It was Ian Travers’ turn to nod. “Yes,” he said. “He’ll go too.”

  Chapter 3

  FANGS OF THURSO

  Sailor, Nick Carter told himself, you are earning your danger money tonight!

  The gale had proved the betrayer, that and the fact that the Captain of the destroyer Orestes—on orders from Washington—had not made the anticipated easting. Nick was to have been put overboard in the yawl off Dunnet Head. From there it would have been a reasonable sail to the Cove of Stroma, where he was to rendezvous with the British agents. Instead, fearful of Pendragon’s radar, the Orestes had dropped him fifty miles to the west!

  But the November gale was the true tyrant! When Nick parachuted into the sea near Orestes the seas were comparatively calm, and the gale showed every promise of veering on around and up into the Norwegian Sea; instead, fickle as a woman, it backed a point or so and came on with renewed fury. At the moment, Nick estimated, it was blowing at Force Seven!

  The Cynara, no matter how stout her heart of pine and birch and juniper wood, had not been built to live in such seas as were chasing her now. And she was old! As was the little Gray & Timken engine, straining and pounding now like a valiant old metal heart to keep living. Every time the engine faltered Nick’s breathing did the same! He was a superb swimmer, and he was wearing a life jacket, but not even he could live in seas like these. But there was no help for it. His cover was that he was James Ward-Simmons, an English adventurer and writer—and the Cynara was Ward-Simmons’ boat. He was wearing the dead man’s sea boots too, and his pea-jacket and sweater-cap.

  He might, Nick thought a trifle grimly as he strove to light a damp cigarette, even be meeting Mr. Ward-Simmons in person before long! He tossed the cigarette away in disgust and clung to the bucking wheel. It took all of his great strength to hold the Cynara on course. Nick’s grin was slow and dour, and in the faint glow of the binnacle had a death’s head quality as he remembered Hawk’s advice to read some of the dead man’s books! N3’s laugh was harsh and explosive! Sure—just lash the old tiller and settle down for a nice cup of tea and an evening with a good book. Good show, what!

  The Cynara felt the roiling green thunder of the seas under her stern. She trembled like a woman about to be raped. The following seas, great masses of foam-flecked murder, moving at greater speed than she was, ran under the Cynara, lifted her, flung her forward to bury her nose in a smother of spray left by the wave ahead.

  He was being carried due east. The rub—and what a rub it was—was that soon now, very soon, he was going to have to make some southing! Or otherwise be blown right on to pile up on the Orkneys. Southing! Nick’s great thews strained as he fought the wheel and tried to stay on his feet and read the compass all at the same time. Southing, jndeed! As it was the gale was trying to push him north, as well as east!

  Yet when the time came he would have to try. He was not sanguine. When he had told Hawk—or had Hawk told him?—that he was a good small craft sailor he had not meant in an old boat with an ancient auxiliary, in a Force Seven gale!

  But what alternative? There was no one else! Nothing else! Only Nick Carter, N3, Senior Ranking KILLMASTER! The British were licked, their best agents blown or dead! While Pendragon waited for his answer!

  There were, of course, the two Limey agents waiting for him now in the Cove of Stroma, but they were to be under his orders and Ian Travers had not appeared to have much faith in them, except as they could assist Nick. Travers had done all the talking on the brief flight to Reykjavik and Nick had listened with a sinking heart and a growing sense of numbness. For just a moment, there somewhere above the clouds, his heart had faltered! It seemed hard that one man must be called on to save the world from atomic lire!

  It was pitch dark in the tiny cabin except for the soft glow of the binnacle. The lone man standing there fighting the wheel, seeming by his own spirit alone to hold the tiny craft together against the fury of the elements, the lone man appeared to slump for a moment. His shoulders bent. He could see nothing but the binnacle, hear nothing but the death cry of the gale. A mountain of water moved over the Cynara, green-fanged and deadly, larger than any before, and the man stood in the torrent and held the wheel steady. The glass of the miniature deckhouse smashed into a million shards. Tons of water roared over the frail craft. Somehow the old engine held firm and the propeller moved and the Cynara emerged from the smother and shook herself a little proudly.

