“How did Mona Manning happen to drift behind the Curtain?” he asked.

  Mohr tapped his teeth with his pipe stem. “My candid opinion, for which absolutely no one has asked, is that she was kidnapped. I told you that she made her last Hollywood picture about five years ago?”

  Nick nodded.

  “Then she went to England and made a couple. I guess it was getting to be too hard to keep her secret in Hollywood. Anyway, Mona was getting on in years by then, and her box-office had fallen off. Then she made a picture in Spain. After that, nothing—until those dirties began to appear all over the world. I understand that Mona hasn’t been in all of them, though.”

  “The last six,” Hawk said. “Those bastards know a good thing when they get it.”

  “They do indeed,” agreed Mohr. “Mona was very lovely. Still is, for that matter. I was half in love with her myself for a time—until I found out the truth. Then my love turned to pity. But her impact in those dirties must be terrific all over the world. For years she was worshiped as the ideal American girl, a symbol of purity. Now they see her doing those filthy things—”

  Nick lit a cigarette and finished his drink. He did not refill his glass. “You say she was kidnapped, Mohr? Couldn’t she have been recruited—and gone willingly?”

  Preston Mohr had light-gray eyes. They were narrowed now and alive with intelligence as he studied Nick Carter.

  “I think it was very likely a combination of the two,” he said at last. “Perhaps they gave Mona a choice of some sort. Anyway, she went behind the Curtain a couple of years ago. She had been in Vienna, on tour—some sort of cabaret act she’d worked up—and all of a sudden she wasn’t there.”

  There was a sibilance of papers as Hawk riffled through a sheaf of flimsies on his desk. He studied one for a moment, then nodded at Mohr.

  “Mona Manning disappeared on October eighth, 1964, according to the State Department.”

  “I expect it was Mike Blackstone who set it up,” said Mohr. “He may even have gone to Vienna to talk to Mona, to coax her to come over. Or he may have set up the kidnapping. Mike knew all about Mona, you see, knew she was insane. They were lovers at one time, in Hollywood.”

  “You mentioned Blackstone in the projection room,” said Nick. “Who is he?”

  Hawk made a sound that was half disgust, half triumph. “You youngsters! Michael Blackstone was, maybe still is, one of the great movie directors of all time.”

  Nick grinned at his boss. He was not abashed. No man knows everything—every man has his lacunae, gaps in information.

  Preston Mohr said: “It’s ‘was,’ I’m afraid. He’s ruined now. But he was great. I started under Mike, as a young assistant. That’s how I know that he and Mona were having an affair.”

  Killmaster recrossed his long legs and lit another gold-tipped cigarette. “Tell me all about this Michael Blackstone. He’s directing these dirty pictures?”

  “I’ll stake my own professional reputation on that,” said Mohr. “I’ve studied every .available film. It’s Mike’s technique, no doubt about it. The cuts, the dissolves, the laps and camera angles, close-ups—everything spells Mike Blackstone. A little sloppy now, but still Mike.”

  “When did he go behind the Curtain? How and why?”

  Nick heard Preston Mohr sigh. Then the director said: “That was a case in which the punishment didn’t fit the crime. There was no crime. Not at first, anyway. Mike Blackstone got caught in the McCarthy buzz saw. He was a lot younger then, of course, and maybe he had some radical ideas and even played around with the pinkoes, but to my sure knowledge he was never actually a Commie. Not then. But he sure as hell is now. You might say, in a sense, that the late senator made Mike a Commie. He took away his bread.

  “Mike always was a crazy sort of bastard. Wild. Proud. Independent as hell. Well, when he was called in front of a Congressional committee, he told them to shove it. He was the great Mike Blackstone and nobody was going to kick him around. But they did. They ruined him in Hollywood. He was blacklisted and soon lost every dime he had. He couldn’t earn a living and he never had saved any money. From what I’ve heard, he and his wife Sybil almost literally starved to death. Mike was too proud to ask anyone for help, you see. So he made some quickies, low-budget stuff for small, independent outfits, under an assumed name. Then he went to Mexico and made some dirty films—stag-party stuff. Finally, he and Sybil disappeared from Mexico. They must have bought false passports—State had taken away both his and Sybil’s—and later he turned up in Moscow. By that time, of course, Mike was a real Commie. They had sold him a bill of goods.”

