Nick moved across the alley into the darter part of the parking lot. He spoke softly: "Feldwebel?"
"Das Wasser ist kalt." The voice was rough, deep, a gravely basso.
Nick went a bit closer. "Ja. The water is cold. The woman told you what I want?"
He was close enough to the shadow now to see it shrug. It was short and squat. It said, "You wish to enter the hotel without being seen, Herr. And I suppose you wish to get out the same way, nein? It can be arranged — for money."
"How much money?"
A moment of hesitation. Nick took another step forward and stopped abruptly. That breath — a powerful blend of tobacco, onions, alcohol and just plain halitosis! The man's friends, if he had any, had just never told him.
"Five hundred marks, Herr? And I must know, you must tell me, something of what you plan to do? I must protect myself, you understand? The polizei…"
"A thousand marks," Nick told him sternly. "And you will ask no questions. None! You will answer questions. The less you know the better for you. If you do your part well and keep your mouth shut you will not get in trouble with the police. When we part you will forget that you ever saw me or that the woman ever called you. You will forget it instantly and forever! Do you understand?"
"Ja, Herr. What is it you wish? I mean other than entrance to the hotel? That part is easy enough and…"
"I know," Killmaster said brusquely. "I would not need you for that! Here is what I want." And he leaned closer to the man, trying his best to avoid that terrible breath.
A quarter of an hour later Nick Carter left the freight elevator at the seventh floor of the Dom. He took the fire stairs up two flights to the ninth floor. The corridors were empty, thickly carpeted underfoot and dimly lit. He went up the fire stairs like a ghost. His workman's clothes were in a locker in the basement. He now wore a green porter's uniform with shiny silver buttons. He had changed in a laundry room while his guide and mentor kept watch outside, thus giving Nick both a respite from the breath and a chance to transfer his weapons without arousing suspicion. That the porter was a rogue he had no doubt — but murder was something else again.
Nick cracked the door on the ninth floor and peered cautiously into the long corridor, a faint grin on his rough-stubbled face. He had neither the time nor the inclination to explain to the porter about AXE executions. To him the killing of Raymond Lee Bennett would be plain murder.
Nick stepped quietly out into the corridor. So be it. After the fact, if he brought it off, it would be too late. The man dare not talk then.
Room 946 was at the far end of the corridor, near the front of the hotel. Nick walked the distance rapidly, noiselessly, his fingers probing the pocket of the green monkey jacket for the passkey. That in itself was worth the thousand marks. He might have jiggled the lock with his pick, but it would have taken time, made noise and kept him standing in the hall too long.
Here it was. A white door with the bronze numerals 946. The faintest of smiles touched his firm mouth as he saw the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door. It might, Killmaster thought sardonically, just be possible that he could kill Bennett without disturbing him. If he did it fast enough. While the man slept.
He glanced back along the corridor. It shimmered in the subdued night lighting, a dim tunnel of silence. Carefully, very slowly, Nick slipped the passkey into the lock. If Raymond Lee Bennett was indeed in the room — and Nick had no way of knowing for sure — then this was the most dangerous part of the operation. Bennett might be a nut, but he was no fool. He enjoyed playing espionage games and he probably knew a lot of tricks, if only from his reading. He might be sitting in the dark, waiting with a .38 Magnum. He might have rigged a gun trap to the door, or scattered bottles and cans around as noisemakers — anything. Nick Carter told himself that he would hate to get it from a crazy amateur like Bennett. He also prepared his apologies if he got caught by some fat German businessman and his wife: "Verzeihung, mein Herri A thousand pardons. The wrong room, you understand! Falsch Zimmer! I have come to repair the plumbing, Herr. I was told this room was empty and — Ja, mein Herr. I am going at once!"
He turned the key. The lock gave with the faintest of oily clucks. Nick waited, listening, not breathing. He had been too long in the corridor. He must get in, out of view, prepared for anything. He moved his wrist and the stiletto dropped down into his palm. He put the blade between his teeth, transferred the Luger to his right hand, and with his left slowly turned the knob. The door swung inward without a sound. The room was dark. Killmaster slipped in and closed the door softly behind him. Prepared for anything.
Prepared for anything but the smell that met his nostrils. A rank powder smell. Guns had been fired in this room. Quite recently.
Nick acted on instinct, not conscious thought. He dropped to his hands and knees and moved away from the door, to his right along the wall, feeling cautiously ahead of him. He breathed softly through his mouth. And listened. Listened with every ounce of intensity he could muster, his face a few inches off the carpet. After a moment he took a deep noiseless breath and held it until his ears began to pop and his lungs hurt. He held his breath for nearly four minutes; at the end of that time he was sure that there was nothing, no one, in the room with him. No live thing.
Nick let himself collapse softly on the carpet, relaxing the tension. The Luger was in his left hand, the stiletto in his right. There was no danger in the room. Not now. He was sure of it. But there was something else in the room — he could feel its presence — and in a moment or two he would have to face it.
He breathed deeply, listening to faint outside sounds, letting his nerves come back to normal. A tug bleated somewhere on the Rhine — the great river was close by — and a car whirred through lonely streets. From far off a police klaxon sounded. He heard the faint rustle and stir of heavy drapes and at the same moment felt a waft of breeze on his cheek. There was a window open someplace. The breeze smelled faintly of the river, of docks and quays, of coal and oil and gasoline. Then the breeze was gone and he could smell the gunpowder again.
His body was safe for the moment and his brain took over. Racing like the fine computer it was. Guns had been fired in this room; there had been no alarm, no police — the porter would have told him — so that meant the guns had been silenced. Silencers meant a particular sort of trouble, his kind, the kind he understood best. The police, hoodlums, ordinary robbers, they did not use silencers. Sometimes Nick did. So did his opposite numbers in the service of other countries.
Nick Carter made a wry face in the dark. It wasn't going to be as easy as he had begun to hope. It never was, of course. It had been crazy to dream of getting Bennett and getting out of Cologne by dawn! He sighed and pushed himself off the carpet. Best get on with it.
He put his hand squarely into a man's face. The flesh was still faintly warm. Nick ran his hand down the man's arm to the wrist, picked it up and flexed it. No rigor yet. Could it be Raymond Lee Bennett? Had the Berlin man, had Avatar, seen a chance and taken it? Done the job and gone? Or was this Avatar now cooling on the floor?
As Nick crawled back to the door he found his thinking a bit ambivalent. If the Berlin man had gotten Bennett it was all to the good — the job was done — and yet it had been, primarily, Nick's assignment. Professional jealousy? Nick grinned in the dark. Hardly that. It was just that when he started a job he liked to finish it.