Ник Картер - Assassin - Code Name Vulture

“I know.”

“I don’t want to wait for some possible future moment together. It may never come.” She began unbuttoning her blouse.

I looked over at her. “Erika, what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m undressing,” she said, not looking at me. The blouse was off. She unsnapped a small bra and whisked it away. I stared down at her.

“Do you realize that Stavros might walk in here at any moment?” I asked.

“It’s only mid-morning.” She had unfastened a catch at the waist of the yellow slacks and was pulling them down over her hips. There was only a wisp of panties underneath, a small piece of cloth that covered almost nothing.

I remembered, and my throat went dry. I remembered the sheer animal pleasure I had felt with her.

“Erika, I don’t think—” I tried to protest.

“There’s time,” she assured me, moving languorously on the bed. I watched her body move and stretch. “You said yourself that Stavros will probably be in conference with a replacement commander at the camp all morning.”

“We can’t be sure of that,” I said as she unbuckled my belt. My pulse rate was up, and I felt the familiar gut reaction to the touch of her.

She pulled me down beside her and moved against me. My left hand moved of its own volition to a breast.

“How sure do we have to be, Nick,” she breathed, her hand inside my clothing.

Well, what the hell, I thought. The door was locked. The Luger would be within easy reach. We would hear Stavros before he got inside the room. And I had the same feeling Erika had. This might be the last time.

I turned and let my eyes move over Erika’s body and the mane of flaming hair that fell over her milky shoulders, and I wondered if there had ever been a more desirable woman than Erika Nystrom. Anywhere. Any time.

I kissed her, and her mouth was hot and moist, and there was an urgency in the way she moved her lips against mine. As we kissed, she undressed me, and I didn’t stop her. Then we were lying on the bed together, and I was sliding the sheer panties down over her hips and thighs. She helped me at the end by kicking them off.

She lay on her back, her eyes almost closed, and reached for me. I moved over her and she pulled me close. We kissed again passionately, and she had hold of me and was caressing me. When she guided me into her, there was a moment when her mouth opened in a gasp of pleasure, and then there was a low moan from her throat.

Her hips were moving against me, taking the initiative, demanding. I responded, thrusting hard into her. The long thighs left the bed and locked themselves behind my back, forcing me deeper inside.

And then the explosion ripped through us. It came sooner and with more violence than I had ever thought possible, making flesh shudder and tremble in its naked power and passing only after we had both been emptied of all the turmoil that had mounted inside us. We were left with soft ripples of pleasure that found their way into the deepest and most secret parts of us.

We dressed leisurely. It was still not late morning. I was beginning to fear, though, that Stavros might not show up. He might be at the airport waiting for a plane to Athens. He might have said he was returning at noon only to throw any pursuer off his trail.

It got to be eleven-thirty. Erika had another scotch, and there was a growing tension inside her that showed plainly in her face.

“I’m going to the desk,” she said at eleven-thirty-five.

“What for?”

“Maybe he called and changed his plans,” she said, taking a quick puff on a long cigarette. “They might know something.”

I didn’t try to stop her. She was all knotted inside, despite the lovemaking we had earlier.

“All right,” I said. “But if you run into Stavros, don’t take him on yourself. Let him come up here.”

“Okay, Nick. I promise.”

After Erika left, I began pacing the room. I was getting jumpy myself. It was important that we get Stavros here. We had chased him long enough.

It was only five minutes after Erika had gone down to the hotel reception area when I heard the sound in the corridor. I drew the 9mm Luger and went to the door. I listened for a moment. There was another sound. I waited but nothing happened. Cautiously and quietly I unlatched the door. Easing it open an inch, I peered into the corridor. There was no one in sight. I stepped into the hall and looked up and down it. Nothing. The corridor had open archways to a garden beyond. I went and looked out there and again saw nothing. There was an exit to the garden area down the corridor about fifty feet. I went down there quickly and took a look around and finally gave up. My nerves must have been on edge, I decided. I returned to the partly open door to the room and entered.

Just as I grabbed at the door to close it behind me, I saw the movement from the corner of my eye, but it was too late to react. The crunching blow to the back of my skull sent a rocketing pain through my head and neck.

The Luger slipped from my hand. I grabbed at the door jamb and held on as I fell against it heavily. I got a glimpse of the face before me and recognized it as the one I had seen at the penthouse in Athens. It was the hard, scowling face of Adrian Stavros. I made an animal sound in my throat and reached out toward that ugly face. But then another blow hit me alongside the head, and bright lights exploded inside. I was swimming in a sea of ebony, and there was no horizon line between the black sea and the black sky. It all closed in on me and merged into a swirling, dark mass.

“He’s coming around.”

I heard the voice indistinctly, as if it were coming to me from another room. My eyes fluttered open, but I couldn’t focus them. I saw three vague forms around me.

“That’s right, open your eyes.”

The voice was familiar. It belonged to Adrian Stavros. I tried to focus on its source. His face cleared up in my vision. I looked into the tough, hard-lined face with the receding, dark hairline and the icy cold eyes, and I hated myself for letting him take me. I looked from him to the other two faces flanking his. One belonged to a husky, dark-faced fellow with a bluish glaze over his left eye. I took him for a Brazilian bodyguard of Stavros. The other man was quite young and wore a khaki uniform. I guessed that he was the officer who would replace the executed Galatis.

“So,” Stavros said in an acid-etched voice. “The window washer.” He made a kind of laugh in his throat. “Who are you really?”

“Who are you really?” I answered, trying to clear my head, trying to think. I remembered Erika and wondered if they had found her, too.

Stavros hauled off and slugged me with the back of his hand, and I noticed only then that I was seated on a straight chair. They had not bound me, but the Luger was gone. Hugo was still on my forearm under my unbuttoned jacket. I almost fell off the chair when the blow landed.

Stavros bent over me, and when he spoke, his voice was a leopard’s growl. “I see you don’t recognize me,” he hissed. I saw the army officer glance at him. “Now you know the kind of man you are dealing with.”

Yes, a psycho, I thought. A ruthless man who preyed on others. Now I realized why they called him The Vulture. I kept my mouth shut this time. He straightened, grabbed at his shirt front, and tore it open dramatically. I stared at the mass of scars across his torso, apparently from a fire. It appeared that they covered much of his body.

“Do you see this?” he snarled, his eyes sparkling a bit too brightly. “I got this in an apartment fire when I was a boy. My father took a lit cigarette to bed with him, the last of a series of wantonly negligent acts toward his family. But I survived, you see. Don’t think I will go to hell, because I have already been there.”