A Korean Tiger by Nick Carter

ceiling chandelier came on with a golden glow. Nick stood with his back against the door and surveyed the scene. Battle was right! A dozen or more shots must have been fired. A wall mirror had been shattered, a vase lay in shards near a mantel, there were ugly pockmarks on the light blue walls. Good thick walls or the bullets would have gone through and alerted the people next door.
    There were two bodies. One, the one he had touched, was that of a small Chinese. Something went
boingggg
in Nick's brain even as he bent over the corpse. So they were in it, too! That would surely make the stew more binding, if not more palatable. He shook his head a little sadly as he examined the dead man. It was something that he and i Hawk had foreseen, of course — the ChiComs had good pipelines into the Kremlin — but they had been hoping that the Chinese wouldn't tumble until it was too late. After Bennett was dead.
    The Chinese had been shot once through the chest, near the heart He had bled a lot on his expensive white-on-white shirt. Near his outflung hand was a Luger very like Nick's own, but a later model and not stripped down. Nick picked it up and examined the long cylindrical silencer fitted over the muzzle. A good one, made right here in Germany. With it in place there would be no more noise than a cork would make, shot from a child's popgun.
    He dropped the Luger to the floor beside the dead man and moved to the other corpse. He was wearing the paper thin, nearly transparent gloves given him by old Poindexter long ago. They were made of human flesh — Poindexter only laughed and shook his head when asked about them — and they would leave prints. Whose prints Nick had no idea. Only Poindexter knew that — he and the man who had done the actual flaying.
    He stood gazing down at the- second corpse. It was near the large double bed. A bed that had been lain on, but not slept in. The coverlet or red velvet was still in place. The material was heavy and thick and had retained the indentations of two bodies. Nick left the body for a moment and went to the bed. He bent over it, not touching it, and sniffed at the indentations in the velvet. Scent! Expensive perfume in one of them. Still lingering. Bennett had had a woman with him.
    Killmaster went back to the body nearest the bed. The twain had met, all right. East and West. The latest dichotomy
Politik.
This one had been a Russian, or at least a Slav, and one glance was all that Killmaster needed. The muscles, the closely cropped hair, the swart concavity of features, the cheap suit that fitted even worse in death than it had in life. A Russian muscle man. Probably an MGB underling killed in the line of duty. Nick bent closer. Killed plenty, too. Four slugs in the gut. He had bled hardly at all. The Chinese agent had been the better shot — if the Chinese had killed him. If they had killed each other. Nick glanced at the bed again, conscious now of the sick disappointment growing in him. Maybe Bennett had killed the two men. Or the woman, whoever she was. It didn't much matter. Bennett was gone again, off and running, and here he stood with a room full of corpses. And egg on his face, as they said in show business. Empty handed.
    He began to move around the room, searching it rapidly and expertly. He glanced at the dead men again and frowned. One Chinese and one Russian. A fight. So who had the button? Who had Bennett? For once he found himself pulling for the Chinese. If they had Bennett then he, AXE, still had a chance. It was a long way to China. If the Ivans had him it was probably all over — they would take him over the line in some remote, desolate country spot. They would guard him with an entire division if they thought it necessary — until they had sucked him dry, had squeezed every ounce of that thirty years of total recall from his freak brain.
    The closets were empty. Clothing, bags, all gone. Nick found an ashtray with a few butts in it. Two were stained with