"Does Sale have one?"
"Sure, right behind his house."
"Let's have a look," Carter said.
The garage door was rolled down, locked. Carter smelled trouble… and something else.
After some searching, Ferguson found the correct key. Making a show of the effort it cost him, he unlocked the door and rolled it up. "What the hell…!"
Millie held her nose and fanned the air in front of her face. "Whew! It stinks in here!"
The interior was a simmering cube of brown meat. It held no car, only the single surrealistic note of a fifty-gallon oil drum. Its sides and the floor around it were covered with black stains.
"Dang!" Gus said. "You can never get that stuff out!"
Carter found a tire iron on a worktable against the wall and held it out toward Wooten. "How about opening that up?"
"Why don't you?"
"Because I'm in charge."
"Thanks a lot, pal." Wooten went to the barrel, nose crinkling in disgust. "Smells kind of ripe."
"Yes," Carter said.
Ferguson shook his head. "I thought that kid had more sense than that. What does he need a barrel of oil for? That's like selling ice to the Eskimos!"
"Maybe Sale didn't put it there," Carter said. "Maybe somebody else did."
"Huh? Why would anybody want to pull a damn fool stunt like that? Some kind of practical joke?"
The drum top was sealed with a metal snap-on lid. Wooten worked the wedge of the tire from under it. "Shit! I just got some on my pants!"
"Send the cleaning bill to Greer," Carter said. "Open it up."
"That'll make a terrible mess," Millie said.
"We'll be happy to take care of any expenses, ma'am."
The lid opened with a popping noise as it was pried off.
A hideous stench poured out of it. Gagging, Wooten levered off the lid, which fell with a clang on the floor.
A hand clapped over his mouth and nose, Wooten backed off from the barrel. Carter took the tire iron from him, held his breath, and poked around at the thing floating in the barrel.
The oil was just a preservative. A human figure was stuffed in the barrel in the fetal position, the top of his oil-saturated head bobbing and drifting.
"Holy Hannah!" Ferguson breathed. "What… what's that?!"
"I wouldn't be surprised if it's Howard Sale," Carter said.
Millie Ferguson's shriek died out before it could reach any real volume. She fell to the floor in a faint.
Making a positive identification of the corpse wouldn't be easy. Carter's quick inspection revealed that the head was minus its ears, nose, and lips. He had little doubt that other parts of its anatomy were similarly excised. And he had no doubt at all that the victim of torture and murder was Howard Sale.
Carter wondered if Sale had taken any consolation in having the last laugh on his tormentors. He took the secret of the auto-incendiary device to his grave, preventing his killers from cracking into AXE's computerized communications network.
Sale would be avenged. That would provide scant comfort for the dead man, but it would give a great deal of satisfaction to the Killmaster.
"But why put the poor guy in a barrel of oil?" Greer wanted to know when Carter met with him back in Al Khobaiq. "And why hide him in his garage, of all places?"
"Somebody's got a twisted sense of humor. And he was meant to be found. Call it a psychological warfare ploy. Kill one, terrify a hundred."
Greer shook his head. "Rough stuff. Who'd do a thing like that?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out," Carter said. With Tigdal's treachery fresh in his mind, Carter hadn't taken Greer into his confidence. He felt safer playing a lone hand. "Have you got anything for me?"
"I came up with something you might find useful. According to my sources. Sale's been a regular at the Crescent Club during the last few weeks."
"The Crescent Club? What's that?"
"I'm surprised Wooten hasn't mentioned it to you. He's rather fond of it himself. You see, the Khobaiqis are a lot like us Americans — they're hypocrites. They have laws forbidding just about everything under the sun, but somehow there's always a way to get around them.
"Khobaiqi nightlife is a contradiction in terms, with the happy exception of the Crescent Club. If you want to gamble, drink, or womanize, the Crescent Club's the only game in town. It's a place where just about anything goes, so long as you can pay for it."
"Sounds promising," Carter said. "I'd like to have a look at it."
"I don't doubt it," Greer said.
"How do I get there?"
"It's about ten miles away, on the southern highway," Greer said. "Wooten knows how to get there. He can drive you out there tonight."
"Good."
"How are you getting along with Wooten, by the way? He can be cantankerous at times."
"Oh, I think we understand each other," Carter said.
"Fine. One bit of advice — watch your step at the club. It's frequented by some pretty rough characters."
"You've been there?"
"But of course," Greer said, grinning. "Khobaiqi or foreigner, anybody who's looking for a good time turns up at the Crescent Club. Like I said, it's the only game in town."
Prominently mentioned in Karl Kurt Hodler's dossier was his virtual addiction to the pleasures of the flesh. Hodler craved his wine, women, and song. The pattern was all starting to come together…
"See you later," Carter said with a wave.
The Grand Sojourn Hotel was new. Except for the city's Old Quarter, everything in Al Khobaiq seemed to have been built in the last twenty years, the product of enormous oil revenues.
Carter turned his evening clothes over to the hotel staff for pressing. He took a dip in the indoor pool, knocking out a half-mile's worth of laps. Refreshing though it was, the swim failed to wash out the haunting image of Howard Sale in a barrel.
At least the exercise broke some of the tension. Carter felt loose, flexible, and able to absorb whatever the evening might bring.
He dined alone on indifferent French cuisine in the hotel restaurant. Returning to his room, he discovered that the simple detectors he'd left in place were untampered with, indicating that there had been no unauthorized entry.
The bellboy returned with his formal wear. Carter wore a white dinner jacket, black tie, black slacks, and the unholy trio of Hugo, Wilhelmina, and Pierre.
On his way out, he stopped by the desk to see if there were any messages for Lewis Fletcher. Prince Hasan had not yet returned his call.
Carter's vanity was pleased by the figure his image cut in the lobby's mirrored walls. Wooten was waiting for him, leaning against the pearl-gray limo parked by the front entrance.
He chuckled. "You look like a headwaiter in that getup."
Carter let the remark pass. He noted a bulging lump under Wooten's sloppy sport shirt, indicating the presence of a gun.
Carter needn't have worried about being overdressed. Night had come, and as in other desert climes, the temperature had dropped dramatically, by some thirty degrees or more, since the sun had gone down. It was even a bit brisk.
The car exited the hotel's horseshoe-shaped drive to pick up the southern highway. To the right rose the hills; to the left a swollen orange half-moon rose out of the sea above the city. The highway was a smooth silver ribbon rolling through a bleakly spectacular lunar landscape.
No more than five minutes had passed before Wooten said, "We've got a tail."
Having noted a pair of reflected headlights bobbing in the rearview mirror, Carter was not surprised. "Turn off at the next road you come to. Let's make sure they're really following us, and not just going south."
"Right, boss."
"I thought Greer was your boss."
"You outrank him. If I play my cards right, maybe you can fix it so that I'm his boss."