  Cynara plunged on.

  N3 glanced to starboard then and saw it—the agreed signal. Three flaming crosses burning on the black rocks of the Cove of Stroma! They were burning a lot of crosses in Scotland these days, so it was thought that this signal should not be too much noticed. Travers had said that Pendragon had his patrols scouring the shore lines of the interdicted area, so the crosses would have to be burnt low in the cove. This would also protect them from the gale. They—they being Washington and Downing Street—also thought that Cynara being so small, would be able to creep in under Pendragon’s radar screen!

  And now the Fangs of Thurso! Tall, sharp black needles of rock guarding most of the approach to the cove. Pendragon’s patrols, if indeed there were any, would not bother with Stroma because of the Fangs. They were an almost impassable barrier even in fair weather. In a gale they were sure black lances of death!

  Nick grinned, and as he felt his stiff, cold, salt-caked skin crack, he knew it was all right! The old Nick was back again! Old Nick—looking for some Hell to raise!

  Now! He must make his turn, his southing, now or he would be carried past! His hands caressed the wheel. “Come on, honey,” he told the Cynara. “Come on now, sweetheart! You’ve been a good brave girl this far—now just a little more for Nick, huh?”

  Straining, gasping, slipping! With every great muscle corded in agony, with all his two-hundred plus pounds off the deck and hanging on the wheel, he brought the Cynara’s head around against the full brunt of the gale! In that fleeting instant of time Nick Carter was fighting, single handed, a primeval force greater than all the atom bombs ever made!

  The little craft screamed in torment! The weight of the wind increased a thousand fold and struck her broadside on, screeching like a million demented banshees. Trillions of tons of water lashed at her.

  But she came about!

  Nick rode a wheel that was like a bucking steer. The little engine died with a metallic groan. Suddenly there was no way on her and Nick was clinging to the wheel not to steer, but to keep from going over the side. The Cynara was swept along, half over, like a dying beetle in a rushing millrace.

  The Cynara went completely over. Turned turtle! And, so great was the force propelling her, she bobbed up again! Right side up! Nick could breathe again, released for a precious moment from the cold green prison that had so nearly closed on him forever. The deck house had gone. He was clinging to the wheel column alone, and that was going. Behind him, gathering now, was the biggest, meanest, ugliest and greenest wave he had ever seen!

  Just ahead, reaching for him, were the Fangs of Thurso! Waiting! Gleaming black. Smothered in raging foam. Grim black reapers of rocks—waiting for the gallant Cynara!

  The huge wave took the little boat down the fence of jagged rocks like a stick against a picket fence. Nick felt her disintegrating under his feet. He caught one glance of the three crosses still burning deep within the cove.

  “Goodbye, girl,” Nick said. He went over the side. He went as deep as he could. Not trying to swim. No use trying to swim now. He was in the hands of whatever personal and private Gods had taken him safely through life thus far. Had preserved that life—and let him do his job!

  As N3 drifted deep below the surface of the gale he felt an odd sense of relaxation, almost of quietude. He had done all mortal man could do—now if he was to be ripped to bits on the Fangs there would be no shame, no regret about it. He had torn his guts out and had held nothing back. He—

  Nick had gotten caught in a tricky whirlpool spinning in the cove, and now it spun him to the surface. Not fifty feet from the black sand and shingle and looming cliff face. He struck out for it, swimming strongly. It was amazing, he thought, that he could even move. He was stunned and blunted and bloody and ripped and broken—no, not broken! Just badly bent.

  It was awesomely quiet in the little cove after the din of the gale. The silence was not really that, of course, but in relation to the hellish din smashing past the cove entrance it was like a library. The waves in the cove were tiny bath tub waves for kids—only about six feet high!

  One of the gentle little six feet high waves seized Nick now and tossed him, most ungently, onto a narrow triangle of black sand and gravel that punched back between two towering wind riven rocks.

  “Thank you,” Nick murmured. “I’ll crawl the rest of the way, if you don’t mind.”

