What in hell, Nick was wondering, goes on at the castle? Tommy guns! Miles of wire fence topped with strands of barbs. That's security, all right, but why so much of it? What has the lady got to hide?

  Trees prevented him from seeing much of the castle itself, this fabulous El Mirador so often pictured and written about. Formerly, anyway. Nick could definitely remember the CIA man saying that not much had been written about the castle in recent years. Writers and photographers were no longer welcome. The Bitch lived alone among her splendor and her millions and liked it.

  What he could see of the castle reminded him of a fairy tale castle he had once seen on the Rhine. He could see turrets and castellated towers and a single line of ramparts with bartizans overlooking an invisible moat. From the tallest tower, a long spire of an affair, there floated a large pennon. As the breeze snapped it taut Nick could make out the device — a single white lily emblazoned against scarlet. He could not repress a smile at the incongruity of the scene. Splendor, even grandeur in this setting, wedded to commercialism. The White Lily. Symbolic of White Lily cosmetics! Millions of jars of goo purchased annually by women all over the world. Women who hoped the white paste would make them as beautiful as Gerda von Rothe. Known locally as The Bitch.

  Nick laughed softly and shook his head. It was a mad world. But The Bitch and her castle and her cosmetic products had nothing to do with his mission. She had millions, so no need for her to counterfeit. And a woman like that was not likely to mix in Mexican politics. No. It was chance, nothing more, that The Bitch and her castle happened to be squarely in the middle of things. Of the immense area he had to explore.

  And yet — the plane had come from that airstrip. The airstrip belonged to the lady and so, as far as the Mexican police knew, did the Beechcraft. Vargas had been employed as a pilot by the lady. That was all the Mexican police had known.

  Nick smiled. Of course they might have been a little more interested if the CIA had told them about the two bags of counterfeit found in the plane. But the CIA had not told them about it. They had sat on that, and simply reported the crash of a Mexican national in a stolen plane.

  It was verging into darkness now, but not too dark for the gunner to see him. The bullet splatted off a boulder just to the left of Nick and went caterwauling around in frantic ricochet.

  Nick flattened out and tried to dig himself into solid rock. We are not alone, he thought with a complete lack of piety. Goddamn it — we are not alone! With the Webley in his hand he wriggled sideways like a snake into the shelter of an overhanging rock and waited for the next bullet.

  Chapter 5

  The Bitch

  In the dead quiet that followed, Nick thought he heard a mocking laugh somewhere out in the gloom. He was not really sure — it might have been a trick of echo or the play of his imagination. In any case it did not come again. Nor was he shot at again. There was nothing but silence and the falling dark and the night cries of small birds. He lay unmoving, scarcely breathing in the shelter of his rocks, thinking furiously all the while. Since he was now on the highest point of land for miles around the shot had come from below, from one of the innumerable gullies and ravines and rock forts that covered the area. It was made-to-order ambush country.

  And yet the gunner had missed! Granted that shooting uphill was tricky at any time, especially in crepuscular light, still he wondered. Had the gunner tried again, had he tried to hold Nick with a volley, the matter would have been clear. But there had been only one shot That and the mocking laugh — had he really heard it?

  The alternative was that someone was having fun and games with him; he had been warned, put on notice that he was being watched. By whom? The bandits mentioned by the CIA Director? Minions of The Bitch? Members of the Serpent Party? Friends of the ex-Nazi he had only just buried? Nick shrugged and with some effort extricated himself from the mental tangle. It would work itself out in time. Things always did.

  For an hour he lay unmoving. A sidewinder twitched past without seeing him. Finally he made his way back to the barranca, his eyes a luminous amber now as he made his way easily through the dark along a trail he had only traveled once.

  Nothing in or around the hut had been disturbed. There were no traces of visitors. Working in the dark, Nick cut some cedar branches and, with the musette bag, arranged them to look like a man sleeping on the bunk. He covered them with his only blanket.

