaze.
  
  "All right," she breathed softly. "But stop that now. I'll make you take me here and now if you're not careful. Don't think we'd be the only ones, either." Then her mood changed suddenly. "Come on, let's get out of this place. I'm sick of it. Usually the party winds up on the beach. Let's get there before the rest of them."
  
  "The beach?" He raised his eyebrows. "That's a pretty long drive, isn't it?"
  
  "I want to go. Do you want to come with me, or not?"
  
  Of course he did. She had something that he wanted. Information.
  
  "Of course I do, Toni. Very much."
  
  "Then go out ahead of me. I don't want the whole lot following us. There's a blue Panther parked on the corner, to the left as you leave the front door. I'll meet you there in a few minutes."
  
  He wondered if she really would. But if she didn't, he'd come right back and see what — or who — had held her up.
  
  He made his way through the giggling, swaying crowd, trying to look like a man in search of a bathroom.
  
  The night was warm but pleasant — as close to perfect as anything Saigon knew.
  
  Again as he walked quietly through the garden he felt his sixth sense warning him of a watcher, or at least of someone near him in the dark. He stepped out of the pool of light and held to the shadows, taking a long, slow look around. But either his instinct had deceived him or the someone was going to some pains to hide himself. After a few moments of watchful waiting he glided silently out of the garden and toward the car.
  
  Almost to his surprise, Toni joined him a few short minutes later. He took the wheel and they drove off to her directions.
  
  The man in the garden stirred. He had needed to feel the fresh air on his face and he did not care who went where. His only concern was for Madame, and she was far away.
  
  But when the second man hurried out into the garden and stared after the retreating car, Saito felt a sense of unease that reminded him of the long-gone days with the Master.
  
  This man moved guiltily. Not with quiet caution, as if waiting for a lady, but as if it mattered to him that he was not seen. This man scuttled on his long spidery legs to a second parked car. This man seemed intent on following Monsieur Dupré's daughter and her tall friend with the fighter's body and strong jaw.
  
  Well, it was nothing to him. But Saito would remember. He would know that yellow face again.
  
  
  
  
  
  Friday Night
  
  
  
  
  The water ran down their bodies in little warm rivulets as they scuffed back along the dark beach to the natural rock shelter where they had left their clothes.
  
  On the drive she had been quiet and moody. But after they had left the car beneath the trees and scrambled down the rocks toward the sea, she had suddenly become alive with gaiety and insisted that they plunge into the soft breakers while the night was still so fine. Their clothes came off quickly and the warm sea received them. She played in the water like a delighted child — a child-woman with strange eyes, softly rounded hips and astonishingly full, ripe breasts. In the water he treated her like a child, letting her splash and duck him to her heart's content.
  
  Nick caught her by the waist and steadied her. His wet arms went around her and his lips crushed down on hers. Suddenly the child disappeared and the woman was there, wanting and demanding. At last she opened her eyes, sighed, and took his hand, directing him along the beach to the rocks where they had left their clothes.
  
  "I don't suppose anyone remembered to bring a towel," he said to no one in particular. "Here, you'd better sit on my shirt."
  
  "We'll both sit on it."
  
  They sat down beside each other.
  
  She was quiet again. He lay back on one elbow and gently pushed the wet hair back from her forehead.
  
  The bright moon broke through the shifting clouds and he could see her eyes again. Now they looked like little pools of pain. Droplets of mascara clung to her cheeks. Washed almost clean of makeup, her face was ghostly pale in spite of their romp in the sea.
  
  His fingers traced a casual pattern down her face and past her chin; over her shoulder and her smooth damp arm. And stopped. There had been makeup there, too; traces of it still smeared her upper arm. Now that it had been nearly washed away he could see the telltale pinprick marks it had been covering. He felt her stiffen as he looked up into her childlike face.
  
  "I thought so," he said quietly. "But I thought it was almost impossible to get unless you dealt directly with the Communist Chinese."
  
  Her small, magnificent figure seemed to wilt. "Oh, my God," she moaned. "Help me, help me, please!" Her arms went around him and she buried her head in his chest. As he held her, wondering if he could bargain his «help» for whatever she could tell him, he thought he heard a car somewhere in the distance. It would be most inconvenient if the party from the house had decided it was time to descend in droves upon the beach. But in a few moments the sound faded altogether.
  
  "What can I do?" he murmured.
  
  She raised her head and kissed him urgently.
  
  Little scuds of sand flew up and sprayed down on their entwined bodies.
  
  He began very gently. Soon the tension in her body surrendered to his touch and she lay back with a little moan of pleasure, waiting.
  
  The moon dipped back behind the clouds.
  
  Her small, full body drew itself close against his hard but limber strength and her superbly rounded thighs rubbed nakedly against his. He felt her heartbeat quicken and she began to murmur low, unintelligible endearments. Her hands roamed over his body, lingering over the muscles and feeling the firmness of him, and her lips trailed provocatively over his ears… his eyes… his mouth… his throat… and back to his seeking mouth. His pulse began the race to catch up with hers as his whole being tingled with growing desire. She was soft; she was hard. Outstretched and rigid; flexible and clinging. Searching; then wanting him to search. Each explored the other's body and measured the other's need.
  
  "Ah!" she sighed. "Closer, closer…"
  
  He parted the smooth legs easily and sought the closeness, rolling her over and pulling her with him in the sort of quiet savagery that he felt in himself and sensed she needed.
  
  Then she fought. Fought in such a way that their bodies remained joined together and each movement was a stab of ecstasy. He let her fight until he wanted more than mock resistance, then he caught her in a trap of muscular arms and legs that left her helpless. Her body undulated sinuously against his. His thighs gave her the rhythm and she caught it, moving with him in the horizontal dance of physical love. Now they were riding a swift conveyor belt that could not stop to let them off until it had brought them to their journey's end.
  
  She gasped suddenly and tore at his lips with her small, sharp teeth, and her hands went around his back and clawed frenziedly at his flesh. He swore softly and tore her arms away from him and pinned them without losing his stride. His mouth bore down on hers and crushed it brutally. She groaned with pain and pleasure and her body arched beneath him. Her movements quickened convulsively in time with his, and then in one galvanic moment they both forgot the flying sand, the sighing sea, their separate identities — all but the wild exhilaration that made them cling together, breathless and exalted. The moment lingered and died.
  
  Nick lowered himself to the sand, feeling strangely tired for a man to whom sex was as necessary as fresh air and good Scotch. He drew Toni down to lie quietly in his arms.
  
  She lay still for a minute or two. Another car passed in the distance without stopping.
  
  Toni stirred. "You do not like it when I hurt you?" she whispered.
  
  "I like everything you do, Toni. But you don't have to fight me. I'm with you, not against you."
  
  She sat up — suddenly, as she did almost everything — and looked down into his eyes. "You must tell me," she said urgently. "Are you the American who was supposed to see my father? On some very important business?"
  
  He hesitated. Did she think she'd bought him now?
  
  "Don't you understand?" Her voice was intense. "I want you to be! If you're not, then tell me. Just tell me, that's all I ask!"
  
  Nick sat up and took her hand. He knew he had to tell her and take his chances on what followed. This, after all, was what he'd come here for.
  
  "Yes," he said. "But it's private business. What do you know about it? Did someone tell you to find out?" The eyes, the pinpricks, the savagery, the Chinaman… they added up. "Is that why you need help?" He made his voice sound very quiet and understanding.
  
  She stared at him. "I… I wanted to know for myself."
  
  "No, Toni. Who gives you drugs, baby? And makes you work for them? I can help, you know."
  
  Tears welled up in her eyes and started trickling down her cheeks. "You've got to swear, you've got to swear you're my father's friend. Prove it to me. Prove that you're working with him."
  
  He shook his head. "How can I possibly do that?"
  
  "If I tell you something that I know, you can tell me something that he must have told you if you are his friend. If I say 'La Farge, what name can you offer me?"
  
  La Farge! She really did know something; much too much.
  
  "How about — Saito?" he suggested thoughtfully. He saw her eyes widen and she nodded almost imperceptibly. "And if I add 'Chinaman, what name can you offer me?"
  
  This time she almost choked. "You know! You know! You know that he's the one who made me spy upon Papa. He promised — I hate him! — he promised — and he wanted me to find out about you too." The words came pouring out until they became a crazy jumble.
  
  Nick shook her roughly. "He's got you hooked, is that it? What did he want you to do? Calm down now, Toni, or I'll take you into the water again and dunk you until you make sense."
  
  She calmed down and she began to tell him about the smooth, exciting Chinese called Lin Tong who had demanded nothing from her but her body until just the other day. And what he demanded now.
  
  "Tell me exactly what you heard being said in your father's den, Toni. And what you said to Lin Tong."
  
  "It was something about a message, and Saito getting back to his lady as soon as possible…"
  
  "No, Toni. The words. You must be more exact. I have to know word-for-word what you said to him. Think back. Whose voice did you hear first? Did you tell Lin Tong what it said?"
  
  Remember, now. No I do not care about the belt Moreau get back to my lady too long alone please not so loud one more day that's all I ask Saito message orders La Farge American…
  
  Nick listened with growing alarm. There was almost nothing important that she had not heard and repeated to the Chinaman. Who had been very pleased with the information but who had wanted more. And there was no doubt at all that he had seen Nick and Toni monopolizing each other throughout the evening. Any man with a minimum of intelligence could piece together a pretty revealing story.
  
  " 'Tomorrow, he said. 'Contact by then. I think he was saying that he was sure he would be contacted by then, as if promising Saito that he would have to wait no longer."
  
  Nick nodded. A gust of wind plucked at Toni's discarded dress, scattered it with sand, and dropped it. Trees many yards away sighed and rustled. He turned his head. Was there someone moving in the dark?
  
  "Let's go," he said. "Get dressed now, Toni. I don't want anyone to find us here."
  
  "They won't come this far; I told you that. This is my own special little cove. No one knows about it except — except a sailor I once knew."
  
  "Not Lin Tong?"
  
  "No, not Lin Tong. But — but — what do we do now?" She made a little anxious movement toward him in the dark.
  
  "That depends," he said quietly. "Why did you tell me all this, Toni? Was it because your Chinese friend had made you desperate?"
  
  "No!" Her head shook emphatically. "Oh, it's true I was desperate — I still am and God knows I will be until — and angry because he cheated me. But I am glad of the anger. It made me see him more clearly. He forgets — often I forget — that deep down I do love my Papa. I have to get out of this. I have to. Already you have helped me. You have given me a chance to… compare."
  
  "And now? Do you want to kick the habit, and him along with it? Or are you going to tell him who I am?"
  
  She held his hand so tightly that it almost hurt. "I'll try not to," she said quietly. "But help me. Even if you have to lock me up, help me not to see him again."
  
  "I'll help. Just one more question, then we'll go. When do I find this Lin Tong when he's home?"
  
  The clouds parted suddenly and the moon stared down at them. In that instant Nick knew for certain that they were not alone. Instinct made him move like a greased eel, whiplashing his body down and to one side and rolling Toni with him as though their bodies were still one.
  
  But flesh can only move so fast.
  
  The vicious twin shocks of sound slammed past his ears even as he rolled. Toni screamed once and stopped in midscream with a little choking sound as the third shot blasted across the sand from behind the barrier of rocks. Nick saw her face twist with agony as her small, abundant form jolted in his arms; and then the fourth report sent a searing line of pain scorching across his shoulders. In a swift, painful movement he hoisted her to the slender shelter of the nearest low boulder. She moaned softly, and a thin dark trickle dribbled slowly down the side of her neck.
  
  He heard a sough of sound from somewhere else. The corner of his eye caught the moving figure as the clouds pulled over the moon. Then he could see nothing but the dim shape at his feet and the thickness in the dark night that was the rock barrier — their supposedly secluded shelter.
  
  His clothes lay somewhere in the sandy clearing between him and the killer — as close, by now, to the killer as to him. And with them were his friends Wilhelmina, Hugo and Pierre. All he had on him was the untried Fang.
  
  And the desperate worry about Toni, who had begged for his help and now lay still with something wet trickling down to her bare shoulder.
  
  He waited for the sound to come again. When it did — the soft scraping of cloth against harsh rock — he crawled away from his low boulder toward the first of the great stones that formed the shelter. If he could get behind the fellow, cut him off between the rock barrier and the sea — He reached the tall rock sooner than he had expected. Its height had not prepared him for the low outcropping that all at once lay hard beneath his feet, nor for the tiny pebble that rolled as he flicked it lightly with his foot. He dropped as though he had already been shot, groping for the pebble or some other pebble until something small and hard came up in his hand. He heard a scrabbling sound some yards away and pitched his pebble up to clatter on the high rocks above him, hoping that the man would think he had been already climbing when the first stone fell.
  
  The report shattered the night like a louder echo of the first four shots. It split the air high over his head, and it had come from much higher than he had expected. Friend Killer, then, was moving too — but moving back up the rocks and away from the sea. Nick cursed inside himself and toed his way lightly back onto the soft sand, moving quietly toward the source of the last shot.
  
  Silence. Absolute darkness. His feet made faint shushing noises in the sand, audible to himself but not to anyone more than a few feet away. The gusty breeze was busy again, too, and it helped to cover the small sounds he was making.
  
  He stopped and listened. All he could hear was the sound of the waves and the wind. If the other man was moving he was just as quiet as Carter. Nick strained his eyes in the darkness. Nothing seemed to move. He looked up at the sky and scanned the clouds. Dark, thick, glowering. No sign of a coming break.
  
  He would have to make his own break, somehow.
  
  Each could play a waiting game. But if there was still a chance for Toni, Nick could not afford to wait. Not did he hold the winning cards.
  
  Five shots. The killer may have as many as five more to go. Plus a spare clip. Not much point in drawing his fire just to make him shoot himself dry; there was no knowing what he had on hand.
  
  Two possibilities. One: Have him fire once more to pinpoint his position, then rush him with one sharp dose of Fang. Drawback — how to avoid getting his head blown off while he was rushing. Two: Steal back to his clothes under cover of the unrelenting darkness, get Wilhelmina the Luger, and shoot it out. Drawbacks…? Possible misjudgment in the dark as to exactly where his clothes might be; a fumbling for Wilhelmina in that open sandy clearing; presenting himself as a sitting target… But he didn't have to sit. He knew exactly where Wilhelmina nestled in her holster. And at least he would get a chance to shoot back, rather than get shot to pieces before even starting on his mission.
  
  He had started moving slowly back toward the clearing, edging silently along the rock, before he was even conscious of deciding. He had no more fear of death than he had of life, but he had no desire to die foolishly. A fighting chance was all he ever asked. And he would rather die when the job was over than before it had begun.
  
  He sidled back cautiously past Toni's limp figure, wanting to touch her to find out if she still breathed but knowing that he should not until this silent stalking was over. Instead, he glanced up at the sky. Still as thick as black cotton, unstirring in the low wind.
  
  A few steps more. No sound from the other man, waiting out there in the dark.
  
  Nick's hands sought quietly in his clothes and came out with the Luger. Then he glided back to the rock barrier and pitched his stone over to the tall rocks where he had last heard from the killer. He heard it strike harshly and fall in little grating bounces down to the soft sand. But instead of a shot there was a grunt of human sound, almost an "Aah!" of triumph.
  
  Then the voice. Imitation American, pitched in an unnatural key as if trying to disguise itself.
  
  "Stop playing games with me, my friend. I know you are not armed. I will get you sooner or later if you keep this up. But there's no reason why you should. The girl was a menace to us both. Now that she no longer troubles us we can pool our knowledge without fear. She has lied to you. We can talk together like reasonable men. I promise I will not shoot if you show yourself."
  
  "Then throw your gun down," Nick yelled. "Let me hear it drop."
  
  There was a low laugh, then a brief pause. Something clattered down the rock face yards away. Nick's hand roamed until he found another stone. The other man called out: "I have done my part. Now let me see you."
  
  "If that was a gun, then so is this!" Nick shouted. He threw his stone at the voice and scrambled sideways. A gun barked. It made so much better a target than the crooning voice. Nick fired twice and heard a yowl of pain. Something fell heavily down the side of a rock and thundered down to the sand. Not a man — a boulder, Nick thought, and fired again. This time, no scream. A shot whined over his head. He ran along the outside edge of his sheltering rock toward the sound, cursing the blackness and straining his ears to sift through the sound of wind and waves for the telltale sound of a man. But there was nothing. Only the sea.
  
  He fired again, at nothing, weaving and running as he fired. Nothing. No answering shot.
  
  And then he heard the sound of Saigon's wet summer. Rain. It came down in a sudden drenching downpour as if the plug had been pulled out of the sky, beating down on the rocks and the sand and the sea until it drowned out all lingering vestiges of sight and every surreptitious, soft sound. He fired again into the night, hoping for an answer. There was none.
  
  He waited. One minute, two minutes passed. There was a lull. One of those freak pauses when the rainclouds seem to take breath before a fresh onslaught. Then he heard the running. Feet running from sand to pebbles to snapping twigs, scraping across fallen boughs and leaves and kicking at stones, crashing through the underbrush that led up to the road. Nick ran after the sound until it faded. Stopped, barely conscious of the rain pouring down his body. Thought — the car! Ran again.
  
  There was no sound ahead of him. No car started up; no footsteps kicked at the twigs and stones on the sloping shoulder of the beach. But if he followed he might yet find the man, groping for Toni's car or more likely the one that brought him here.
  
  Toni. Lying under the drenching rain with the blood trickling down her soft body. She could still be alive, and needing him. If there was the slightest chance of helping her — and he remembered how sincerely he had promised to help — he would have to go back now.
  
