Dr. Death (6 page)

"You okay?" I asked Michelle.

She opened her mouth, but couldn't speak. I could feel her trembling.

"Relax," I said, taking one hand from the wheel to pat her thigh. "It gets easier now."

And then I saw the Lincoln again. It was almost a quarter mile back down the dead-straight road, but even in the thickening twilight I could make out its distinctive low silhouette.

This time I didn't even bother to curse. The ratty little man was obviously a natural-born driver. He could match me daredevil stunt for daredevil stunt for quite awhile — long enough, in fact, to make it inevitable that the police would stop us. Which I couldn't afford even if he, with diplomatic plates, probably could.

"It's time," I said, as much to myself as Michelle, "for a change of pace."

I let the BMW slow to a comfortable, legal, 40 miles an hour. The Lincoln approached. In the rearview mirror I could see that one front fender was badly bashed, the headlight out, and a side window smashed. The Frenchman looked to be in a state of shock. His driver had a stunned, wild-eyed expression.

They pulled up a few car lengths behind, and held the distance. I swung off onto New York Boulevard at the same speed. They stayed behind. Other cars came up behind and passed, five, ten, fifteen. The Frenchman made no effort to pass.

They might be simply trying to follow us to our destination. On the other hand, they might be holding back, waiting for a quiet, dark place to attack us.

Time was passing. Valuable time.

I decided to call their hand.

I went another two miles and took a right turn onto Linden Boulevard, going toward the Naval Hospital. Halfway there, a furniture warehouse, unused at night, took up almost a block. I pulled up in front of it and waited. It was an ideal place for an ambush.

The Lincoln pulled up fifty feet in back.

I waited.

No one got out.

I waited another moment, and when the Frenchman and his driver still didn't make a move, I gave Michelle her instructions. To her credit, even if she was still trembling, she simply nodded, her eyes sharpening with readiness.

Then I got out of the BMW and strolled back toward the Lincoln. When I got close enough to see over the remaining headlight's beam, and into the car, I watched the look of shock on the Frenchman's face gradually fade into an expression of wary alertness as I came nearer. His driver, coming down from his trick-driving high, simply looked surprised and stupid.

I leaned over the hood of the Lincoln and tapped on the windshield, directly in front of the Frenchman's face.

"Good evening," I said politely.

The driver glanced uneasily at the Frenchman. The Frenchman continued to look straight ahead, uneasy, wary, saying nothing.

Michelle should be sliding into the driver's seat now, as my head and body obstructed the view from the Lincoln.

"That's a fascinating two-way radio aerial you have here," I said, again smiling politely.

Michelle should now be putting the still-idling BMW into gear, waiting for my next move.

"But it's getting a little rusty in spots," I continued. "You really should have it replaced."

And a split-second later Wilhelmina was in my hand and firing. The first bullet ripped the radio aerial off the car and sent it spinning into the air, the second shot out the remaining headlight, and, as Michelle sent the BMW into a screeching U-turn, flicking on her high beams as she bore down on the Lincoln to blind both the Frenchman and the driver, my third and fourth bullets shot out the two tires on the right side of the big sedan.

It was the next maneuver I was worried about, but Michelle handled it beautifully. Barely yards away from the Lincoln she braked just enough so that my flying leap enabled me to grab through the open window on her side and hang on to the inside of the door. Then she was accelerating again, lights out now, in a swerve around the Lincoln and up over the curb it was parked against, hiding my crouching body at the far side of the BMW until, on the sidewalk, we reached the end of the street. Then, again, a screeching right turn, my body completely blocked from view, and we were tearing up New York Boulevard, my hands clinging to my precarious hold like twin leeches.

A quarter mile further she slowed to a stop. In one smooth movement, I was in the driver's seat, she in the passenger seat, neither of us saying a word.

It was another mile before she spoke.

"That was… too risky," she said. "They might have killed you when you came up to their car. Aside from the danger of your acrobatic leap onto this car."

