After some time she stopped the car. Through the luxuriance of the thick jungle foliage, Nick saw the old temple bathed in the moonlight, its statues and reliefs an exotic mixture of Hindu and Buddhist cultures. Hand in hand they walked along the jungle trail toward the imposing gateway of the old temple. She led him to the edge of a deep pool that lay beneath overhanging vines.

  “Would you like to swim?” Li asked. She kneaded his powerful back muscles. “It might relax you.” Nick nodded.

  With a complete lack of self-consciousness, the supple girl slid her light silk dress over her head and stood revealed in front of him, her golden body straight and her tiny perfectly formed breasts high and proud. Her liquid eyes smiled as she kissed him lightly and then slipped into the water. Nick watched her go, her taut buttocks brushed by the length of coal black hair that fell down her slender back. Wearily he undressed and followed her into the tepid water of the jungle pool.

  They swam silently for a bit, while behind them in the jungle the monkeys chattered as they moved through the trees.

  “This place is very, very old,” she whispered. “It’s one of the few places that makes me feel young.”

  “You are young,” Nick said. Her laughter was rich and rueful.

  “Not that young.” She paddled over to him and kissed him. Nick watched her body, so slim and perfect, undulating under the water. She saw him watching her and a slow smile spread across her features. Wordlessly she pulled him to the edge of the pool and slipped out to lie dripping at the water’s edge.

  No words were needed. They had grown too close to each other since the day in the desert. She lay on her back in the lush grass and waited, her long limbs spread in easy welcome, the little mound of her belly rising and falling in increasing anticipation. Her smile was as warm and soft as the jungle night.

  Nick pulled himself out of the pool. His muscles felt relaxed and powerful again after the swim. Slowly he walked over to her, the water dripping from the muscles of his body. Li extended one cool hand up to him and pulled him down to her.

  For a long while their eyes met in tenderness as they made love slowly and deliberately. Nick saw the sleek body below him writhe and twist in steady, controlled passion. Soon their love-making became more strenuous as the two fine bodies clung to each other in the final struggle for release that was more like wild combat than love. But before that, in the beginning, they had been together in full understanding and sympathy.

  Later she relaxed with her head on his chest and he lay back, his passion spent, and marveled at the supple beauty of her body.

  “Another one was killed tonight,” he said softly. He felt her stiffen.

  “Who?”

  “Johnson.”

  She was silent for some time. Then she spoke as a woman to her man, talking about what was really on her mind.

  “You are not with the Treasury Department, are you?”

  “No,” Nick said.

  There was another silence.

  “I hope nothing happens to you.”

  “So do I,” Nick said. The quick slim body pressed closer against him. Her wet mouth sought his. For a while they fought off the fear of danger with their ardent bodies. Much later they drove back to Bangkok in silence.

  “I wonder if Baxter would be in Johnson’s place today if he had done it himself,” Li remarked at one point.

  “Done what?” Nick asked.

  “Delivered his bag,” the girl answered. “I heard Baxter, the one they call Captain Smiley, ask Johnson to deliver a bag to a friend of his because Baxter was going to be tied up in town. That was just as they were getting off the plane. I remember because Johnson seemed sort of grumpy and said, ‘All right, just one more time. Why don’t you get organized?’ or something like that.”

  Nick’s eyes gleamed in the darkness.

  Frank Baxter, his noble paunch concealed beneath a red sport coat, walked up the line of flagstones into the courtyard of the Buddhist temple. He stopped every few steps to snap a picture.

  Nick chose a more roundabout way of entering the monastery grounds. He walked around back and jumped the wall. Then he concealed himself in a grove of trees and waited. Saffron-robed monks strolled the grounds deep in meditation. Among them Baxter’s coat was as easy to spot as a distress flare at night. Nick watched as Baxter was joined by a bearded monk whose robes were more elaborately ornamented than the others. Together Baxter and the monk strolled the grounds, making rather broad pantomimes of guide and sightseer. Every step they took, however, tended to lead them further away from public view. Nick moved with them, keeping the pair always in sight.

