Blood Of The Falcon

Twelve

Sultana's status in the palace of sin was ambiguous. She was no slave, although Hodler apparently thought otherwise. She had free run of the place, and answered to no one. As Carter followed her through the labyrinthine windings of marble halls and shadowy arcades, they occasionally encountered guards. None of them stopped or even challenged her, but respectfully deferred to her instead. Carter guessed they were household guards, not Hodler's crew. He didn't know what they made of him. Maybe they thought he was one of Hodler's crew too. Or maybe they wanted no part of a fight that wasn't theirs. It was clear that his leveling of Abdullah, Missab, and Kizar hadn't provoked any ground swell of opposition.

Carter had a difficult time keeping his internal compass oriented among the maze of corridors and turnings, in obscure upper levels far removed from the rowdy revelry of the club. Adding to his distraction was Sultana herself, the nearness of her. She gave off an intoxicating scent compounded of perfumes, spices, and her own musk.

The folds of her dark chador covered but did not conceal her womanly body. Sultana was blessed with the rounded, hour-glass figure that leaves fashion designers cold but puts men on fire.

They passed under a tower's arched portal, Sultana leading the way up a stone spiral staircase, through a second archway, down an L-shaped short hall. Halting before a door, she reached into the folds of her garment, pulled out a long tarnished brass key, unlocked a door, and beckoned Carter inside.

They were in an antechamber. Sleeping curled up on a floor mat, swatched and swaddled in black garments, was an incredibly ancient female.

Perhaps she was not sleeping, merely resting, for she sat up as soon as the chamber was entered. She was so old and wrinkled, she seemed a living mummy. Her chattering was animated and then some, her toothless mouth pouring out a torrent of what sounded like abuse when she saw Carter. Her dialect was obscure, and so fast, that Carter couldn't make heads nor tails of what she was saying. It seemed to be about him, and he doubted it was complimentary.

Sultana silenced her with a few short sentences, also spoken in that oddly accented dialect. Her words caused the crone to look at Carter with new eyes — no easy task, since her orbs were sunken in fleshy pouches and filmed with age. But there was disconcerting intelligence in her keen gaze.

"She is Faranyah, my slave," Sultana said. "She's a nuisance, but she's been with me for so long, I wouldn't know what to do without her."

She looked archly at the Killmaster. "I told her you have come to rescue me from my evil captor."

"She doesn't seem too impressed," Carter said.

"Faranyah said it would be a great and good thing if both you infidels killed each other. She is very devout."

Sultana shooed her slave away. Wailing piteously, the crone shuffled out the door, shaking her head and wringing her hands.

Sultana closed and bolted the outer door. She conducted Carter into her private quarters, beyond a beaded curtain covering an archway.

The inner lounge was sumptuous, in the Arabian manner. An intricate Persian carpet stretched from wall to wall. Long low divans were covered with cushions and brocaded pillows. Elaborately carved sandalwood screens and panels pleased the eyes and perfumed the air. Rich tapestried wall hangings adorned the walls in a riot of colored arabesques.

"What is your name?" Sultana asked.

"Nick."

"Neek."

"Close enough," said Carter with a smile. "Tell me, how did you come to be called Sultana?"

"That you shall soon discover for yourself."

Her hands busied themselves with the fastenings of her chador. It came undone, sliding off her curves to fall at her feet. Carter was dazzled by the splendor of her garments, and still more dazzled by the splendor of her body.

She was magnificent. Her wickedly ripe body was bedecked with jewelry. Jeweled rings glittered on her fingers, multiple strands of gold necklaces studded with precious stones and pearls fell across her heavy breasts. She wore a red-sequined halter top and a crystal-sequinned G-string. After a moment, Carter realized that what he had taken for red sequins were really rubies, while the G-string was set with diamonds.

"Are you as mighty on the field of love as you are on the field of battle?" Sultana teased.

Carter embraced her. She made quite an armful. Perfumed heat rose from her flesh, smoother than the gauziest silken veil.

He wanted her urgently, but he would take her slowly. Slowly… slowly… very slowly. That was best.

"Time to lift the veil," he said huskily.

He took off her face covering. She was perfection, her pouting lips an invitation. As her desire mounted from his caresses, she smelted sweeter still.

He found the catch to her halter, a maddeningly tricky clasp. It came undone and her heavy breasts tumbled free, her nipples like carnelian. He polished them with his tongue. Moaning, she stroked his hair, neck, shoulders.