  On his hands and knees he made it back into the ever narrowing little triangle until he was out of the reach of the waves. Then he collapsed, face on the shingle, arms out-flung. He moved not a muscle. Only the motion of his powerful chest told that he was alive at all.

  Almost immediately he heard the mermaid singing. He groaned inwardly. Damn and double-damn! They give you no rest, these women. Even here in this place! Even when a man is nearly dead!

  He groaned into the cold sand. “Go home, mermaid!”

  But the mermaid sang, sweetly, in a voice that had just a hint of a Scots burr: “For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen—”

  The sweet, burred soprano stopped, ending on an upward and inquiring note. Nick tried to raise himself, then forgot it. He slumped back onto his cold sand pallet. In a minute, he thought. In a minute I’ll be up and doing. But just a minute—

  It came again, from somewhere over his head. “For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen—?”

  Memory came ringing back. Travers, on the plane on the way to Iceland—a recognition code had been set up. Improvised on the spot. Ian Travers was a great reader of poetry!

  Nick took his face out of the dank black sand once more. Like a fighter that knows he has to get off the canvas. Suppose he couldn’t remember the damned thing? He sat up and started squeezing water out of his pea-jacket, thinking madly. How did the rest of that damned thing go?

  The hidden mermaid, perched somewhere on her rock, began to sing once more. Suddenly Nick remembered. “All right,” he croaked in a salt-caked voice. “All right— I remember!”

  And in a voice that would have made Melba O’Shaughnessy, late of his bed, shudder with horror, Nick Carter sang the rest of the poem:

  “Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green—”

  “N3?”

  “Barely,” acknowledged Nick. “Just barely. Who you?”

  “Working on code Doomsday and EOW?”

  “Yes,” said Nick wearily. “Yes! Now let’s cut out the identity routine and get on with it. Time’s wasting. I ask again—who are you? Just your name, please?”

  “Gwen Leith. Special Branch. I saw you from the cliff. I didn’t think you were going to make it. That poor little boat!”

  Nick staggered to his feet and leaned against a column of rock. He wondered if he had been assigned a kook on this, of all missions! He peered around, upward. He seemed to be in the inside of a tar barrel. Also in some sort of rock trap.

  “I agree with you,” he said. And meant it. “She was a fine little boat. But there is now me to worry about. I seem to be in some sort of trap, a pit or something. How do I get out of this damned place?”

  “You’re in a rock chimney,” the girl said. “It’s the only one in the cove—and you had to land in it.” She sounded reproachful.

  “I’m sorry,” Nick said. “I’ll try to do better next time! But for right now can’t we figure a way to get me out of here? Fast!”

  “Are you hurt?”

  Nick flexed his muscles and did a couple of fast knee bends. He put his hands against the rock and pushed hard in an isometric or two. He was feeling better by the second. Stronger and hungrier—and thirstier! The very thought started a glow in him. This was Scotland, after all!

  “I’m fine,” he told her. “So? What about a light?”

  “Daren’t risk it. Too many Druids around.”

  If Nick hadn’t been briefed by Travers on the plane that one would have thrown him. As it was he ignored it. “So how do I get out?” He let the impatience show.

  “Catch.”

  The end of a rope hit him in the face. He yanked hard, testing it. It held. “You got this belayed up there?”

  “Yes. It’s all right, redly. Around a rock. You want me to help you?”

  Nick grinned to himself as he went up the rope hand over hand, his legs dangling free. Help him? He found himself anxiously looking forward to seeing Gwen Leith, of Special Branch. Sounded like a character. Then he thought —she must be the best they’ve got or they wouldn’t send her on this job. Probably intelligent and clever as hell—and looks like an old claymoor!

  She didn’t smell like a claymoor, old or new. She smelled like heather and wild thyme. And the hand that reached for his, with a strength that surprised him, was soft and small.

  “Maybe I’m wrong,” Nick mumbled, half to himself as he let her hand guide him oyer the lip of the rock. “I hope.”

  “Wrong about what, N3?” She was a slim evanescent figure beside him, still holding his hand. There was only the loom, the blur, of her—that and her scent.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Skip it.” He released her hand and peered around. Below and to his left the sea was a writhing mass of wave and wind, a flickering and unceasing cauldron of boiling motion. Up here he was attacked by the wind again, but it seemed to be losing some of its weight. Even as this thought struck him he glanced up and saw an errant star or two, and could see, or thought he could, a nimbus where the moon was hiding.

