Still he hesitated. I went on: “Maybe you won’t die. I’ll take you out with me, if you want to go. I can’t promise that you will live, but I will promise that if you die I’ll die with you. I won’t leave you to face it alone.”
That was the convincer. The black man slipped off the bed and padded toward P.P., the stiletto gleaming in his hand. “All right,” he said. “All right. Let’s tie him up.”
P.P. Trevelyn raised a hand. “No. That won’t be necessary. I know when I’m beaten. I know you will do it. And you are quite right, Mr. Bennett. I was bluffing. I do want that two months of life. I will take you to Dr. Valdez.”
I halted the black man. He stopped, reluctant, and I told him to toss the stiletto on the bed. He did.
P.P. said, his voice ice-encrusted, “I do not really blame you, Thomas. But you know what to expect if you are taken alive — I do not forgive such treachery!”
The black man looked scared.
“Forget that,” I told him. “He’s just & dying old nothing talking through his head. Get dressed.”
While he dressed hurriedly I poked the Tommy gun in P.P.’s skinny neck. “Get over to that phone and call your people, your guard house or whatever, and explain the facts of life to them. One wrong move from them and you’re dead. Be sure they understand.”
His slippers scuffed on the carpet as he walked to the phone. He started to pick it up, then hesitated. “Some of my people, the rank and file, aren’t too bright. I wouldn’t like for there to be a mistake made.”
I grinned. “That’s good thinking, P.P. You just make sure there isn’t a mistake.”
He did not pick up the phone. “If I can show you something?”
I nodded. “Do that. Carefully.”
He opened a closet and showed me a long rank of handsome uniforms on hangers. “I am a Lieutenant General in the Haitian Army, you see. Also a Colonel in Duvalier’s Elite Guard. I have many ranks and titles.”
“I’ll bet.”
“The point is that if we wore uniforms, the three of us, it would look better, more natural, and there is less chance of an, er, accident. I would not want to die because of some trigger-happy fool.”
The man had a point. But a thought struck me — I didn’t have any burnt cork with me and there was no time for the makeup bit anyway.
I pointed this out. “I’m Whitey, remember? This is the Haitian Army!”
His expression was sour. “I know. It doesn’t matter too much. We hire white mercenaries from time to time, though Papa Doc hates to admit it. You can pass as one. You’ll be working fast — and the uniform is the important thing.”
He was right. It had to go fast or not at all. By the time anyone questioned the color of my skin it would be too late — for them. I weighed the deal very briefly.
It meant that I would have to ditch the machine gun. It would look a lot better. And it would carry a certain logic— because of the attack, the firefight, we were staging an inspection. I couldn’t very well carry off that illusion if I had a Tommy gun jammed in his ass. I nodded.
“Okay. Get with it. I’ll tell you what to say. Every word. You say anything else, just one extra word, and I’ll kill you.”
Trevelyn reached for the phone. He looked at me, eyes hooded behind the big dark glasss, and there was fear and resignation in his words.“You lied to me, Mr. Bennett. You are not CIA. You’re AXE!”
Chapter 13
Half an hour later, dressed as high rankers in the Haitian Army — decked in plumage finer than even Sutton Place doormen — we entered an elevator and started downward. No sweat. No interference. P.P., at my urging, had dispatched every available guard and officer to the gate, to patrol the fence and organize pursuit of the invasion forces. I had an inward chuckle about that. Some invasion force! Lyda, Hank Willard and Duppy.
I washed my face and took out the contact lenses. The uniform was a miserable fit — I had to slash a lot of seams with the stiletto — but I was the very model of a modern major general. In Papa Doc’s army. P.P. outranked me, the old bastard.
I was walking a very thin plank and knew it. Killing the girl had cowed them both, which was my intention, and I had to act before the shock wore off. And before Thomas, the black, began having second thoughts. I thought I could trust Thomas, to a point, but I did not give him a weapon. I left the Tommy gun in the suite and herded them into the elevator with the Luger.
As we descended Trevelyn took off his glasses to clean them and for the first time I saw his eyes. Small, set too close to his nose, with a sly bird-like dark twinkle, they told me nothing that I didn’t already know. P.P. was an amoral man, not immoral. A constitutional psychopath who inherited a fortune in millions and built it into billions, and became the slave of those billions. He was a sincere man. He really believed that his billions gave him the right, the burden and the duty, to call tunes for the world. A sort of reverse noblesse oblige.
I herded them through corridors and sub-basements, P.P. shuffling in the lead on arthritic legs, to a large room where there was a turntable for narrow gauge tracks emerging from a tunnel. On the table was a small electric car with three padded leather cross seats.
I indicated the car with the Luger. “Goes to the Citadel?”
“Yes.” P.P. lurched painfully into the car and sank back; with a sigh. He wasn’t faking his pain or his decrepitude. The old boy had just about had it. I wondered how it felt to leave all those billions behind.
Thomas, now a full Colonel — and looking smart and handsome in the uniform — took over the controls Thomas was having second thoughts. Not about his own plight so much as about me. Thomas was just beginning to realize to fully and actually know, that I had killed the girl in cold blood. He had to think that, since he couldn’t know my real reasons for the killing. And he knew I was AXE and he knew what that mean!. Thomas was wondering what I would do to him when I no longer needed him.
“Take her away,” I said. Thomas touched a lever and the car glided into the tunnel, running smoothly with a near silent whir of electric motor. I sat in the rear, covering them the Luger on my knee and out of sight below the side of the Cap P put on his dark glasses and peered at me. He appeared to have recovered some of his cool, but I sensed that it was superficial. The knowledge that I was AXE had put a deep gut fear into him.
He surprised me when he said, “It has come to my attention that some of the natives, from time to time, put a voodoo curse on me. Do you believe in the efficacy of such charms, Mr. Bennett?”
I thought it time to give him another shock. Things were going smoothly, greased by fear, and I wanted them to continue that way.
“My real name is Carter,” I said. “Nick Carter. Thomas made a sound in his throat and gaped at me. P.P. stared at me and his claw-like hands twitched and he shriveled a bit into the garish uniform. There was a quaver m his cancer-ruined voice when he spoke.
“The Nick Carter! Of course. I should have guessed that.”
I grinned at him. “Now you know. As to the efficacy of voodoo curses — until recently I didn’t believe in them. Now I do.”
“You do?”
“Of course. Simple. I’m here, P.P. I am the obeah!”
P.P. fell silent. He folded his hands in his lap and stared down at them. Thomas, dumb struck, stared at me with eyes that grew larger by the second.
We whined along the narrow rails. The tunnel was tall and broad and well lighted by overhead bulbs caged in wire. There was a dank smell of recently finished concrete.