The Death Strain (2 page)

"Dinner won't be until eight and Paul and Cynthia Ford are coming," she said. "They're night owls and I'm not waiting that long. I'm hungry now!"

I knew what she meant. We were in her rooms on the top floor, and as I stood up, Sherry ticked off the tiny latch holding the top of the gown together. It fell open and her rounded breasts came out like two pink-tipped buds blossoming in the morning sun. Some girls' breasts thrust out, some point up piquantly. Sherry's breasts were all soft roundness and I found them with my lips, caressing them, reveling in their softness.

"Like last night, Nick," she breathed. "Like last night" It had been the first time for Sherry and me, and I'd promised her more and better. "Oh, God, it couldn't be," she had said in my ear. I was about to show her. I lifted her up and put her down on the bed, and her legs, moving up and down, kicked off the gown and searched for my body. I traced my lips down her body, between her breasts, over her abdomen, down across the curving line of her belly.

I was glad the doors of the old house were thick oak. Sherry screamed in ecstasy, her cries growing louder as I made love to her. With each new sensation she'd gasp long, lingering cries, sometimes ending in a laugh of pure pleasure.

"Oh, God, God," she cried, and her long legs circled my waist as she thrust herself up at me. Faster and faster went the rhythm and suddenly she buried her head against my chest and cried out in the eternal rapturous cry of fulfillment. Her body quivered for a long moment before she fell back and her legs fell limply apart. I stayed with her and she moaned, little sounds of pleasure. I moved to her side. She didn't say anything for a long time, and we lay with bodies touching as I took in the beauty of her figure. Finally she turned her head toward me and opened her eyes.

"Don't you want to go into the shipping business, Nick?"

I grinned at her. "I might someday. Can I think about it?"

"Please do," she murmured. "I'm going to nap till dinner. I want to restore my energies… for later on."

I cradled her against me and we both slept.

We were halfway through dinner when the butler announced that I had a phone call. I took it in the study, knowing damn well who it would be. Hawk was the only one who knew where I was. Leaving word of one's whereabouts was a strict rule for all AXE agents. The tight, strained flatness of Hawk's voice told me there was trouble before he'd said half-a-dozen words.

"Who's there besides the Nestor girl?" he asked. I told him about Paul and Cynthia Ford and that we were midway through dinner. Usually Hawk didn't care what I was midway through. This time I heard him pause.

"All right, finish dinner," he said. "I don't want you dashing out of there because I called. After dinner, be casual and say that I want to talk to you for a little while and that you'll be back. Tell them it's nothing important. Then excuse yourself and get the hell over here at once."

"To your place?" I asked.

"No, the office. I'm there now."

He hung up and I went back to eat, just as the man had said to do. But during the remainder of dinner my mind was racing, consumed with curiosity. Hawk's insistence on my being unhurriedly casual was a tip-off. It meant that whatever was happening, it was anything but casual. I kept my cool through coffee in the Nestors' antique-gold drawing room and then through some small talk. Finally, glancing at my watch, I excused myself for an hour or so. Sherry went to the door with me, her shrewd gray-green eyes studying me.

"Are you really coming back?" she asked. "Or is this one of your little ploys. I know you, Nickie boy."

I grinned at her and caressed her breast, outlined through the hostess gown. She shivered.

"Damn you. You better come back now," she said.

"If I can come back, I'll come," I said. "And you know it." A fleeting smile in her eyes told me she did.

The lights of the AXE offices on DuPont Circle in the heart of Washington were yellow eyes watching me as I approached. A long, black Lincoln pulled away from the curb just as I reached the front door and I saw the small State Department seal on it. Full security was on, I noted as I showed credentials three times, right up to the pretty little thing in the outside office.

Two men sat there, briefcases beside each of them, looking for all the world like salesmen, Their fast, probing eyes that watched my every move gave them away. I smiled pleasantly at them and grinned inwardly at the effort it took them to nod back.

The girl had put my card through her little computer and a tiny screen beside the desk showed her my picture. It also told her I was AXE Agent N3, rating
Killmaster,
could pilot a plane, drive Formula 1 racing cars, speak three languages perfectly and four more passably. It also told her I was single, and when she handed me back my card her eyes were full of interest. I made a mental note to get her name. The Chief, for all his New England conservatism, knew how to brighten up the outer office.

