The Vulcan Disaster

I looked away for a moment, turning my eyes to the corner, where black clouds were billowing out of a slowly burning pile of clothes somebody had yanked out of the closet and dumped on the floor for fuel. No, for primer. They’d been soaked in something, and I couldn’t recognize the smell. The idea had been to start a fire that would burn up the evidence, all right — but one that would go so slowly at first that the killers would be able to get away undetected in the half-deserted hotel.

My eyes went back to the body, scanning the area immediately around it as well. There wasn’t much doubt how Hermann Meyer had died. His throat had been cut, very nearly from ear to ear, with what appeared to be two deft, practiced slashes of a very sharp knife — a razor, perhaps. The area around his head and shoulders was stained through with his own red blood, easily visible even through the smoke.

There was another wound just below his waist. I could see blood on his shirttails, which had been pulled out from his pants. I squatted down beside him, reaching inside his bloodstained jacket to search for his wallet. It was gone, of course; the killers would have wanted to look through it at their leisure. I wiped my hand on a sleeve of his mutilated coat, in one of the few dry spots. And once again my eyes went to the blood stains on his shirt and on the front of his trousers.

I opened his clothing, exposed his abdomen, and gasped. There, etched deeply in the skin above his groin — and the bloody job looked as if it had been done by a rusty nail — was a six-pointed star. The Star of David.

Chapter Three

Someone was calling me outside.

I looked up from the body of the later Herr Meyer and let my glance run quickly around the room. The fire was beginning to spread slowly along the rug toward me, I started to get up; then the pain in my ribs hit me again, and I let myself have a second’s rest before trying again.

This time I made it and I shook my head to clear it, feeling a little dizzy. Maybe the smoke was beginning to get to me; the best of gas masks only get part of the fumes, and mine was strictly emergency stuff. I pushed the door aside and went out into the other room. It wasn’t much better there.

“Mr. Carter! Mr. Carter, are you there?”

I looked at the hall door and there she was, her hand over her nose and mouth, blinking through the smoke at me, coughing a little as she called. And all of a sudden the big bold brassy Mata Hari mask fell away completely. She didn’t like the Dragon Lady bit any more. She was frightened, and was feeling like a defenseless little kid again.

“Okay,” I said, making for the door, trying not to jar the ribs too much. “Get back in the hall.” She saw me, looked up, dropped the hand that covered mouth and nose, and backed away out of sight. I gave the apartment one more glance and went out, Wilhelmina ready in one hand.

I closed the door behind me. The smoke wasn’t so thick out here. I peeled off the gas mask and stuffed it in a pocket. Even in the windowless hall you could hear the sporadic small-arms fire outside now. A lot of last-minute bills were being paid, I supposed, before the Cong and the North took over and canceled all accounts.

Helene — no, make that Phuong for good now; she’d be Vietnamese to the marrow from here on — was standing leaning back against the wall, looking at me. Her hands were behind her, spread against the wallpaper. There was stark terror in her eyes.

“What the devil are you doing here?” I said. “You should have split the minute I got out of sight. Now how are you going to run that gauntlet downstairs? How are you going to disappear into the crowd?”

“I...” She swallowed hard, and when she recovered, her face was the face of a teen-ager, vulnerable and full of unanswerable questions. “Oh, Mr. Carter, take me with you. Please. I couldn’t... couldn’t pass for the sort of person I should have to pass for, out in the city. Look at my hands. I... they will look for calluses, for signs of physical labor. Can I show them these? Can I...?” But a sob broke into her words. The eyes were large and plaintive, the voice broken and totally empty of self-confidence. She didn’t even sound as if she believed I’d listen to her.

“Jesus,” I said. I leaned against the wall myself, looking at her. There wasn’t much left of the poised, self-reliant beauty who’d done that little striptease act for me to divert my attention (and, I remembered now, to give Walter Corbin time to escape — or to kill me). She looked about thirteen. The small-boned hands and feet that poked out of the black pajamas were like a child’s.