Peking & The Tulip Affair (9 page)

"Now what?" she asked.

"The man with the frozen face," Nick said grimly.

Bormann was cradling the phone when Captain Stryker knocked urgently on his door. "Come in," he barked. Stryker walked in, his face florid. "Sim Chan is here. She insists on seeing you. I don't like the look of it She has blood in her eye."

"Too early in the morning to be melodramatic," Bormann growled. "Where
is
she?"

"In your office. I told her to wait there."

"Let me get dressed. Tell her I'll be with her shortly." Bormann watched Stryker leave, then started to dress. He had just received word that the laboratory was no more. Burned to the ground. Stryker would have to know sooner or later. But how would the man react? Would he stick with him or desert?

He strapped a wide leather belt with a holster about his waist He made sure his Luger was loaded and went out.

With the laboratory gone, work on Agent Z would have to start all over again, from the very beginning. He wondered why Kerner hadn't called himself. The caller had been rather vague. There had been something about a white man attempting to invade the compound, of being captured, and then being put to death. Shortly after that, the laboratory had caught fire. The caller had been one of the Chinese officers assigned to the compound.

Bormann walked into his office to find Sim Chan sitting calmly in a leather-backed chair, her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. She had on a short leather jacket over a tight-fitting dress. He bowed stiffly and sat down behind his desk.

Sim Chan looked with distaste at the masklike face. "My thought, as I drove to Peking from the laboratory, was to confront you with your treachery, Herr Bormann, and loll you." She let her cigarette drop, and ground it out with the sole of her shoe. Her right hand slipped into the pocket of her leather jacket.

"Treachery?"

Was the man mocking her? "Yes, treachery," she hissed. "You have no intention of turning Agent Z over to my people."

"Where did you learn this nonsense?"

"From Kerner himself. He gave himself away." Then she smirked. "It was just before I killed him."

Bormann s back grew rigid as plaster. "Walther Kerner is dead? Then Agent Z has died with him."

"What are you talking about?" she snapped.

"The laboratory has burned to the ground," he informed the Chinese girl. "It is no more. No laboratory, no papers, no Agent Z."

"The formulas we used are in my head," she said.

Bormann stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. "Just who are you, Sim Chan?"

"Are you that stupid?" she spat. "I am an Intelligence agent as well as a scientist. I became Kerner's mistress only to keep an eye on him."

Bormann seemed to relax on the swivel chair. "Then we have need for each other, Sim Chan. You are wrong about me. Perhaps Kerner had his own ideas about Agent Z. I don't know. I never tried to crawl into his mind to find out what he was thinking. I, too, believed he was loyal to
our
cause. If he betrayed you, he also betrayed me."

"You are too clever, Herr Bormann." Sim Chan studied the man with thoughtful eyes. "You may be telling the truth, but I doubt it. Time will tell."

"We must trust each other if we are to accomplish our main objective," he told her patronizingly. "You are an intelligent woman. If we fight each other we accomplish nothing except, perhaps, our own destruction." He took a cigarette from an ivory box on his desk and lit it with a heavy silver lighter. "Who was this white man who was captured last night?"

"An American. He didn't give his name. We used Agent Z on him for experimental purposes, and he died. There is still something wrong with the formula. Before Kerner injected the American with Agent Z he gave out with a pretty speech about how he and his German friends were going to take over Germany. When the American's body was taken away, I confronted Kerner. The fool tried to kill me, thinking all women are weak. It was he who ended up dead."

"You know nothing of the fire?"

"No, nothing. I ordered my car and drove here to… talk to you."

"That fire couldn't have been an accident," Bormann decided. "It had to be the American."

"He was dead," Sim Chan insisted.

"Was he?" Bormann spewed out blue-gray smoke. "Describe the American."

Sim Chan described the man she and Kerner had used the drug on, and Bormann was convinced it was Nick Carter.

"Whoever he was," Sim Chan argued, "he's now dead."