  Twenty million sticky-fingered tots will be heartbroken, Nick reflected, when I turn Captain Smiley over to the FBI. Carter, you’d even put the Easter Bunny in a rabbit stew, you heel, he thought happily.

  Baxter and the monk made their exchange in the security of a house of meditation. From among the trees, Nick saw Baxter hand the yellow film boxes to the monk, who then secreted them among his robes. There was further palaver and then the pair emerged from the hut. Baxter made a show of taking more pictures of the grounds and finally waddled off down the path toward his car.

  Shame on you, Captain Smiley, Nick thought, shaking his head. You’ve gone and … He didn’t finish the thought. Something hit him on the side of the head, sending a burst of fireworks flashing through his skull and sharp pains along his spine. He tried to fight back and found that he Was paralyzed. A moment later his legs gave way. He was still conscious but there was nothing that he could do about it. He had been cut down from behind by a human hand turned into a scientifically applied weapon, just the way he had so often cut men down himself.

  Rough hands seized him and dragged him along toward the temple. What was irritating about it was that the monk who had cut him down so neatly was calling sanctimoniously for a doctor.

  “Bring the ailing one to the master,” advised a second monk for the benefit of any civilians in the area. “The wisdom of the master cures all ills.”

  I’ll just bet, Nick thought. When Nick was out of sight of the public one of the monks hit him again. This time he lost consciousness.

  Some time later, he became aware of a sort of suffused half light. There was a group of shaven-headed monks staring at him. Something had changed but he couldn’t for the moment think exactly what. His arm hurt and he was unable to judge the passage of time. Soon morning became afternoon. His mind melded into a psychedelic nightmare of slanting eyes that gazed at him, chanting monks and strange instruments. Then everything became further distorted and he seemed to be rising and falling.

  He was out in a square. Low, heavy clouds hung over the scene. In the grayness a great crowd had gathered. The crowd was very npset about something which Nick didn’t understand. The crowd seemed to be chanting and arguing among themselves at the same time. Nick discovered that, he, too, was wearing robes and a form of skull cap. His legs were pretty unsteady but he did his best, to stand in the center of the square, swaying a bit, with a vacant smile on his face for all the good people.

  Through the fog in his mind he could hear a voice rising above the multitude, a commanding, angry voice, a hypnotic voice.

  “He will protest with his life the barbaric wanton acts of the imperialists toward our brethren in Vietnam. This heroic martyr refuses to let anything halt his sacrifice. He insists that self-immolation is the only solution… .”

  The voice labored on. Nick listened, pleased with its cadences. A monk approached Nick bearing a gallon tin of gasoline and proceeded to splash Nick liberally. Nick stared at him, puzzled. Why would anyone want to do that? Nick was ready to .admit that he was out of his mind but he wasn’t so. far gone that he ‘thought gasoline was the same thing as after-shave lotion.

  A small but increasingly clear voice at the back of his mind was trying to tell him something. Nothing concentrates a man’s mind like his impending execution. When-Nick saw a third monk approaching, bearing a torch, the fog in his mind receded rapidly and Nick began to get the picture.

  “Our brother will not be deprived of his martyrdom,” the voice screamed. Meanwhile the effects of the drugs Were wearing off as Nick forced his mind to control his shaky muscles.

  “Oh, yes he will,” Nick growled. The monk with the. flaming torch was leaning toward Nick’s gasoline-soaked clothing. Nick summoned all the recuperative powers that long years of hard conditioning had bestowed on him and lashed out with his foot at the firebearer. Other monks rushed to the first monk’s aid. Nick’s first few blows were shaky but his coordination improved as he got back into action.

  Several monks went down under the piledriving blows from Nick’s hands and feet. Other monks from the edge of the crowd joined the first group, the head monk well to the front.

  Nick fought himself a breathing space and scooped up the gasoline tin from the street. Then he sloshed the head monk and those nearest him. Somehow in the forest of flailing, striking arms he managed to find the torch. The monks fell back. Nick seized the head monk and applied the flame to his robes. The fire caught spectacularly and spread to the nearest monks. Then Nick’s powerful legs were churning and driving him through the flaming mob before his own robe caught fire.

