Nick Carter - The Death’s Head Conspiracy

“I’m so damned scared, Nick,” she said, “for you and for me and for everybody else in the world. How will it end?”

“Badly,” I said. “But not for us. Now relax and let me worry.”

I massaged the smooth muscles of her back through the velour robe.

She tilted her head to look up into my eyes. “I hope you’re right, Nick,” she said.

I bent and kissed her on the mouth. She smelled of soap from her bath, with a touch of some floral scent in her hair. Her lips were cool and yielding, and sort of minty to the taste.

My hands slid up and found the open edge of the robe, then moved down to the warm, rising hills of her breasts. With a small cry of desire, she pulled away from me Just long enough to loosen the belt and slide the robe back over her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor.

Slowly, deliberately, she drew my hands down over her nakedness, pressing her breasts for a moment, then letting the nipples bob up again as she wound my hands down her body and across the flat stomach with its softer-than-chamois skin.

Her eyes were entranced as she bent her head to watch, she guided my fingers over her silky cushion to her warm center, and her hungry eyes rose to meet mine.

As I stepped back and hurried out of my clothes, she studied me with frank interest and admiration, never turning coyly away, even when I was completely naked. Then she simply opened her arms to welcome me.

I glanced upward to the bedroom landing, but she shook her head — as if to say that her need was too urgent for delay — that the place was here, the time was now. So we stretched out on the thick blue carpet and I stroked her body. Her moans came softly at first, like the sighing of wind, but soon rose to feverish cries of demand, as she rolled and pulled me down on top of her.

She arched her lean blonde body up to meet me as I entered her. Then there was the writhing, twisting rhythm of her tortured desire, the mounting together on a cresting wave of climax, followed by the long, surging descent to the empty shore of sweet exhaustion.

Early the next morning Rona went to work and turned out a huge breakfast. The night’s exercise had given us both big appetites, and we put the food away with enthusiasm. As the coffee cooled in our cups, other things began to warm up. However, this was a working day and, from what I’d learned of Rona the night before, a spot of after-breakfast recreation might just keep us occupied until late afternoon.

So instead, I stood in the sunken tub and took a cold shower.

We got away from LA. International on a nine o’clock flight, and at Dulles another of Hawk’s silent, efficient chauffeurs met us with an AXE limousine.

We went through the security rigamarole and soon were seated across the desk from David Hawk. The head AXE man ran his eyes over Rona Volstedt and turned back to me with an unspoken question in his gaze. I shrugged and grinned back at him as innocently as I could.

Hawk cleared his throat explosively and got down to business. “At the time you called me yesterday, Nick, we were holding a seaman named Juan Escobar off the Caribbean cruise ship Gaviota. He was picked up in Fort Lauderdale when he was acting suspiciously going through customs. No contraband was found on his person or in his suitcase, but with all our people on double alert these days, the Florida authorities called our office. We had Escobar brought up here for questioning, but we couldn’t get anything out of him. Then, when you passed on Miss Volstedt’s information about Knox Warnow and his nuclear plastic explosive, we had a closer look at the suitcase he brought in. Sure enough, our labs showed it to be fissionable material. In the latch we found a microelec-tronic detonator that could be activated by a long-distance radio signal. And, funny thing, there was a small skull embossed on the handle — a tiny death’s-head.”

“Have you learned anything more from the seaman?” I asked.

“Not much. I’ll let the man tell you himself.”

Hawk tapped a button on his intercom and said, “Send in Escobar.” A minute later a pair of grim looking government men entered with a sullen, pockmarked man between them. The government men left and Hawk motioned Escobar into a chair.

I walked over and stood in front of the man. “Let’s hear your story,” I said.

Escobar shifted uncomfortably. “I already told it twenty times.”

“Tell it again,” I said. “To me.”

He took a look at my face and started to talk without further hesitation. “The big man, he give me the suitcase and five hundred dollars. He say take a couple weeks off. Then when I catch up with ship, he give me another five. All I do is stick the suitcase in a locker in Cleveland and leave it there. That is all I know. I swear.”

“Who is the big man?” I asked.

“I do not know his name. He comes on board sometimes at one port, sometimes at another. All I know, he is with new owners, and when he gives an order, everybody jump.”

“New owners, did you say?”

“Si. Five, six months ago, they buy the Gaviota. Most of the old crew they fire, a few of us they keep. Me, I work for anybody. It’s a job, you know. The new guys they put on the crew, they are not South American like the rest of us. They talk funny, and they keep away from us.”

“Tell me more about the big man.”

“He is the boss, that is all I know. He looks rough and he talks in deep voice. Big shoulders, like a bull.”

I glanced at Hawk.

“The description fits Fyodor Gorodin,” he said.

To Escobar I said, “Anybody else giving orders?”

“One man I only see twice. Skinny, mean looking, white hair. He’s the only one I ever see give orders to the big man.”

Again I turned to Hawk. “Zhizov?”

He nodded.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and walked slowly to the far wall. Then I came back and planted myself in front of the sailor again. I stared into his eyes till he looked away.

“Juan,” I told him, “you have probably heard that the United States deals fairly with criminals and that you don’t have to be afraid of mistreatment. But this situation is quite different, Juan. There is no time for patience. If you are lying to us, I will personally see to it that even if you live, you will be useless to the senoritas. Do you understand me, Juan?”

“Si, senor!” he snapped. The bulge of his eyes told me that he knew I wasn’t kidding. “On my mother’s name, I tell the truth! There were six others who they give also the suitcases. Where they take them, I do not hear. My case was for Cleveland. That is all I know, senor , believe me.”

I did. I nodded to Hawk and he had Escobar taken away.

“I presume you checked out the ship and these new owners,” I said when the three of us were alone again.

“Yes. The Gaviota is Venezuelan registry. The former owners were paid a huge sum in cash by a man who said he represented an outfit called Halcyon Cruises. It’s phony, of course.”

Rona spoke up. “Couldn’t you seize the ship and question the crew? Find out where the bombs are coming from?”

“We could,” Hawk admitted. “But we couldn’t be sure that Gorodin would be aboard, and it seems that Zhizov almost never appears. Even if we did learn where the bombs are being made and where the triggering device is kept, word of the seizure of the ship would reach them before we could. And then they might set off the bombs already planted in God knows what cities. No, this exercise has to be low-profile, that’s why I wanted you and Nick here.”

“I’ve been wondering when you’d get around to that,” I said. “No offense, Rona, but I’m accustomed to working alone.”