  He turned back, hesitantly at first, and then he ran toward her in the blinding rain.
  
  
  
  
  
  And Saturday Morning
  
  
  
  
  She was there, lying quietly next to the low boulder where he had left her, with the hard rain lashing at her naked body.
  
  Nick picked her up in two strong, gentle arms and carried her over to the relative shelter of the rocky barrier. He put her down as if she were a sleeping child and pushed the wet hair back from her pale face. The rain had almost washed the blood away. He wondered why he could see that, and then realized that the sky had lightened almost imperceptibly. He placed one hand on her temple and another on her soft, wet breast. After a moment he got up and made his way to their soggy bundle of clothes. He picked them up and carried them back to where she lay, unclipping his tiny pencil flashlight as he walked.
  
  Its thin beam shone down at her as he took her hand and held it. Soon, he doused the tiny fight. He put his jacket over her, very, very gently. She was so cold and wet, little Toni who had been so warm and vibrant and so very troubled such a short time ago. Even the jacket was cold and wet, but it would keep out some of the biting rain.
  
  When he had dressed himself in the rest of his wet clothes he moved his jacket and dressed Toni in her few slight, filmy things. Then he wrapped the jacket around her once again and lifted her in his arms. His fingers curved around her. Fang glistened in the rain.
  
  "Next time, Fang," he whispered. "We'll meet the bastard again. We'll get up close before he runs and let him have it."
  
  He walked up the beach toward the road, wondering briefly why the killer had decided to run. But it didn't really matter. Knowing why wouldn't help. The jacket over the limp form didn't matter either. It wouldn't do any good.
  
  Rain doesn't harm the dead.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Lin Tong's bare feet slapped lightly against the tarmac road high above the beach. His shoulder ached abominably from the tearing bite of that unexpected bullet. Hell's Dragons! Who would have thought that bare-skinned American would suddenly pull a gun from somewhere — or that his own would fail him so soon afterwards? As long as he had been the only one with a gun there had been some point, some pleasure, to the proceedings. He could have gone on enjoying himself until morning light. Imagine, the American trying to escape him, and naked as a baby! But the sudden return fire was not so very amusing. And when his own miserable Russian-made automatic jammed — he cursed the Russians bitterly as he ran — the situation became impossible.
  
  He wondered if the man was still following him. There had been moments when he had been sure that doom was close behind him, but it had been some minutes since the last shot was fired in the distance and there was no sound on the road but the slap-slap of his own feet and the pelting rain. He should have done something to Toni's car when he had first seen it. Now… Where was it now? He must have passed it. Better not look for it. No time. He might be discovered in the act. By a man who would not hesitate to murder him, or even torture him for information. And he had such vitally important work to do. But it was a pity that he had been so cautious before. His car must still be half a mile away, and it seemed as though he had been running for an hour.
  
  Nevertheless, he had been quite clever. So Antoinette had thought she'd told no one about the cove! Of course she had. Her little rock shelter, where she had played so happily as a child. And taken two or three sailors one night when she was a little older. Of course she had told him about it, as she had told him so many things while she was riding high on those drug-borne clouds.
  
  It was sad about her, in a way. If he had managed to kill the American first she might still be alive. But somehow all that talk of hers had made him lose his bead. He had shot wildly, out of anger, and he had killed Toni. And not the man.
  
  Lin Tong had almost loved her. At least, he had loved the things that he could do to her. He would get that man some day.
  
  At last! His car.
  
  He scrambled into it, his clothes clinging uncomfortably to his body. Back to the city. Perhaps an hour or two of preparation, no more, and then he was on his way. No need to tell anyone else what he had discovered.
  
  La Farge. A belt. Moreau.
  
  How fortunate, that he knew this land so well.
  
  The car shuddered to a start.
  
  He travels the fastest who travels alone… After all, the Executioner had done all the groundwork. Why should he not reap the glory?
  
  Raoul Dupré's face was a study in anguish and despair. Shock struggled with disbelief, outrage with suspicion, hatred with overwhelming sorrow, bitter self-reproach with a growing desire for revenge. Even with Nick's unassailable credentials he would have had a hard time proving his own innocence of Toni's murder if it had not been for Saito's evidence.
  
  The big man stood stolidly by, only his eyes betraying his deep sympathy for Dupré. Over and over, with unvarying patience, he had told his brief story of the scene outside the house earlier that evening, fitting in his observations with Nick's tale of shots and a fruitless chase.
  
  The party was over. Toni's body lay upstairs in her bedroom.
  
  "I will not believe it!" Dupré said, for what seemed like the hundredth time. "She was wild — yes, I know that. But drugs!" He swept his fingers through his unkempt hair. "God knows I warned her about that swine of a Chinaman. But that she gave him information in exchange for drugs — that I cannot credit. It is too much. Too much!"
  
  "You saw the marks," Nick said quietly. "When your doctor friend comes he will bear out something of what I say. She told me the story. Why should she lie to me — or I to you?"
  
  Dupré threw up his hands and shook his head. "How could she inform on me? She did not hate me, I know that."
  
  "She loved you," said Nick. "She was in torment, you must understand — she couldn't help herself. It took tremendous courage for her to tell me what she did. And she told me because she loved you."
  
  "Oh, yes, she told you! And look where she is now. Dead." His voice rose. "How could you let it happen? Why did you take her out there…"
  
  "Hold onto yourself, Dupré!" Nick's voice lashed out at him. "It was necessary for her to talk to me, since clearly she couldn't bring herself to talk to you. I'm sorry for what happened. Desperately sorry. But to blame myself is useless — just as useless as trying to decide, at this late stage, what made her into the kind of girl she was."
  
  Dupré's eyes widened. He stared at Nick. "You mean that I…?"
  
  "I mean nothing that I don't come right out and say. We have no time to quarrel. She's dead. Nothing's going to bring her back to life." Nick made himself sound brutal. "You chose your line of work, Dupré. Now get on with it. Lin Tong is obviously going to make some use of all his information. In the first place he will have alerted his people about the Moreau message. That means he is either on his way already, himself, or he will have gotten word to other agents closer to the scene. In the second place, he has blown your cover…"
  
  "And yours," Dupré snapped, showing the first sign of returning reason. "Which you made so easy for him."
  
  Nick chose to ignore the last comment. "Mine is not so important as yours. My job here is limited, but your entire operation is in danger. If I know our Chinese friends — and believe me, I know them well — they'll make every attempt to take you and your staff alive and keep you alive only as long as it suits them. You will not enjoy the experience. So you had better avoid it."
  
  "I intend to," Dupré said coldly. "But the first thing I am going to do is bend every effort to catch up with that murdering filth and make him suffer. With my bare hands I will kill him — hurt him until he screams for mercy and then choke the devil to death. Why do we wait here, talking? Let us be on our way."
  
  He threw himself toward the study door.
  
  "Just a minute," said Nick sharply. "You're not going anywhere. Where do you think you'll find him? Waiting for you on the road to the plantation? Uh-uh. You have no more idea of where he is than I have. But if he's headed north, I'm the one to find him. You will stay here in Saigon."
  
  Dupré turned a look on him that was almost hatred. "You will deprive me of my vengeance? No, Carter. I will find that man wherever he is and I will kill him in my own way…"
  
  "Dupré. Listen. You'll have your revenge. But Toni died trying to help. Help, don't you understand? You will make a mockery of what she did if you go flying off like a madman and endangering our whole mission and your own work in Saigon. He may still be here. Someone has to stay in the city in case he is. And not only that. Now that you know what he is, you have to take steps to protect your own organization and find out something about his." Nick's eyes bored into his. "I have to leave here and leave immediately or another woman is going to die. Perhaps horribly." Saito, unobtrusive in a corner, stiffened and stepped forward. "Would you like to have that on your conscience?" Nick went on. "You will, unless you stop acting like a wild man and start planning. If we work together and you play your cards right, we should be able to string Lin Tong up by the toes and wreck his entire organization in this city. Do you know, for instance, where he works from, who he works with, who gives him his orders? No, you don't. Well, this is your opportunity. I can't understand a man who'll settle for a petty little slice of revenge instead of the whole cake. Or one who seems to have forgotten that he's supposed to be an intelligence agent — with the lives of a lot of other people in his hands. You'd throw them to the wolves, would you, Dupré?" Nick stopped abruptly. If reason could not reach this man, they were in very bad trouble indeed. There was too much at stake for him to let Dupré go galloping into the jungle with blood lust in his eye. Besides, Nick's orders were very explicit: the La Farge mission had been turned over to AXE, and he was AXE.
  
  "How is it my opportunity?" Dupré asked, almost conversationally. But there was, Nick saw, a gleam of interest in his eyes.
  
  "I've told you. You are now known to Chinese Intelligence — all right, both of us are. And now you also know a little about them, enough to guard yourself. So you must be careful — but not too careful. They will want to find out more, but you won't let them. You are in a position to be the perfect decoy. That, at least. At best, you will be able to use them to lead you to the heart of their operations. There you may find Lin Tong, or the men he works for. You're needed here, Dupré. There'll be too much left undone if you insist on leaving with me. And I can't wait much longer. We have already waited long enough."
  
  A harsh sound came from Saito. "Too long. The little lady is much mourned. I feel great sorrow for her. But other bad things will happen if we do not go at once. Monsieur Dupré, this man speaks true. It is for us to go and for you to do — the things that you know best how to do, here in the city. I must go now. I must go to my lady."
  
  Nick watched Dupré. If he was going to make a nuisance of himself instead of helping, he would have to be… immobilized.
  
  Dupré took a deep breath. "What do you want me to do?" he asked quietly.
  
  Nick let his own breath out in a small explosion of relief.
  
  "First," he said, "you will have to make arrangements about Toni. Say she has gone away or whatever you like, but no one must know what happened to her. No officials, no police. Only friends you know that you can trust. Next, alert your headquarters. Tell them about Lin Tong and have them pass the information on to AXE. I'm not sure that I'll have time for sending reports, and I must rely on you for that. Next, as to your security arrangements…"
  
  The dawn was coming up over the rain-swept city by the time they had finished planning Raoul Dupré's part in the action. Saito, seething with impatience to be off, had padded off in the wet night to pick up certain of Nick's gear from the hotel and come back to arrange for simple food supplies with Maru.
  
  When all the talking trickled to a stop Raoul Dupré sat in silence for a moment and then said something that made Nick stare at him in surprise and then feel a rush of pity.
  
  "Do you know," said Dupré, "she bought new bamboo curtains for the patio…?"
  
  Nick slept for two hours in a musty spare room across the hall from Toni's. His back ached from the creasing of Lin Tong's bullet, but the sleep and the shower that followed made him feel refreshed and ready for the journey.
  
  He made one quick trip into downtown Saigon before leaving. For about forty-five minutes he was closeted with a high-ranking U.S. Army officer who listened to him suspiciously, placed one swift phone call, and then gave him a map. He drew two small circles on it.
  
  "Here's your pick-up point," he said. "Twenty-five miles north-northeast of Saigon. Go by the numbers. Between seven and eight north-south, three and four east-west. There's a hollow there, a clearing. Only place like it anywhere in the vicinity — can't miss it. Anyway, you'll hear the chopper. I can give you a convoy to within five miles. After that you're on your own. You understand that I can't spare any of my men to go with you?" He looked fiercely at Nick. "Too many casualties, far too many casualties already."
  
  Nick nodded. "I know that. This is strictly a two-man job anyway."
  
  "Ah. Good." The officer looked relieved. "He will drop you — here." A thick forefinger pointed to the map. "That's as close as we can get you, I'm afraid. That leaves you with… um… thirty-eight miles to go. Rough territory, riddled with Reds. I could get you closer to the border — here — but that means you'd have to hike along its length to get where you want to go, and that's no picnic either. This is your best bet. Not good, but still the best. No landings, you realize. Hope you're good at climbing."
  
  "Fair enough," Nick answered, wondering how Saito was going to enjoy the ride. "Thanks very much; that'll do fine. About this convoy — when can we leave?"
  
  "You have half an hour. Can you make it? Good. There's a routine patrol leaving then. If you're on it, I can set your pick-up for… let's see… 1330… better make it fourteen hundred hours to be sure. Rough trek, through that thick stuff. Got all the gear you need?"
  
  "All we can carry," said Nick. "We meet at Checkpoint Chester? Right. And thanks again."
  
  When he and Saito met the military convoy at Checkpoint Chester twenty-five minutes later, they looked sufficiently like an American «advisor» and his Vietnamese counterpart to pass casual inspection. That, with any luck, would be all they'd have to face until they left the cover of the patrol.
  
  Several blocks away, Maru chugged off in the ancient auto he had borrowed from a trusted friend to start the travelers on their way.
  
  Nick followed Saito into the transport truck and stretched his legs gratefully. Maru's borrowed car, he refleeted, had come in very handy, but the truck was almost luxurious in comparison.
  
  The American lieutenant in charge of the patrol acknowledged their presence with a curt nod and strode off to have a special word with the lead driver.
  
  In his study, Raoul Dupré locked away his private telephone and made two carefully guarded calls on his standard phone. The first concerned a meeting between himself and a colleague in Dalat. The other dealt with the final disposition of his one and only daughter.
  
  Upstairs, Antoinette Dupré lay under a sheet, not knowing that she was waiting for a limousine to come for her that night and take her to a "holiday resort" where her resting place would be marked, when there was time, by a simple gravestone.
  
  At Checkpoint Chester the convoy started rolling. Nick looked at Saito appraisingly and thought of Dupré's parting words. "I still wish I could go with you. But you are right — there is much for me to do here. And Saito will be a loyal, fine companion."
  
  Saito's face was expressionless. But his big hands clasped and unclasped over his knees in an extremely uncharacteristic gesture. He's afraid, thought Nick. Not for himself; for her. He's afraid we won't get there in time… For the sixth, eighth, tenth time, Nick tried to plot Lin Tong's probable moves since disappearing in the darkness and the rain. A head start to the city, but not a very long one. After that, almost immediate contact with agents in the north. Would he, or they, know exactly where to go? Well, it surely wouldn't take them long to find out. The La Farge plantation had been in the same place for a good seventy-five to eighty years. And in Communist territory since 1954. Lin Tong's people would find the place, ail right.
  
  The only thing to Lin Tong's disadvantage was the normal agent's difficulty of making swift, safe contact with colleagues in the field… which was a straw of hope, if ever there was one. And in the remote likelihood that Lin Tong was so low on resources that he was obliged to go himself, he would probably not have been able to commandeer fast transport until the last lap of his journey — the Communist-held jungles to the north and the leap across the border to the foothills and the plantation. As it was, he had a head start of anything up to six hours, depending on what he'd done before he'd left. If he had left.
  
  The convoy rolled out into the rainsodden countryside between the dripping trees and picked up speed. Nick and Saito sat in silence.
  
  Some miles to the north, Lin Tong was both cursing and exulting. His shoulder wound was giving him dreadful pain and his parting arrangements had taken longer than he had intended. But still, he had succeeded in making a number of quite ingenious plans. Already, his relay system of instruction was under way, and as the hours passed the guerrillas in the south were contacting the guerrillas of the center who would pass the word to the northern jungle groups who would send the message across the border. It had been complicated, to explain that there may be one tall spy, or two or three, but he felt confident that he had made himself abundantly clear. The enemy provocateurs and saboteurs were to be stopped at any cost. And all this, he congratulated himself smugly, without giving away the true purpose of his orders. He had even managed to set up a two-man, full-time watch over Raoul Dupré's town house without letting a word leak out to Brother Arnold. Marvelous! He would head Bitter Almonds yet.
  
  His foot slammed down on the brake and his dark green sports car screamed down the side road toward the waiting jeep and its two occupants. In time he would send both of them on their way, but he would use their driving skill as long as was convenient and thus conserve his strength for the last leg of the journey.
  
  Minutes later, his car was hidden in the thick jungle foliage and he was being driven north in a captured American jeep over paths and tracks known only to the Viet Cong guerrillas.
  
  And many miles further to the north, Madame Claire La Farge stood in the southwest fields of her plantation listening sympathetically to Donh Cam's story about his ailing wife. The other field hands went on working stolidly. They knew that she would speak to each one of them in turn to find out if all was well with them.
  
  "Bring her to the house, Donh Cam," she said. "Otherwise she will not rest, and that is what she needs. Don't wait — go now, and take Lua along with you to help her. I will be along shortly to make sure that your wife follows doctor's orders." Cam bowed deeply, his face alight, and hurried off. Claire turned to one of the youngest of the workers, smiling to herself at his obvious adoration.
  
  "So, Tran. Are you still trying to study at night…?"
  
  She stopped short. Young Tran cocked his head and listened for a distant sound. It grew near and loud and unmistakable. Claire froze.
  
  Her Royal Roadster was coming back.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ready — Gel Set — Go!
  
  
  
  
  There were few other travelers on the muddy road. It was a good enough highway, rain-pocked as it was, to support very much more traffic. But only an occasional car or cart passed the convoy from either direction. Wayfarers on foot were few and far between and they eyed the American vehicles without any visible sign of cordiality.
  
  Nick eyed them back, thinking to himself that there was no knowing which of them had been swayed by the Viet Cong propagandists with their poisonous fantasies about American «neo-colonialism» and «tyrannical» attempts to smash Vietnam's "patriotic revolution."
  
  "Peaceful in the country," he commented thoughtfully.
  
  "Huh." The G.I. sitting next to him made a sour face. "Wish I had X-ray eyes. Bet I could pick out enough Viet Cong back in that thick stuff there to outnumber us ten to Nick raised his eyebrows. "So far down?"
  