  A safe distance away, Nick turned and looked back. The square Was full of monks stripping off their blazing robes and dancing wildly about in the nude. They seemed as reluctant as Nick to make a noble sacrifice of themselves. The crowd, disgusted with their lack of fervor and feeling cheated, were fighting among themselves. Nick had no difficulty moving around the edge of the riot and slipping back to his hotel up a side street.

  Captain Smiley looked just the way he appeared on television, debonair yet kind. In his hand he clutched a gin and tonic of which his sponsor, a soft drink outfit, could only have disapproved, but his greeting to Nick was the same cheery, “How’s everything today?” with Which he greeted twenty million moppets every afternoon at four o’clock.

  “Have a drink, Campbell,” he offered.

  “No thanks,” Nick said. Baxter drained his drink and Crossed the bungalow room to where the bottles and ice

  “Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll just have one by myself to fight the heat.”

  “Go right ahead,” Nick said cheerfully, “especially if it’ll help you talk.”

  Baxter kept his back turned and continued mixing his drink.

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “Yes you do,” Nick said flatly. “The ball game’s over. There’ll be some FBI men flying in soon but, meanwhile, we’ll have a private talk.”

  Baxter’s chuckle was hearty and sincere.

  “You gotta be joking, Campbell. Or drunk. I’ve fired writers who wrote better fines than that.”

  “If you turn around with that gun still in your hand, you won’t die but you’ll be hint awful bad,” Nick said. “Drop it.”

  The gun thumped to the floor mat.

  “All right,” Nick said. The floor creaked a warning. Nick spun crouching and saved his fife. As it was, the knitting needle in Mrs. Baxter’s hand missed Nick’s heart and buried itself in the flesh of his shoulder. He should have known, he told himself later; the female of the species is. deadlier than the male. The grim little woman had a second needle ready in her hand and was about to launch herself like a human spear at Nick’s heart when he kicked her in the stomach and sent her flying back toward her husband.

  At that moment a gun went off. Mrs. Baxter’s eyes popped from their sockets. Her back stiffened and she clutched at her chest.

  “Millie,” Baxter was shouting, “Millie, I didn’t mean to … I swear. It was him.”

  Baxter’s face contorted with rage and pain as he attempted to dodge around his wife and empty the pistol into Nick. Nick beat him by a fraction of a second. Baxter dropped the gun and stared with surprise at the spreading red stain on his shirt front.

  He looked at the blood on his hand, then at Nick. In a surprisingly normal tone he said, “I’m not the big man, Campbell. You know….”

  He whispered a name that Nick had to strain to hear. Then he fell dead beside his wife.

  Chapter 13

  THE WEATHER had been bad when they left and it was just as bad now that they were coming back. The big jet was stacked in a holding pattern over New York somewhere between Westchester County and Montauk Point, with half a dozen other aircraft cleared to land ahead of it.

  Nick sat in his seat as tensely as a big cat and Li, understanding his mood if not the reasons for it, left him strictly alone. The reason, however, was simple. It was beginning to look to Nick as if he had misplayed his hand badly. If Frank Baxter’s last gasp had been true, Nick should have had the Chicom paymaster and a billion dollar haul of Chicom intelligence that was on its way into the States, gathered from each of the paymaster’s ports of call. But in Manila and Tokyo, Nick had drawn a blank. Not the slightest shred of evidence had pointed to Nick’s candidate.

  The man knew he was being watched, all right. It was a game of cat and mouse but Nick wasn’t quite sure any longer who was cat and who was mouse. Nick intended to arrest his man in New York but without the microfilms and other hard evidence the Chicom network would barely even be slowed down.

  The hostess came down the aisle checking seat belts with a cheery smile, while Nick tasted the dregs of bitterness. Kirby Fairbanks, Pecos’ old buddy, went by on the way to the toilet. The hostess shrugged and let him go. It looked as if they would stay in the holding pattern for another twenty minutes. Fairbanks winked but Nick did not return the gesture. He reviewed the facts in his mind. He wasn’t particularly anxious to face Hawk with no more than what he had. Two members of the Chicom Finance Team dead and Mr. Big only a suspect. Nick’s eyes played idly over the passengers. Fairbanks had not returned to his seat yet and, Nick noted, the occupied sign wasn’t lit on either of the lavatories.