  The moon was pushing one golden horn above the blunted teeth of the sierra to the east when he snaked out of the hut and took up lodgings for the night in the low branches of a piñon pine and settled down for the vigil.

  It proved a waste of time. His only visitor was a cougar. The big cat came softly out of the trees beyond the pond, on stealthy velvet paws, then paused as it caught the man-scent. With a flash of saffron in the moonlight it was gone.

  As dawn seeped over the peaks in pale effulgence, Nick went to sleep, clinging to his branch. When he awoke the sun was three hours high. He climbed down, swearing at his stiffness and feeling just a bit the fool. Still it had been necessary to take the precaution. He bathed his face in the pool, then with the Webley in his belt and concealed by his shirt, he skirted the pond and climbed to the mesa. Descending on the far side he found a path that led toward the tiny village of Cosala. He followed it at an easy pace. He was gambling there would be no police in the village, and a visit for supplies would aid in establishing his role as a gold tramp. It might also, he thought rather grimly, provide some sort of reaction — other than shooting at him — from those who were watching him. N3's frown, as he trudged along, had something of puzzlement in it. The CIA man had assured him that he did not have to worry about the bandidos. Nick wondered now how the CIA could be so sure. Did they have some sort of private deal cooked up with El Tigre and his band of cutthroats? Somewhere in the back of his mind Nick was beginning to feel the first prick of apprehension. Was this going to turn out to be a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing? Another Bay of Pigs on a lesser scale? He knew damned well that the CIA hadn't told him everything. They never did!

  Still there was his own job to do, no matter what the obstacles; he was responsible to Hawk and AXE and had to get on with it. Yet, as he entered the village, the vague feeling of impending snafu would not go away.

  It was a dismal little village, typical of the poverty and inertia the Serpent Party was trying to exploit. Nick Carter, rather an apolitical type, could see instantly that this could be made a fertile breeding ground for communism. It would, of course, be called by another name. The Chinese Reds were very far from being fools.

  There was a single, mean street lined with tumble-down adobe houses. An open gutter, crammed with filth, ran down the center of the street. The smell and aspect of poverty was everywhere, hanging over the village like a miasma, attaching itself to the few peasants who shuffled past him without the usual friendly greeting that one receives in Mexico. Nick was aware of the furtive glances as he kept alert for any sign of a policeman. The villagers, of course, would know instantly what he was. A gold bum. As sullen and unfriendly as they were, he doubted any of them would turn him in to the Federal authorities; people like these were not usually on good terms with the police.

  At the far end of the street he found a shabby cantina lit by candles and guttering oil lamp. No electricity in the village, of course. Nor any running water. That would have to be fetched from a single communal pump. As Nick rapped on the bar for service — there was no one in attendance — he could not help making the stark comparison between this village and Acapulco. They were two different worlds. Granted that this was one of the poorer provinces, and that the Mexican Government was doing everything in its power, yet these people were still living in ignorance, poverty and desperation. None of their country's many bloody revolutions had availed for them. So it was here, and in the other places like it, that the Serpent Party was winning seats in the Chamber of Deputies and even in the Senate. It was weak as yet, the Party, but it was on the march. And financed, according to both the AXE and CIA experts, by the proceeds of the counterfeit that was playing hell with the American economy. Clever bastards, these Chinese!

  Nick rapped on the bar again. The service was lousy, too. He studied a faded poster over the back bar, a garish advertisement for beer. A pariah dog the color of diluted mustard, skinny and trembling, slunk through the door to cower beneath a table. Somehow the sight of the miserable dog triggered the growing irritation in Nick. He slammed his fist down on the bar. "Goddamn it! Is anyone here?"

  An old man, wrinkled and bent, the joints of his fingers grotesquely swollen, shuffled from a back room. "I am sorry, Senor. I did not hear you at first. My granddaughter, the little one, she died this morning and we must make ready the funeral. You wish, Senor?"

  "Tequila, por favor. And I am sorry about your granddaughter. Of what did she die?"