  "Yeah. You're new, huh? Hell, we've had guerrilla action within five miles of Saigon. Cocky bastards, getting closer every time. Christ, they practically own the jungle south of here. All they left us is a little open space in the middle so we can go around in circles in it. Jeeze, some crazy war, this is."
  
  He snorted with disgust and thrust a limp cigarette between his lips. "That's why you see so few villagers around," he added. "The action's been so close lately, they don't wanna get screwed up in it. Saigon they won't go into for love or money. I think those riots and strikes and bomb-throwings and burnings scare 'em worse than the Commies. But hell, what's the difference. They all start from the same place, don't they? I mean all them riots and things. Yeah, sure they do. In the jungle with the Congs." He scowled and puffed as though he were spitting a guerrilla in the eye.
  
  Nick looked at his second-hand pocket watch. It shouldn't be long now.
  
  The convoy left the highway and turned into a narrow, bumpy road pitted with rain-filled pockets. A hazy sun burned in through the back of the truck. Nick sweltered in the building heat. The sweat trickling down the faces of his G.I. companions didn't help to make him feel any cooler. Only Saito seemed unconscious of discomfort.
  
  At long last the convoy ground to a stop. A barked order traveled down the line of vehicles and men began tumbling out onto the soggy road. Nick nodded at Saito and the two of them leapt lightly from the truck.
  
  One by one the men peeled off into the fern and bamboo jungle, scattering down the rough paths into the interior.
  
  What their maneuver was or how long they would be at it was no concern of Nick's. It was good cover for him and Saito, and that was all that mattered.
  
  The young lieutenant met him at the roadside. "Last stop for you," he said. "Got your bearings?"
  
  Nick nodded. "Due northeast from here. We'll make it. Thanks for the buggy ride."
  
  "Y'welcome. Good luck to you, whatever you're up to. Watch out where you put your feet — booby traps all over. The first coupla miles should be fairly easy, but after that it may get rough. Chances are no one has seen us stop, but if they have they'll recognize this kind of bush-beating maneuver. We do it often. So — after a while I give the signal, the rest of the boys come back, you don't. That's all I can do."
  
  "And that's a lot," Nick said sincerely.
  
  There was a wet heat under the trees and the light was dim and deceptive. Nick walked on in silence for a while, getting accustomed to the shadowy dimness and surveying his surroundings. Saito padded along quietly three paces behind him.
  
  The going was easy for about ten minutes. Then the underbrush began to grow thicker, the trees taller, the mosquitoes louder and more ravenous. Nick slowed and came to a stop beneath a thick-stemmed, heavily foliated tree. Thick bush crowded halfway up its trunk and formed a shield that could only be chopped through with a machete. Saito scowled and pointed. There was a clear space only yards away that they could easily get through. Nick shook his head and held up a silencing hand. He listened.
  
  Only the mosquitoes spoke. From somewhere in the distance, probably quite near the road, came the faint sound of some kind of movement through the trees. The sound was going away from them.
  
  Then there was nothing but the mosquitoes. They seemed louder now… No, it was the sound of water, a stream gliding and humming through the jungle.
  
  Nick's eyes swept the thick growth around them, wishing — like the G.I. — that he had X-ray eyes. Nothing moved but the ants and ticks and little flying things.
  
  He turned to Saito and grinned companionably. "Okay, Saito. I just wanted to be sure we wouldn't be caught with our pants down. It's time to change. Then we'll move on with all possible speed." His voice was a low but audible murmur.
  
  Nick was swinging the light pack down from his back. He motioned Saito to do the same with his. He slid off his Army boots and khakis and pulled on the faded half-uniform, half-rag characteristic of the guerrilla. Saito hesitated for a minute and then stripped off his borrowed fatigues.
  
  "Good suit," he commented. "Is possible to keep it?"
  
  Nick shook his head. "I'm sorry. Not this time. If we are caught and searched I don't want you to be found with American Army gear. You won't be popular. We'll have to leave them here."
  
  Saito pursed his lips and nodded. "It is a pity; but you speak truth." He finished his changing in silence and watched Nick with growing interest.
  
  Nick took their discarded clothes and boots and pushed them deep into the undergrowth. His feet, like Saito's, were now encased in sandals, but instead of being the rope-soled variety the sandals were made of rubber tires. These, too, were characteristic of the guerrilla's makeshift but thoroughly practical costume. The belt he buckled around his waist was a miniature arsenal. In addition to his cartridge pouch and a tiny first-aid kit containing some unusual supplies, it held three hand grenades, the Luger, a machete, a suitably battered flashlight, and a long wire frame which made Saito stare in puzzlement. It was the latest minor triumph of Hawk's ingenious Armory Department, a very light but sturdy magnesium alloy shaped into the outline of a rifle stock. The butt end fitted snugly against a man's shoulder; the front was slotted so that Wilhelmina would slide in swiftly and stay firmly in place.
  
  Nick saw Saito staring and decided to give him a swift demonstration. He clipped Wilhelmina into the slot and swung the rifle to his shoulder. It had taken less than three seconds to pull Wilhelmina from his belt and complete the move.
  
  "Au!" breathed Saito. "A rifle!"
  
  Nick grinned. "When I need one." He reached into his pack and tossed Saito the second belt. "You told me you had your own gun and machete, so I didn't get you those. But you may have some use for the rest. Have you used grenades?"
  
  Saito's eyes widened as he took the belt. "Not for many years," he said, busy buckling. "These are a little different. But I know how to use them."
  
  "From working with La Petite Fleur?"
  
  Saito nodded. His shoulders straightened proudly, "The finest leader that a man could know."
  
  "I believe that," Nick said quietly, slipping the tiny compass from the pack into his pocket and then dipping back into the pack. "Now I hope we're not going to have much use for these things on this trip, but in case we do — here you are." He handed Saito a little bundle containing a nylon hammock, a light blanket, and a folded rectangle of waterproof cloth. His own bedding was neatly stashed away inside his pack, which was growing smaller and lighter by the minute. Besides his sleeping gear, it now contained only a small supply of food and a canteen of coffee. So did Saito's. "We'll take short rests, if any, but we may as well be prepared. Have a look at this map while I finish getting ready. Won't be long now."
  
  He gave the map to Saito and reached into his miniature first-aid kit for two tiny triangular patches and a tube. He stuck one patch at the outside corner of each eye and then carefully rubbed the contents of the tube over his face, neck, hands and arms. Saito looked up from the map and stared at him.
  
  "No, I don't expect this'll fool anyone for long," said Nick, "but it should help to make me a bit less obvious." He wiped his hands and tied a thick, rolled piece of cloth around his forehead to protect his eyes against the clutching thorns and branches of the forest. "Okay, let's go over the map. This circle…" He pointed to it."…is where we'll be picked up. This is where we are now, a little over four miles south of the pick-up point. The second circle, here, is where we'll be dropped. From there we'll have to make our own way. It's thick, hilly territory for the most part, and then it flattens out into fairly open country for the rest of the distance until we reach the foothills and the farm. You're familiar with this part of the territory?" His finger stabbed at the northern jungle area marked on the map.
  
  Saito nodded with satisfaction. "I have been through there. It is not easy traveling, but it is better than being out in the open. That is not bad terrain at all for those who wish to move without being seen. Of course there will be watching for us, will there not?" His eyes were shrewd with understanding. "It will not be so simple as it was for me on the way down, when no one knew where I was traveling, or why. It is good that we are well prepared for trouble." His hand went involuntarily to his belted waist.
  
  Good man, Saito, Nick thought to himself. He had wondered if Saito realized just how drastically the interference of Lin Tong could affect their race to the plantation. He was pleased that he did not have to spell it out.
  
  "Yes, I think we can expect some hazards," he said, in the understatement of the week. "But the worst of them should come very close to the end. Until then we just run the usual risk of booby traps and snipers — nothing specially arranged for us. But the closer we get the more cautious we're going to have to be. They can't guard the entire jungle, but they can guard the routes to the plantation. All right, let's be off." He folded the thin map paper into a small square and slid it behind his forehead sweatband where it would no doubt get a little damp but would stay legible — and hidden.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Lin Tong lay on a pile of army blankets in the back of the bounding jeep. Every jolt — and there seemed to be one with every yard of this hellish track — sent a sharp twinge through his shoulder and down his uncomfortably sprawled body. But they were making excellent time. Sore and tired though he was, he could well afford to be pleased. He changed position on his pile of blankets and willed himself to rest. Later he would not be able to.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "So your Saito has not yet returned, Madame La Farge?"
  
  General Ho Van Minh smiled at her sympathetically. "I can well understand how you must miss his services," he went on smoothly. "He has been away for at least two or three days now, has he not? So inconvenient, when I know you rely so much upon him. And it does seem strange that none of your people should know why he went off to the village of — ah — Hon Du. I have asked many of them why he might be delayed, thinking perhaps that he may have a woman that you know nothing of, and yet none of them seem to have any idea of the nature of his mission."
  
  "There is no reason why they should," Claire said icily. "Their curiosity is not unbounded, as yours appears to be. Perhaps you are the one to tell me why he has been delayed. Your soldiers have been known to shoot first and then steal afterwards. There is no road, no village, in this country that is safe from them. God help you if anything has happened to him."
  
  Minn's constant smile was very gentle and unpleasant.
  
  "I do not need God, Madame. I think you do. The time has come for us to stop this fencing. You will have noticed that this time I brought a small detachment of my soldiers with me. At this moment they are on guard at various points throughout the plantation. But if you do not give me the information that I want, several things will start happening quite soon. First, I am afraid that you yourself will suffer. Only a little bit, in the beginning, so that you can fully appreciate what is being done to the loyal people of your plantation. Then perhaps you will be prepared to suffer more, or you will condescend to talk to me. On the other hand, perhaps you will enjoy seeing what my men are capable of doing to your beloved workers."
  
  It seemed to Claire that the world had suddenly stopped turning. Minh's eyes were little red pools of anticipation… and what he was anticipating was too horrible to contemplate. He would torture her brutally, she had no doubt of that. This she could bear, she thought. But she could not bear it if he were to hurt young Tran, or Donh Cam's sick wife, or Donh himself, or fragile little Lua, or any of her people.
  
  "Why are you threatening me?" she asked. "I don't even know what it is that you're trying to find out." Her right hand, like Saito's hand so many miles away, reached involuntarily for the belt she wore. But her hand, unlike Saito's, halted in its course and brushed the air instead. "I have no secrets from you, General Minn."
  
  "You are closer to the truth than you think, dear lady. In fact, it is no longer any secret to me that several nights ago — a night we have spoken of before — there was a singular activity in the fallow fields. An activity suggesting a burial." He grinned wolfishly. A soundless voice inside Claire said — "Oh, no; oh God, oh no!" "Now I wonder what might have been buried? I wonder with such interest that I intend finding out. So what I shall do is leave you again to think things over — but leave you in the company of certain of my men who will thoroughly search your house, your grounds, your fields, and question all your people. Then, I think, we will both be ready to talk."
  
  "It seems that you already know far more than I do. By all means search. I hope you find some stray dog's bone for all your efforts. I'm quite sure you will find nothing else." Fear and anger seethed within her. Somehow this mincing, brutish creature had come upon some shadow of the truth. And he would surely not be satisfied until he had the substance.
  
  Minh shook his head. "You are wrong, Madame. I'm afraid that you are flattering yourself that all your loyal people are all your loyal people. I assure you that my information is correct. Unfortunately it is incomplete. I shall complete it." He bowed, a mock courtesy that made her want to kick him in his little rounded belly. "When you have thought about what I can do to you and your happy family of slaves, I think you will be only too pleased to tell me about that stray dog Moreau and what he came here for. And what message he brought that sent Saito off to — where was it again? — Ah, yes. The village of Hon Du."
  
  "You may show yourself out," said Claire, turning away to hide the agony in her eyes. "Lua is busy. And so am I."
  
  He chuckled his way to the door. Claire heard his quick little steps fade and his harsh voice grate an order. The car door slammed.
  
  She wondered how many hours of grace she had.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The jeep lurched mightily and flung itself onto a smooth, wide strip of roadway. Lin Tong rubbed his shoulder and cursed. Then he realized where they were. There were miles of swift, straight road ahead before they came to the next roadblock or checkpoint. He knew that, before the next hurdle loomed up ahead, his drivers would take to the narrow tracks again. But in the meantime the ride would be almost pleasant. He sighed comfortably and drifted back to sleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The stillness of the jungle was so intense that it was almost a sound. When they stopped, the silence pulled at Nick's ears, and when they moved he thought they sounded like a herd of elephants.
  
  And yet they made very little sound. Nick padded in the lead, searching out gaps in the undergrowth and dodging the groping, tick-hung fronds with a quiet dexterity that suggested a lifetime in the jungle rather than in the bars and boudoirs of the world's most sinful and sophisticated cities. Saito flitted after him, equally untiring and adroit, his face almost without expression. But if Claire could have seen him she would have seen an expression in those bland eyes, and she would have recognized it for what it was — a glimmer of admiration for the big man ahead who moved so quickly yet so surely.
  
  Even the mosquitoes seemed to be taking a siesta.
  
  Nick slowed. There was a brightness up ahead, piercing through the tangle of stalks and trailing leaves, that suggested a break in the clustering trees.
  
  Saito made an almost soundless sound behind him.
  
  "Clearing," he whispered. "Small hollow. That is the place."
  
  "Okay. Slowly, now," Nick cautioned.
  
  They edged their way through another twenty yards of clawing brush until the sun grew very bright and they stood looking out on something like a clearing. Except that it wasn't exactly clear.
  
  Tangled piles of barbed wire lay scattered about like obstacles in a very tough Marine camp training course — or like hazards especially placed for entrapping paratroopers.
  
  There weren't going to be any paratroopers. But there were going to be two men trying to hitch a ride. And those things looked immovable.
  
  Well, that was something that would have to be faced when the chopper came. But there was something else that was going to have to be considered right now. That smell of smoke, for instance, and the faint scattered sounds that drifted back to them with the smoke as they stood there in their own silence.
  
  Nick sniffed the air and listened. Saito, now beside him, stood alert and poised like some outsized, two-legged pointer.
  
  The sounds separated into muted voices and the clank of utensils. There was an encampment of some sort uncomfortably close by. And according to his information, there was no village or South Vietnamese bivouac anywhere in the vicinity. That is, there wasn't supposed to be. There were such things as nomadic tribes, of course, but they didn't usually travel around with bundles of barbed wire. Least of all would they spread them about, useless but for one purpose, in a jungle clearing that would have served them better as a camp site. On the other hand, perhaps the makers of the sounds and smoke had nothing to do with the wire obstructions… but that was most unlikely. Nick looked at his weather-beaten pocket watch. They had made good time; there was still half an hour before the chopper was due. During that time they could scout the camp, find out whether it contained friend, foe or neutral, and wave the chopper off if necessary.
  
  Nick shook his head at his own thoughts. There was going to be no waving off — they had to hitch that ride whatever happened. And in the meantime perhaps whoever it was that was taking a lunch break up yonder would strike camp and silently steal away.
  
  But they did no such thing. The sounds began to grow louder and resolved themselves into the sounds of men moving through brush, occasionally hacking at it, stopping once in a while to make little rustling noises, and then moving on — toward the clearing.
  
  Nick was beginning to hope that they would have crossed the clearing — or better still, be in the midst of it — by the time the helicopter came.
  
  But they were still stirring about in the undergrowth when he heard the distant chopping sound. Saito sucked in his breath. The rustling stopped for a moment, replaced by low, sibilant voices. The helicopter engine noise grew louder.
  
  So did the voices and the rustling.
  
  
  
  
  
  Almost Everything Is Jake
  
  
  
  
  "We'll have to make a run for it, Saito," Nick whispered. "Keep your gun handy. If the pilot knows his stuff he'll be able to send the ladder down between the wire bundles. After I've signaled I want you to climb up first. Have your gun ready even while you're climbing. Can you manage?"
  
  Saito nodded silently, his slitted eyes staring out into the clearing.
  
  "They're coming now," he muttered.
  
  The helicopter droned downward and passed low overhead to circle the fringes of the clearing like some undecided, lumbering moth. Nick motioned to Saito and added out into the tangled clearing, his head down and his body running at a crouch. He zigzagged through the maze of spiky obstacles to a point where there actually was enough clear space for two men to stand close together, and he looked up to see the whirlybird hovering yards away and still quite high above, waiting for the signal. Nick waved. His arms made a V, then an X, a V and an X, a V and an X…
  
  The craft hummed closer and started lowering steadily. The sounds in the jungle had almost stopped, except for a series of soft scrunches and little clicks.
  
  A young face peered through the Perspex and grinned down at them. The ladder dropped quickly and swayed above their heads. Nick waved again — this time in a signal that meant Danger. The young face above them stiffened warily. Nick swung his arm to point at the covering woods that now were absolutely silent, and his hand went to his belt.
  
  "Saito!"
  
  Saito leapt like some huge and graceful panther, his one hand ready with his gun even while he climbed.
  
  Nick saw them then — two men half-hidden behind a low bush, crouched over a machine gun. Shadowy shapes waited silently behind them.
  
  He clawed at the dangling ladder and entwined an arm around a section of the swinging sidepiece, feeling himself being snatched into the air and dangled there like a puppet on a string. Now, if he did what he was expected to, he would turn his back on the tangled forest and devote himself to holding on. But he was not about to do what was expected of him…
  
  One deafening shot slammed past his ear, a signal and an opening move, and in that instant he pulled out the pin, heard two answering shots from Saito, and threw.
  