He was in his leather chair, spare, lean face controlled as usual, steel-blue eyes alert. Only the way he kept shifting the unlit cigar from side to side told me he was unusually agitated. He always chewed rather than smoked his cigars. It was the speed at which he chewed them that was the tip-off.

"Big visitors at this time of night," I commented, sliding into a chair. He knew at once I was referring to the State Department limousine.

"Big trouble," he said. "That's why I didn't want it spread that you dashed out of tie Nestors' house. We've already got enough newshawks sniffing around."

He sighed, sat back and regarded me with a long stare.

"I only sent you to attend that bacteriological symposium because I wanted you to get up to date on the stuff," he mused aloud. "But sometimes I think I'm psychic."

I didn't debate the point. I'd seen plenty of evidence of it.

"You're aware of the Cumberland Research Operation, of course " he said.

"Only aware of it," I answered. "Our virus factory. The stuff that's been getting such a second look from so many people lately."

Hawk nodded. "In the Cumberland operation there are sixty bacterial strains for which man has no known antidote. Let loose, they could wipe out whole areas and perhaps more than just areas. Of them all, the deadliest strain is one called X–V77, X–Virus seven-seven. Sometime between four-ten and four-twenty this afternoon, X–V77 was removed from the Cumberland Repository."

I let out a low whistle. "It was," Hawk continued, "removed by the Director of Cumberland, Dr. Joseph Carlsbad, and three other men unknown to us. Two guards were killed."

"Carlsbad is the guy who's been making noises of late," I recalled. "Is he some land of kook?"

"That'd be too simple," Hawk said. "He's a brilliant bacteriologist who, as we piece it together, worked along with us so he'd be in a position to influence government thinking. When he found he couldn't really do that, he began planning to take things into his own hands."

"You say planning. That means you feel this wasn't a sudden, impulsive action."

"Hell, no," Hawk said. "This move took a lot of planning. This was left at the scene."

He pushed a note at me and I read it quickly, aloud. "I have stopped talking," it said. 'This is my ultimatum. Unless all bacteriological warfare stockpiles are destroyed, I will destroy those who would destroy mankind. Science cannot be misused for political ends. I shall be in further contact. Unless what I say is done, I will strike a blow for all people everywhere."

Hawk got up, paced the room and gave me a total picture as it had been reconstructed. When he'd finished, the lines in his face were even deeper.

"This has to come on top of the World Leadership Conference scheduled for next week," Hawk muttered. I knew about the Conference, hailed as the first real gathering of the world's leadership to try and solve the problems of this old planet, I didn't know AXE was involved in it, and Hawk grimaced at my question.

"Everybody's involved," he said. "They've got the FBI on internal security, State on operations, the CIA on watching known problem areas. Here, just look at this list of biggies due at the United Nations General Assembly building on the opening day of the Conference."

I scanned the list briefly and saw some one hundred and thirty names. My eyes picked out the chiefs of state of all the major powers, Russia, France, Japan, Italy. I saw that the Queen of England was listed. So was Chairman Mao of the People's Republic of China, his first trip to the UN. The head of the International Council of Churches was on the list as was the Pope, all living past Presidents of the United States, the prime ministers., presidents and kings of every country on the globe. It was to be a first of its kind, all right, a major step in assembling the world's leaders in one place to act, even superficially, as one body. I gave the list back to Hawk.

"Got any leads on Carlsbad, any particular person he might be after?" I asked.

"We gave everything we know about the man to the Chief Psychiatrist at the Pentagon, Dr. Tarlman," Hawk replied. "His conclusion is that Carlsbad's real desire is to injure the United States, probably by infecting one of the world's leaders. Carlsbad's parents and sister were killed at Hiroshima where, as Methodist missionaries, they were interned during World War II. Dr. Tarlbut says Carlsbad's principles may be sincere, but they're abetted by his repressed hatred of those who killed his parents and sister."