  Hawk picked up another flimsy from his desk. “Black-Stone was reported in Moscow, Leningrad, Warsaw and Belgrade, doing some sort of Party work. Neither State nor CIA knows exactly what. The last report is that he is living in a villa outside Budapest. Apparently quite well off.”

  “That all ties in well enough,” said Nick Carter.

  Preston Mohr stood up. He glanced at his watch again, then at Hawk. “If I’m going to make that plane, sir? Of course if you really need me—”

  Hawk came around the desk to shake hands with the debonair man. “You’ve done your bit, son. Thank you. Goodbye. Have a good trip.”

  As Preston Mohr shook hands with Nick their eyes met briefly. Very softly, Mohr said: “You’re probably going to find Mike, and you’re probably going to have to kill him. If you can, if at all possible, do it fast. Mike and I parted ways a long time ago, but there was a time when he was a pretty good Joe.”

  Killmaster inclined his head, but did not comment.

  The door closed behind Preston Mohr.

  Hawk said: “I know you’re dying of the disease that killed the cat, and I can’t help you. Just forget that you ever saw Preston Mohr. He’s been under heavy cover for years and even I don’t know who he works for. If I did, I couldn’t tell you. To you, to us, he’s just a famous movie director whom we have never met. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Good. Now go look in those boxes stacked along the wall and tell me what you find.”

  It was not like Hawk to be whimsical. Killmaster shot a glance at his boss and saw that he was not being whimsical. Hawk, an unlit cigar in his mouth, was leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling with a look of black fury on his grim face.

  Nick Carter opened one of the boxes and began to look through the glossy photos stacked within. After scanning a dozen, he turned to his boss. It had been a long, wearisome drag of an afternoon. What he had seen and heard had both irritated and revolted him. It was time for the imp in Nick to pop out—and pop out it did.

  With a careful insolence that he knew just where to stop, Nick said: “I’m a little surprised at you, sir. A little shocked, too. I never suspected that you were such a dirty old man!”

  Chapter 3

  HAWK’S GIMLET EYES flickered, but he did not deign to reply to his subordinate’s jibe. Hawk had worked with Nick Carter for a long time, on many perilous and difficult cases, and he came as close to knowing the real Carter as anyone could. Now the older man sensed that Nick’s nerves were a trifle raw, sandpapered by this wretched afternoon. N3 was, after all, supposed to be on leave.

  Hawk’s inner feeling was one of satisfaction. Nick Carter always did a superb job. He probably was the best agent in the world. He was even better when goaded by the cold anger which Hawk very well knew was behind the agent’s unwonted insolence.

  Hawk said: “Pretty filthy, aren’t they? It’s their secondary line, you might say. Not as important as the films, no propaganda value, but still deadly enough. Pure smut.” Hawk allowed himself a grim chuckle. “There’s a contradiction in terms, if I ever heard one.”

  Nick silently continued to look through the contents of the boxes. “How did they happen to send all this filth to you?” he asked finally.

  Hawk poured himself another drink. Nick had never seen his boss drink so much. “God only knows,” Hawk said. He waved his glass at the boxes. “Channels got fouled up, as usual. That lovely little lot happens to be from your town, son. Fun City. From what I gather, the locals got most of it in raids around Times Square. Then, I suppose, the Feds moved in, probably at State’s request, and took over. Some genius over on C Street gave it to the CIA, and when they handed us the baby, this stuff came with it. You seen enough now?”

  “Too much,” Nick said tartly. He had been looking at some of the pornography in comic-book form; he had experienced the same sense of shock that had accompanied his first sight of Mona Manning in lewd positions and contortions. Again he felt that the ultimate obscenity far surpassed both the basic and superficial bawdry. One could not, without extreme revulsion, accept the perverted sexual antics of Blondie and Dagwood, Maggie and Jiggs, or watch the seduction of a willing Orphan Annie by a wolflike Daddy Warbucks. Yes, they had even stooped to that!

