Free Beirut Incident by Nick Carter Page A

to the underside of the bed wouldn't go off for another hour and a half, and I was sure she would sleep that long, probably longer if for some reason the acid took longer to eat through to the detonator.
    I had picked up the bomb on my way to the St. Georges after I had left Harkins' place. If you ever need a plastique bomb in a foreign city, the place to get it is from the local C.I.A. agent-in-residence — and you can almost always find the C.I.A. agent-in-residence posing as the local Associated Press man. In Beirut it was Irving Fein, a little round man with horn rimmed glasses and a passion for drawing inside straights.
    We had run into each other more than a few times around the Middle East, but he'd been reluctant to provide me with the explosive without knowing who I intended to blow up, and without checking with his boss first. He finally acceded when I convinced him it was a direct order from the White House.
    It really wasn't, of course, and I might find myself in trouble over that later, but the way I figured, Su Lao Lin was an enemy agent and she had to be destroyed.
    She was also very good in bed. Which was why I'd kissed her goodbye before I left.

Chapter 7
    Louie met me at the Trans World Airlines gate at the airport an hour later. He had been talking to two swarthy men in inexpensive English-cut suits. They might have been olive oil merchants, but somehow I doubted it. As soon as Louie spotted me, he hurried over, hand outstretched.
    "Good to see you, Nick! Good to see you!"
    We shook hands heartily. Louie did everything heartily. Then he introduced me to the men he had been talking to, Gino Manitti and Franco Locallo. Manitti had a low, overhanging brow, a modern-day Neanderthal Man. Locallo was tall and spindly, and I caught a glimpse of a yellowish set of bad teeth through his tensely parted lips. Neither one spoke enough English to order a hot dog at Coney Island, but there was an animal hardness about their eyes, a tightness around the corners of the mouths that I'd seen before.
    Musclemen. More grist for the Mafia mill.
    Once on board the big airliner, I sat next to the window, with Louie in the adjoining seat. The two newest recruits to the Franzini family sat directly behind us. During the entire flight from Beirut to New York, I never heard either one say a word.
    It was more than I could say for Louie. He was bubbling from the moment we buckled our seat belts.
    "Hey, Nick," he said with a leer. "What did you do last night after I left Su Lao Lin's? Man! That's some chick, huh?" He laughed like a little boy telling a dirty joke. "Did you have a good time with her, Nick?"
    I looked at him coldly. "I had to go see a guy about my papers."
    "Oh, yeah. I forgot. That would have been Charlie Harkins, I guess. He's a real good man. Best in the business, I guess."
    Was, I thought to myself. "He did a good job for me," I said noncommittally.
    Louie babbled on for a few more minutes about Charlie in particular and good penmen in general. He didn't tell me much I didn't already know, but he liked to talk. Then he changed the subject.
    "Hey, Nick, you know you sure messed up that guy Harold in Su Lao Lin's apartment. Jeez! I never saw anyone move so fast!"
    I smiled at my friend. I can be flattered, too. "I don't like getting rousted," I said toughly. "He shouldn't have done that."
    "Yeah, yeah. I sure agree. But, damn, man, you almost killed the guy!"
    "If you can't hit the ball, you shouldn't go to bat."
    "Yeah, sure… man… The doctor at the hospital said that his kneecap was practically destroyed. Said he'll never walk again. He's got a spinal injury too. Might be paralyzed for life."
    I nodded. Probably from that karate chop I'd given him across the back of the neck. It will do that sometimes, when it doesn't kill outright.
    I looked out the window at the disappearing Lebanese coastline, the sun glinting on the azure Mediterranean beneath us. I'd been on the job a little more than twenty-four hours and