Read A Korean Tiger for Free Online Page A

pipe bowl. Shiny clean.
    The revolver was a Smith & Wesson with a stubby two-inch barrel — a .38. It would pack a hell of a wallop at very short range. A light film of oil glistened on the weapon. Some of it adhered to Nick's fingers and he wiped them on his trousers.
    Hawk said: "Are you thinking what I'm thinking, N3? Something real nutty — like make-believe and pretend and children's games?"
    Before he answered, Nick Carter glanced again at the bookshelves containing the mysteries, the spy stories, the stacked assortment of comic books of like tenoi His keen eyes flicked to a little taboret where stood two bottles of scotch and a soda siphon. The seals on the whiskey were intact, the siphon was full.
    Hawk followed his glance. "Bennett didn't 6moke or drink."
    Finally Killmaster said: "It would make it nice and simple, sir. To decide that Bennett is just a nut who read too many spy stories, saw too much television. A juvenile mentality whose idea of glory was to earn his Junior G-Man's badge. I'll admit a lot of things point that way — but on the other hand a lot of things don't. Kids, even grown-up kids, don't usually take a hatchet to their wives."
    "He's a psycho," Hawk grumbled. "A schizo. Split personality. He was a psycho, a nut, all his life. But he kept it pretty well concealed. Then suddenly something triggered him into a psychotic state, and he axed his wife."
    Nick knew that his boss was thinking aloud and expecting Killmaster to play the role of devil's advocate. It was a technique they often used on a knotty problem.
    "I think you're about half right," he said now. "But only half. You're oversimplifying it, sir. It's all right to say that Bennett was a childish romantic who liked to play at being a spy — but the FBI had turned up evidence that he could have been a real spy. Don't forget the total recall and the camera mind! The man's a walking record of everything important that happened in Washington in the past thirty years."
    Hawk grunted and tore the unoffending wrapper from a fresh cigar. "Then why the hell didn't the Kremlin, if it was the Kremlin, ever try to contact him? Why didn't they pay him? It just doesn't make sense that they would plant a guy like Bennett and then not try to milk him over the years. Unless..."
    Nick had replaced the trenchcoat and hat in the metal cabinet. He crossed the room and stood looking at a fake fireplace, of imitation red brick, that had been installed in one wall. Behind a cheap brass screen there was a small electric heater with an extension cord leading to a wall socket. Nick picked up the cord and plugged it in. The heater began to glow red.
    Before the fireplace was a shabby armchair with torn vinyl upholstery. Nick Carter sank into the chair and extended his long muscular legs to the make-believe flame. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself as Raymond Lee Bennett. A dreary little man with a poor physique, not much mouse-colored hair, a bad case of acne scarring an ugly horse face. Very poor equipment with which to face the world. A world in which all the goodies went to the beautiful people, to the brilliant and the clever and the moneyed people. Nick, his eyes still closed, struggling to simulate and attune himself to the pinkish atomic armature underlying the brain of Raymond Lee Bennett — just one brain in billions — began gradually to evolve a hazy picture in his own mind. He could almost savor, nearly taste, the raw juices of defeat. Of frustration and a terrible wanting. A crying out that would not be answered. A soul wanting out of the skimpy body and begging rescue from the ravaged face. A have-not yearning to have. A fuzzy mind, yet conscious of the passage of time and with a horrible awareness of what was being missed. A poor puerile child locked away from the sweets of life.
    Such a man — if man was the word — could only have found relief, surcease, in fantasy. Nick opened his eyes and stared at the glowing electric heater. For