She slipped free from his embrace, shedding her silks and beads and baubles in a dance that was old when Salome was young.

She moved away from him while he undressed, but not too far away. Naked and sleek, tawny flesh glowing in the lamplight, she sprawled on a chaise longue, a leg dangling over each side, her arms folded behind her head. It was as erotic an image as Carter had ever seen.

Looking up at his powerful, aroused body standing at the end of the chaise, she smiled and murmured, "Take me."

He plunged between her spread thighs and it took his breath away.

She was right. It didn't take Carter very long at all to learn how she had earned her name. She was a one-woman harem who made a man feel like a king. Or, in this case, a sultan.

Faranyah pounded on the outer door. Carter stood on the open-air balcony, looking down into the courtyard. It was still dark, but dawn was not too far distant, that hour when a good Moslem can distinguish the difference between a white thread and a black thread, and so knows that it is time for the morning call to prayer.

There was some kind of commotion at the main gate.

Carter was almost dressed. He adjusted the slings on his shoulder harness and holstered Wilhelmina. Now he was fully dressed.

Sultana threw on a robe and opened the door. Faranyah chattered at her. Sultana closed her eyes, then took a deep breath to steady herself. "He is here," she said.

"I know," Carter said.

He had Wilhelmina at his left side, Pierre in his crotch, and Hugo on his right arm. He was ready to raise merry hell. "Let's go," he told Sultana.

She was coming with him. He wasn't going to leave behind a ready-made victim for Reguiba's revenge.

Sultana picked up a leather pouch filled with her jewelry, the only item she was taking with her. A slight problem arose. She wanted to take Faranyah with her too.

"I can't leave her behind," she said.

But Faranyah didn't want to go. She shook her head while beating it with her palms, wailing her strong negative.

Sultana was worried and exasperated. "She does not want to go. She has not gone outside the compound walls for over ten years."

"You two work it out," Carter said. "I'll go down and greet our guest." He started for the door.

She halted him with a soft hand on his arm. "Neek."

"Yes?"

She kissed his cheek. "Allah be with you."

"Thanks. Be ready to go, once the shooting stops."

Carter left the suite. Faranyah and Sultana were still arguing over whether or not the slave would accompany them. A dark hush held the echoing halls of the palace. Its occupants would wait this clash out behind locked doors. Sultana had told him that the household guards would not get involved. Their only allegiance was to the palace of sin.

He went to meet Hodler.

Karl Kurt Hodler was an East German athletic prodigy. The state was his mother and father and it had shaped him into a scientifically engineered tool, first for athletic competition, later for destruction.

Hodler had gone to Munich in 1972 to compete for Olympic gold. He brought home a bronze medal, won in the grueling pentathlon. Today he would win neither gold nor bronze, but lead, the kind that comes out of the barrel of a 9mm Luger. He would, if the Killmaster had any luck in the matter. And Carter would need that luck, since Hodler was ranked as a world-class marksman with a pistol.

Hodler had brought back more than the bronze in 72. He had seen the work of the Palestinian Black September squad that massacred eleven Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village. That was for Hodler. He had finally discovered a team he wanted to join, namely, the league of world-class international terrorism. Since then, he'd won his varsity letter in sabotage and murder a hundred times over.

Technically he was still attached to the East German spy squad specializing in wet work, but in reality he was more or less a free agent, able to move around as he pleased, so long as his work coincided with Soviet-bloc goals. He hadn't been back home for over ten years.

Operation Ifrit wasn't a Soviet action. Militant Islam didn't need any direction from the Soviets, though they were glad to take all the Russian weapons and assistance they could get, as long as there were no strings attached. Since Ifrit's goals were the same as the Soviets — destabilization of hostile regimes in the Islamic world — the Russian bear was more than happy to lend a hand.

Hodler was an organizer and an expeditor par excellence. It's easy to motivate people when you're a killer. Two months ago he'd arrived in Al Khobaiq at Reguiba's behest to take charge of the moving and shaking.

Hodler worked hard and played hard. On his first night in the emirate he had been taken to the Crescent Club by hosts determined to show their guest a good time.

Something unique in his experience happened to Hodler that night. He took one good look at the magnificent Sultana and fell for her hook, line, and sinker.

The icy East German death machine fell madly, obsessively in love with the Khobaiqi courtesan. He was addicted. He had to possess her utterly. No other man could have her, touch her, even look at her.