  “That stuff has been pouring into this country in rivers,” Hawk said, “dirty rivers that the regular authorities haven’t been able to stop. They fly it in from Canada and Mexico like dope—which it is, in a way—and they’ve shipped a lot in by boat. State, and the CIA, think the Chinese are giving the stuff away! That means no cost to the middleman or the retailer. It’s the old drug gambit again—a huge profit with a minimum of risk.”

  Nick Carter flung down a batch of the comic books and went back to his chair. He stared at Hawk, rage glinting in his eyes. “Okay, sir,” he rasped. “It’s a mission. I know that. A hell raid. Seek and destroy. And my heart will really be in this one, believe me. So how much can you help me? Where do we start?”

  Hawk nursed at his glass. He peered over it at Nick, his eyes icy. “That’s where the shoe begins to pinch, son. I really can’t help you much. CIA hasn’t got much. I, AXE, haven’t got anything but hand-me-downs. We can get you started, and that’s about all. After that, youH be strictly on your own. Naturally, we’ll help all we can—but don’t count on anything. Apart from what you’ve seen and heard so far, and what I’ll tell you in a minute, there simply isn’t anything!”

  “This is a carte-blanche mission, then? I plan it, structure and time it, my own way? When I walk out of that door, I’m on my own?”

  Hawk nodded. “You are. There will be no orders cut. You are to be responsible only to me. And what I don’t know won’t hurt me.” Hawk took another sip of his whiskey and grimly grinned.

  Nick also grinned, with tight lips and a white flash of teeth that was just as mirthless, and for a moment Hawk thought of a strange hybrid—half wolf and half tiger. With some hint of caution he said, “Just don’t overdo it, N3. You know what I mean? Be careful who the corpses are, try not to have too many, and remember, if you get burned, I. can’t help you. Not officially.”

  “That’s news?” Nick said dourly. “I don’t even exist— officially.”

  “I know—I know. But this time, not only do you not exist, you haven’t even been born yet! I’ve already had my briefing from State on that. They have high hopes of building the present detente with die Russians—and that means Hungary—into something approaching rapport: You know how those cookie pushers talk. Anyway, it means don’t rock the boat. I trust I make myself clear?”

  “You are absolutely lucid, sir. It’s the same old deal. In like a ghost, out like a ghost, and hope I don’t become a ghost.”

  Hawk stripped the cellophane from a new cigar. “That’s it. Now I’ll give you what is probably your starting point—I’d say it damned well has to be because there isn’t anything else. There’s a man called Paulus Werner.”

  Hawk stopped speaking and watched for Nick’s reaction.

  Nick said: “Name means nothing to me. Never heard of him. What about him?”

  For an answer, Hawk picked up a flimsy from his desk. “This, from Glenn Boynton: When his agent, now ashes in that box, called him from London, he said: ‘I picked up Paulus Werner today. He’s just in from Budapest. I think he’s in London to recruit. My cover is good, and I’ll try to follow him back to—’ “

  Hawk looked over the flimsy at Nick. “That’s all. End of phone call. Boynton says that he heard noises, sort of a gasping sound, and what might have been a struggle. Nothing after that. Someone hung up the phone in the kiosk.”

  He glanced at the paper again. “Scotland Yard traced the call to a street booth in Soho, corner of Greek and Old Compton Streets. It was half an hour before the CIA men got there. They found nothing. No blood, no damage, no signs of a fight—nothing at all.”

  No, thought Nick Carter. He had to disagree. Not exactly nothing. There had been the pitiful residue of a man—the little cardboard box with its grisly contents. He remembered Glenn Boynton’s words: “We’ll give it to his widow, along with a few wood ashes to make weight.”

  His face impassive, Killmaster said, “Tell me about this Paulus Werner. German?”

  Hawk nodded. “We think so. West German passport, anyway. We got a bit lucky there. CIA had nothing on Werner, nor did we at AXE, but Interpol did. This Paulus Werner used to be a pimp in Hamburg. He Was a young man then. Later, he graduated from pimping to procuring for local whorehouses. An ambitious type, you see. Interpol has had him under surveillance from time to time but they’ve never had enough on him to make an arrest. They think he is, or has been, white-slaving—running women out of Europe and the UK to the Middle East and the Orient. And, more recently, taking them behind the Iron Curtain.”

  Nick Carter frowned. “The Russians are pretty damned moral about sex matters. They’d nail him for that. Probably shoot him.”

