Nick got his entrenching shovel and dug a shallow grave. He tumbled the body into it and covered it over, patting the earth flat. He did not want his pond contaminated with a cadaver.
He dressed, jammed the hunting knife into his boot, and went back to the hut. He picked up the cruzeiro piece and examined it again. There was an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. There were also, it was rumored, an awful lot of ex-Nazis. Nick flipped the coin high and caught it again. Whoever had killed the man and burnt all his clothes and possessions, had missed the coin. Now it tattled a fragment of story. What the full story was Killmaster could not guess. Probably it did not concern him or his mission. Almost certainly it did not. And yet — someone had killed a Nazi, an SS man, and buried the body where they hoped it would never be found. That in itself was of no matter. What did matter was that the ashes had still been warm!
Nick conceded, reluctantly, that he was probably not as alone as he had hoped. Still he must play out his part according to plan.
He slung the binoculars around his neck inside his shirt. Then, with the big Webley in his belt, he took a can of beans from the musette bag and ate them under a fir tree. He dug himself a small latrine back in the grove of primavera and used it, then flung the empty tin in and covered both it and the excreta. Then, with his little shovel and the pan, he began working his way back up the stream toward the far end of the barranca. He had, or hoped he had, the appearance of a gringo stiff looking for a good place to pan some illegal gold.
He found a shallow spot where the stream ran crashing around huge boulders and crossed over. He stopped to pan here and there, always working his way upstream. Now and then he found specks of gold in the pan, and these he carefully stowed away in a leather pouch. If the Mexican cops did get him he must have something to prove that he was a bona-fide gold tramp. If Authority was in a good mood they might do no worse than kick him out of the country. That in itself, of course, meant defeat. He would go back to AXE with his tail between his legs. N3’s regular features took on a saturnine cast at the thought. That had never happened to him. He didn’t think it was going to happen this time.
He spent the entire afternoon play-acting. The sun was lowering in the west, the sky riven with rainbow color, when he found what he wanted at the end of the barranca. It came very near to being a dead end, a box canyon, but at last he found a steep passage, as narrow and treacherous as a winze in an old mine, which led out of the ravine on the easy side. He left his pan and shovel by the stream and slipped through the narrow winze, slipping badly on the shale floor. The passage ended in a tumble of giant boulders not far from the mesa he had seen before. To his right, half a mile away, was the flat-topped mountain. A belt of trees and heavy brush strayed in a wavering line from the mesa to the foot of the mountain. Cover enough, he reckoned, for a man who knew how to use cover. And he did. The main thing was to get to the point of vantage before the light went.
The sun was half-drowned in the Pacific when Nick Carter reached the mountain top. He had been right — it overlooked everything for miles. He found a niche in the boulders and adjusted the binoculars.
To his right, the northeast, was the tiny village of Cosala glimmering white in the twilight. He must go there in the morning, to be seen, noticed, and to get supplies. He did not think there would be a resident policeman in so small a village.
Nick brought the glasses around slowly, counter-clockwise, sweeping the broken landscape. Here and there he spotted the gaping maws of old mine shafts, tottering stipples and derricks, all rotting away now. From one of the mining sites a rusting narrow-gauge track ran away to nowhere. Near it a donkey engine stood mute.
Suddenly Killmaster let out a grunt of satisfaction. There it was. The airstrip. The strip the CIA was betting was the one from which the drunken Vargas had taken off with his load of counterfeit. Nick examined it carefully. It was weedy and overgrown, unkempt, but he could clearly see tracks where a plane, or planes, had recently landed and taken off. At one end a wind sock lifted erratically to the evening sea breeze. There was a metal hangar and a tiny operations shack built of raw yellow wood, unpainted. Everything about it gave the impression of desolation and desertion.
A rutted track led from the airstrip to the double-laned highway he had crossed that morning. Nick adjusted the glasses again and followed the black ribbon of highway to the north, to where a dirt road shot off to the left to end at a high wire gate. There was a small stone guardhouse just inside the gate.
He put down the glasses to light a cigarette, Mex, and when he took them up again he saw a car just coming into sight on the highway. It was a sleek, expensive car, and its shiny black hide flaunted the last rays of the sun. Nick nodded in appreciation. A Rolls. Such a car could only belong to the owner of the castle known as El Mirador. The Watch Tower. That quite famous and extraordinary woman who was known locally as The Bitch.
Nick let his cigarette loll from the corner of his lips as he kept the glasses on the car. Possibly the lady had been out hanging some of the peasants, or at least whipping them. She was, if rumor was true, quite capable of both.
His orders had been specific on the subject of the lady and her famous castle. Stay clear! She was VIP. Not to be bothered. Unless in the very unlikely event that she was in some way mixed up with the counterfeiting and the Serpent Party. The CIA Director had all but stated that Gerda von Rothe, her real name, was above suspicion. He had not gone quite that far, but the implication was there.
Now, as Nick Carter followed the Rolls with his glasses, his grin was on the knowing side. Nobody was above suspicion! That was the creed of AXE, and of Hawk, and it was his creed too.
He thought he detected a flash of silver hair as the Rolls turned off the highway onto the dirt road that led back to the castle. Was the lady a platinum-blonde? Surely the CIA man had told him, though there had been no pictures immediately available. Nick shrugged. Odd that he couldn’t remember. Not that it mattered — if the lady was as clean as the CIA seemed to think.
The Rolls was stopping at the gate now. Two uniformed guards came out of the guardhouse and opened the gate. Nick smiled as he watched them salute in military fashion. The Bitch ran a tight castle.
The Rolls went through the gate and up a long, curving drive that wound into thick growing trees. Nick lost sight of it and brought the glasses back to the uniformed guards. Silver insignia of some kind glittered on their caps. They did not wear badges. Both men wore Sam Browne belts that looked well polished, and both wore buttoned-down holsters on their belts. Nick’s brow furrowed in thought — what was the lady so afraid of? His frown deepened a moment later as one of the guards went into the guardhouse and came out again with a submachine gun. He sat in a chair leaning against the side of the guardhouse and began to clean the gun with rags and oil. So powerful were the glasses that Nick could see the man’s flat, expressionless face, see the lips move as he whistled at his work.
What in hell, Nick was wondering, goes on at the castle? Tommy guns! Miles of wire fence topped with strands of barbs. That’s security, all right, but why so much of it? What has the lady got to hide?
Trees prevented him from seeing much of the castle itself, this fabulous El Mirador so often pictured and written about. Formerly, anyway. Nick could definitely remember the CIA man saying that not much had been written about the castle in recent years. Writers and photographers were no longer welcome. The Bitch lived alone among her splendor and her millions and liked it.