Initially, some of Sultana's admirers were inclined to dispute the point. One was found shot dead, the other had the larynx torn out of his throat by a killer who had broken the backs of two bodyguards to get to him. After that, the general attitude was that if Hodler wanted her that badly, he was welcome to her.

Sultana's wishes were of no importance in the matter. Hodler did not mistreat her, never so much as laid a finger on her in anger. And he was often angry at her coolness. She submitted in body but not in mind. His lavish gifts failed to impress her; his lovemaking left her cold.

No matter. Hodler was convinced that in time she would learn to love him. Especially since he saw to it that no other male got near her.

When he was away from her on frequent trips, he left three of his men behind to guard her. But last night, late, when he returned from fetching Reguiba and company in the desert, Hodler was confronted by three ruined wrecks named Abdullah, Kizar, and Missab. Learning that an unknown Yankee had leveled the three guards and moved in on Sultana, Karl Kurt Hodler went out of his mind with jealousy.

Searing him like vinegar on an open wound was the image of Sultana, his woman, writhing in the ecstasy she had never shown him, offering all the charms of her perfect body to a stranger.

His pounding footfalls disturbed the birds nesting under the palace eaves. They made interrogative cooing chirps.

Hodler bounded up the front steps, under the portico.

A voice called his name: "Hodler!"

A man stepped out from behind a sheltering column. Hodler couldn't believe his eyes when he saw who it was.

"Solano?"

He'd met Solano, briefly, in Turin at one of Gianni Girotti's organizational meetings. The Italian struck him as brash, cocky, but absolutely capable.

Then last night Reguiba told him that Solano was in reality an AXE Killmaster named Nick Carter. Hodler had heard rumors about this American agent for years. And when he learned that it was Carter who had wrecked the Israeli action, he was enraged.

But he never in his wildest dreams suspected that the Yankee stranger who had taken his woman was Nick Carter himself. Until now. Now, he grasped the full dimensions of the big picture, and Karl Kurt Hodler just about went out of his mind. His fury knew no bounds.

All these thoughts spun in his reeling mind when he saw Carter. And that was too much thinking. For, while he was trying to sort things out to make sense of them, the Killmaster acted.

And shot the gun right out of Hodler's hand.

The impact broke Hodler's hand, even as the gun went flying. Hodler hardly noticed. He had gone totally berserk. Unarmed, he charged Carter's gun.

Carter had no intention of mixing it up with the six-foot-six-inch former boxing champion and power weightlifter. He shot Hodler in the left leg.

Hodler pitched forward, almost immediately scrambling up, lurching forward on one good leg, his huge hands outstretched to rend and tear. White foam bubbled from his mouth.

Carter shot him again, in the right kneecap.

Hodler went down again.

"That comes courtesy of Howard Sale," Carter spat.

Hodler was still in there pitching, fighting to drag his dead-legged body across the stones to get at Carter. Progress was turtle-slow, but he was game.

Carter shook his head, impressed despite himself. The East German giant's physical prowess was awesome. Hodler was like one of those indestructible characters in a bad stalk-and-slash movie. A bullet right between the eyes would stop him, but that was the last thing Carter wanted. Hodler had to be taken alive.

Hodler froze. Glancing over his shoulder, Carter saw the reason why. Sultana had emerged from within the palace, with Faranyah in tow.

For the first time, Hodler showed pain, anguish.

"Sultana — why?" he cried.

"Sultana is no man's slave," she said.

She started down the steps. "Stay clear of him," Carter warned, but she ignored him.

She stood over him, out of his reach.

"But I love you!" Hodler groaned.

"I hate you." From somewhere within the folds of her robe she drew a dagger, raising it high for the killing stroke. Hodler looked as if he would welcome it. But that was not to be.

The knife's downward arc aimed at the East German's broad, heaving back, but it never reached its target. There was a slapping sound as Sultana's wrist hit Carter's open hand, thwarting the blow.

"What are you doing?" she shrieked. "Let me kill him!"

"No." As gently as possible, Carter pried the dagger loose from her fingers. At the same time, what felt like a bear trap closed on his leg.

Hodler grabbed Carter's ankle, trying to heave him off balance. Carter's free foot slammed Hodler's forehead with a stunning back-heel kick. Hodler let go, but he was still conscious.

Distraction was provided from a new quarter, courtesy of a throaty rumbling coming from the direction of the main gate.

