Seek and Destroy Page 7

  There was something wrong here, he felt certain of that. But what could it be? Some object out of its normal place, even by an inch or so? Something, however innocent, which ought not to be where it was? There seemed to be literally a hundred possibilities. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the bright glare of sunlight reflected from the mirror on the wall across from the bed. Yes. that was it!

  Slowly, he walked over to it, ran his linger over the smooth glass surface. Even from close to, it looked quite ordinary but there was a curious dull sheen to it when viewed from a slightly acute angle. He had seen that bloom behind the glass of a mirror on one or two occasions in the past, knew that it was a one-way mirror, that although he could see nothing through it from that side, a man standing on the other side of the glass would be able to look into the room and see all that was happening. Now if he was right in this surmise —

  Placing his fingers around the bevelled edge, he tried to ease it away from the wall. It was fixed solidly into the plasterwork. Lifting his fingers a little higher he felt around the edge, felt that tiny object near the top edge of the mirror. At first sight, even on a reasonable, close inspection, it would appear to be nothing more than part of the rich ornamentation around the edge of the mirror, but his sensitive fingertip could just feel the small length of wire that led back from it into the wall. It was remarkably well made, even for an object of this type. A cunning blend of the one-way mirror and a small button microphone, feeding both vision and sound into the room next to his. He did not need anything else to tell him that one of the Russian agents of the M.G.B. occupied that room, no matter what name would be signed in the register downstairs. His jaws clenched tightly. Taking the long-bladed knife from along his wrist, he took one of the chairs over to the wall just beside the mirror, stood on it carefully, and inserted the strong blade of the knife just below the button microphone, where it was joined on to the rest of the mirror. A quick twist of his wrist and the wires leading back into the wall had been cut through. Grinning a little to himself, he got down from the chair. Now all he had to do was drape his jacket over the mirror whenever he wished and he had effectively destroyed their eyes and ears.

  He was beginning to realize how tricky and resourceful these men were. He doubted if they had learned much so far by means of this device, but if he had not discovered it, there was no telling what they might have learned and with the girl skilfully pumping him, it could have been the end of the plan he had laid.

  Going over to the drink tray which had been thoughtfully provided, he mixed a Scotch and soda, went across to the chair near the window and lowered himself into it, staring down into the busy street below him as he lit a cigarette and drank the whisky slowly. Everything that had been done by these men so far had been performed with skill. They were not amateurs. They had learned their lessons in sabotage well in Russia, one of the toughest schools in the world. A man who failed, no matter how trivial that failure might be, was doomed. He would be taken back to Russia and his fate would have already been decided before he left the country.

  He blew smoke out in front of him, watched the traffic narrowly down below. As far as he was concerned, he had better make sure that no further mistakes were made. He had almost lost his life earlier and it had been only the timely intervention of Paul Merton which had saved him. There would have to be nothing more like that in the future, if there was to be a future for him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DEATH OF AN AGENT

  Carradine’s footsteps echoed back at him from the tall buildings on either side of the narrow street. The warm night of the Southern Hemisphere hung over the city, a deep purple, already lit by thousands of stars, unfamiliar and strange constellations that winked at him in a pattern of light. There seemed to be no one about, even at this early hour of the night, unless they had all decided to stick to the main thoroughfares of the city. Here, he was in the old sector, built on that promontory which thrust itself out into the sea. From the first, this part of Montevideo had given him the impression of being a place where it was not wise to walk alone after dark. In contrast to the newer part of the city, there were many dark streets here where death could come swiftly out of the shadows. It reminded him, in places, of some of the cities of the Orient. There was that same, indefinable air of mystery, of brooding fear, lying over the low houses, lurking in the pools of shadow which seemed to smother most of the street on both sides.

  His instinct told him that this part of Montevideo was one in which it was possible that he might not get out alive. Why in hell had Merton chosen to give him an address here? Was it that after what had happened, the other wanted to be super-cautious? Was he taking no chances on Carradine being followed? Perhaps he was seated at some window at that very moment, where he could look along the whole length of the street, could see him walking along the narrow pavement, could see clearly whether there were any other dark shadows lurking at his heels. He paused momentarily, listened intently for the quiet pad of feet at his back. But there was no sound. It was as if the whole place was asleep, but fitfully asleep, with one malevolent eye still open, watchful for trouble.

  Keeping well away from the wall, he walked on down the long, narrow boulevard, eyes flicking from one side to the other, his body poised so that he could twirl and twist in any direction in a split second if danger threatened. It was the walk of a man who had lived with danger, who knew how to meet it if it came. He thought of the time he had had in London before he had been given this assignment and wished that he was back there, and wondered what trouble he was going to run into on this mission. There seemed to be far too many intangibles and improbables around for his liking.

