“Get lost, buster,” she said harshly. “Buy yourself a drink. I’m leaving.”
He waited, studying the small machine in front of him. It was an unusual device, but he figured he could make it work.
H.M.’s receiver began to beep.
“L.M. Norfolk. L.M., Norfolk,” it said. “Come in, H.M., come in, H.M., come in, H.M.”
Nick flicked the transmitting switch. He could not see the hidden second switch at the back of the tiny machine tripping automatically as he began to transmit.
“H.M., H.M., H.M.,” he tapped. “Come in, L.M. Come, L.M. Report.”
A pause. Then: “H.M. Query. H.M. Query. Your touch is different. Is something wrong? Query. Request further identification.”
“All right, Nickska,” Julia’s voice murmured into his ear. “I had to leave the bar. Too many listeners. I’m in the ladies’ room. And where the hell are you? Speak, lover.”
“H.M., H.M., H.M.,” the little receiver tapped. “Identify yourself.”
“Wait, Julia,” Nick whispered. “Back with you in a second.”
His fingers played over the keys.
“H.M. to L.M.,” he tapped. “Yes, there is something wrong. Activity in hotel. Suspect search. B.P. must have talked. Must leave here soon. M.B. will have message for you within the next few hours. Wait — someone comes. Over, but wait!”
“Julia, baby,” he said into his mike, “go outside the hotel, walk around the west wing, take the second brick-walled path, and give the AXE signal. On your way, send message to Hawk that one of our chickens is roosting in Norfolk. Details later, but right now I’m on another line.”
He tapped again. “H.M. to L.M. Safe so far, but search gets closer. Your report, quickly. I will forward to M.B. if I get out of here. Hurry L.M. Hurry.”
“L.M. to H.M.,” came the answer, and this time the tapping from the other end was not quite as smooth as it had been. “Report as follows. Placed container in Naval housing unit. Started saucer scare. Left smog pollutants in eight different places. Request details trouble your end. Over.”
“No time,” Nick tapped urgently. “Must leave at once. Last orders from M.B. for you as follows. Stay where you arc. He will contact you in person because of crisis situation. Do you have secure accommodations?”
“Secure enough. Skyline Motel, Route 17. Over.”
“H.M. to L.M. Stay there and exercise caution. No need for great alarm, but must take care. Do not attempt to contact others. M.B. or self will do that as soon as possible. Over.”
“But my previous instructions —”
Nick blanked out the tapping with his own.
“Have been changed. You will obey new orders. Over and out.”
A pause. Tap-tap. “Accept. Over.”
Nick grinned to himself as he rose from the little machine. It was ready to receive more incoming calls, and so was he. For once he had been lucky, and if he went on being really lucky he could sit here and take messages until the whole lot of them called in, and Hawk would have them picked up one after the other.
It was unfortunate that he still did not know about the hidden switch at the back of the machine, the one that H.M. had turned off when he had risen to stretch and that had tripped automatically when Nick had started to transmit. He could not know that there was a timer attached, and that he had inadvertently left it in the “on’ position.
Nick spoke again into his tiny mike as he began to search the packed suitcase. “N3 to Hawk. N3 to Hawk. Further to Norfolk lead. Definitely Norfolk. Virginia. Prospect placed container presumably radioactive in Naval housing unit. May himself be found in Skyline Motel, Norfolk, Route 17.”
“Good. I already have a man — well, someone — on the way to Norfolk,” Hawk came back. “Which one of the prospects is it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Nick said rather coldly, digging through the suitcase. “The initials he is using at the moment are L.M. But he didn’t send his photograph along with his message —”
“All right, all right, enough of that. But would you know if it was Judas?”
Nick shook his head at the unseeing microphone. “It wasn’t Judas, definitely wasn’t Judas. Neither was the one at Little Rock. They’re both awaiting orders from M.B. himself. Martin Brown, the boss. Or is it Brune, or something else? By the way, I am at the moment sorting through a suitcase apparently intended to be removed from here by the H.M. fellow. I suspect it’s only one of several, the others in use elsewhere. It should give the sceptics something to think about — more goodies in it than in a Fuller Brush man’s bag.”
“Hold it,” said Hawk, and spoke to someone at his side. “Prospect L.M. Norfolk. Alert our courier, send reinforcements immediately. Said to be at Skyline Motel, Route 17. On the double! All right, Carter.”
Nick went on with his inspection. “Pollutants you want? Take your choice. Smog you need? We got plenty! Stink-pills you got enough? Take home a six-pack.” He described the contents to Hawk as he rapidly sorted through them.
One small motion-picture projector with two unusually wide apertures, two lenses, and two accompanying rolls of film. “3D flying saucers, I’ll bet,” said Nick.
A large, flat package of charcoal-colored tablets that were nauseating to the nostrils. A canister of gelatine cap-rules filled with some kind of liquid. A pair of wire cutters. A little electronic device with a tiny plunger and a timer — something like a supra-modern version of a dynamite detonator, except that it seemed to be designed to detonate or jam electrical circuits.
“All right, the rest will keep,” said Hawk. “I get the point. I’ll send a man up to take over the transmitter: I don’t want you spending hours of your time sitting on your butt and chatting. You have other things to do. I’ll be in touch.”
There was a small click in Nick’s ear and Hawk was gone. Abrupt old devil, Nick thought, and then rose to his feet because of the hammering on the outer door. “Lizzie Borden took-an-awe,” the rhythm told him, and he knew his visitor was Julia.
He glanced down at the familiar features of H.M. The man was out cold and would be until AXE’s medics wakened him with the antidote. He might yet do some talking. And the transmitter was still in place to betray the men who used it.
Things were not going badly at all.
He took two steps away from the tiny room.
The blast was so sudden that it enveloped him before he heard it.
With a sizzling, savage, deafening roar and an agonized tearing of metal, the small room blew up behind him and spewed its flying debris into the larger room. Chunks of steel and plaster and wood sprayed outward as if shot from a cannon; lumps and slivers of searing missiles slammed against the back of his head. Nick dropped like an ox in a slaughter-house.
The transmitter had delivered its last message.
CHAPTER TEN
Two Versus Two
The man with the artificial hands sat with his hat pulled down low over his eyes and waited until the last minute before boarding his second flight of the day. But he was alert, and he was watching.
At the last call for his flight he rose unhurriedly and walked down the ramp, smiling thinly to himself. It was no trouble at all to travel to and through the United States, he was thinking, if only one had identifications and passports for all possible occasions. And those he had — the best that money could buy. So had his men.
He boarded the plane and obediently fastened his seat belt.
On the whole he was pleased. It was a great pity about B.P. and the plant, but they had served their major purpose. Now it was simply a matter of working with redoubled caution, and he was used to that. Even the question of new headquarters was already solved; it had been solved in advance because of the need for a place to keep the pilfered West Valley material.