"It was a calculated risk," I said. "If they had wanted to attack us, they wouldn't have just sat there when we pulled over to the curb. As for what you call my acrobatics — if I weren't ready to take risks like that I'd be ready for retirement. Which I'm not."

Michelle simply shook her head. She still looked shaken. I silently spun the wheel and headed toward Manhattan, going by local streets where it would be easy to spot another tail. But I was fairly sure we'd lost the Frenchman and his friends. Getting rid of the aerial for their two-way radio meant they couldn't send for someone else to take over. As for the Chinese girl, I was certain I had shaken any other tail she might have put on us.

Shaken it at the very beginning. Easily.

Too easily.

Why should she have given up so soon?

It made me uneasy. But there was nothing I could do about it now. I simply stored my uneasiness in a compartment of my mind, ready to trot it out any time.

In Manhattan I parked on a busy side street and made a telephone call. Fifteen minutes later, a man from the car agency arrived with a totally unremarkable and highly anonymous Ford Galaxy. Totally unremarkable, that is, except for a few changes under the hood that let it do up to 110 without difficulty. He picked up the BMW, expressing no interest or surprise at my sudden switch of cars, and left, wishing us a good trip.

It was as good as any trip can be when you're driving, and you haven't slept for over forty-eight hours. Michelle was lucky. She dozed, her head on my shoulder. I kept the Ford at exactly five miles an hour over the speed limit, and sipped black coffee from containers until I wanted to gag.

We weren't tailed.

At ten minutes to midnight, I parked the car a few feet from the headquarters of the Amalgamated Press and Wire Services, the rather shabby, run-down building on Dupont Circle which disguised the headquarters of AXE.

Hawk was waiting in his office.

"And so that's about it, sir," I wound up my account an hour later. "The OAS almost certainly have Duroche. Whether he's with them willingly or not is another story."

"And
where
he is with the OAS is still another story," Hawk added grimly.

I nodded. I had already told him of my clues, the three words: Leopards, Pearl, Volcano. I had some more thoughts on the meaning of those words, but Hawk obviously wasn't in a mood to hear them now. He puffed somberly on his obnoxious cigar for a moment, staring into space somewhere over my left shoulder. His sharp-featured face, with the toughened old skin, and the surprisingly soft blue eyes, had the expression it wore when he was thinking hard — and was worried. Not only was Hawk a tough old bird, he was a smart one. If he was worried, so was I.

Suddenly, as if he had decided something, Hawk leaned forward and ground his cigar into a pulpy mess in a cracked twenty-five-cent ashtray.

"Five days," he said.

"Sir?" I said.

"You have exactly five days," he said coldly and clearly, "to find Fernand Duroche and get him away from the OAS."

I stared. He stared back, piercing me with those blue eyes, now grown hard as hammered steel.

"Five days!" I said. "Sir, I'm an agent, not a magician. From what I have to work with, it might take me five weeks, and then only…"

"Five days," he said again. The tone of his voice meant "no discussion." He gave his swivel chair a sharp nudge, and spun around so that he was facing away from me, staring out the dirty window. Then he told me.

"A few hours before you arrived in New York, we received a communication. From a Colonel Rambeau. I believe you remember him."

I did. He'd slipped out of our hands after his attempted assassination of De Gaulle and gone into exile. To Spain, it was suspected. But still a top man in the OAS.

"Rambeau has informed us that the OAS now has the power to turn the U.S. energy crisis into more than a crisis. A catastrophe. And if he's telling us the truth, catastrophe would be a mild way of putting it."

Hawk's tone was dry and cold. It always was when the trouble was bad.

"And exactly what is that power, sir?" I asked.

"According to Rambeau," Hawk said, drier and colder than ever, "the OAS now has the power to totally destroy every off-shore oil refinery and oil drilling rig in the western hemisphere."

My jaw dropped, in spite of myself.

"That sounds impossible," I said.

Hawk spun around to face me again.

"Nothing," he said grimly, "is impossible."