  The old man put a dirty glass and half a bottle of cheap tequila before Nick. He pushed forward salt, half a lemon and a plate of shriveled mango slices. Nick poured the tequila and drank, ignoring the lemon — it looked sick — but using the salt. The old man stared at him with apathy until Nick repeated his question, then he hunched his shoulders and spread his hands in the age-old gesture of defeat.

  "Of the fever, Senor. Of the typhoid. There is much of it around here. Some say it is the well, from which all must drink."

  Nick poured himself another shot of tequila. "Don't you have a doctor in the village?" Stupid question!

  The old man shook his head. "No doctor, Senor. We are too poor. None will stay in our village. The Government has promised us a doctor, and serum, but it does not come. The doctor does not come. So our children die."

  There was a long silence broken only by the buzzing of flies. The cantina was full of them. Nick said: "Is there a policeman in the village?"

  The old man gave him a shrewd look. "No police, Senor. They do not bother with us. Or we with them. We spit on the police!"

  Nick was about to reply when he heard the sound of an expensive motor in the street. He went to the door and, keeping out of sight, peered out. It was the Rolls Royce he had seen last evening through the binoculars. There was no flash of silver hair this time. Whatever the purpose of the Rolls in this remote little village, evidently the lady was not involved.

  The car was driven by a short, sturdy little man who looked like a mestizo or, to N3's experienced eye, a Chinese trying to pass as a mestizo. In the circumstances, Nick thought, it could well be. He watched with interest as the Rolls stopped a little way past the cantina and the driver got out He was wearing slacks and a garish sport shirt and a pair of blue sneakers. He walked with a bouncing spring in his step, giving the impression of squat muscularity, of a powerful coiled spring. Judo man, thought the AXE agent. Karate, too, probably. He filed the thought away.

  The man was carrying a small hammer and a large, rolled-up sheet of paper. He went to the blank, windowless side of a deserted adobe house and nailed up a poster, taking the nails from his mouth and banging them in with rapid strokes. Nick could not make out the words but the emblem of the serpent was clear enough. The golden serpent with its tail in its mouth, the same as the bracelet he had been shown.

  Another man put his head out of the rear window of the Rolls and said something to the mestizo. The man was wearing a white, snap-brim panama, but Nick caught a good look at the face. It was pink, well nourished, running a bit to jowl. A porcine face that he had seen not many hours ago in a glossy photo in San Diego. The man's name was Maxwell Harper and he was head of a large public relations firm in Los Angeles. It was he who handled The Bitch's cosmetic account.

  Harper was also in charge of publicity for the Serpent Party, hence the CIA's somewhat cursory interest in him. The man was doing nothing illegal, as the Director had taken pains to point out. He was properly registered with the Mexican Government and had been given a professional work permit. He was being paid openly by the Serpent Party to promote their campaign. Even so, an eye was to be kept on him. Nick had gathered, from what the Director had not said, that the CIA had a vague uneasiness about Maxwell Harper.

  The mestizo finished hammering up the poster and went back to the car. Instead of sliding beneath the wheel he took another roll of paper from the front seat, said something to Harper, and started for the cantina.

  Nick turned and headed for the back of the cantina. As he passed the bar he held up a twenty peso note and put his finger to his lips. The old man nodded. Nick slipped through the door into the back room. He closed the door but for the barest crack and stood listening. His eyes, roving the poor barren room, fell upon the tiny coffin on a pair of trestles. The child in it was dressed in a white frock. Her small hands were crossed on her breast. She looked like a brown rubber doll laid to rest for the moment.

  A spate of Spanish, heavily laced with the dialect of the province, came from the bar. Nick put his eye to the crack. The mestizo was having a drink and haranguing the old man. He had spread the poster on the bar and weighted it with beer bottles. He jabbed a blunt finger at the lettering and kept talking. The old man listened in a sullen silence, nodding now and then. At last the mestizo shoved a small packet of peso notes at the old man, pointed to a wall of the cantina, and left. Nick waited until he heard the soft vanishing purr of the Rolls, then he went back to the bar. The old man was reading the poster, moving his lips.