  The chattering burst of machine-gun fire sent splinters of death spitting through the air inches below his feet… and then came apart in a hideous crash of tearing sound. He saw the cloud of dust and smoke, the ugly hole in the foliage and the mess of tangled forms; heard the cries of men in agony and the stray, wild bullets whining through the air; and felt himself being lifted high and swung over the treetops. A ragged man in clothes much like Nick's burst out of cover at a zigzagging trot, flinging a rifle to his shoulder and throwing himself behind a barbed wire barricade.
  
  That won't do you a bit of good, my friend, Nick thought grimly. This time Wilhelmina spat out her message of death and the man slumped down onto the little bayonet spikes of the wire.
  
  Then they were high over the trees and heading north. The ladder slowly disappeared into the cramped interior of the craft, taking Nick and Saito with it.
  
  "Sorry I let you dangle out there so long." The pilot grinned at them cheerfully and jerked a thumb at the narrow seat in the rear. "Sit down and make yourselves at home. Yeah, that's the only place. No luxuries on this bird, fellas. Glad you could fire back; I couldn't. You okay?"
  
  "Fine," said Nick, making room for Saito and himself. "Neat pick-up; thanks. My name's Carter, by the way.
  
  This is Saito."
  
  "Yeah, welcome aboard. Call me Jake." He shot a look of curiosity over his shoulder. "Can I ask why you want to go to that hell-forsaken part of the world?"
  
  "Sorry, no," said Nick, struggling to find room for his long legs. "It's too embarrassing to explain that we're butterfly collectors in search of a rare and wonderful species found only in that region of outer purgatory. Besides, I don't think you'd believe me."
  
  "I get it," Jake chuckled. "Top secret stuff, huh?"
  
  "Yeah, top secret," Nick said drily. "So top that you don't know there is a secret. In fact, you don't even know that we exist."
  
  "Izzat so," Jake said thoughtfully. "Say, do you have any idea of what you'll be getting into after I drop you…?"
  
  The craft picked up speed and chugged along over the green hell of the jungle. Jake talked on, giving vivid and sometimes illuminating details about what might lie ahead. Nick fed him questions, hoping to glean anything that might be of help. Saito listened without comment, nodding occasionally, once or twice shaking his head and pursing his lips, once smiling at a particularly lurid burst of youthful exaggeration. Nick caught his eye and grinned back. He liked this fellow Saito more and more. And he could sense that Saito felt pretty much the same way about him.
  
  The green stuff below rose and fell as it climbed up mountains and dipped down into valleys As far as Nick could see it was almost unbroken. Even the few small clearings and narrow trails he could once in a while pick out looked like tiny deathtraps between the clutching trees, rather than places where people could camp, walk… or land on from the sky.
  
  But there was a landing place waiting for them somewhere up ahead. The brass in Saigon, young Jake, and Saito, all agreed on that. Unless it had become unusable within the last few days…
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Lin Tong was awake and feeling almost rested.
  
  He sat in the back of the smooth-riding jeep having a meal that he felt he richly deserved. His drivers had changed places once and the first was reclining in the spare front seat, his head thrown back against the edge of the back rest and his nose emitting the most incredible snores. They were making remarkably good time, almost as good — well, about half as good — as if he had been able to travel by air, and without all that trouble of takeoff and landing. Also, he was quite sure that he was well ahead of that American, who would have had to do something about Toni and…
  
  Tires screamed beneath him and the jeep came to a jolting stop. Gears slammed noisily and the road started going in the wrong direction.
  
  "In the name of hell! What are you doing?"
  
  "Going back," the driver said laconically.
  
  "I can see that, you fool! But why?"
  
  "New roadblock up ahead. We will have to find another side road. Unless of course you wish to explain to the Americans…"
  
  "All right, that's enough," Lin Tong snarled back. "Just keep on driving — but smoothly!"
  
  The driver grunted and went on backing up. Several minutes later he made a swerving turn that made Lin Tong yelp with agony. Once again they were on a narrow forest track that shook up every bone in his lanky body.
  
  Lon Tong swore bitterly. "We do not have the time for this! Next time you see such an obstacle I will shoot my way through before I go through another patch like this."
  
  The driver eyed him in the mirror.
  
  "Then you should have told me that before. But do not concern yourself about the time — on this section we can make up several miles. It is harder than the main road, but it is more direct. We will gain time here."
  
  "Then you should have taken it in the first place," Lin Tong grumbled. But he sank back on his blankets feeling satisfied. These men knew what they were doing. They should; they had been trained by the Communist Chinese and had worked their way down from the north so patiently and skillfully that only their Chinese masters — and Lin Tong was one of them — knew that they had infiltrated the southland. And only he, Lin Tong, had thought to call upon their services.
  
  Now he held two high cards in his play for the leadership of Bitter Almonds. First, he had the only lead to the missing spy Moreau; and second, that very lead was the final proof he needed against Raoul Dupré. When this action was over he would show up Brother Arnold for the incompetent old fool he was…
  
  Lin Tong's handsome face twisted into a pleased smirk. There might be other compensations, too. How old and ugly, for instance, was this Madame La Farge? And was there a husband in the background? If there was, he could easily be taken care of. Pity that he had not been able to find out much more than the location before he had left. But he would soon know if the woman was alone. Young or old, he could make her crave his maleness. He was very good at doing that.
  
  He began to calculate the time he might expect to arrive at the plantation and wonder what Madame would be doing. It would be quite late that night and she would probably be in bed. He would enjoy meeting her that way.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  They had already turned the house upside down and slashed brutally at locked doors that could easily have been opened with the keys she offered. But they had preferred to destroy the lovely woodwork and rip down exquisite drapes without her help. Now they were in the garden, tearing at the plants as if each one hid a spy's dead body.
  
  Madame followed them slowly, her heart aching for the home that was her last link with Paul, loathing the senseless destruction, worrying terribly about what would become of all the people who had worked for her throughout the years. Already there were brutal men tramping through the fields, shouting questions and thrusting shovels into the earth that fed them.
  
  But they had not yet laid hands on her or any of the men and women she employed. Something had made her stop thinking of her employees as "her people." She looked across the garden and the fields, realizing for the first time in years that she was not just the aloof and gracious lady of the manor nor all these people her undeniably well-treated serfs. She was, in fact, hardly better than a benevolent dictator who had no right at all to regard anyone as "hers." It was therefore not at all surprising that one or more of them was not a loyal servant. He might well have thought that his first duty spas toward the People's Republic of North Vietnam.
  
  So she felt no resentment against her hidden enemy, whoever he might be. But she did feel deep concern about the future of all the people whose lives and livelihood depended on her and the plantation… both of which seemed about to come to an untidy end.
  
  Claire La Farge sank down in the shade of a rain-damp tree. Her only hope was Saito. God please make him hurry back with help!
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Jake had run out of chatter and was singing his way over the treetops. Nick kept his eyes on the scene below, spotting the occasional jungle hamlet and seeing the panorama change from dense forest to cleared valley to cultivated land and back again to almost impenetrable forest. For the first time he allowed his mind to dwell on what might lie at the end of this tangled trail. He knew without a doubt that Moreau's message, if there really was such a message, was bound to be of vital importance. He was sure that someone would be trying to beat him to the plantation. He was aware that there was a concentration of North Vietnamese forces within a few miles of its fences. He felt certain that he could trust Saito implicitly. But Madame Claire La Farge was a complete enigma to him.
  
  "Tell me, Saito," Nick asked quietly. "Why has Madame been allowed to remain on the plantation?"
  
  Saito wrenched himself up from thought and stared at him. "Rice," he said succinctly.
  
  "What?"
  
  "Rice. Also some tea, a little rubber, other things. Much food, like the south. But the north, that part of the north, is very short. Guerrillas grow their own crops. But not the People's Army." His nostrils twitched with contempt. "Wherever they go, they steal and forage. And of course they kill. So Madame was obliged to bargain with the enemy."
  
  "Oh, she was," said Nick. So Madame had made a deal to save her rich plantation and her once elegant neck! He hid his contempt and asked mildly, "What kind of bargain?"
  
  Saito looked steadily into his eyes. "To provide food for the armies in exchange for keeping the plantation. In this way she would save the land and many fives. Also she would continue to provide a means of living for all the people who knew no other way of life." He paused for a moment and then added: "I am her foreman. She consulted with me first, and I with all the others. It was not for her sake that she did it. It was for us."
  
  Nick nodded slowly, knowing that he had been reproached. "I see," he said. "She must be a very fine woman indeed."
  
  "She is," Saito said shortly, and turned his gaze away.
  
  Nick felt abashed. Saito had seen through his suspicions and rubbed his nose in them. He hoped that he had not antagonized this gentle giant. But at least he had set a lingering doubt to rest — Madame had not sold out to the Reds. And if they were using her as a decoy, then why Lin Tong's curious involvement in this affair…? As an agent himself — which he obviously was — he would have known about such a plot. Or would he?
  
  "More questions, Saito," he said in French. "You saw Moreau yourself. Is there any doubt in your mind that he might have been anything other than he seemed?"
  
  "He was dead," said Saito, looking into the distance. "He had been beaten, starved and tortured. And his feet were bleeding sores from running. How can I guess at anything I did not see?"
  
  They were both silent after that.
  
  The helicopter whirled its way into a gentle mist that thickened as they proceeded north. Jake stopped singing. The Perspex canopy became blurred with rain.
  
  Nick closed his eyes and made himself relax. He dozed, and dreamed of Toni lying wet and dead on a lonely beach.
  
  "Wet," said a voice. "A dead drop in the wet."
  
  He came awake instantly. The mist was thick, steaming fog swirling around them. Jake was looking over his shoulder, his young face creased with worry.
  
  "If this doesn't clear up in a half hour or so, I don't know what we're going to do. I can't see a thing down there. God knows what I'll be dropping you into."
  
  Nick stared downward into a blanket of white. "We can't get any lower?"
  
  "Not a chance. I'm low as I can go right now without nicking the trees. That stuff could be right down on the forest floor and we wouldn't know it until we hit."
  
  Nick thought it over, sparing a bitter mental comment for the weather forecaster. "Okay. Nothing we can do but keep on going. You'll know when we get there?"
  
  "Sure, that I'll know. But I don't know what it's going to be like underneath."
  
  "Well, don't worry about that now. If necessary you'll have to drop us blind."
  
  "Ha!" Jake snorted. "You won't stand a chance in hell…"
  
  "I think we will, if we don't try to take it too fast. Of course, there's bound to be some risk to you…"
  
  "Me!" Jake scowled at him. "So what's with me, dad? Mine not to reason why, mine but to drop you and bugger off. You just give the orders and I'll drop you where you want to go. I don't give a damn about the risk to me, you — sir."
  
  "Hold your horses, Jake," Nick said mildly. "You may not care, but I do. Now this is what I think we might try to do…"
  
  He told him. It was a fragile plan, but the best he could come up with until they knew what waited for them at Point B.
  
  Half an hour later they were less than three miles from their drop-off point and forty-one miles from the La Farge plantation. And the rain fog was thicker than ever. The rotor blades churned slowly through the soupy air.
  
  "It's low here," Jake said quietly. "Not what we think of as jungle, with tall trees and all. Scrub and vines — stuff like that. Can't see it yet, but I know that's what it's like. You ready?"
  
  "We're ready."
  
  The craft hovered like a bee above a flower.
  
  "Okay. Out you go."
  
  The ladder snaked out and dropped into the fog. Nick went out with it; Saito followed several rungs behind him.
  
  Nick knew that the sun was still somewhere above the horizon because he could see gray light through the blanketing fog, but that was all he could see. He felt himself swinging slowly through the warm, wet air, and then he saw the dim, roughly rounded shapes below him. Bushes.
  
  Then there were no more shapes. He sensed rather than saw the bare space beneath him. This was it! His hand tugged gently at Saito's trouser leg and…
  
  A sound like that of a wooden bridge collapsing, its timbers cracking and splintering under a wall of water, exploded through the fog. His body jerked as something bit into the ladder and ripped away a portion of the sturdy cord. The fingers of his left hand burned as though he had dipped them into fire. Then his whole world was filled with the ugly chattering sound and the hideous lurching movement that seemed to be tearing him apart.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "They're ours! They're ours! Give them the signal, you blind, you blazing fools!" Lin Tong screamed. "Can't you see they're ours!"
  
  The horn of the jeep spoke sharply. One two three four One two three four One two three — Four. And out.
  
  The chattering, splintering sounds stopped as suddenly as they had begun. The jeep rolled over once and lay in the wet ditch with its wheels spinning uselessly in the air. Lin Tong picked himself up and scrambled out. The hard nose of a rifle stared him in the face. Behind it he saw a small man in ragged uniform. Beyond the man stood another with a smoking machine gun.
  
  Lin Tong's hands went above his head… and clasped into a gesture known to every Chinese spy in Vietnam and every Viet Cong guerrilla. It meant: Hold your fire. Our cause is one.
  
  They lowered their weapons and watched him impassively.
  
  "In my left pocket there is money and a letter," Lin Tong said quickly. "The money is yours and the letter contains hidden identification which I will show to you when I lower my hands. You will see that I am on a mission of extreme importance." His voice was trembling, and he knew it. But he must get these devils' help or everything was lost.
  
  One of them reached into his pocket and leafed through the folding money. Then he peered at the letter. "This I do not understand," the man said gutturally. "You will have to come with me to the Commandant." Lin Tong choked back a curse and followed him. He did not know that he was twenty-five miles south and some miles east of the American named Carter and the Japanese called Saito. He would have cursed out loud if he had known. But, on the other hand, he would have been immensely cheered if he could have seen them dangling with their heads in dribbling, blinding fog and their feet in hell.
  
  
  
  
  
  Claire Has Company
  
  
  
  
  "So sorry, Madame. We have found nothing. It is regrettable that my sources of information appear to be so faulty." General Ho Van Minh felt very suave and sure of himself. His sources might not have been completely accurate, but he was quite sure that they were essentially correct. Corpus delicti be damned; corpses were much too easy to come by for him to be bothered by such details as digging up old ones. "Perhaps you would care to correct my wrong impression by answering a few questions. And it may be convenient for us to do our talking in the wine cellar."
  
  "The wine cellar!" Claire's eyes flickered over him and to the stocky aide blocking the door. If she could be alone with the General she might have some chance of — well, stalling somehow, until help arrived. But the cellar seemed like a most uncomfortable place for discussion. "If it's refreshment you require, General, I can easily have it sent up here."
  
  The General laughed. "So can I, my lady; so can I. But I am thinking not so much of refreshment as of privacy. You will be so good as to lead the way. Sergeant!" The aide snapped to attention. "Come with us."
  
  "General Minh." Claire stood her ground and looked him firmly in the eye. "You have practically admitted that there is nothing to this wild story of yours. Now what is this nonsense of going down to the cellar — of all places — to talk about something that doesn't even exist?"
  
  "Oh, it exists, Madame; it most certainly exists."
  
  "Only in your twisted mind, General Minh," Claire said through her teeth.
  
  Twin points of bright light from his eyes stared at her face and his lips twitched.
  
  "General, sir!" The aide clicked his heels. A second man now stood beside him, bright-eyed with excitement. "Forgive insignificant interruption, but Corporal reporting, sir."
  
  "Well, what is it, what is it?"
  
  The newcomer spoke rapidly in the dialect of the northwestern villages. Claire's heart turned over and seemed to drop slowly through the floor.
  
  The General turned to her. A little red spot had appeared on each of his fleshy cheeks. "So, Madame. A body has been found. It exists, Madame — and not only in my twisted mind!"
  
  His hand lashed out and struck her sharply across the face.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Nick's legs jackknifed upward reflexively to dodge the spitting hail of bullets. The torn ladder swung wildly beneath the lurching helicopter, and above him Nick heard Saito's startled "Gah!" of sound. For one blessed moment the deadly rattle from below stopped as if for breath, and in that moment the wobbling machine steadied and soared off at a high, sharp tangent. The next burst bit into empty sky.
  
  The rotor arms whirred briskly overhead as Jake zigzagged the small craft toward the north. Nick felt something warm and wet trickling down his hand. He knew it wasn't water.
  
  "You all right, Saito?" The rushing air caught at his breath, blowing his words away. But Saito heard and answered. His words whipped past Nick's ear.
  
  "All right, sir. But this flying is for birds."
  
  But Jake was in his element. His expert hands guided the humming craft well above the treetops and yet low enough so that his outside passengers could take quick advantage of any break.
  
  And, after fifteen minutes of breathless clutching at his flying trapeze, Nick knew the break had come. The rain had stopped. The early evening sun was burning into the blanket of fog… burning so hard that it melted the thick camouflage into thin, drifting wisps.
  
  The misty wisps below them drifted languidly over an open clearing, encircled by low trees and invitingly covered with soft fern and moss.
  
  "Geronimo!" yelled Nick.
  
  The helicopter gave a small, burp-like lurch and circled once over the clearing. Then it wobbled gently downward, edging toward the trees rather than toward the center, and trembled to a mid-air stop. Nick jumped toward the trees, his arms reaching for — and clutching — a sodden, mossy trunk. He turned his head to watch how Saito fared; saw him leap lightly, land — lose his footing as the earth opened up beneath him, and heard him yell out in alarm. Nick flung himself toward him, face down on the moss, and shot out both arms to grab at Saito's disappearing figure. He seized a shoulder and a clawing hand and pulled with all his strength. The big body slowly came upward and toward him, its face a twisted mask of surprise and pain, the coolie hat flung far back on the head at a crazy angle.
  