  For five minutes he walked on in silence with only the echo of his own footsteps to keep him company. The moon sailed out from behind a low stretch of cloud, turned it into a sheet of mother-of-pearl for a moment as it broke free, then flooded the street ahead of Carradine with a white light. If anything, it made things worse, deepened the shadows on either side and formed new ones. Lifting the piece of card to his chest, Carradine glanced down at it once more, checking on the address printed there, although he knew it by heart now. The next turning but one on the left, halfway along the street. A car turned the corner of the long boulevard behind him. The headlights shone along the street and he moved deeper into the shadows as the beams came searching along the boulevard. He pressed himself into a niche between two of the buildings. The car drew level with him. Without any change in the note of the engine, it went on past. He caught a brief glimpse of the man seated behind the wheel, a cigar between his lips. He did not recognize him. Certainly it was none of the M.G.B. agents he had met so far. Waiting until the car had gone out of sight around the corner half a mile further on, he stepped out into the street, moved a little more quickly now, turned into the second opening on his left. The alley was little more than ten feet wide, with the dark buildings lifting high on either side. Not a sound broke the stillness. The buildings successfully shut out the moonlight here and there was the stench of garbage in his nostrils as he went forward carefully, placing one foot in front of the other, setting them down gently. Turning his head slightly, he focused his eyes on the buildings on his right. Was that a faint glow of light, showing through thin, flimsy curtains at one of the windows? He paused, stood absolutely still to make sure. There was no doubt about it now, a greyish, blurred glow that stood out against the blackness of the houses now that he knew where to look. This was the place. A quick glance behind him. There was no one there, and he felt sure that nobody had turned into the alley from the boulevard.

  Swiftly, he moved across to the house, knocked softly on the door. The stillness persisted. Cautiously, he lifted his hand and knocked again. The echoes moved through the house, but evoked no response Putting up his palm to the door, he pushed gently. It swung open on creaking hinges. A tingle went along his spine as he stood there. There was something wrong here. At the moment he was not sure what it was. This was certainly th
e house. The number was on the wall just beside the half open door.

  Slipping inside, he eased the gun from the shoulder holster, pushed off the safety catch. His eyes were now accustomed to the darkness. A dingy hall opened out in front of him and he padded noiselessly along it. He guessed that the light he had seen came from a room leading off the right of the hall and a moment later, he spotted the door leading into the room. Gently, he turned the knob, pushed. The door swung open. A lamp was burning on the table in the middle of the small room. It threw shadows into the corners, touched the cracked mirror on the wall, the threadbare carpet on the floor, and the shoes and legs of the man who lay sprawled there, the rest of his body in the shadow thrown by the low table.

  Holstering the gun, Carradine moved forward, went down on one knee beside the man on the floor and gently turned him over. It was Paul Merton. The American agent was still alive, but only just. There was a trickle of blood on his lips and his head was thrust back, there was a spreading red stain on the front of his shirt, around the hilt of the knife which had been thrust into his body just below the breastbone.

  As Carradine moved him the eyes flickered open for a brief moment, the lips twitched into a travesty of a smile.

  “Who did it?” said Carradine thinly. “Can you tell me who it was?”

  He saw the muscles of the other’s throat cord and writhe as he tried to speak. His lips moved and more blood trickled down his face and chin. The tongue touched the back of the parted teeth, then he said in a hoarse, hurried whisper, the words all slurring together as he tried to get them out. to shape them into sensible sounds: “Small man, thin-faced. Must have been ... ” He swallowed convulsively, drew in a deep shuddering breath that brought a further spasm of agony to his features, “must have been the other ... man. The man Gerda saw with the gun.”

  Carradine listened with tightening lips. There was nothing he could do now for this man. Obviously he was so close to death that the slightest touch could stop his heart for ever. Yet there were so many things he felt this man knew which it was essential for him to know if he was to succeed in this mission.

  “That agency? Did you find anything?”

  Merton tried to nod his head, but could only move it a few inches. His body relaxed and for a moment Carradine felt sure the other was dead. Then Merton opened his eyes again. There was a glaze forming on them. “In the top drawer, there ...” The other lifted his hand, managed to point to the far side of the room.

  Lifting his eyes, Carradine saw the chipped set of drawers, nodded to the other to indicate that he had understood what he was trying to say.

  A moment later the other uttered a low sigh that came out from between his tightly clenched teeth. His back arched for a second into an impossible posture, then he was still. The lines of pain were smoothed from his face and the eyes remained open, staring sightlessly up at the cracked and peeling ceiling. Automatically, Carradine felt for the pulse. There was no beat under his finger and he slowly placed the arm on top of Merton’s body.

  Pushing himself up to his knees, he squatted there for a moment staring down into the face of this man who had saved his life once, but whom he had not been able to save. He ought to have guessed that sooner or later, the Red organization would get to Merton. Whether they had connected the American with him, or with the Henkel affair mattered little. All that was important was that they had known who he was, and they had taken the necessary steps to see that he no longer represented any danger to them.

