Ник Картер - The Killing Ground

“But he’ll want to be present. He’ll want to see it happen.”

“Yes. He wants to pull the trigger himself. All he can talk about is you.”

Was it too much? Carter wondered. Kobelev never did a thing without a very good reason. Had he sent Lydia to lull him into a false sense of security for the night?

Kobelev could talk about no one else other than Carter? Was it so? Once again, Carter got the feeling that he was missing something. Missing some piece of information crucial to his own survival. But what?

Lydia was studying his face as he thought.

“Is it true?” she asked. “Is Ganin dead?”

Carter started to answer yes, but then he held off. Was Ganin dead? He saw the man go over the edge. He saw the blood on the rail.

Suddenly another thought crossed his mind, and he went cold. Suddenly he realized just what it was that had bothered him. Ganin. Christ, is it possible?

In his mind’s eye he went back to the Zugspitze. He put himself in Ganin’s spot. Ganin turned around at the edge of the roof and smiled. He smiled! He had a means of escape worked out.

In his mind, Carter let himself fall over the edge. The balcony railing came up at him, and he grabbed it. An instant later, a split second later he swung himself under the balcony to a platform, or perhaps to a beam on the supporting structure. Beneath the balcony!

After Carter had left, Ganin had climbed up, taken the cable car down, and stolen one of the staff cars parked behind the cable car building.

Ganin. Alive. It was just possible.

“What is it?” Lydia asked, alarmed. She had read something of that in his eyes.

“Ganin is alive,” Carter said softly. “Or at least there is a very good possibility he is alive.”

Lydia’s hand went to her mouth. “I thought—”

“Kobelev is convinced I believe Ganin is dead. Tomorrow he says the confrontation will come. He sent you along, and that was his mistake.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Tonight I supposedly will be lulled into a sense of false security. You and I will be so happy to see each other that I will be off my guard. He did the same thing last time with... Sigourney.”

“Ganin will come here? Tonight?”

“I’m sure of it.”

Lydia looked away, pale. “I’ll never escape. It is impossible.”

“No,” Carter said. “Ganin and Kobelev will never leave Innsbruck alive. They’ve made a fatal mistake.”

She looked into his eyes, wanting to believe him, but she finally looked away.

They had a lovely dinner in the hotel’s excellent restaurant, and Carter made a great show of fawning all over Lydia as if he were a starved lover and could hardly wait to get her upstairs in bed. He also seemed to be drinking a great deal of wine.

Afterward he tipped too heavily, and he and Lydia made sure they were spotted crossing the lobby and taking the elevator up to his room.

The information would get back to Kobelev. Immediately. Ganin, in turn, would be set loose. But Carter was sure that if Ganin were alive, and in any kind of shape to come there, he would have to be a changed, much more cautious man. That, too, would be the assassin’s undoing.

Two suitcases were stacked in the middle of the bedroom floor.

“They’re mine,” Lydia said. “I had them sent up.”

“Could there be explosives...”

She shook her head. “I thought the same thing. I packed them myself.”

For the next twenty minutes, Carter methodically checked the room from top to bottom, making sure there were no listening devices, no bombs or hidden booby traps of any kind, and then he double-locked the main door, shoving the heavy living room couch in front of it. In the bedroom he made sure the windows were locked and the drapes pulled closed. With great effort he managed to move the massive wardrobe, built of solid oak, in front of the windows. It wouldn’t stop a determined assassin, of course, but it would slow him down and deny him a noiseless entrance.

Lydia watched him work with wide eyes. “Do you think this will stop him?”

“No, just slow him down,” Carter said. “Buy us some time.” He peeled off his clothes and took a quick shower.

When he came out, Lydia was sitting cross-legged on the floor smoking one of his cigarettes and drinking a glass of champagne. She had tossed her jacket aside, and her dress was hiked up to her hips.

“They could have poisoned the wine,” Carter said, coming across to her.

“Not his style,” she said.

Carter sat down beside her, and she poured him some champagne, and held the cigarette to his lips so that he could take a puff.

“A celebration,” she said. “One way or another I will be free within twenty-four hours.” She laughed. “Either he kills us, or you kill them. And then my worries will be over.”

It was the fatalistic Russian attitude. It was common.

She leaned over and kissed Carter, lightly at first, but then she placed the cigarette into the rest of her champagne, set the glass aside, then got up on her knees and pulled off her dress.

She wore no bra, and her nipples were erect. She slid out of her panties, and pressed Carter back on the carpet, pulling off the towel he had wrapped around his waist.

“Live or die,” she said seriously. “It does not matter. I want you to make love to me now, Nick Carter. For the last time, no matter what happens.”

They kissed deeply, and then she worked her way down his chest, across his stomach, finally taking him in her mouth.

Carter reached down and undid her hair, pleasure coursing through his body, as she did magical things with her tongue, lips, and fingers, trying to lose herself in lovemaking.

She sat up suddenly, tears streaming from her eyes. “I need you,” she said in Russian. “Please?”

Carter rolled her gently over onto her back, and she opened her legs, pulling him to her, and they made love, slowly at first, but then faster and harder with more urgency, until Lydia cried out in passion and fear at the very end.

The dawn broke very cold and gray. Carter got up from where he had been sitting in the middle of the living room all night and splashed some cold water on his face.

Lydia had crawled off to bed, but she had not gone to sleep until sometime after four in the morning. It was barely seven now, and she was wide awake.

“He didn’t come,” she said when Carter emerged from the bathroom.

“No,” Carter said. He went into the living room and pulled the couch aside. Then he went to the phone and ordered eggs and sausage and toast, with plenty of coffee for both of them.

Ganin hadn’t come. Which meant he was dead after all, or he had learned his lesson and was waiting until Carter left the security of the hotel.

Back in the bathroom, Carter took a quick shower, then shaved and got dressed in his new ski clothes. Their breakfast came a few minutes later, and after the room service waiter had left, Carter sat down with a cup of coffee and slowly cleaned Wilhelmina.

Lydia watched it all, and then joined him for their breakfast, although neither of them ate very much.

Afterward she got dressed, and they repacked their bags and Carter’s ski equipment.

“What happens now?” she asked. “I cannot remain here like this.”

“No,” Carter said. “You’re going to Munich. Then back to the States.”

“I won’t be able to cross the frontier. I have no passport.”

“You’ll be met,” Carter said. “At Scharnitz. Do you know where it is?”

She nodded. “On the way back to Garmisch-Partenkirchen,” she said. “But how?”

“You’ll see,” Carter said.

They left their room and went downstairs to the lobby, Carter’s right hand in his jacket pocket, his fingers curled around the grip of his Luger.