  "A devil's trap!" gasped Saito, heaving his muscular hindquarters out of the partly exposed pit. Nick gave one last mighty pull and Saito landed beside him, swearing angrily. There was a jagged hole on the inside of the big man's left calf, just beginning to ooze out the rich red blood. But at least, thank God, the man was safe — and living.
  
  The helicopter's engine coughed. Nick looked up and saw Jake's anxious face peering down at them. He waved back reassuringly, a saluting sort of gesture meaning Thanks, We're fine, Goodbye, Good Luck. Jake's face split into its usual cheerful grin and he waved back. The craft tilted slightly and then rose, trembling at first and then with gathering strength. Saito looked up and raised his arm in a farewell salutation.
  
  Then the two men left on land glanced involuntarily at the thing that had been lying in wait for them. Only a small section was exposed, but that was enough to give them the whole picture. Beneath the shallow covering of moss and branches was a deep pit studded with long bamboo stakes sharpened to narrow, razor-sharp points. What would have happened to Saito if he had landed directly on the pit was… unthinkable. Nick shuddered and thought fleetingly of another pit, much like this except that it had been in Africa and it had claimed a victim.
  
  He pushed the thought aside and motioned Saito further back among the trees while he thrust a hand into his small first-aid kit and watched the helicopter clear the top of the leaves, veering west to make a sweeping turn back to its home base in the south. Nick opened the small container he had taken from the kit and turned his attention to Saito's bleeding leg. The chopping sounds above them began a gradual fade.
  
  "Hold still. Let me put some of this on." Nick smeared the antibiotic over the open wound and then started to tear a strip off his shirt. Saito stopped him. "No, sir. My shirt. You will need yours for your hand!"
  
  The sound of tearing shirts suddenly became magnified incredibly into a whining, screaming crash that filled the clearing and — it seemed — the entire sky. It came from high above and a couple of miles away, and there was a blazing ball of fire in the sky. It seemed to hang there for a moment, burning with a terrible brightness, and then it fell. There was another tearing sound. A shattering, reverberating explosion. Then there was silence.
  
  Saito's hands dropped away from his torn shirt. "May the gods give him rest," he said reverently.
  
  There was no encore to the dreadful sound; no suggestion of a search party, no machetes thwacking at the bush. Nick and Saito eased their way deeper into the green tangle and finished their bandaging under cover of a heavy thicket. Then they padded cautiously into the snarled mess of reeds and stalks and sticky leaves that lay between them and the border.
  
  Because their intended drop had proved to be impossible they were now some miles further north than they had hoped to be at this time. It was an advantage paid for with one helicopter and one life. The time was now a little more than thirty minutes past seven and there were approximately twenty-eight miles to go.
  
  On foot.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Lin Tong was no longer choking on his curses. The guerrilla Commandant had been very helpful indeed. It had taken him a few brief moments to recognize the importance of Lin Tong and assume some vital meeting with Intelligence Headquarters in the north. Lin Tong had let him think whatever he liked, so long as he thought in terms of being useful to the special Chinese emissary whose noble efforts were doing so much to promote the cause of the free peoples of Vietnam against the American imperialists and their valets…
  
  He talked rather a lot, but he made up for it.
  
  The Chinese agent went triumphantly on his way, secure in his knowledge that the Viet Cong held this part of the southland as firmly as they held the sector north of the partition line, and that the border crossing would be as simple as stepping from one friendly province into another. After that, in North Vietnam, the sailing would be even smoother. Any local fool would be able to lead him straight to the plantation.
  
  It was a little after seven-thirty in the evening, and he had some sixty-three miles still to go.
  
  By high-powered vehicle.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The mosquitoes were singing their maddening chorus and the matted jungle floor steamed and squelched beneath their feet. Sharp, blade-like leaves and thorny branches snatched at their faces; ticks crawled, ants bit and tickled; sweat saturated their torn clothes. Every yard was a new hazard; every fallen trunk and pile of matted branches was a possible booby trap. And it was getting darker by the minute.
  
  They stopped and ate, and then went on. Lights began to flicker here and there among the trees. Patrols. Saito took the lead. He was getting into territory that he knew. It also happened to be territory that the guerrillas regarded as their own backyard… They glided on, the two big men, silent as the shadows.
  
  "Halt!" Nick froze where he was. There had been no suspicion of movement or a presence up ahead, and now, out of the soft blackness, this — the low guttural accent of the north. A light suddenly blazed across his face and blinded him. Saito muttered an oath and broke into a low rumble of Vietnamese which Nick could barely follow. The answer was a harsh laugh and a brusque command. By now Nick could see the outlines of their challenger, a stocky, ill-dressed man barring their way with a single rifle. The rifle jerked menacingly and the figure stepped aside with another bark of words.
  
  Saito marched ahead, grumbling something about being a loyal partisan who had other things to do besides being dragged off to see Commandants by suspicious guards — and as he passed the man he lashed out two brawny arms in a lightning-swift attack. One jerked savagely at the rifle and the other, its hand hard as an oaken board, slammed against the man's windpipe. There was one muffled grunt and the light went flying. Saito bent to grab the rifle and a second figure leapt out of the darkness to land heavily on his back, snarling like an animal and raising an evil-looking machete for the killing slash.
  
  Nick's feet left the soft undergrowth as if propelled by powerful springs and his body soared forward like a rocket in flight. His steely fingers caught at the machete-wielding arm and twisted viciously. Saito rolled free and leapt to his feet to meet the third grunting figure that came hurtling at the flailing group. Nick slid back the tiny safety catch on his right index finger and jabbed at the straining neck beneath him. There was a moment of wild convulsion and then the body was still.
  
  Saito's great hands were balled into a double fist that came down like a sledgehammer on the third attacker. The man fell like a shattered rock as a shot, from somewhere behind the bushes, slammed into a thick bamboo stalk behind Nick's ear and split it like a matchstick. Wilhelmina came into his hand and spat her lethal answer back into the bushes. There was a yell, the sound of feet crashing through the undergrowth away from them, and three swift shots aimed at God knows what.
  
  "A signal," Nick said quietly. "There'll be more of them. Double around that canebrake and let's get the hell out of here."
  
  "Yes, sir!" Saito grabbed the fallen rifle and trotted toward a narrow passage between the tangled trees and the tall cane. It meant a loss of valuable yardage, but at least it wouldn't lead them right into the arms of the pursuers who would almost certainly come.
  
  They did come, within minutes. The first sign of them was the cracking of a branch. Then there was a series of scattered rustlings that might have been no more than rats scuttling through the undergrowth. But these rats were men, fully-armed and searching. And the sounds were fanning out.
  
  Their best hope lay in keeping absolutely still.
  
  And that meant another waste of precious time.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  She had hit him! She had actually dared to hit him! But she wouldn't hit him again. General Minh wiped away the little trickle of blood that kept dribbling down to soil his impeccable tunic. Her ring had cut him badly. The devil's bitch! If it had not been for that snickering aide of his, she might even have gotten away.
  
  But now she was tied to a heavy, up-ended table, secured with thick cord from her own kitchen, and she no longer looked quite so beautiful and full of scorn. She still had her clothes on, of course; there was nothing particularly entrancing about the feminine form and he had no immediate desire to play with it. Later, perhaps, his men might like a little diversion.
  
  "You will see that I have had certain tools brought down here, Madame," he said conversationally. "Reflect a while. Consider how you will look, not to mention feel, when your fingernails are pulled. And perhaps your teeth. Think of this, and ask yourself if it is worth it. I have time, Madame. I can keep this up for days. But — can you?" His lips twisted cruelly. "It would be so much easier if you will tell me what message Moreau brought you before he so unfortunately died."
  
  "I don't know any Moreau," Claire said again. "I don't know whose body that is. I don't know who buried it there." Hope faded from her as the pain of his blows spread. She was finished. God, was it really worth all this? "There is no message, can't you understand? There isn't any message!"
  
  This time his blow was low, a swift thrust in the midriff that slammed the breath out of her and made the long ends of the belt swing like startled snakes.
  
  "Oh yes, there is a message," he insisted gently. "What have you done with it?"
  
  The rope ends gradually stopped swaying at her waist.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  This last stretch was not so easy as he had hoped it would be. First the mountain passes had slowed him up, then the churned-up mud of the lower road, and then the vehicle itself with its coughing engine. And now these dull-witted peasants! For some reason they were unwilling to guide him across the last few miles. But it didn't really matter. He didn't have far to go and he would manage by himself.
  
  All things considered, Lin Tong was making excellent progress.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  They stood silent at the edge of the canebrake, watching the groping figure come nearer and nearer. By the twisted luck that seemed to be their lot, all but one of the searchers had fanned out to the south and west. And the one that came their way had something stuck between his lips that could be a short blowgun or — a whistle.
  
  Nick restrained Saito's little forward movement. This had to be completely soundless.
  
  Ten seconds more. Five. Three. The feet made tiny scrunching sounds on the fallen cane. The man was almost alongside them.
  
  Now!
  
  Nick reached out his arm and brought it back sharply, angled around the man's neck with the tightness of a vise. And as he tightened, he made Fang go to work. The tiny needle sank into the taut flesh and the body quivered. The straining bundle of muscle pressed against Nick's arm became a flaccid lump of flesh.
  
  Twice in a row. Fang really knew his stuff.
  
  He lowered the body quietly to the ground. There was no hiding place but the natural cover of the cane, so it would have to stay there.
  
  Nick and Saito stood in silence for another minute, listening, and then they set off at a rapid trot.
  
  The crude path sloped upward for a while but then it began to incline downward past the great hulk of the mountain that loomed up on their right. On the other side of the mountain lay the La Farge plantation, still too many miles away. But Nick knew that a narrow road wound through the foothills well below the high passes and that it would lead them — if they could only reach it — to the southwest border of the farm.
  
  Saito led the way like a cat in the night. The foliage thickened and then again thinned out, until at last he stopped and pointed, his face split in an unaccustomed grin.
  
  A village lay ahead of them, a small collection of wooden shacks built in a circle with two outlets. One road lay before them, leading straight into the clearing. The other was much wider. It was impossible to see exactly where it wound, but it went off roughly in the direction of those inviting foothills.
  
  The village was dark and quiet. Those who live on the land have little need to burn the close-to-midnight oil. And there was a battered farm truck parked in the middle of the clearing.
  
  There were only three drawbacks. One was their ignorance of the condition of the truck — it could, for all they knew, be empty of fuel. The other was a man seated on a log with his profile toward them. And the third was another man guarding the road down through the foothills.
  
  "The Viet Cong control this village," whispered Saito. "But as you see, their guards are few. We could creep through quietly, or…"
  
  "We could take the truck," Nick said almost soundlessly. But Saito heard, and nodded in the gloom.
  
  It was time for Hugo. Anything else would give that blunted profile a chance to turn full-face in their direction, and that would be the end of these few welcome moments of silence.
  
  Nick's hand slid down his left shoulder and pulled the small stiletto from its sheath. The blade flicked from the narrow haft without a whisper. Nick crouched. Sighted. And threw. The head turned slightly. Beautiful!
  
  The icepick blade sliced into the bare throat and stayed there, like a skewer through a roast. There was the slightest gurgling sound and a frantic clawing of dying fingers. The man toppled in a slow, languid sort of movement.
  
  The figure on the far side of the glade kept its back turned, unmoving, as though the owner dozed.
  
  Nick glided forward.
  
  "Wait!" Saito hissed. But his warning came too late.
  
  Nick stepped over the log to pull Hugo out of the fallen body. As his left foot joined the right he felt something move beneath him, and then there was a snapping sound that came at almost the same instant as he felt the thing snake up around his body and tighten in a grip that jerked him off his feet and — dropped him with a thud that must have been audible in Saigon.
  
  Saito was standing over him with a machete. A whiplash whistled through the air and the bent trunk of a tall, willowy tree straightened, shuddered through the air, and quivered into stillness.
  
  Goddamn! One of those bent-tree-and-lasso booby traps, and he had stuck his feet right into it! Thank God for Saito and his quick thinking!
  
  He was thinking this while he and Saito rolled down into the shadows alongside the dead body and the log. When he looked up he saw that the second guard was no longer at his post. He was walking slowly toward them, and the thing he held in his hands was not a welcoming bouquet. It was a submachine gun.
  
  There was one chance in hell of hanging onto another minute of silence, and probably of life. Nick took it. He sat up groggily, holding both hands unsteadily above his head. He heard the armed man grunt, saw him step forward with the gun.
  
  And then Nick leapt — high and to one side in a feinting movement, and then low in a dive that was Killmaster's deadly version of a football tackle. The gun fell. So did the man, with a squeaking cry that became a restful little gurgle as Nick's hands clamped about his throat and squeezed. He felt the tiny clicking sensation in his finger. And then the man was dead.
  
  Fang was a handy friend to have around.
  
  He tossed the machine gun into the bushes and ran after Saito, who was already flinging open the door of the truck. A kind of thumping noise came from one of the dark huts.
  
  "Keys!" Saito whispered exultantly. "And there is fuel!"
  
  "Okay. Steer, but don't start," Nick whispered back. He thrust his full strength against the rear bumper and pushed with all his might. At first, nothing. Then the truck began to move. Very, very slowly at first, but picking up momentum as it went.
  
  The door to one of the huts was flung open and a voice called out a question.
  
  "Ah, your fadder's moustache!" Nick yelled back reassuringly, and leapt onto the running board of the ancient truck. "Let's go, Saito!" The truck leapt into rattling life and tore down the narrow road.
  
  A shot clanged into the tailgate. Saito grinned and pumped at the accelerator.
  
  Running feet and stray gunshots fell away behind them. The big Japanese crouched over the wheel and maneuvered the clumsy vehicle over the track with the skill of a stock car racer.
  
  "So much for that. What's our next obstacle?" Nick asked, fingering Wilhelmina hopefully.
  
  "No more!" said Saito, almost singing. "No more! One, two men on patrol at the border. No jeep, no radio. We shoot! Easy! We drive now, easy, then we walk quiet for the last mile, yes?" Yes!
  
  The truck lurched downhill over the pitted road toward the border and the home stretch.
  
  If there were soldiers up there in the hills, they could not care less about the rattling of the truck over the North Vietnamese roads. They knew that all vehicles in this part of the world belonged to North Vietnam.
  
  Which, of course, they did.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Claire shook her head groggily. There was so much pain in her body that it was almost no pain at all. The agony had become her element, like air. It was her body.
  
  But her mind must have been wandering. One minute ago, or was it one hour ago? there had only been Ho Van Minh and his aide with her in the wine cellar. Now there was another man. Tall, quite good-looking, faintly Chinese in appearance. Perhaps he had come in answer to Saito's bid for help! Her heart leapt — and then drooped horribly. The man was talking to Minh as one would to an inferior. An inferior under his command. And he was saying — "Message, General Minh? What message? I can't imagine what you're talking about."
  
  And then his eyes drifted over Claire and fastened on the drab belt she wore at her waist.
  
  She groaned. And fainted.
  
  
  
  
  
  I Couldn't Help It General; I Lost My Head
  
  
  
  
  Lin Tong looked at her slumped form and felt a warm glow of triumph spread through his tired body. So Moreau had come here, and Madame did have something to hide. The belt she was wearing — was it not a curiously unattractive piece of clothing for a woman like Claire La Farge to wear? Lin Tong knew women, knew them well. What he saw in that crumpled, beaten figure was a woman of great natural beauty wearing a simple but stylish cotton dress casually pulled in at the waist by a piece of knotted cord.
  
  "…the murderer of Ding Wan Chau," the weird little general was saying obscurely. "Coincidence, you say? I say not. He came this way, killing as he passed. And now his body has been found, buried on her land. I tell you he came here, gave her the information, and died. It is too late to make him suffer for the murder. But she will suffer, oh, how she will suffer. Is it not right that she should feel the pain of dying?"
  
  "Hmm?" Lin Tong said absently, wondering how best to get this squawking cockatoo of a creature out of the way so that he himself could go to work. "Oh, yes, General, you are absolutely right. But perhaps we should change tactics, yes? More subtle persuasion might succeed where you have — ah — failed. We can mete out punishment after I have procured the information."
  
  "After you have procured the information?" General Minh looked at him sharply. "This woman is my prisoner, Lin Tong. My orders from Headquarters were to apprehend the man Moreau…"
  
  "And you have found him. Your job is done. From now on, this is up to me." His eyes roamed over Claire, and he saw her stirring. First he would be very gentle, and then…
  
  "Why should it be up to you?" The General's voice rose one full octave. "What is your authority to interfere in military matters?"
  
  Delectable French femininity… mature, yes, but still young… full, firm breasts… high cheekbones… a richly sensuous mouth… He tore his eyes away. If he had been the General, the woman would have been unclothed long ago.
  
  "Chinese Intelligence, my dear General," Lin Tong reminded him smoothly. "You have seen my identification. Surely there is no need for me to tell you that all your orders — direct or indirect — come from us? I should hate to have to report that you have not been cooperative. I expect you realize what your position would be, in that event. Precarious, to say the least." He smiled benignly. "And of course my superiors are waiting for my report."
  
  The General's mouth opened, shut, and opened again. "Of course I shall cooperate. But I ask only that you turn her over to me when you have finished."
  
  "Of course, General. Now please tell me, quickly and very quietly, what has been said and done so far."
  
  The General explained. Lin Tong listened, and watched Claire. A face that knew something of life… and love… and men. Long-lashed, closed eyes under raven-black eyebrows… soft, dark hair… smooth skin… shapely legs… slim waist — belted — and slender arms that looked as though they had the strength to fight him in the way he loved to be fought… Her eyes fluttered open, and closed again.
  