  Nick cursed himself for a fool and unsnapped his seat belt. Then he moved forward down the aisle, his easy gait masking the building tension within him.

  In the first-class lounge the purser was reading a magazine. How the hell did Fairbanks get by him, Nick wondered. He edged the door of the flight deck open a crack and listened carefully. Inside the flight deck Nick heard excited voices.

  “You’re insane, man.” That was the pilot. “For God’s sakes, we’ve just made an over-the-Pole from Japan. If I don’t get into a landing pattern in fifteen minutes, we’re in the drink.”

  “You’ll do as I tell you,” Fairbanks shrilled. “You’ll stay off that radio and fly this plane to Bermuda or you’ll be dead and so will all the passengers. I’m desperate. I don’t care if I die but I’m not landing in New York to. face… .”

  The pilot’s voice was surprisingly steady as he interrupted Fairbanks. “I don’t think you understand about planes, mister. They don’t fly like birds. They need gas.”

  “Keep your hands off those controls,” Fairbanks snapped. “I can read a compass as well as you. Keep on flying south.”

  “I’ve got to mate a turn now. If I don’t, we’ll he up here playing tag with half a dozen other big birds at closing speeds of about one thousand miles an hour. Mister, I don’t care how desperate you are. You don’t want to go out like that.”

  Nick edged the door open a crack further. He could see the body of one of the flight crew slumped dead in his chair, blood running onto the navigation equipment.

  “We’ve passed our checkpoint, sir,” the co-pilot said. Nick eased the Luger out of its holster. One quick move would do it. He’d have to take Fairbanks by surprise or the man might kill another member of the crew.

  Then everything happened at once. The co-pilot yelled, “My God, coming up on our starboard… .”

  Suddenly the big jet winged over like a fighter plane and Nick was thrown through the door onto the floor. The cockpit windows seemed to be filled with the wings of another aircraft which disappeared into the ghostlike clouds as quickly as it had appeared. The flight crew were swearing in unison and the radio was going wild.

  “Pan World three-oh-seven, we have you on our scope way out of the pattern. We do not read you. Please acknowledge. Pan World three-oh-seven… .”

  Kirby Fairbanks was braced against the cockpit wall, his gun leveled at Nick’s head.

  “The pilot dies, the pilot dies,” he babbled. “I don’t want to waste a bullet but I will.”

  “We all die, mister, if I don’t get her down in five more minutes,” the pilot said.

  “Leave your gun right where it is, Campbell, and go back to your seat,” Fairbanks ordered.

  Nick had no choice. He left the Luger on the flight deck and walked back to his seat. Li Valery looked at him with wide eyes.

  “What happened? I saw… .”

  “For the time being never mind what happened,” Nick said. “Remember that little automatic you were going to shoot me with in Paris?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “Where is it?”

  “In my purse. It’s a bad habit of mine… .”

  “Let me have it.”

  Without asking any questions Li reached into her purse and withdrew die little ladies’ automatic. Nick slipped it into his pocket and got up again. He lurched as the plane made a steep bank. Then the pilot’s voice graveled over the intercom.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re experiencing a slight difficulty up forward here. The landing may be just a bit rough so don’t worry and obey your hostesses’ instructions.”

  Nick smiled grimly. What the pilot meant was he might be going to try a deadstick landing at several hundred miles an hour and for nobody to panic if it didn’t work. What had made Fairbanks change his mind and let the plane land?

  Nick didn’t worry the question long. If the big redhead came out of the cabin shooting, the toy automatic Nick had would be no match for the Luger. Nick looked around for a place to conceal himself. The coat rack. Quickly he stepped inside and pulled the coats around him. Only one or two of the passengers noted his strange behavior; the rest were too wrapped up in their own fears concerning the landing. The plane was coming in fast now. Nick had to grip.hard to keep from falling forward.