A man, not one of the guards, pushed the heavy wooden door open, allowing an incredible auto to roll into the courtyard, around the fountain, and up to the front entrance.

Here was the «spaceship» car that Gus Ferguson had seen when Prince Hasan came to Petro Town to confer with Howard Sale. It was a Rotwang Plus-X, an exotic mid-engine, four-wheel-drive concept car, turbo-charged and fuel-injected. The four-passenger, aerodynamically streamlined red auto's name translated as "Red Wing," but with its long snout and aggressive rear spoiler, it reminded Carter of nothing so much as a scarlet shark.

At a price of a cool quarter-million dollars, there were perhaps a dozen Red Wings extant in the world today. Here was one of them.

Prince Hasan hopped out. Pleasure smoothed the lines of fatigue in his face when he saw Hodler. "Nice work, Nick!"

"Thanks," Carter said. "You're right on time."

Hasan's face expressed even more pleasure when he caught sight of Sultana. "And who is your lovely and charming companion of this morning?"

"Sultana, meet Prince Hasan," Carter said.

"Delighted to meet you. Delighted!" the prince beamed.

Carter leaned over the semiconscious Hodler and clipped him behind the ear with the Luger barrel, putting him out cold. Kneeling beside him, Carter pried open Hodler's lantern jaws.

Wedging two fingers in Hodler's mouth, Carter probed his back teeth. Sure enough, one of his back molars popped loose. Carter pulled it out.

"What on earth are you doing?" Prince Hasan said.

Carter held up the tooth. "It's a poison pill. All he had to do was bite down hard on it to get a nice mouthful of cyanide."

"We wouldn't want that! My uncle's staff of, er, interrogators, is looking forward to many a long and productive session with Comrade Hodler!"

"I'll bet." Carter knew that by "interrogators," the prince meant the emir's torturers. A Khobaiqi question-and-answer session usually began with hot branding irons and then got nasty.

Carter wiped his fingers clean on Hodler's shirt and tossed the tooth away.

Hasan was asking Sultana, "Did I mention that my uncle is Emir Bandar, my dear?"

"You can tell her in the car," Carter said. "She's coming with us."

"Wonderful!"

"Faranyah changed her mind," Sultana said. "She's coming too."

That didn't leave much room for Hodler. Carter and Hasan hefted the East German and crammed him into the trunk. Even with both of them carrying, Hodler was a heavy load. They had to get rid of an extra spare in order to fit him inside, and even then, it was tight.

Carter savored the irony. The East German liquidator would be making his last ride in a West German-made supercar. And it would be his last ride. Once he was delivered to the emir's dungeons, Hodler would leave it only to attend his own execution. According to Khobaiqi custom, he would walk to the headsman's chopping block. Although in Hodler's case, he would probably have to go via wheelchair.

It was obvious at a glance that it would be a tight fit, getting five in the Red Wing: Hasan, Carter, Sultana and her slave, and Hasan's younger brother Fawwaz, who was standing lookout at the gate, scanning the valley below.

"We can always steal a bigger car," Carter suggested.

"You might be able to steal a bigger car, my friend, but not a faster one," Hasan said.

The foursome climbed in the car, the females in back, Hasan at the wheel, Carter riding shotgun. The dashboard-mounted two-way radio crackled with static.

"I radioed Road Post Fifty-eight to send us some back-up," Hasan said. "Odd… they should have been here by now."

Fawwaz fired a burst into the air to attract their attention. He frantically waved his arms.

When the Red Wing paused at the gate to let Fawwaz climb in the back, they saw what had gotten him so excited. A trio of jet-black limousines rocketed up the mountain road, already a third of the way up.

Hasan said, "They're not mine."

"They're Hodler's," Carter said. "Let's get out of here!"

Fawwaz did not object to sitting in the back in such close proximity to Sultana, but he was taken aback by the stream of profanity launched his way by toothless Faranyah, abusing him for accidentally poking her with the butt stock of his automatic rifle.

Hasan tripped a catch under the dashboard, accessing a hidden compartment stocked with weapons and ammo.

"That's some option," Carter quipped as he selected a Swedish Carl Gustav M-45 submachine gun, slapping in its advanced rhomboidal thirty-six-round clip. There were plenty of spare clips on hand, too, as well as grenades and a sawed-off Remington shotgun.

The three black limos were more than halfway up the mountain when the Red Wing dropped down the road on the other side, descending the steep southern face.