  'They promise much," he told Nick. "The Serpents — but they will do nothing. Like all the others."

  Nick scanned the lettering. It wasn't too bad, he admitted. Not exactly subtle, certainly not honest, but done with cunning. That would be Maxwell Harper's hand. Public relations writing, American style. Every promise was qualified, but in such a way that the ignorant, the unlettered, would never notice it.

  He had a last shot of tequila and shoved a five-thousand peso note at the old man. "For the muchacha," Nick said. He nodded toward the back room. "For a stone, perhaps. And I am sorry, old man. Very sorry."

  At the door he halted and looked back. The old man was fingering the money. A single silver tear exuded from the rheumy eyes and crept down his dark cheek, tracing a light path in the dirt. "Muchas gracias, Señor. You are a good man."

  A thought struck Nick. "The child," he said gently. "Why didn't you take her up to the castle, to the place they call El Mirador? Surely they would have helped you? I hear the woman who owns it is very wealthy."

  The old man stared at him for a long moment. Then he spat. "We did take her, Senor. We begged for help. I myself, in person, wept. I got on my knees. We were turned away at the gate." He spat again. "La Perra! The Bitch! She helps no one."

  Nick Carter found this hard to believe. Bitch she might be, still she was a woman. And a woman and a sick child — "Perhaps it was the fault of the guards," he began, but the old man interrupted him. "They called the castle on their telephone, Senor. I myself heard them speaking to the woman. To La Perra. She would do nothing. She called us beggars and ordered the guards to drive us away."

  Nick went down the mean street to a small bodega to which the old man had directed him. It was a poor setup, with everything in scant supply, but he managed to buy some canned food, two blankets and a tiny mange-ridden burro, called Jake. He paid, loaded his supplies on Jake and headed back for the barranca. No one paid him the slightest attention as he left the village. There was no sign of the Rolls.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon panning up and down the stream and accumulated a pinch or two of dust. He was not going to get rich.

  It was hot and dry with a sky of glaring blue dotted here and there with miniature fleece. Around four he knocked off panning and took a dip in the pond. He left his clothes close to the water, with the big Webley on top of them. He dove deep and swam around as he had the day before, but found nothing of interest. He did not really expect to find another body.

  This time he stayed down just a few seconds over four minutes. It was time enough for her to approach the pond without Nick's hearing the hoof beats. When he surfaced, blowing and sputtering, she was sitting there on a magnificent palomino, staring at him. The Luger in her hand was rock-steady. Just behind the Palomino, flattened on their bellies, were two enormous Dobermans, their scarlet tongues lolling slant-wise from the wickedly fanged mouths.

  The man and woman stared at each other for a moment. The woman spoke first, in German. "Der Tag kommt?"

  Nick Carter's brain raced like a computer. It was half of a recognition signal and he knew it, but he did not have the countersign. That this was The Bitch he knew instantly; he also guessed that her visit was somehow tied in with the dead man he had found, but he could not take advantage of his knowledge. There was nothing to do but play it cool and straight. He let just a hint of servility creep into his manner. He gave her a tentative smile.

  "I'm sorry, ma'am. I don't speak German. Just English. That was German, I guess?"

  He saw a flicker of disappointment in the narrowed green eyes. She was a tall woman with enormous firm breasts and an incredibly small waist. Her hair was fine-spun silver, a Medusan mane flowing below her shoulders and caught with a golden brooch. Her magnificent skin had a tawny glow about it. Knowing what he did about her — which he must pretend not to know — Nick Carter was impressed, tremendously impressed. This woman, Bitch though she might be, was a legend in her own time.

  The Luger moved in her hand as though it had a life of its own. He knew that if the whim took her she would murder him then and there.

  She spoke again. *The word Siegfried means nothing to you?"

  "No, ma'am. Should it?" Nick tried to look abashed and uneasy. At the moment it was not difficult, standing naked as he was in water to his waist.

 

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