  He made himself concentrate. "Your guards, General. Quite alert — I must commend you. One of them nearly killed me before allowing me to explain. How many men do you have with you, and where are they stationed?"
  
  "Two aides with me in the house. One with us, as you can see; one in the service hall. Nine on duty in the grounds: Sergeant, Corporal, and seven men. The Sergeant can tell you exactly where they are placed, if you must know that, but roughly speaking there should be two near the main gates and one at the rear; one patrolling the northeast sector, another the southwest…"
  
  But the man who was supposed to be patrolling the southwestern border of the plantation had fallen down on the job.
  
  He had fallen dead.
  
  His neck was broken, snapped cleanly by the two steely arms that had snatched at him from the darkness and jerked him into eternity. His dying eyes saw nothing. His killer was already half a mile away, gliding silently over the damp soil of the plantation alongside a big man who had also done his share of killing that night, and who was now praying silently for the safety of "his lady."
  
  The going was easy now and their pace was rapid.
  
  "Is it usual to have their soldiers on the grounds?" Nick whispered.
  
  "No. Only sometimes during the day, when they come to pick up food supplies." Saito's muted voice was grim. "Never at night, and never on patrol. This looks very bad. Perhaps it is best that I first find one of my own men to ask what is happening here. They will help, if we need help."
  
  Nick grunted. "Looks as though we might." He was silent for a moment, then — "What is that light up there on the hills? Didn't you say the camp was a good five miles away?"
  
  Saito looked, and swore softly. "They must have moved," he muttered. "That can be nothing but their camp. What now, my lord?"
  
  "Just what we'd planned. We circle once around the house to see who might be — who else might be waiting for us. If in any doubt, we kill. You show me the best way in. Uh — introduce me, if necessary. Then round up whatever help you can. We'll just have to work it out according to what comes."
  
  They padded through a grove of trees that led to the rear entrance of the house. A light glimmered dimly up ahead. After a few minutes the trees thinned out and Nick could see the squat, square shape of buildings to their left and, directly in front, the rectangle of light that was a large rear window.
  
  "Storage barns," Saito whispered. "Not far behind them are houses for the men. That light, that is the kitchen. It is very late for someone to be using it."
  
  The sprawling shape surrounding the bright rectangle assumed the clear outlines of a large ranch house. Nick catfooted over to the window and looked in. The opening was covered only by a fine mesh screen. Through it he could see a young woman seated at a huge, worn table, her elbows on the table and her head cupped in her hands. There were tear stains on her cheeks.
  
  "Lua!" Saito breathed.
  
  "Sssh!"
  
  Footsteps sounded in the passage beyond. A uniformed man came into the kitchen and stared down at her, his expression sardonic and calculating. He stood there for a moment and then walked over to her with his hands outstretched. There was a gun holster at his hip and a thin red scratch across his face. One hand went under the bowed chin and jerked it up. The other tore roughly at the front of the girl's dress. It was already torn, Nick [saw, and rage welled up within him.
  
  Saito stirred beside him and muttered something.
  
  "Not now," Nick mouthed at him. He drew away from the window and pulled Saito after him. "First we see who else there is."
  
  They skirted the house and found no one until they crossed the sun patio and looked down on the driveway, Then they saw the Royal Roadster and the big staff car. A soldier was patrolling the driveway some yards beyond the two silent vehicles. His eyes were on the house; light spilled from a front window to illuminate the scene for his watchful gaze.
  
  "Enough," Nick muttered. "Get back." They dodged pack along the side of the house toward the storage barns. "Two carloads of 'em, probably scattered all over the plantation. Let's find your men."
  
  "But Lua…"
  
  "Yes. First the men, then Lua. All of us'll have a better chance that way. Including Lua. And Madame."
  
  Saito sucked in his breath and led the way along a long path running past the storage barns to a miniature village.
  
  The dim starlight showed a cluster of dark buildings interspersed with garden plots and fronted by a grassy square. One man patrolled the square. But one man with a submachine gun was enough to hold a squad of unarmed men at bay, especially when they all knew that one clatter from that gun would bring reinforcements running.
  
  They took him with the oldest of tricks — the one that Nick had tried on Lin Tong on the beach outside Saigon. He found a stone and threw it toward the neat, dark houses. It clacked against a hard stone wall and clattered to the ground. The gun swung up; the soldier turned toward the house and stared.
  
  Saito was off and running, apelike and silent on all fours until he reached the grass, then upright as his feet touched its damp softness. The soldier walked slowly away from him toward the fallen stone. Nick slithered toward him in a flanking movement, clutching the one weapon that could be of any use at all if Saito failed.
  
  The big Japanese was halfway across the grass when the soldier shook his head and turned his back to the silent houses. Nick heard a startled grunt and saw the gun swing up against the uniformed shoulder. Saito's tremendous arms were outstretched, ready for the karate attack that could still bring down the soldier, machine gun and all. But he might die in the attempt and there would be noise and there were still seconds and yards left…
  
  Nick swung his practiced arm and threw.
  
  The weapon sang through the air and struck home, horribly. Saito and the soldier seemed to leap apart in three directions. But, in fact, Saito froze where he was and only the soldier leapt apart, in two hideously separated pieces of pulsating flesh. The machete dropped before the head, and the head only toppled when the body crumpled and collapsed in terrible slow motion.
  
  Nick choked back nausea and padded over to where Saito still stood in his half-crouch. The severed head was ghastly in the starlight. Saito's startled face was only several degrees handsomer and Nick felt that his own was probably pea-green and twisted with revulsion. He forced himself to pick up the machine gun and give it to Saito.
  
  "Sorry," he muttered. "It was all I could do. Take this. Don't use it unless you absolutely have to. I'm going back to the house. Talk to your men and join me in back of the house as soon as you can. Have one of them come with you — and only one, for now. Be sure that you can trust him! And hurry."
  
  The two men parted, each on an errand of his own. The girl was still in the kitchen, but no longer seated at the table. She was on her feet near the window, and she was fighting like a cornered animal. The Vietnamese officer — a Lieutenant, Nick noticed — had thrust his thick body against hers and his mouth against her lips. His body squirmed and thrust while the spatulate fingers clawed and ripped; her head went back as his mouth bore down roughly, mauling and chewing at her swollen lips.
  
  She fought almost silently, jabbing her long fingernails into the heavy-lidded eyes and kicking out desperately with now a knee and then a tiny foot, and only when her lips were momentarily free of his crushing pressure did she snarl just once and then bite viciously.
  
  The officer snarled back and laughed. His fingers did something to the front of his tunic and then he swiveled himself against her with renewed zest. Nick saw the man's left hand tear at the bottom of her clinging dress, and then he saw no more because he was flitting silently from the window to the heavy back door whose mechanism Saito had already described to him. A moment's silent picking with the simple device from his first-aid kit was almost enough to do the trick. Nick manipulated quietly, hearing a thud from the kitchen and a muffled cry. Something moved inside the lock. Hugo, the knife with the icepick blade, jabbed once in silence to complete the job. The door opened inward with a low creak of complaint.
  
  Nick glided down a short hall with its three doors all ajar. To the night a pantry. To the left, the kitchen. Straight ahead, another passage lined with doors — storage closet, wine cellar, cloakroom, and so on — and leading to the main living rooms of the house. He took one quick look down the main passage, heard nothing and saw nothing, then backtracked to the kitchen door.
  
  The lieutenant was much too busy to hear him entering. His short, thick body lay sprawled upon the slight figure of the girl and while she moaned and struggled he exercised himself — up, down, up, down — with the ponderous regularity of a piledriver.
  
  It was a delicate time to intrude, but intrusion was necessary and the timing had to be perfect or things could be made even more unpleasant for the girl.
  
  Nick's feet were soundless on the kitchen floor. In a few swift strides he was behind the writhing couple, towering over the brutal attacker and reaching down with two powerfully corded arms.
  
  A second's pause — the upbeat — then the snakelike strike. Both arms reached around the topmost body, one beneath the raised chest and the other underneath and tightly hooked around the straining neck. He heaved upward in one galvanically sudden jerk, bringing all the concentrated power of his muscular right arm to bear against the rapist's throat and driving his left thumb savagely under the fat-padded rib cage.
  
  "Aaarrgh!" Fingers clawed desperately at Nick's right arm. The chunky body lashed about beneath him. He lifted it and released Fang's striking tongue. He heard the girl's bitter sobs and saw her roll over to hide her semi-nakedness, and then he felt Fang's swift bite take effect. The body heaved once and then collapsed in Nick's clutching arms. He lowered it lightly and turned quickly to the whimpering girl.
  
  She scrambled to her feet and shrank away from him, clutching her arms around her body as if to shield herself. "Non, non, non!" she moaned, her eyes wild with terror. Nick suddenly realized what he must look like to her — a wild man from the forest, caked with mud and dried blood, armed to the teeth with his guerrilla's weapons.
  
  "Lua, hush!" he whispered. "I am your friend. Please try not to cry. Saito is here with me. Do you understand? I have come back with Saito."
  
  She stared at him blankly, quivering like a wounded bird.
  
  "I am here with Saito," he repeated in French. "Don't be afraid. We have come to help."
  
  He saw the wild, lost look change to one of hope and pleading.
  
  "Saito? Where… where is he?" she whispered.
  
  "Talking to his men," he answered, taking her gently by the hand and steering her into a chair. "Lua, you must please answer one or two questions and then go to your room, or wherever you can rest. But tell quickly — where is Madame?"
  
  "Madame! Oh, God, Madame!" Her face twisted with the agony of sudden recollection. "They have her in the wine cellar to ask her questions. I have heard nothing. I do not know…"
  
  "Who's 'they'? How many?"
  
  Lua choked back a racking sob. "Three, now. First the General and a sergeant. Then another man, Chinese I think."
  
  Chinese. So Lin Tong had made it. Nick's jaw tightened grimly. With plenty of help, too, like a squad of soldiers and the Big Brass himself.
  
  "Where is the wine cellar?"
  
  Lua gestured. "Through the…"
  
  "Sshh!" Nick held up a hand for silence. There was a slight sound in the rear hall, and it was not repeated. But his senses told him that someone was moving outside the kitchen door. And there lay the body of the soldier, sprawled unbuttoned on the floor in a grotesquely twisted heap. Nick's hand went to Wilhelmina's waiting butt.
  
  "It is I, Saito." The big man glided in through the open door with a glance of satisfaction at the corpse. The smaller man behind him stopped and stared. "This is Xuan, whom we can well trust. Lua, little one…" His big hand clasped her shoulder. "Forgive us for being so long. Where is Madame?"
  
  "In the wine cellar," Nick said crisply. "With three men, me or all of whom are probably torturing her. Leave Xuan here, Saito, with Lua and that gun. Have him get that body out of sight and let's get into that cellar. Is there any other entrance besides the one in the hall?"
  
  Saito shook his head angrily. "No, only the one. I will rip the devils apart with…"
  
  "Sure, but not if they see us first. Any more men in the house, Lua?"
  
  She shook her head.
  
  "Only that — that — " She gestured at the dead thing on the floor, and shuddered. "I… stayed here because I… wanted to be — near Madame." The tears rolled down her cheeks. "I would have let them hurt me instead…"
  
  "It would have done no one any good. Come on, Saito. Show me that cellar."
  
  Saito nodded and gave the machine gun to Xuan with rapid instructions. Then he pointed down the hall.
  
  The two of them walked quietly along the stone flooring of the service hall and through the connecting door to the passage lined with other doors. Saito stopped outside one that was a heavy oaken slab bound with curlicued bands of well-worn brass. They waited for a moment, listening. No sound came through the solid door.
  
  "Lock oiled?" Nick whispered.
  
  Saito nodded and placed a huge hand on the heavy handle. It went down silently and the door swung inward without a whisper of a creak. There were no stairs below them, only a stone ramp leading sharply downward to a crude stone floor that was bathed in harsh light. Voices floated up to them. Nick took a few paces down the ramp and saw that the walls to either side were solid and that the only way down to the cellar was virtually a sloping tunnel. Nothing of the tunnel was visible except what lay directly beyond the arch-shaped opening at the bottom of the incline.
  
  The muffled voices became distinguishable words. "But I insist, Mon General," someone was saying smoothly. "You have done your share, and we agreed that it is now time for me to try my methods. And I can assure you that they are most effective."
  
  Lin Tong's voice. Nick had heard it once before. The language and the accent had been different, but the timbre was the same. "The girl was a menace to us both," the voice had said. "Now that she no longer troubles us we can pool our knowledge without fear…"
  
  Saito stiffened beside him. Nick held him back; he wanted to hear more.
  
  "Is there any reason why I cannot stay here and take part in this interrogation?" a high-pitched voice asked querulously. "After all, it is I who started on the woman…"
  
  "Yes, it was you, and see how much good you have done." Lin Tong sounded angry. "I have had enough of your interference, General. I did not need you and I did not ask for you in the first place. Now I order you to leave, do you understand?"
  
  "You cannot…"
  
  "I can. Now take yourself and that grinning aide of yours out of my way. Oh, and leave your men posted on the grounds. I do not wish to have any interruptions until I send for you. Goodnight, General."
  
  "When will you…?"
  
  "Goodnight, General!"
  
  Nick pushed Saito back through the open door and closed it softly behind them. His thoughts were racing. It seemed pretty clear that Lin Tong was not working with the General, although their presence here was for roughly the same reason. That meant that the General — and all the aides and men he had brought with him — would have to be disposed of somehow. And that, in turn, could result in disastrous consequences for Madame and all the loyal people of the plantation… Yet the consequences could be even more disastrous if he let the General live. It was an impossible decision to make. There was the dead lieutenant to consider, and the encampment on the nearby hills…
  
  The encampment on the hills. That did it. A possible solution flashed across his mind.
  
  "Back into the kitchen, Saito," he whispered. "If one of them goes in there — kill!"
  
  Saito sped away. Nick glided down to the opposite end of the passage and drew himself into a darkly shadowed corner. Next to him was a pair of double doors through which the General was bound to pass if he intended to walk through the house to the front entrance and his car.
  
  The door from the wine cellar flew open and the General stomped out, muttering angrily. A man in less resplendent uniform followed closely behind him and swung the door shut with a decisive thunk.
  
  "Lieutenant! Lieutenant!" The General's head darted angrily, his reddish eyes searching for the man on duty. "Where in Satan's name are you? Hah? Miserable worm, where are you?"
  
  General Ho Van Minh of the Fifth North Vietnamese Army stamped his foot and screamed a curse.
  
  "Sergeant! Find that fool and tell him he is to stay outside this door until the Chinaman sends for him. And when he comes to me with the message I'll tear his kidneys out for not being at his post. Tell him!"
  
  The Sergeant scuttled toward the kitchen. The General's quick, angry steps brought him rapidly toward Nick.
  
  
  
  
  
  Killmaster Meets The Lady
  
  
  
  
  He would wait until the little man was inches past him, and then smash down on the crown of that bullet head with the knuckle jab he knew could fell a man with all the deadly force of a mightily swung axe.
  
  But then the General stopped, poised and alert on the balls of his feet like a bantamweight boxer, his eyes narrowing in the gloom. Nick heard the scuffling and grunting sounds that had stopped him and saw the head slowly turn to scan the shadows. It was too late to wait; for all the General's idiosyncrasies, his mind was quick and his body well-trained to respond. Nick could almost hear his thoughts — Diversionary tactics in the rear often mean attack on flank or front — and he launched his attack a split second before the darting eyes flickered over him in his concealing shadow.
  
  His right hand, stiff as a knife blade, led his body in the sudden charge. The paunchy figure in front of him moved with incredible speed and the dagger point of Nick's outstretched hand slid harmlessly past the General's short neck. The two small hands that grasped his arm caught him with surprising strength and pulled him forward to catch an agonizing blow on the right shin. He let himself drop limply, rolling with the painful twisting motion rather than resisting it, and brought up his left hand to ram a swift knuckle blow against an elusive brown temple. The General screamed and loosened his twisting hold. Nick cursed softly at the piercing sound and leapt to his feet. He came down with a vicious double stomp kick on the General's rib cage. The cracking sound was gratifying, but the bellow of pain must have wakened the dead. He threw himself down on the squirming figure, suddenly feeling all the weariness and wounds of the last two days, and pressed both hands against the soft neck. Minh shook his head like a terrier and thrust a hard palm up against Nick's chin.
  
  Fang clicked gently. Nick felt the little jabbing tongue dart from his finger and retract. In a matter of seconds the General would be dead beneath his grasping fingers.
  
  Minh twisted free, screaming like a soul in hell, and slammed an iron-hard side-arm blow against Nick's head. Nick felt the world swim nauseatingly. All the pain of his bruised body seemed to gather in his head and threaten to drag him down into a dark and bottomless pit. He gritted his teeth and jabbed out once more with Fang.
  
  Nothing. No result but a harmless little bite into the fleshy cheek and a smashing blow against his abdomen.
  
  Goddamn! Fang was finished, like a cheap toy broken after one day's use, and this little blob of a man was calling on all the fiends of hell for help. What's more, they'd come, with Lin Tong in their lead, and that would be the end of everything. What in hell was Saito doing all this time?
  
  For the luvva Pete, Carter! part of Nick's mind addressed him furiously. If you can't fight off this little blob without calling for your bodyguard, what in hell can you do?
  
  The heavy door leading down to the cellar opened suddenly and a shiny gun barrel nosed out into the passageway.
  
  Nick saw its glint and heard the shout that came out with it, but both sight and sound were vague things drifting through his mind. He had a more immediate problem. He jabbed a knee into the squirming figure beneath him and slammed the heel of his hand up hard beneath the wagging chin. Then both hands came up high and wide and swung down, thumb knuckles extended, like twin hammers against the vulnerable temples.
  