  Hawk said, “That’s the point. Boynton said it: CIA doesn’t think the Russians know about this deal, about the smut factory.”

  “It would tie in,” Nick agreed. “They need models for those dirty pictures. Also a lot of extras and second leads for the movies. They could be getting them from this Werner, at that. If what Boynton thinks is true—that the Russians and Hungarians don’t know what’s going on— then the people running the factory wouldn’t dare recruit locally. They would have to bring the girls in from outside.”

  Hawk had already chewed his cigar to a pulp. He tossed it into the wastebasket, then drained his glass and banged it down on the desk.

  “Paulus Werner was in London a few days ago. Fact. Boynton’s man was on his tail. And—”

  “And thought his cover was good,” Nick interrupted. “It wasn’t. Fact.”

  Hawk frowned. “Boynton’s agent knew that Werner was just in from Budapest. How he knew doesn’t matter. Budapest does. The experts say those dirties are made in and around Budapest. The makers of the films, and that other crap, need women to operate. Paulus Werner is suspected of running women. It does tie in, N3. Not air-tight, by any means, but it does tie in. And it’s all we’ve got.”

  “All I’ve got.” Nick’s smile was faint. “Do I, by any chance, get a picture of this Werner?”

  Hawk shook Ms head. “Interpol has one, yes. But it appears to be lost somewhere in Paris at the moment. Not much help.”

  Nick lit a cigarette. “Physical description? Any particular MO?”

  Hawk consulted his papers again. “Not too much on. the description. In his fifties now, short, runs to fat, speaks English with a German accent. Dresses flashily. No particular mannerisms or exotic tastes noted. None would be if the guy is smart. He must be. Probably, he changes his appearance from time to time. About the MO—maybe just a bare chance. Werner has been known to organize little theatrical troupes and take them on tour. But he hasn’t done that recently.”

  Nick had been lounging on his spine. Now he sat up a little straighter. “Girls in these troupes, of course?”

  “Of course. Singers, dancers, acrobatic acts. That sort of thing.”

  Along with the wolf and tiger, Nick Carter also possessed a fair share of bloodhound.

  “It just might be,” he told Hawk. “Certainly the trail beckons. Maybe too much. When you take a real good look at it; it appears just a bit too obvious.”

  His chief told Nick what he already knew: That a good agent never overlooks the obvious. “And maybe it isn’t so obvious from Werner’s viewpoint,” Hawk added emphatically. “He’s never been picked up, you know. Just kept under surveillance. Maybe he doesn’t know it. Maybe he thinks he’s in the clear and has the world on a string. He hasn’t used the theatrical-troupe bit for a long time, and maybe he figures he can go back to it now without risk. It’s worth a try, N3. Just get on with it.”

  Killmaster stood up and stretched. He reminded Hawk of a gigantic, sleekly muscled cat.

  “I’ve got to find him first,” said Nick. “London is a big place. Eight million people.”

  “Soho is about the size of Greenwich Village,” said Hawk. “And just about the same kind of place. If Werner is in London to recruit, he’ll be moving in certain circles. That should narrow it down a great deal. Goodbye, son. Let me have all the facts—when you come back.”

  Nick, before he left the building on Dupont Circle, went down to the sub-basements again. He had to pick up a fresh stock of ammo for the Luger. AXE made its own ammo, all carefully done by hand. Nick usually measured, filled and tamped his own cartridges, but there was no time now.

  Before leaving, he stopped by for a brief chat with Old Man Poindexter, who was in charge of Special Effects and Editing. Although Poindexter’s round face had the fading benignity of a Santa Claus who has been on a strict diet, in point of fact, the old man was rail-thin, and had always reminded Nick rather of Cassius than Claus. The old man was glad to see Killmaster, whom he regarded as much his protege as Hawk’s.

  “Going on a mission, boy?”

  Nick smiled and nodded Vaguely. It was a rhetorical question and both knew it. AXE personnel did not discuss AXE business among themselves unless it was germane, and the AXE organization was rigidly compartmented.

  Nick took the 9-mm Luger from his shoulder holster— the only weapon he was carrying, and that more for comfort than any expected use—and laid it on the counter. He took off his jacket and wriggled out of the shoulder harness.