"It wasn't his ghost who burned the laboratory to the ground," Bormann said patiently.

Sim Chan stubbornly stuck to her guns. Hadn't she herself seen the American die? He couldn't have faked the death. Bormann had to be wrong. Well, if he was going to insist that dead men could live and start fires, she certainly wasn't going to argue with him. She had always questioned the man's sanity. She knew that there had been plastic surgery done on his face. She knew that his hands were not hands but stainless-steel claws. No man could go through all that and still keep his sanity. She knew about humoring the insane. Well, she would humor this man who was so sure of himself. He was supposed to be an ally of her people, but she doubted this very much. She was used to playing games in her chosen profession. She knew that Bormann couldn't touch her. With Kerner dead only she could start the experiments again to perfect Agent Z.

"You chase your Nick Carter," she said. "It is your problem, not mine."

Bormann nodded his head in agreement. "Yes. Let me worry about Carter. We'll find a new location for the lab, but it doesn't pay to start the experiments again till Carter is dead."

"And what do I do till then?" she asked with sarcasm. "Twiddle my thumbs?"

"You may remain here as my guest," he invited graciously.

Sim Chan agreed that would be a good idea. "That way we can keep an eye on each other."

Bormann met Captain Stryker in the courtyard. He told Stryker about the laboratory being burned to ashes and of the death of Walther Kerner. He saw the look of despair on Stryker's face and quickly added that Sim Chan would be able to perfect Agent Z.

"But when?" Stryker asked.

"Nothing can be done till Carter is dead. It had to be Carter who set fire to the laboratory. I want you to go to Tsin Then and find out what you can. He may have gotten help from the villagers, but I doubt it. See what you can find out Visit the compound, talk to the soldiers there. Somebody must have seen something."

"I'll go at once."

"What about the guards who were on duty the night Carter slipped through and killed two of our men? Have you found out anything?"

"Not yet. I have three of our men still working at it."

"Good. And phone me once you find out anything."

Stryker heeled about and took off.

Things were going badly, Bormann knew. He had been so close, so damn close, and then Carter had showed up. With Kerner gone, things would be difficult He knew Sim Chan didn't trust him. But she was his only hope. Once Agent Z was perfected he would kill her and then leave China as quickly as possible.

But Carter was his first concern. Where the devil was the man?

Nick had been ready to go back to Peking when Lotus discovered he had been shot in the side. Nick explained that it was only a crease. She had made him wait in the car while she went to the village for bandages and medicine. Nick's protests had been in vain.

It was dawn when she had returned, and they had decided to stay there till nightfall. She bandaged him neatly, like a professional nurse.

He tucked his shirt inside his pants. The sun was overhead, hot and yellow. "Don't tell me nobody's suspicious."

"The village doctor supplied the medicine and bandages. I gave him all our cigarettes. He didn't ask questions."

"You trust him?"

"No," she said simply. "But there wasn't much choice. I didn't want you to get an infection."

"We can't stay here," Nick told her. "When the boys at the compound find those two bodies in the mess hall they'll start thinking and this whole countryside will be crawling with soldiers."

"You agreed that we can't travel by daylight. We have to stay here till it gets dark."

"Too dangerous. If they question the doctor, and he talks, we're in for it."

Lotus saw the sense to his reasoning, but they were well hidden here in the foliage. Unless Nick wanted to stay in the village.

"That family you know. What can you offer them? We have no more money."

"They don't like the Germans. I can tell them the Germans are after us."

"You're grasping at straws."

She shrugged and told him she was leaving it up to him.

Nick checked guns and ammunition. There were two pistols and a rifle. The rifle had six bullets in it. One of the pistols was fully loaded. The other had three cartridges in the clip. They weren't exactly a two-man army. "How do I sneak in if your friends say it's okay?" he wanted to know.

"The people will be in the rice paddies. They all work there except the very old and the young children. I'll talk to them. They won't say yes unless they mean it. They are honorable."