  He heard running. Then a shot. Something fell heavily.
  
  His hands clawed at the General's tunic and pulled the sagging body up toward him. One more for the road — He drew his right arm back and slammed it forward with such desperate strength that his fist rammed the windpipe against the spinal cord. The General's head slammed against the floor.
  
  It was finished. Nick rolled over and heard the second shot. It bit into the wall behind him and made him leap galvanically as though he himself had been shot.
  
  In one swift glance his eyes caught a tableau that would have been fascinating, maybe even amusing, if it had taken place at some other time and affected other people. But right now it was a sort of Conga line of death, and he was at the head of it.
  
  Lin Tong was facing him across the General's outstretched body, a smoking pistol in his hand and a killer's light in his eye. Behind him lay the fallen figure of Saito. And beyond Saito stood his friend Xuan, tense and uncertain, the submachine gun clamped against his arm.
  
  There wasn't even time to reach for Wilhelmina.
  
  Nick leapt, with all that was left of his speed and agility. He felt the hot breath of the bullet skim over the length of his body as he shot forward in a long, low, diving spring, and almost simultaneously the full force of his lowered head struck into Lin Tong's midriff. The Chinese expelled breath in a short grunting gust and slammed backward like a pounded punchbag. The pistol skittered noisily across the floor. Nick felt a weak flicker of triumph, and slammed what he hoped would be the finishing blow — not the killer-blow, for he wanted him alive, but the silencer — against the handsome head.
  
  But Lin Tong had not spent half the night being pursued and hacking his way through dense, unfriendly jungle. His shoulder wound ached and he was tired, but he was relatively rested from his hours of sleep in the bouncing jeep.
  
  His recovery was unexpectedly quick and savage. He jerked his head aside and caught the blow against his wounded shoulder, and the pain gave him strength. He clawed upward with his long, strong fingers and fastened himself around Nick's neck. Nick let him claw, and thrust his thumbs down deep into Lin Tong's staring eyes. The Chinaman bellowed and let go. Then they were upon each other again, seeking holds and clutching each other like a pair of demon lovers. Lin Tong rolled and Nick rolled with him, and like a ball of tumbleweed they wheeled and rose and fell in the narrow passage.
  
  And suddenly Nick was no longer at the head of the Conga-line of death. He heard a door fly open and he heard the footsteps clattering toward him from the front door of the rambling house. A voice cried out something harsh and unintelligible. He wrenched violently at Lin Tong's flailing body and then the next minute he was falling head over heels down the slope leading to the cellar. His Siamese — or was it Chinese — twin rolled with him…
  
  Nick heard a single shot. Then a rapid burst of fire. Then silence from above. He saw nothing but the stone walls of the tunnel, the bright light from below, the snarling face of the enemy whose body was wrapped around his like a pair of pincers. His head hit the wall, hard, and his vision blurred. He and the animal that clung to him rolled down another three or four feet. The hands caught at his throat again, and squeezed. The world was a nightmare of swirling red and black, and he felt himself tumbling down again into the pit he knew was always waiting for him.
  
  He called upon his last reserve of Yoga-trained endurance and willed away the dreadful ringing in his ears. His own hands reached out and found the other straining neck, and his thumbs pressed hard into yielding flesh.
  
  Lin Tong's stranglehold became a feeble flutter of nerveless, useless hands. Nick increased his pressure on the sensitive carotids, praying silently for the strength to hold out long enough. The face that stared wildly into his own slowly drained of all expression. The Chinaman's strong body was suddenly a limp weight in Nick's hands. It dropped away from him, rolled over once, and lay quite still.
  
  Nick slumped back against the cold stone wall. He felt like a pricked balloon… a human balloon that had been mercilessly squeezed and bruised and beaten before being punctured into eternity. The light from the cellar seemed to blaze and dim and blaze again. It was impossible for him to move his tortured body another inch; it was too heavy, too racked with pain, too spent from the unrelenting hours of exertion… His breath sighed out in one long, exhausted moan.
  
  He blacked out completely.
  
  When he came to he heard voices all around him. He opened his eyes wearily and looked up. Xuan and Saito were standing at the head of the ramp, having some sort of animated discussion that Nick could not comprehend. Xuan was gesturing with the machine gun. Saito seemed to be trying to restrain him. There was an ugly, bloody streak across one side of his head and his face was a halfmask of blood. If someone else had come in to join the party, there wasn't any sign of him. Nick lifted up his sagging head with hands that were reluctant to move, and remembered vaguely that someone had come in through the front door and there had been some shooting.
  
  God, yes! Memory came flooding back and dragged him to his feet. There was still that other moaning voice to reckon with — the one that floated up to him from the cellar. The woman's voice.
  
  He clutched the wall and stumbled down the ramp. Lin Tong lay still, but his muscular chest rose and fell with a healthy regularity that Nick could envy even while he felt relief. There was going to be something left of this swine to take back to Raoul Dupré.
  
  For a French wine cellar, it wasn't much to look at. The only thing that made it worth a visit was the woman tied to a heavy, upended table, wearing a torn dress and a string belt. He stared at her, swaying on his feet, and wondered why she was looking at him with such horror in her lovely eyes. Surely she must realize that he had come to help…? Ah! His face!
  
  His bruised and bleeding fingers went up to his face and plucked clumsily at the outside corners of his eyes.
  
  "Madame La Farge," Nick started formally, "my name is Nicholas Carter." The tiny patches pulled away. "In connection with your advertisement in The Vietnam Times…" He stopped abruptly, hearing his own words. Good grief! He must be delirious, to talk to her this way. "Saito brought me here. I'm working with French Intelligence." Madame's lovely, swollen lips parted slightly and a little sound came out. Nick moved unsteadily toward her, hearing the soft footsteps padding down the ramp behind him. He knew the footsteps; so did she. Her eyes suddenly became gleaming pools of tears. "Raoul Dupré… sends his — his very best regards."
  
  Hugo slipped out from his sheath as Madame's eyes turned away from him.
  
  "Saito!" she cried, and started sobbing like a child who had been left alone for a long and terrifying time.
  
  The severed cords sprang from her arms and fell to the floor.
  
  Saito bounded to her side. "My lady! Oh, my lady!" She reached for him weakly, the tears streaming down her cheeks. "You are hurt," she whispered, and gently touched his face.
  
  The cords around her feet dropped free. Saito caught her as she began to fall.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Lin Tong plus one General plus two aides plus one Master Sergeant plus one Corporal plus seven men had added up to thirteen. Thirteen minus Lin Tong, two men on patrol, two in the house, one General, and one hothead who had come rushing in after hearing shots, brought Nick's immediate problems down to six. Lin Tong was very much alive but most securely tied, in such a way that he would strangle himself if he so much as moved. The cellar door was bolted. Donh Cam, whose sick wife lay upstairs, guarded it with Lin Tong's pistol.
  
  Madame La Farge lay in her huge warm bathtub, soaking up the soothing heat and thinking of the two torn and bloodied men who had found her in the wine cellar. She caught herself wondering what the man Carter looked like when he was unstained, unbloodied, and — well, dressed in something other than those torn guerrilla rags.
  
  Lua fussed over her, refusing stubbornly to rest her own abused body until Madame was safely tucked in bed. Madame looked at Lua's tired face and mangled dress. She sighed. "Towel, please, Lua," she said. "And then if you don't go and look after yourself at once, I'll put you in my own bathtub — myself."
  
  "Ah, but Madame…!"
  
  "Lua!"
  
  "Yes, Madame. Your towel…"
  
  Outside, Saito's chosen group of men ringed the house. Only one or two had guns. All were armed with machetes, which they well knew how to use. If anything went wrong they would die fighting for Madame. And if all went according to plan, the worst that could happen was that they would be questioned, perhaps kicked and beaten, but not killed. At least, not too many of them. They would have their answers ready. "Shooting, sir? Yes, of course we heard it. We most naturally thought that there was an attack from across the border, so of course we locked ourselves in our houses and…"
  
  Some distance from the house, and in several directions, twelve silent men flitted across the fields and did their deadly work. Six Vietnamese soldiers on patrol died almost silently. The one or two who managed a choking sound before they died were wasting their last breath; the only men who could help them were more than two miles away, sleeping in their hillside camp.
  
  As Madame toweled herself dry and thought about the awful day and the secret she had not given away, the Royal Roadster and the squad car purred into fife in her front driveway. The sound was a message of success, at least in the first step of the final game. And yet she shuddered, thinking of those who had died and were still to die.
  
  Bed looked inviting. She pulled the soft gown around her and slid gratefully beneath the covers.
  
  The two vehicles pulled away.
  
  They went slowly at first, because it was necessary to let the running men keep pace with them, but after a while they speeded up.
  
  Saito went first in the Royal, because he knew the road. His cargo was one General, one Lieutenant, and one Sergeant, and all of them were dead. Nick followed in the squad car. His troop consisted of one Sergeant, one Corporal, seven men; and all of them were dead.
  
  The road to the camp led upward, leveled out for several hundred yards, and then inclined gently downward until it reached the camp. After that it climbed up again, and steeply; but what it did beyond the camp made no difference to the drivers.
  
  About seven minutes after leaving the La Farge plantation the vehicles slowed again.
  
  Nick took the remaining grenade from his belt in readiness for what was to come, and clipped Wilhelmina onto the wire stock. He knew that Saito, yards ahead of him, was making similar preparations. He also knew that three other grenades would be put to their best possible use, and that several newly acquired machine guns would be trained on appropriate targets.
  
  A shrill birdsong pierced the still night air. Nick put the vehicle in gear, pushing a lolling Corporal aside with his elbow, and followed Saito along the curving mountain road. He saw the Royal Roadster reach the end of the level strip of road, and took his cue. He accelerated. Opened the door. Took the pin out of the grenade. Left it on the seat. Grabbed Wilhelmina, rifle stock and all, and jumped. The vehicle gathered speed and plunged down the slope after the Royal.
  
  Nick raced across the narrow road and scrambled up the mountainside. He had reached the comparative safety of a tangled bush when the first explosion shattered the silence. The gigantic noise split into several parts and spilled its echoes down into the valley. Fragments of torn metal flew and bit into the sodden earth. The second blast was even louder than the first, and with its ear-splitting sound the squad car became a twisted mass of pulverized parts. From somewhere above him came the deadly clatter of machine guns. Seconds later it was drowned out by the echoing blast of two more explosions. Nick clawed his way through the thick bushes and saw the dim lights of the camp. Spumes of smoke swirled against the lights and small disheveled figures ran helter-skelter among the tents.
  
  Beneath him, above him, behind him, and in front of him, the deady sounds grew in volume. The third and last of the explosives slammed full into the camp, and he could see tents crumple and fall like houses made of cards. Running figures scuttled around like cockroaches in a grubby kitchen when a light is suddenly turned on. Return fire bit into the hillside, finding nothing. Machine guns chattered madly, screaming out their message of sudden death and penetrating hatred.
  
  Two shattered vehicles lay on the road leading into the bleeding, screaming camp. No one would ever know that their occupants had died earlier that night and in another place. Men at war do not hold autopsies, especially when their encampment has been attacked by guerrillas from across the border between them and their enemies.
  
  The killing sounds stopped as suddenly as they had begun. That meant an end of their small supply of ammunition and the start of a retreat as swift and silent as their surprise approach. Nick dragged himself backward through the bushes and lowered himself down to the road, hoping that Saito's men had started withdrawing down the hillside according to plan. Aimless bursts and booms of fire were coming from the camp, going somewhere into the hills above in search of the hidden enemy. But the hidden enemy had already done its job.;There would be no reason for anyone to believe that General Minh and his unfortunate companions had not died in a guerrilla action that caught them just as they were entering their own camp.
  
  Flames from the two burning vehicles sent intricate patterns of light dancing across the mutilated road.
  
  Nick met Saito in the shadows and sent him on his way. He himself waited only long enough to hear Xuan's report of a complete withdrawal with two minor injuries, then he too made his weary way back to the plantation. A searchlight roved helplessly around the hillside. There was nothing left for it to find. The tiny war within the war was over.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Madame Claire La Farge awoke from a short, uneasy sleep. The distant sound of firing had stopped some time ago and the night, slowly sliding into dawn, was once again as quiet as thousands of other nights… except that there were soft male voices on the landing. Then she heard Saito's footsteps going downstairs and the other footsteps, the new ones, going into the room that she and Paul had designed for guests that had stopped coming here more than ten long years ago.
  
  She listened as the tall stranger moved quietly about the room; heard him leave it, cross the landing, and fill the bathtub in the guest bathroom that was all cream and pink and gold.
  
  Claire smiled to herself. If ever a man needed a bath, this one certainly did. But a cream and pink and gold setting was hardly what she would have chosen for him. Dazed as she had been when Carter and Saito had made their rapid plans, she still had noticed how the tall, bedraggled stranger had pulled together his flagging strength and taken quiet command He thought quickly, and he acted with decision. And when he saw her revive and take the cup of coffee from Lua's trembling fingers, he had turned on her a smile of such genuine warmth and pleasure that it had stayed with her long after he had gone. He had not even asked about Moreau's message, but had touched her hand and apologized for being so long in coming. She had told him, then, that the message was still safely with her. He had nodded as if he had known it would be, thanked her for her courage, and left with Saito. Now that he was back she felt a relief so intense that it surprised her.
  
  The splashing in the bathroom stopped. A few minutes later the water gurgled away and light footsteps padded back across the landing. Claire sat up in bed and reasoned with herself. It was too late to bother him. She was supposed to be asleep. He was a stranger to her. He needed rest. She could talk to him in the morning. But she had been alone for days and knew so little about what was really going on. She had a perfect right to know the outcome of the evening. Possibly she could help him by tending to his wounds. He could tell her how he had become involved in this. She could see what he really looked like…
  
  Ridiculous. Time enough for all that in the morning. Right now what they all needed more than anything was a good, long sleep.
  
  She made up her mind and got out of bed. Her body ached abominably and she knew that sleep was going to be impossible until she had eased her mind by talking to him. The soft robe slipped around her. Her slippers made no sound as she left her room and walked across the landing. The thin line of light beneath Carter's door convinced her that she was doing the right thing. He was awake and she was awake, and they had much to talk about.
  
  Claire tapped lightly on his door.
  
  "Saito?" he called out.
  
  "No, it's Claire La Farge. May I come in?"
  
  "Oh! One second, please."
  
  She heard a swift movement across the floor. The door opened. He stood there smiling down at her, a thick towel secured around his midriff.
  
  "Sorry I'm not dressed," he said. "I was just doing some exercises." And thinking about you, he might have added, but thought better of it. "Come on in." He held the door wide open and stepped back.
  
  Damn you, Claire, she told herself. Apologize and leave at once.
  
  But she was already in the room. And he at last was looking at her as she really was, the proud and beautiful woman he had come so far to meet.
  
  "Exercises?" she said faintly, gazing at the muscular bronze body and its latest collection of wounds. "After all the exercise you've had today?"
  
  "These are different," he said cheerfully. "Yoga breathing tricks to make me feel more human." He propelled her into a chair and sat down on the bed, carefully tucking the towel around him. "I did hope I'd see you," he went on, "but I was sure you'd be asleep. You should be. There's nothing wrong, is there?"
  
  She looked into his face and caught the clear, steel-gray eyes gazing into hers. The strong face, no longer muddy-brown but tanned cleanly by a summer sun, was almost classic in its masculine beauty. The wide, firm mouth was gentle, and she already knew that it could smile in such a way as to make her feel… strangely weak. After all, she was a mature woman, not an inexperienced child. She saw the mouth quirk at the corners, and wondered what he could be thinking about a woman who stared at him that way.
  
  "You look… different," she said feebly, and saw the glint of laughter flash into his eyes. "No, nothing's wrong. I wanted to know what happened tonight. Did it — work out the way you'd planned?"
  
  The clear eyes became serious. Nick nodded. "Pretty much. No casualties on our side, quite a few on theirs. There'll no doubt be some squawks about the 'border episode, but it's most unlikely that you'll be affected. On the other hand, I think it's time you seriously considered leaving the plantation. This is a bad…"
  
  "I will not leave here," Claire said emphatically. "It's my home and nobody is going to drive me out. And what is more, I won't be sitting on the sidelines from now on. Somehow I'm going to find a way of fighting back."
  
  She was beautiful, Nick thought; bruises, cuts and all, she was strikingly handsome, unmistakably and elegantly French. The rich black hair was tumbled over her forehead, begging to be brushed back by a loving masculine hand, and the full lips drew his eyes like magnets. Firm, delectable breasts strained against the lacy gown she wore beneath her robe. Her subtly accented voice was low music; and her dark eyes were deep pools that he would have loved to swim in. This was a woman; the almost. legendary Claire La Farge was a real woman of style and grace and guts — and a figure that a goddess might have envied. Nick felt his heart beating with a more healthy vigor than it had achieved for hours and tried hard not to stare at her fabulous breasts.
  
  "I think you might have to find a safer base from which to do your fighting," he said soberly. "Raoul Dupré suggested that…"
  
  "Dupré!" she exclaimed. "Yes, yes, you are here because of him! But still I do not understand. Why you? Who exactly are you? Who was that man who looked Chinese? How did he know about the belt? He did, you know. I saw him look at it. And what about…?"
  
  "Hold it!" Nick interrupted, his face splitting into that grin she found so unaccountably captivating. "I'll tell you about it from the beginning, and that should answer everything. But I warn you, it's a long and complicated story and you must be very tired."
  