We faced each other across his desk in silence for a few moments, each uncomfortably aware of exactly what that threat could mean, if it was real. It would be bad enough if the oil drilling rigs were destroyed; that would cut off a substantial amount of oil right there. But the destruction of the refineries, which processed oil not only from the western hemisphere, but from the Arab countries as well, might cut down the supply of oil in the U.S. by as much as eighty percent.

Oil for essential industries, for gasoline, for heating, for transformation into other forms of energy, such as electricity.

The United States, as we knew it, would grind to a halt. Our country would be virtually paralyzed.

"Could it be a bluff?" I asked. "Do they offer any proof they can pull it off?"

Hawk nodded slowly.

"They claim that they will offer proof in five days. Proof that not only can they do it, but that even with advance warning, we can't stop them."

"And the proof?"

"In five days, the OAS will blow up and totally destroy the Shell Oil refinery off the coast of Curaçao. Unless, of course, we can stop them. And put them out of business."

"And if we don't? What's their price for not blowing up all the others?"

Hawk slowly drew another cigar from the breast pocket of his rumpled brown suit.

"They haven't informed us of that. Yet. They state there will be further communication after they've proved what they can do."

He didn't have to go further. If the OAS did prove they could make good on their threat, the demands they could make on the U.S. would be staggering financially, politically, and in every other way.

It was blackmail — extortion, if you please — on an undreamed-of scale.

Hawk and I looked at each other across his desk. I spoke first. One word.

"Duroche," I said.

Hawk nodded.

"The connections are too strong for coincidence. The OAS have Duroche. Duroche is a specialist — a genius — in underwater propulsion devices, the computerization of those devices, and their use with nuclear warheads. The OAS claim the ability to destroy every off-shore oil rig and refinery in this Hemisphere. Therefore…"

"Therefore, Duroche gave them this ability," T finished for him.

Hawk rammed his cigar between his teeth and lit it in short fierce puffs before speaking again.

"Correct," he said. "And therefore…"

"Therefore, I have five days to get Duroche away from the OAS," I finished again.

"You have five days to get Duroche away from the OAS
and
destroy whatever devices he's developed for them.
And
the blueprints for them."

There it was. Five days.

"And Carter," Hawk's voice was still dry and cold, "this is a solo. The OAS have warned that if we enlist the cooperation of any foreign police or officials at all, they will immediately destroy every off-shore oil rig and refinery from Caracas to Miami."

I nodded. That figured.

"You'll have to take the girl with you," he went on, puffing mechanically at the cigar. "She can give you positive identification of her father. We can't have you bringing out the wrong man. I don't like to involve her, but…"

"What if Duroche won't come willingly?"

Hawk's eyes narrowed. T knew the answer already.

"Bring Duroche out!" he snapped. "Willingly or unwillingly. And if you can't bring him out…"

He didn't have to finish. I knew that if I couldn't bring Duroche out, for whatever reason, I would have to kill him.

I hoped Michelle didn't realize that.

I stood up, then remembered something.

"The Chinese girl," I said. "Did the computer turn up anything on her?"

Hawk's eyebrows went up.

"Interesting," he said. "That is, interesting because there's nothing particularly interesting on her. No Interpol record. No reported involvement in any form of espionage. Her name's Li Chin. Twenty-two years old. Graduated very young from Vassar, top of her class. Graduate work at M.I.T. Then she went out to Hong Kong and spent a year there working in the family Import-Export business. Just returned to New York a few months ago. Hard to see how she fits into the picture, at this point."

It was. That was what was bothering me. But there was nothing I could do about it now. I returned Li Chin to her special little compartment in my mind.

"Any idea where to start?" asked Hawk.

I told him. He nodded. A cigar ash dropped to his suit jacket, comfortably joining a number of other smears and stains. Hawk's brilliance didn't extend to wardrobe or its care.

"I'll contact Gonzalez for you, in case you can use him. He's not the best, but he's knowledgeable about the area."