"If they tell the others…"

"They won't," she insisted. Before he could say anything else she turned and ran. He grinned after her.

It was late afternoon when Captain Stryker called Bormann from the compound. Two guards had been found dead in a closet in the mess hall. He was organizing a search party.

"Did you find out anything about the man who was captured?" Bormann asked.

"He was wearing a black costume. Probably used it to get into the Imperial Palace."

"Very clever," Bormann said dryly.

"Some of the men saw his body carried out of the laboratory. But two guards claim they saw him later in the laboratory while it was still burning. Those two were badly burned and are in the infirmary. They were lucky. Their comrades were killed, shot to death by the man."

"Carter must be back in Peking," Bormann said. "He wouldn't be fool enough to stay there, not after he accomplished what he set out to do."

"Shall I discontinue the search?"

"I will leave that to your own discretion, Captain Stryker"

Stryker heard the click and knew Bormann had hung up. He replaced the receiver in its cradle. Bormann believed the man was back in Peking, but there was always the chance he was hidden somewhere, trying to get his strength back. The man must be exhausted from all the chaos he had created. Now where would he be if he was still in the vicinity? There was always the village of Tsin Then. It would be foolhardy for a normal man to attempt to hide in the village, but this was not a normal man.

He could stop in the village for a quick investigation before going on to Peking. No need to bring any of the Chinese troopers with him. If he did find Carter, he was sure he could handle him alone. He wouldn't be asleep like the Germans whom Carter had killed in their beds. Kerner was more a scientist than a soldier. And the Chinese troopers were a stupid bunch. No, Stryker was no boy. He was a professional soldier. He was more than a match for that idiot American. Maybe Bormann was afraid of him. But not Stryker. No, indeed.

Stryker left the little makeshift office and got into his car. He signaled to a guard framed in the doorway of one of the two remaining buildings. The guard went inside to cut the electric beam. Stryker drove out of the compound.

It would be quite a feather in his cap to kill this man Carter. He knew how Carter plagued Bormann. It would be quite a feat to accomplish what Bormann had never been able to do.

Lotus and Nick sat on beds of straw, their backs against the wall of the thatched hut. They had just finished eating and their stomachs were full and satisfied.

"I feel grimy," Nick confessed. "Wish I could take a bath."

"There is a stream nearby. But it would be dangerous to go there now. We're lucky no one saw us come in." She reached inside her pocket and took out a piece of jade. "This is where our luck came from."

"What's that?"

"The jade I took from my father's dead body," she reminded him.

"You've been carrying it with you?"

"Yes. I hope it will bring me better luck than it did my father. We Chinese are superstitious, aren't we?"

"No more so than most people."

Lotus suddenly cocked her head. "I hear a car."

Nick scrambled to his feet. He peered out the doorway. The car was coming toward the village over an open field. There was one lone occupant. Lotus was beside Nick. She drew in her breath sharply. "It's Captain Stryker." Her fingers, like steel claws, pressed against Nick's arm. "I told you about him. He is brutal."

There were some old villagers outside their huts; they ignored the car.

Stryker braked and got out. He drew his Luger and started a systematic search of the huts, from left to right.

Lotus huddled against the wall of the hut while Nick flattened himself against the wall near the doorway. He had one pistol in his belt, but he didn't want to shoot Stryker; he didn't want the villagers in the rice paddies to hear the shot.

When Stryker entered the hut, his Luger protruded at least two feet in front of him. Nick chopped at the gun wrist and the Luger dropped. Stryker ignored the pain of his wrist and plunged his left fist into Nick's face. Nick rolled with the punch. He dropped to both knees, wrapped his hands around Stryker's ankles, and pulled. Stryker fell backward. Nick was on him, his knee digging in the pit of the German's stomach, his fingers around Stryker's neck. Stryker pushed Nick's head away, using the heel of his palm.

Nick had to let go of Stryker's neck or his own neck would have been broken.