Hasan handled the car like a pro on that wild roller-coaster ride, switchbacking through a series of hair-raising hairpin curves.

Carter looked back. Sultana sat bolt upright, eyes wide. Faranyah covered her eyes with her hands and moaned. Fawwaz grinned hugely. He was having a great time.

The last curve played out, dropping through foothills to reach a straightaway shooting across the plains.

A true motoring fanatic, Hasan shouted, "Now I'll show you what this car can really do, Nick!"

The press of acceleration pushed Carter deep into his seat as the Red Wing opened up, building ahead. The horizon leaped forward, while the pursuers receded in the distance.

At that moment, the sun came up. Its angry red orb beamed long ruby rays across the desert landscape, touching it with fire. Jagged rock pinnacles and spires threw elongated shadows across the flatland.

Way, way back, the trio of pursuit cars crawled like three black bugs over the ribboned road.

Hasan laughed. "They'll never catch us now! We'll be at the post in ten minutes!"

Unease nagged Carter. "Didn't you say they were sending out some units?"

"Why, yes. We should have met them by now. I don't see them, do you? I'd better call again."

Activating his hand-held microphone, Hasan tried and failed to raise the outpost. Finally he made contact. Brief contact.

The post's radio operator was frantic. "We are under attack by a large force of heavily armed guerrillas! Repeat, we are under attack! We cannot hold them off much longer! Turn back, Prince Hasan. Repeat, turn back!"

And that was that. Following that message, the outpost ceased transmission, no longer responding to Hasan's urgent radio calls.

"Reguiba's on the move," Carter said.

"We'll have to turn east at the next junction and pick up the coastal highway! But there's no need for alarm." Hasan chuckled. "Nothing on the road can catch us!"

Nothing on the road.

The crossroads was empty of ambushers and everything else but highways and earth. The Red Wing slowed to 70 mph to take the left turn, its free-floating suspension showing no symptoms of stress. Safely set on the eastward course to the coast, the car once again increased speed.

Trouble arose out of the north, manifesting itself at first as a pinwheeling glare in the sky.

Nearness resolved the pinwheel into the rotors of a helicopter sweeping toward them on a swift, sure trajectory bound to intercept them in a matter of minutes.

Its shadow zoomed across the plains, overtaking the Red Wing. "Not one of ours," Prince Hasan said unhappily.

The copter was a lightweight, four-passenger job whose white fuselage was trimmed with green stripes. Not a military model, for which Carter was profoundly grateful, the chopper was a type favored by geologists making aerial surveys and the like. It had no heavy-caliber machine guns, and that was a break. But it did have gunners firing automatic rifles out of the ports and gaping side hatchway, slung back so the shooters could hang halfway out of it for a better firing position.

Air drag vacuum shook the Red Wing as the chopper overflew it. Its landing skids missed the car's roof by little more than six feet.

Executing a sweeping turn, the chopper came in for another pass. The whoop-whoop of the whirlybird was counterpointed by stuttering automatic rifle fire.

The Red Wing caught the tail end of a burst, shuddering under the jackhammer pounding. Sultana screamed as the rear window exploded, cascading safety glass into the interior. She and Faranyah were huddled as low as they could get. Holes were punched in the trunk. Had the gas tank been hit, it would have been all over right there and then, but luckily none of the slugs tagged it.

Prince Hasan did some evasive driving, randomly cutting from lane to lane, slowing down and speeding up to throw off the gunners' aim.

Carter squirmed his upper body out the window. The airstream tore at him, seeking to rip the M-45 from his hands. He sat on top of the door, legs hooked tightly to keep him from toppling out.

Fawwaz joined the party, sticking the snout of his rifle out the window, pointing the barrel up.

The chopper overflew the road, coming in behind them. Carter's thighs already ached from the strain of wedging him in the window square, but he needed both hands for accurate shooting — as accurate as a submachine gun gets, anyway.

Twin spokes of fire converged on the rear of the car.

Hasan's evasive tactics threw off Carter's aim, but the Killmaster could hardly expect him to stop dodging. He could only wait for his chance, and when it came, he opened up with the M-45, squeezing off short sharp bursts. He targeted not the copter, but the gunners hanging out of its side.

He got one. The shooter dropped his weapon and fell forward, saving himself by holding on to the landing skid.

Temporary save. He couldn't hold on for more than a few seconds. His buddy was reaching for him, trying to haul him back inside, when the wounded man lost his grip and fell off the copter.