  "I want to hear it," she said simply. "I want to hear it all."
  
  He made sure the towel wasn't slipping, and he told her almost everything. When he came to the part about Toni on the beach he skipped a few unnecessary details and concentrated on Lin Tong's part in the ugly business. Claire's mobile face reflected her shock, her sympathy, her horror. When Nick was finished with his long recital they discussed Moreau, and what they would do about finding his body a permanent and peaceful resting place. Then they talked about Saito's loyalty and courage, and low appreciative each of them was for what the others had done.
  
  There was a brief silence. They looked at each other. Claire blushed faintly. Nick felt his pulses quicken. Her breasts rose in a sigh.
  
  "I could talk all night," he said. "I gladly would, to you. But don't you think it's time you had some sleep?"
  
  "I suppose it is," she murmured. "But… unless you are asking me to go, please first tell me a Utile more about yourself."
  
  He told her, enormously glad that she wanted to stay. When he had given away all that AXE would allow, he asked her about her life on the plantation, and about the cool and brilliant daredevil known as La Petite Fleur.
  
  For the first time she managed to speak of Paul as if he were really dead, never to return, and as if he were a wonderful memory rather than the whole of life. At last she sighed and said: "I have not talked like this to anyone for years. Please forgive me for exhausting you. But it is so very good to have you here. I am most grateful. And now, I had really better go." But she didn't look at all as though she wanted to.
  
  "Perhaps you should," he said, and instantly regretted it. She rose.
  
  And gave a sudden groan as she clutched her side. "Oof! For a few moments I had forgotten," she said, half-smiling but obviously in pain. "I feel as though I have been in the middle of a football game — and I was the football."
  
  He reached over to help her up. She staggered into his arms, stammered something, and tried to draw herself away.
  
  "Let me help you," he said. "I'll carry you to your room." He scooped her up lightly and cradled her in his arms.
  
  "No, no!" she protested. "It is not necessary."
  
  "It may not be necessary. But it will be nice. For me, at any rate."
  
  He smiled down at her flushed face and carried her toward the door. She said no more, but put her arm lightly across his shoulder.
  
  When he opened the door to her room he bent his head to kiss her hair. Perhaps she didn't notice. But she did not object.
  
  
  
  
  
  Love Is Love But War Is Hell
  
  
  
  
  "That wasn't so bad, was it?" He put her gently on the bed and beamed down at her. It was impossible to avoid thinking how big and comfortable the bed looked and how desirable she was as she lay back against the pillows.
  
  "No, that was not so bad." Suddenly she laughed. It was a sound of pure pleasure, and he loved to hear it coming from her. The only trouble was that it made him want to hold her close and say things to her that it was too soon to say. "It's a pity," she was saying, "that we don't have inquisitive neighbors. What fun they would have, talking! Madame La Farge was put to bed just here dawn by a man wearing nothing but a bathtowel and a scar!"
  
  "Unfortunately it is very difficult to remove the scar," said Nick, bending over her and kissing her lightly on the cheek. He almost wished he hadn't. His lips felt as though they had touched something heavenly, and every cell in his body suddenly started clamoring for equal rights. "If our lives were very different," he added softly, "we could give them even more to talk about. Goodnight, Claire. Sleep well."
  
  She touched her cheek where he had kissed her.
  
  "Goodnight, my — friend." Her arms went around his neck. She drew his face down to hers and kissed him on the lips.
  
  It began gently enough, but once their lips had met they could not bear to part. All that he had begun to feel for her and tried to hide welled up inside him and escaped into that kiss. And she, who had started it with a soft touch of her sensuous lips, could not draw away. And didn't try to. The gentle kiss grew passionate. It lengthened… burned hot… paused… and merged into another clinging, searching meeting.
  
  Claire sighed and lay back, looking at him. But her arms still held him close to her. For a while they stared at each other in silence. Just stared. Each could see what was in the other's eyes.
  
  At last she murmured: "Do we really care about the neighbors?"
  
  His heart leapt. He wanted her; from the first minute he had wanted her. But it had seemed too much to ask.
  
  Nick brushed the tousled hair back from her eyes. "Let them talk," he said. Her hand reached out and turned off the bedside lamp.
  
  There was no more robe, no more gown, and no more towel.
  
  She touched his back and felt the strip of heavy tape that stretched across it. "I didn't see that," she whispered. "How much you have been hurt!"
  
  "No more than you," he said softly. He held her very gently, wondering if the exquisite calisthenics of lovemaking would not be cruelly hard on her. She seemed to read his thoughts. "Let's suffer together," she murmured.
  
  What they did together was the sweetest kind of suffering.
  
  They lay side by side and felt the twin sparks of desire grow into tiny flames in search of something to burn. Two aching bodies forgot what they were aching about and began to revel in the delicious agony of wanting. Her legs entwined his and her fingers traced the contours of his face until they knew it well. He, in turn, caressed her breasts and kissed the sensuous lips until he knew that she — and he — were ready for more than kisses. His hand went lightly down the length of her perfectly curved figure, finding the bruises and the tender places and moving on to where there was no pain. At first she trembled slightly at his exploring touch, but as he sought the softness of her body she grew relaxed and warm and found the need to seek his body with her own hands. She felt the smooth skin, scarred here and there by battles of today and long ago, and the firm, supple muscles of a male body more wonderful than any she had ever known. This was a man; strong but gentle, magnificently formed, sensuous and hungry.
  
  Claire was hungry, too, and not for food. She had waited a long, long time for a man like this to come into her empty life. And she had forgotten nothing of what it was to love and please a man. The little movements of her fingers made Nick tingle, and sent small arrows of passion shooting through him. The larger, involuntary movements of her flexible body were instinctively voluptuous, and what they sent through Nick's body was even more gratifying and yet more demanding. He drowned out all memory of pain and tiredness and gave himself up to the pure delight of being with her.
  
  The bed became a paradise of a thousand and one pleasures. He sensed what she needed, and played her body like a lovely instrument. She moaned softly, wanting more and getting it. They discovered each other slowly, without urgency, picking up tempo as they learned how best to please each other. She wanted to be kissed, and he kissed her tenderly all over. He wanted her close to him, so that he could feel the softness of her breasts and the firm thrust of her thighs, and she came close and made him feel the vibrant warmth of her whole body against his.
  
  For long moments they lay beside each other, scarcely moving, saying the things that lovers say and letting the passion slowly rise within them. It was too good to put an end to, even a temporary end, and so they went on drifting as long as they could drift.
  
  He was floating on a cloud. But it was a most unusual cloud — one that wanted him to become a part of it, that wrapped itself around him with loving arms and sent little sparks of electricity coursing through his titillated nerves.
  
  "Claire, oh, Claire…" he whispered.
  
  "Love me… love me…" Their lips burned together and their bodies clung.
  
  Then he found that he could drift no more. He turned, pulling her down to him so that his weight would not press down on her bruises, and drew her even closer than before. And suddenly the floating cloud was full of storm and hot with crackling passion. She came to him as though that was all she had ever wanted, and when their bodies became one it was as if each had been aching for the other through all eternity. They both forgot that they had intended to be gentle. Two battered but beautiful beings moved together in a mounting rhythm.
  
  He had known no woman quite like her. In every way, she was perfection. And she made love as though she really loved him. Not like a woman who needs a man for a sudden and fleeting sensation, but like one who yearns to give everything she has to someone she loves with all her heart. There was no shame in her feeling for him, and he knew it. There was desire and understanding and companionship and… a sort of gratitude. All those he felt too, and more. They were like two people who had loved and thrilled each other for years, and had come together now after a long parting.
  
  "Nick, my darling… Nick, my darling…" Their lips met again in a blazing kiss that burst the floating storm cloud and let it wash away everything but the wonderful feeling of being as close together as two people can ever be.
  
  Their joint pleasure mounted until it was almost beyond bearing. He murmured to her, and she answered with a sigh. He thought he could hear thunder — but he knew that she was gasping with an ecstasy that matched his own. It was not thunder. It was an explosion that enveloped them both and reverberated through their trembling limbs until at last it died away and left them limp, still holding onto each other as if to let go would be to die.
  
  They were very much alive, and loving.
  
  But now at last they could let themselves feel tired.
  
  "My love… wonderful and beautiful…" "My sweet, my Nick…"
  
  Their words trailed into tiny kisses and the kisses into nothingness.
  
  It had been thunder. Rain splattered on the roof.
  
  They slept peacefully in each other's arms.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Dark morning. Late, but dark with overcast. And raining still.
  
  And there was news. Some time while they had slept, the Army encampment on the hills had folded up its tents and silently stolen away.
  
  "Hmm. Orders from above, I suppose," said Nick. "I guess they must have radioed what happened last night and been told to take themselves off the wrong side of the mountain. Any idea where they might have gone?"
  
  Saito shook his head. "All we know, sir, is that they are out of sight. Xuan went off scouting more than an hour ago, but he is not yet back."
  
  "Hmm," Nick said again. "And no one's been here to interview the staff about last night's fracus?"
  
  Saito shook his head. Nick went on with what he was doing — braiding thin strips of rope around the belt until the whole thing, with whatever message it had contained, was disguised as a length of sturdy rope that any farmer might be expected to carry on the back of his truck. Claire watched him, her mobile face a study in conflicting expressions of anxiety and love.
  
  "Saito…"
  
  "Yes, sir?"
  
  "I think I'd better leave at once. I'm sorry, Claire, but I'm going to have to steal one of your trucks. I know you're short of gasoline, but it's the only way I have of getting back. I'll try to make it up to you somehow." He looked into her face and saw the suffering in her eyes. They both knew that she was not thinking of the truck. "I'll change while you get the truck," he went on. "And have Donh give the Chinaman some food and make sure he's tied up tightly."
  
  "You'll never get through," Claire said tightly. "You know you'll never pass as a farmer if anyone stops and looks at you. Let Saito take you. He'll have a better chance. Don't leave like this! You'll never make it."
  
  "I'll make it," Nick said quietly. "One way or the other, I'll get there. Saito stays here. You're going to need him."
  
  "No! You…"
  
  "Saito stays here," Nick said firmly. "Saito, please get things ready for me."
  
  "Yes, sir," Saito answered. "Madame…" and his gentle eyes looked down at her. "It is true that you will need me. I help the Master on his way. But I stay here." He bowed, and padded out of the room.
  
  "Nick." Claire looked at him beseechingly. "I don't know what to tell you. But I don't want you to go."
  
  "I have to, Claire. I got what I came for — and something else as well. Now I have to go. But I can talk to the French and have them send safe transport for you…"
  
  "That isn't what I want. I want you to be safe." She swallowed nervously. "I want you to be alive. And to come back here, if you can. Because I'll never leave here."
  
  His steel-gray eyes were as sad as hers. "I know you won't, Claire. And in a way, I never will."
  
  He reached for her across the table. After a while they drew themselves apart. Then he left, to dress himself in fresh clothes that Saito had found for him and to rub the alien color into his face.
  
  Within half an hour everything was ready.
  
  She walked with Nick to the far end of the southern lands where the truck was waiting in a clearing. Nick's brow was furrowed. There was a noise somewhere nearby that shouldn't have been there. But Claire, sunk deeply into thought, seemed not to notice it.
  
  They both watched as Saito bundled a bound and spluttering Lin Tong into the back of the truck.
  
  Claire turned and looked into the strong face with its stain of muddy brown. "Come back," she whispered. "Be with me. But if you can't… I won't think that you can't." She pulled something off her finger. "Please take this, and remember. It is a ring that I… have cherished very much." He took it from her and slid it onto the small finger of his left hand. "It is the dragon design," she said. "It means luck and love, and courage. And immortality. I wish all those things with you. Or for you alone, if need be."
  
  Afterwards he could not remember what he said. He only remembered the moment that he held her in his arms, that moment when the sound grew louder and became a helicopter hovering only yards away from them.
  
  Raoul Dupré's face peered down through the Perspex. Then it was a chaos of landing, explanations, and departure.
  
  Minutes later, Nick was in the air. The rope was tied around his waist, its message still secure. Lin Tong was bound and snarling helplessly. Raoul Dupré was exultant.
  
  "I had to come and get you myself, mon ami! It was not easy, but I made them lend me the helicopter. When the other one did not come back, I knew that something must be done. And only I could do it. You have him for me, my true friend! You gave him to me alive! Oh, how he will talk, the Chinese swine, before I lead him to the guillotine!"
  
  Nick heard him say all this, and more, and he saw how Lin Tong slumped onto the floor in helpless silence. But the only thing he was really conscious of was Claire.
  
  She was waving from below.
  
  He waved back, and saw her tall figure grow smaller by the minute. Smaller… lonelier… then very small, and very much alone.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Saigon. September, 1964. A city torn by conflict, political intrigue, and the growing fear of complete disintegration.
  
  And yet there was some hope that the disintegration could be halted if the rot could be cut out from within. No one could possibly sort out the intricacies of Vietnamese politics with its basic themes of hostility and power grab. But it was possible to remove some of the major sources of agitation and deliberate discontent. That at least was something. Wasn't it?
  
  Nick sat at the bar of the Continental with Raoul Dupré. Fragments of Hawk's latest recorded message kept on churning through his mind.
  
  "Listen carefully. I will relay this information only once. You will have no professional use for it, anyway. It is only for your personal satisfaction. Moreau's message has been deciphered by our code experts working in collaboration with certain well-known anthropologists who have of course been sworn to secrecy. Naturally, they also had security clearance. Moreau's message was in the form of a quipu, a device used by ancient Peruvians to convey messages and calculations. There is no need to explain how the words are formed by the arrangement of knots…" That was Hawk at his worst, using his lecture room manner to be a little superior about something he had probably never heard of before the Moreau-La Farge case. Although you couldn't be sure. Hawk had an amazing store of general knowledge. And Nick, in fact, knew something about the quipu himself. He had thought of it at once when he had seen Claire's belt, but he couldn't be sure. Certainly he had no idea how to read it. "The message consists of a list of names," Hawk's clipped voice continued, "preceded by the advice that all the people referred to are top members of the Chinese Communist conspiracy in Vietnam, True names, code names, occupations, and even some addresses are included. These individuals occupy themselves primarily in Hue, Dalat and Saigon, with — quite naturally — a heavy concentration in Saigon. You may be interested to know that a man named Choong Quong Soong heads the list. His code name is Brother Arnold. After his name come the words "Bitter Almonds," the meaning of which we have not yet discovered. I am sure, however, that it is only a matter of time before we will. Further down, we find the name of Lin Tong, also known as Brother Bertram. If this does not excite your interest or surprise, you may be interested in knowing that the name Michele Dumas appears toward the end of the list. Code name Sister Lotus, if you please. I trust that you did hot become too devoted to her during the short time at your disposal."
  
  Not to her, Nick thought numbly. Not to Michele. There were other names in the message that meant nothing to him. Then Hawk had said: It will be clear to you that this information opens up an entire new field of work in Saigon, throughout South Vietnam, and possibly even across the border. Someone, and more than just one person, will have to be working there fulltime for at least the next few months and possibly for longer. Arrangements must also be made for the protection of the La Farge plantation." Nick's heart had leapt. Months, or even a year, and some of it with Claire! Long enough to persuade her to leave, long enough at least to… But Hawk's voice had ground on relentlessly. "Raoul Dupré, who is receiving his instructions under separate cover, will head the operation. You will stay there only long enough to brief the incoming AXEmen and turn them over to Dupré. Then you will return to Headquarters. The Cuban mission requires…"
  
  His heart had dropped like a lump of lead. Sitting at the bar and re-hearing Hawk's words in his mind, he felt that first agony again. Somehow it kept on getting worse. He fingered the small package in his pocket and wished to God that something would happen so that he wouldn't have to send it. Take it, yes. Any time, and many times, but not send it with the short, cool note that was all he had been able to manage.
  
  Raoul Dupré was eying him curiously. "What ails you, my friend? Do you not wish to leave our lovely city? Or is it perhaps something else that you are thinking of?"
  
  Nick took a deep breath. "It is perhaps something else. You're satisfied with the arrangements, are you, Raoul? You don't need my help any more, do you?"
  
  Raoul shook his head slowly. "I will manage. Your colleagues are fine men. But surely if you wish to stay, you can arrange it?"
  
  There was too much understanding and sympathy written on his face. Nick was not a man who had much use for sympathy.
  
  "You don't know Hawk," he said. "Or me, for that matter. I'll be leaving now. Don't worry about coming to the Airport. But… Would you do one more thing for me?"
  
  "Anything." There was a new strength about Raoul, and it showed in every word and gesture. "Just tell me what you want."
  
  Nick reached into his pocket and took out the small package. "Somehow, can you get this up to Claire?"
  
  Raoul took it from him and tucked it inside his jacket. For the first time he noticed the dragon ring that Nick wore on his little finger.
  
  There are many casualties in war, he thought. Soldiers were one kind. Toni was another. And Claire La Farge and Nicholas Carter were casualties, too.
  
  "I'll see that she gets it. Good luck to you, my friend."
  
  Nick left the bar and walked slowly along the damp street. All he could send her of himself was a bracelet, the loveliest he could find in all Saigon.
  
  Come back. Be with me. She had asked him for his love. And all he could say in return was a short message that read:
  
  My darling Claire… it is impossible.
  
  That was all. In exchange for love and the immortal dragon, a bracelet purchased in Saigon.
  
  The rain fell on his bare head as he walked past one of Saigon's most beautiful canals. He didn't see the canal and he didn't feel the rain.
  
  Come back. I can't. It isn't possible.
  
  
  
  
  
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