  “Am I wrong?” he asked, “or is this howler breaking up?”

  “It’s veering,” she agreed. “In an hour or two it will be nearly calm. The weather’s like that up here in northeast Scotland. But come on, N3, we mustn’t stand here and natter all night! You’d better take my hand again. I know the path down to the moor.”

  They left the little rock table and she led him downward along a narrow, twisting path. She went swiftly, her hand in his, and Nick found himself increasingly anxious to know what she looked like. She appeared to be slim and rather tall, and very quick and nimble on her feet. Nick chuckled to himself. He knew what the trouble was—knew it of yore! Reaction was setting in—he was cold and hungry and wanting a drink, yes, but the real matter was that he had come back from death yet again! Cheated the bony old gent, as so many times before. And when he did that he always, but always, wanted to taste deeply of life!

  For nearly half an hour she led him downward with the sureness of a mountain goat. At times she needed both hands to feel her way, and Nick hooked one of his big paws into her narrow belt and felt the soft firmness of her back, the ripple of velvet fleshed muscles.

  As they descended she told him how worried she was about her fellow agent, Jim Stockes, who had gone into Dunnet to make contact with one of the few plants they had in the Druids. He had never returned.

  “I should have gone in his stead,” said Gwen Leith. “He’s a Scot, too, but from the Lowlands. And even though he is a Double O and one of the best in the business the job was not for him. I should have gone! I was born in Canisby and I’ve known these people, and this region, since I was a bairn. But Jim wouldn’t have it! He insisted that I meet you and he would make the Dunnet contact. But maybe I’m worrying for naught—perhaps he’ll be at the black house when we get there. If he isn’t, N3, there will be only the two of us!”

  The gale was passing now. There were a few stars in the wind shredded sky and a hint of morning in the east. The rain slackened to mist. They reached the bottom of the cliff and she led him across a blasted, desolate heath and into a narrow glen. By now Nick’s eyes were accustomed to the light and the strange terrain and he was seeing better than she was. He no longer needed her guidance and walked beside her. They reached the bottom of the glen, where a burn ran full and foaming, and she went unerringly into the midst of a conifer spinney where a little car glinted in the growing light.

  Nick Carter had been thinking a lot on the trip down, and saying very little. He was aware of the machinations of Ian Travers! The man had been nearly apologetic about the agents whom Nick was to meet—and now one of them turned out to be James Stockes! The man who was nearly as much of a legend in the counter-intelligence world as Nick Carter himself!

  N3 chuckled to himself. Travers was as cagey as Hawk. And never a word out of him about Jim Stockes! Just a couple of agents, Travers had murmured. We must make do with the best we have, you know. And gone on with his planning and instructions. He would be in London long before Nick was to be picked up by the Orestes—and from London he would be in constant touch.

  The light was growing by the second. Gwen slid into the car with a flash of tanned knee. Nick got in beside her. He could nearly make out her face now. She was wearing a very brief skirt, which showed her lovely legs. These he saw in the faint glow of the little two-seater’s dash. Her face was still a blur, but he thought he could make out a stubborn chin and a saucy nose.

  Just before she trod on the starter the girl looked full at him. Her voice was tart. “Look at my legs all you please, N3. I’m not ashamed of them. But there’ll be no touching, now or ever. I’m an engaged girl and if the world does not blow up this time, or perhaps even if it does, I intend to marry the man! You will understand that right now, N3, and behave yourself accordingly! I’ve had the same trouble with Jim Stockes and set him the same terms! We’ve a desperate, dirty and dangerous job to do, the three of us!

  There will be no time for anything else, and even if there were it would not be either of you I’d pick! I adore Jim, and I think I’m going to like you—but I know who you are and what you are, however brave and strong and cunning and all the rest of it, but I’ve no mind to become emotionally involved with supermen! I’ve told Jim and I’m telling you, once and for all. Clear?”