  Getting to his feet, he walked brusquely over to the chest of drawers, opened the top one. There were a couple of carefully-folded shirts there and a dark tie resting on top of them. He searched through the shirts, found nothing. The rest of the drawer seemed to be empty, yet the other had said that the information was here. He examined the articles of clothing once again, more closely this time, found what he was looking for a few moments later, it had been slipped carefully into the fold of the tie. Opening out the single piece of paper, he went back to the table and held it close to the dim lamp, scanning the lines of writing. The address given was in one of the suburbs of Montevideo. The Aroyo Mining Corporation. That seemed as good a front as any for an organization such as this, he thought grimly. Tomorrow, in his guise of a Uruguayan workman, he would try to get them to give him a job, anywhere so long as it was outside of the city. If he suggested a somewhat shady past, it might be an advantage to him. These people preferred those working for them to have something in their background which they could use as blackmail if the necessity for such a manoeuvre ever arose.

  He turned, thrust the paper into his pocket, glanced down at the dead body of Paul Merton lying on the floor. What to do about him? he wondered. Ring the police and tell them there was a dead man at this address, a man who had been murdered. It seemed the only logical solution. Perhaps it might be the best thing to do. Certainly the other members of the American organization in the city would then be warned of what had happened and might be able to take steps to protect themselves.

  Carefully, he let himself out of the room. The hallway was silent, dark, the paper faded and peeling from the walls in places. The automatic made a reassuring bulge against his side. Going out into the alley, he glanced up and down the street, searching the shadows for any sign of movement. A cat raced from one shadow to another, came rushing towards him, saw him and swerved off to one side, uttering a low mewing wail as it vanished into the night. He forced his quivering nerves to calm.

  There was the feel of danger here. His nerves jumped a little as he edged forward, away from the house, moving towards the entrance of the alley some fifty yards away. He could just make out the dim line of moonlight which fell obliquely across the alley mouth, although none of it managed to penetrate any further. It was as if even the moonlight shunned this place of evil.

  Twenty yards from the end of the alley, the sudden sharp scrape of a boot on the cobbled stones caught his ear. He whirled towards the sound, instinctively and catlike, made no attempt to reach for his gun. He did not want to bring anyone else here by the sound of gunfire. Besides, it might be the man who had killed Merton, a man who had stayed there in case anyone else did show up. The shape launched itself out of the shadows of one of the buildings, hurtling across the six feet of space towards Carradine. He saw the arm upraised to throw, caught the faint glint of light on the naked blade. The knife sighed past his head as he ducked swiftly. He heard it strike the wall behind him and clatter to the road. Then the man was on him in a sudden rush, one arm snaking out for his throat, seeking to take a strangling grip on him. Carradine let the other come on, knowing that his momentum could be used against him. He turned, caught at the other’s outthrust arm, pivoted sharply, pulled on the other’s body. The man went flying over his bent shoulder and hit the ground hard. Even as he fell, Carradine had moved. A couple of strides brought him behind the man, as the other was struggling fiercely to rise, shaken by the impact of his fall. Going down on to one knee, Carradine hooked one arm around the man’s throat and began to squeeze slowly, exerting pressure on the other’s windpipe, cutting off the other’s breath. The man began to struggle, quite ineffectually against the choking arm across his throat. His eyes began to bulge in their sockets, his tongue thrusting out between the parted lips.

  “Who are you?” Carradine hissed. “Are you going to tell me?”

  The other said nothing, continued to struggle. Gently, Carradine lifted his other hand, found the nerve in the side of the man’s neck, just below the right ear. He pressed slightly on it, not enough to kill the man, although that would have been the result had he increased the pressure just a little more, and knew that the other was experiencing excruciating agony, a splitting pain in his skull.

  “Are you going to speak now?”

  A pause, then the other nodded his head as far as he could with Carradine’s arm around it, the elbow on the adam’s apple. He relaxed the pressure on the other’s throat slightly. “All right. But no tricks or I’ll kil
l you, you understand?”

  Another nod. “Very well. What are you doing here and why did you try to kill me?”

  “I thought you were somebody else,” was the croaking reply. “A friend of mine was attacked last night in this alley. I waited here for his attackers. When I saw you coming, I thought you were one of them.”

  Carradine brushed the rest of the other’s words aside contemptuously. “Why do you persist in lying?” he said thinly. He jerked his arm back into a tight hold again. “You were in that house across the alley earlier. You killed the man who lived there with a knife. I notice you’re good at throwing knives. It must have been that. You would never have taken him by surprise and killed him in fair fight. Then you waited until you saw me go in, knew that I was sure to find his body, and that you would have to kill me too, to prevent me from talking.”

  Threshing wildly with his arms, the man tried to break free. A horrible gurgling came from deep within his tortured throat. The wind whistled sharply in and out of his mouth. Reaching up, he tried to claw Carradine’s arm away from his throat, nails raking deep bloody furrows in the flesh. But Carradine held on grimly. He doubted if the other would tell the truth even if threatened with death. The members of the M.G.B. back in Moscow had tortures far worse than any that he could dream up for this man, and once word got through to them that he had talked, these men, the executioners of the organisation, would see to it that he suffered the tortures of the damned-on-earth before he died, screaming and pleading for death to come and release him from his agonies.