As I walked over to the fallen man, an instructor came out of the shadows behind me. "Hey," he shouted, "what's going on here?"
He came over to where I stood and saw the stiletto sticking up out of the thug's back. "Jesus!" he said. "What the hell happened?"
I pulled the stocking mask off the husky man and saw that he was dead. The face wasn't familiar. "We had visitors," I said. "One got away. He's gone by now."
"You killed this one?" He looked a little sick.
AXE instructors are specialists in self-defense, but most of them haven't spent much time in the field. They train us to loll but are never around for the dirty work.
"It looks as if I did," I said, moving past the slack-jawed karate expert to pick up the envelope my assailants had left with me. I opened it up and could just barely read the message in the dim moonlight.
At the forthcoming Caracas Conference, the government of the United States and particularly the AXE intelligence network will suffer severe humiliation and embarrassment. This is an open challenge to AXE to determine what form the humiliation will take and how it will be executed, and to prevent it if you can. When you fail, the world will see the inefficiency of AXE and the ineffectiveness of the United States government in world affairs.
It was signed simply "The Spoilers." The entire message, including the signature, was pasted up from magazine clippings.
The ashen-faced karate instructor came over to me from the dead man. When he spoke, his voice was cool. "Was that left by these men?"
"That's right," I said.
"May I see it, please?" he asked in his instructor's voice.
"I'm afraid not," I answered.
His face filled with anger. "Now look here, Carter. This unfortunate incident occurred on school grounds. And you have some explaining to do."
I stuck the paper into my jacket pocket. "David Hawk will get a full report."
Everybody at AXE answered to Hawk, even this man's boss at the training center. I suspected that the instructor resented the fact that I reported directly to Hawk. As I started past him to retrieve my stiletto, it looked like he was going to try to stop me.
"Do you think you can take this paper from me?" I asked with a sarcastic grin.
He hesitated for a minute. I knew he wanted very much to accept the challenge, but he was aware of my rank. That single fact frightened him in spite of his black belt in karate.
He moved aside, and I retrieved the stiletto. I cleaned the blade on the dead man's back and returned it to its sheath. "You can take the body to the training center," I said, "but leave it there till you hear from Hawk. And don't remove anything from his pockets."
The instructor just stared hard at me, resentment written all over his face.
"In the meantime, exercises are over," I said. "No more skulking around in the shadows tonight."
I turned away and headed back toward the buildings. I had to get a call through to Hawk right away.
A couple of days later Hawk and I sat at a long mahogany conference table at AXE headquarters with the head of the CIA, the chief of the National Security Agency, the Secret Service boss, and the director of the Venezuelan Security Police. Hawk had asked these men to meet with us because their agencies were going to provide the security for the Caracas Conference.
Hawk was at the head of the table, speaking through a huge, smelly cigar. "You all have copies of the message before you, gentlemen," he said. "If any of you wish to examine the original again, I have it right here." His spare frame seemed electric with energy, and his hard, icy eyes looked out of place in his jovial Connecticut-farmer's face. I noticed, as I had many times before, that when Hawk spoke, people listened carefully — even these notables.
"There is no lead as to who wrote it?" the CIA chief asked. He was a tall, sandy-haired man with piercing blue eyes and the manner of a five-star general.
"I'll let N3 answer that," Hawk said, shifting the cigar in his mouth.
I folded my hands in front of me on the table. I can't stand these bureaucratic meetings, especially when I have to answer a lot of questions from intelligence brass.
"There's no way to trace the materials that they used for the message itself," I said. "We've checked out the paper, envelope, clippings, and glue, and it's all common stuff that they could have bought at any one of a thousand stores in the area."
"What about the men themselves?" asked the Secret Service head impatiently. He was stocky and blondish, with streaks of gray starting at the temples. He looked very nervous.
"The man I killed turned out to be a shoe salesman in a large department store here in Washington. No leads. He hasn't got a record with any of our departments or with the police. And all I can tell you about his friend is that he's a tall guy with a European accent."
"Russian?" the NSA man asked. He was an older man with white hair and a long, jutting chin. He was doodling on the note pad in front of him, but he watched my face intently.
"I couldn't tell for sure," I said. "It might have been a Balkan accent. And of course it could have been phony."
The Venezuelan drummed his fingers on the table. He was a big man with an olive complexion and dark, heavy eyebrows. He was the man who had successfully protected the Venezuelan government during a series of attempted coups a while back, and he was obviously worried now. "Then we have no idea who is behind the message," he said slowly, in his thick accent.
"I'm afraid that's the present situation," Hawk admitted. "Even the signature doesn't mean anything to us."
"If it were up to me, I wouldn't worry about it," the NSA chief said. "The whole thing is probably a hoax of some kind."
"Or just some men with a grudge against AXE," the head of the Secret Service commented. "Amateurs who can be handled easily if they show up in Caracas."
"I don't see the Russians or Red Chinese going about an assignment in quite this way," the man from the CIA said slowly. "But then, it's almost impossible to guess how the KGB and the L5 will conduct themselves in any given situation."
"The hard, cold fact remains," Hawk said, "that there is a threat to the conference. The note talks of humiliation and embarrassment, not just disruption. And it is specifically addressed to AXE. What kind of embarrassment would particularly affect my agency, gentlemen?"
There was a short silence. Finally, the CIA chief spoke again. "Your people are often brought in where an assassination attempt is expected," he said, "to block their executioners with yours." He glanced in my direction.
"That's right," Hawk said, sitting back in his chair and glancing around the table. "So if AXE is to be embarrassed at this conference, it's just possible that someone is planning to assassinate our Vice-President or the Venezuelan President or both."
There was a buzz of conversation around the table. The head of the Secret Service regarded Hawk somberly. "I don't see how we can draw that conclusion from the note, David," he said. "I think you re exaggerating its importance."
The NSA man got up from his chair and started pacing back and forth beside the long table, his hands clasped behind him. He looked like a retired British colonel, striding down the room. "I think we're all taking this thing much too seriously," he argued. "The damned note could be a practical joke."
Till now I'd purposely kept quiet. Hawk wanted to hear everyone's opinion before we expressed ours. But now I thought it was time for me to speak up.
"It's a little too well planned for a joke," I said quietly. "Remember, these men managed to gain access to the AXE training-center grounds. And they knew my name and managed to find me there. The one with the accent, who gave me the note, said exactly this: T suggest your people read it carefully and seriously. "I looked around the table. "He didn't sound like he was kidding."