"Interesting," I commented. "In any case, it all means that the doctor might do any damn thing with his deadly strain of bacteria. And if we start alerting every prominent person in the world, the cat's out of the bag."

"Exactly," Hawk agreed. "So for now, at least, this is still top-secret security. Our one lead is Carlsbad's niece, Rita Kenmore. She lived with him, and we know be is very devoted to the girl. She's still at his house. I've got men watching it on a twenty-four-hour basis. Tomorrow, I want you to go to her and see what you can find out. I've a feeling that Carlsbad will try to contact her."

"Should I go back to Sherry Nestor tonight?"

"Absolutely," Hawk snapped, and I knew it was hurting him to give me another night of pleasure. Normally he'd have me on some plane within the hour. "I want nothing added to the rumors already starting to fly. Boxly of the
Post-Times
has wind of something already, and hell have his crew beating the bushes in all directions. In the morning, instead of going to the symposium, you'll go to Carlsbad's home here in Washington. Check with me first, though."

Hawk swiveled and gazed out the window and I knew he was through.

I left with a chill wrapped around me, a feeling of elements outside man's control waiting to descend. The pretty little thing in the outside office smiled at me. It was an effort to smile back, and I forgot to get her name. It didn't seem important anymore. I walked slowly through the night, thinking about what I'd just been told and putting together what few things we knew. Carlsbad had not been alone. He had some kind of organization. A giant Japanese ought to be easy enough to spot.

I had no idea then what land of an organization Carlsbad had put together. I was to find out, however, that it was kind of an elite of the damned.

When I got back to Sherry's, Paul and Cynthia were still there, and I maintained a casual air until they left. It was Sherry who, with her native shrewdness, saw through my façade.

"I know better than to ask what, but something's gone wrong," she said. I grinned at her.

"Not here," I said. "Let's get lost." She nodded and she was naked in my arms in moments and we got lost, the whole damned night, lost in the pleasures of feeling and not thinking, of the body over the mind, of the present over the future. It was a nice way and a nice place in which to get lost, and Sherry was as eager as I was.

I left Sherry half-awake in bed, murmuring for me to stay. "Can't, darling, I said in her ear. Her soft breasts were outside the sheet and I covered her up. She pulled the sheet down again without opening her eyes. "Still no go, doll," I chuckled. I brushed her body with my lips and left her grumbling. I'd checked out Wilhelmina, the 9mm Luger in the shoulder holster under my jacket, and I'd strapped Hugo, the pencil-thin stiletto, in its leather sheath on my forearm. Pressure at the right spot and the tempered steel blade dropped into my palm, silently, deadly.

I paused in the study downstairs and called Hawk. He was still harried, a man juggling more than he could safely handle. He told me they'd confiscated the only copy of the speech Carlsbad had sent to the symposium chairman to have read for him.

"It was rambling, threatening in vague ways," the Chief said. "It had Dr. Cook, the chairman, thoroughly confused and he was happy to see us take it off his hands."

"I'm on my way now to see the niece," I said.

"She's in scientific research herself, Nick," Hawk told me. "The two men watching the front and back of the house are FBI, I'm in walkie-talkie contact with them. I'll tell them you're on your way."

I was about to hang up when he spoke again. "And Nick, bear down. Time is short."

I went outside to the little blue Cougar parked near the Nestor house. I drove to the edge of Washington proper and found the Carlsbad house in the run-down area, the last house on a long street. A thick wall of woods was about twenty yards behind the house and there was heavy shrubbery in a vacant lot across the street from it. The house itself was run-down and decrepit-looking. I was frankly surprised. After all, Carlsbad wasn't drawing peanuts in his position as Director of the Cumberland Operation. Certainly he could afford something better than this.

I parked and walked to the weathered, cracked door and rang the bell. My next surprise was the girl who answered the door. I saw china-blue eyes, big and round, under a shock of short, brown hair set in a round, saucy face with a pert nose and full lips. A blue jersey blouse, almost the color of her eyes, tightened itself over full, upturned, thrusting breasts and a deep blue miniskirt revealed young, smoothly firm legs. Rita Kenmore was, to say the least, an eye-filling bit of fluff.