For a second or two she suffered his touch. Her smile was hard, cold, cruel. Then she slashed him across the face with the riding crop, a hard and stinging blow.
“Never touch me again,” she said. “Until I tell you I want to be touched. Goodbye, Jamie. Midnight at the postern.”
Nick, his fingers tenderly exploring the weal on his face, watched her skirt the pond and head for the mesa. She put the palomino into a canter. Damon and Pythias loped along behind.
He stared after her until she was out of sight. When at last he turned toward the hut his face wore an expression of puzzlement, of near disbelief, that was most unusual for the AXE agent. In his line of work he had been in some weird situations, but this beat them all. He felt as though he were walk-in some dark dream.
Bitch she might be. Legend she certainly was. If the stories, the rumors, the wide-spread publicity by mouth and print, if all these were to be believed — Gerda von Rothe was seventy years old!
Chapter 6
El Tigre
They came upon him while he was using the latrine. A sly move on their part. A man with his trousers down is at a great disadvantage. Nick had put the Webley beside him on the ground. As the four bandits stepped out of the shelter of the little clump of yucca trees he reached for it, but halted the motion in time. Four carbines covered him.
The youngest of the bandits — he was little more than a boy, with a flashing white smile — said, “Buenos dias, Señor. Or should I say good evening? Anyway, Señor, please to put up the hands. Do not fear. We do not intend you harm.”
Nick Carter scowled at them. “Is it all right if I fasten my belt first?”
The youth nodded. He was evidently the leader, despite his tender years. “Please do, Señor. But please to try no monkey tricks — I would not like to shoot you. Jose! Get the revolver.”
Nick, on the opposite side of the latrine, watched in disgust as one of the bandits picked up the Webley and handed it to the boy. To be taken so easily was humiliating. He had been deep in thought, pondering about Gerda von Rothe, the castle, and the strange turn that events were taking. He had not been alert. Sometimes it was an error to think.
He said: “You’re making a mistake, you know. I haven’t got anything worth stealing, unless you consider a few cans of food and a mangy burro worthwhile.”
The young man laughed, his teeth flashing in the thickening dusk. “We know that, Señor. We do not come to rob you. But no more talk — my brother, El Tigre, awaits you impatiently. You were a long time coming, Señor, I think. You gringos do not keep your promises well.”
Nick was prodded back into the Joshua trees where a single mule was waiting. The bandits were walking, it seemed, and the mule was for him. He soon found out why. He was blindfolded and made to mount the mule. The beast had a bony spine that dug into Nick like — a saw. His feet were bound beneath the mule’s belly, but his hands were left free.
Before the blindfold was secured he had a good look at them. The three older men had flat, impassive Indian faces the color of old pennies. They were all dressed alike in the classical uniform of Mexican bandidos — loose pajama-like suits that had once been white but were filthy now, and tall wide-brimmed sombreros. All wore thonged sandals. Each carried two leather bandoleers criss-crossed over the chest. All had pistols and knives in addition to the carbines. And, Nick thought, as cutthroat a crew as you were likely to find anywhere in the world. You had to be tough to survive long as a bandit in Mexico. It was usually a short life, if not a merry one, and when they were caught the authorities did not bother to give them a trial. The bandits were made to dig their own graves, granted a last cigarette, then the firing squad did its work. He could not help wondering how, in this year of 1966, El Tigre had managed to survive. The Mexican government was loud in its claims that banditry had been wiped out.
Was there, perhaps, some kind of a deal? Again Nick had the feeling that he was stumbling around in a dream, groping in a labyrinth. New corridors kept appearing. What had Hawk called the mission? A many-faceted sonofabitch! Nick was beginning to agree with his boss.
He tried to memorize the path they took. He knew when they reached the dead end of the barranca and the mule lurched up the narrow steep winze. If they kept straight on now they would be on the mesa. But the mule was pulled to the right, toward the mountain from which he had spied, had been shot at, the night before. Nick waited for the climb to begin, but instead he went down a steep grade, the mule slipping and sliding on its rump in shale, and he could tell by the sudden change in acoustics — the bandits bantered among themselves constantly — that they were in another canyon. They kept going down, always down. Nick gave it up. He was hopelessly lost.
During the hour-long trek he had plenty of time to think. Slipping and sliding around on the mule, tormented by the bony spine of the creature, still he managed to concentrate. Perhaps the blindfold helped him. He struggled fiercely to keep his thoughts in orderly flow, in logical sequence, trying to make some sort of sense out of a decidedly weird concatenation of events.
Gerda von Rothe had been expecting the ex-Nazi, the SS man, whose body Nick had found and buried. The man probably had come from Brazil. Obviously he had been a killer sent to do a job for Gerda. A job that Nick was now taking over. Or so Gerda thought. He made a shrewd guess that one of the men she wanted killed was Maxwell Harper, the public relations man. Why? Nick gave that up for the moment. He hadn’t the faintest idea, except that Gerda had given the impression of a woman who was a prisoner in her own castle. Possible...
Who was the other man? — Or men? — whom she wanted killed? The mestizo, or Chinese, he had seen in the village? Again possible. The mestizo and Harper appeared to be working closely together. But again — why murder? And how did the Chinese Reds and Nazis spin in the same plot, if they did? Nick Carter shook his head and nearly groaned aloud. Wheels within wheels!
Now on to the next baffling factor in this crazy skein. El Tigre was expecting him! Had been for some time, according to the young leader of the bandits. The muscles knotted in Nick’s lean jaw. Hell’s fire! The CIA man had skimmed lightly over the bandit situation. Too goddamned lightly. The bandits were not likely to bother him. So he had been assured. Yet here he was bouncing around on this razor-backed obscenity of a mule, a captive of bandits.
His thoughts flashed back to Gerda von Rothe and the first words she had spoken to him.
“Der Tag kommt.”
The day is coming! What day? When? Why? How? Who? And where did the Chinese, the counterfeit money fit in? This time Nick did groan aloud.
The bandit leader, who must have been riding close behind him, was immediately solicitous. “You are in pain, Señor?”
“This screwing mule is killing me,” Nick said harshly. His temper was fraying badly and he told himself to watch it. This was a time for the icy imperturbability he was capable of at his best. He was not at his best just now. He had to admit that. And not only because of his poor posture at the moment. He had the sickening feeling of a blind man groping in a tar pit. There were things, events, trains of motion, of which he had no inkling. He was convinced now that information, important information, had been deliberately withheld from him by the CIA. Even if their lapse was not deliberate, if it had been a mistake, an oversight, it was still just as bad.