He bounced across an eighth of a mile of landscape before his tattered corpse rolled to a halt.

The relief that kill bought for the Red Wing was short-lived. The copter faced them, zooming low over the road, coming in for what looked like a collision course.

The dogfight turned into a game of chicken. Losing a man must have unnerved the other gunner, none of whose shots came close on this pass.

Carter's bullets ripped the copter's underside. He poured it on, going for the aircraft's gas tank. Landing skids came so close that he had to duck his head to keep it from being taken off. Fawwaz poured it on too.

The copter's roar was interrupted by irregular coughing.

The enemy wasn't so eager to rush in for another go now. They were in trouble. Tendrils of smoke wisped out of the copter assembly, thickening by the second into fat black snakes coiling around the craft.

Where there's smoke, there's fire. Once the burning began, it rapidly went out of control.

There was a whoomp, a crumping sound, then the first explosion — a small one. Pale yellow flame wreathed the machine's dragonfly body. The engine yammered, the copter yawed, pitched, shuddered.

The gunner tried to save himself by jumping. Had he been made of rubber, he might have survived the fall. As it was…

The copter blew up, going nova, making the brutal desert sun pale by comparison. A mass of seething incandescence with a black helicopter silhouette at its heart.

The flying funeral pyre didn't stay airborne for very long. Leaning sideways, it plowed into the ground, producing a still more spectacular explosion.

End of copter.

Carter climbed back into his seat, his nerves starting what would be a long, long process of untensing.

Fawwaz, delighted, fired off the rest of his clip into empty air to show his exultation.

"Everybody okay?" Carter asked.

No one was hurt, apart from a few minor scratches and bruises sustained by Sultana and Faranyah. The rear window was gone. A line of fat black holes dimpled the car's rear. The right side of the windshield was starred by a spidery impact web.

Prince Hasan breathed a heartfelt "Allah be praised!" at their narrow escape.

That did it for the opposition. The Red Wing reached Al Khobaiq without further incident.

The emir's crack units of Bedouin Home Guard were mobilized on full alert. Security was intense at secret police headquarters, where Prince Hasan rolled the Red Wing to a halt.

Those bullet holes perforating the trunk didn't look good for Karl Kurt Hodler. The lock was jammed and a burly guardsman had to jimmy the trunk lid open with a crowbar.

Hodler was curled up in a fetal position, steeped in a pool of his bright red blood. He was later found to have taken three slugs, any one of which would have killed him.

Sultana, hugging herself, asked, "Is he dead?"

"Incredibly dead," Carter said.

Karl Kurt Hodler had had the last laugh after all. He had cheated both AXE and the headsman's axe. A tough break, but Carter didn't seem as upset by it as the prince would have expected.

After a hurried consultation with an excited aide, Hasan was grim-faced. "More bad news. Road Post Fifty-eight was massacred, wiped out to the last man. That includes Wooten, whom I left there for safekeeping. He was gunned down in his cell."

The prince was sour. "What a waste! All that work, and we've lost both our leads, Wooten and Hodler. We'll have to start all over again, and — but you are smiling, my friend. What can you possibly find amusing about this setback?"

"We've got a source that's better than Wooten, and the next best thing to Hodler," Carter said.

"Who?"

"Sultana. The Crescent Club provided Hodler with a perfect cover. He used it to meet with leading subversive elements in AI Khobaiq. Pretending to be nothing more than pleasure seekers, the radicals met in the back rooms of the club to plot revolution with Hodler."

"Hodler is dead, Nick."

"Sultana is very much alive. Hodler was insanely jealous and possessive."

"I can see why," Hasan said, eyeing Sultana.

"He never let her out of his sight," Carter said. "Kept her with him at all times when he was at the club, even when he was busy plotting with his radical pals. Sultana knows them all, and will identify them. Once you put the arm on them, I'm betting it won't be long before one of them tips us to Reguiba's hideout."

"I see." Hasan nodded, smiling. As the implications sank in, his smile broadened. As the full effect of Sultana's curves hit him, he was all but beaming. "That's good. Very good!"

Carter grinned back. "I got some of the story from her last night, but Pm sure you'd like to talk to her yourself."

"Indeed I would! You will excuse me, please!"

Prince Hasan made a beeline for Sultana, and in no time, their two heads were together. Carter overheard Sultana asking him, "Tell me, are you really a prince?"

"Am I a prince? But of course! Emir Bandar is my father's brother! The emir regularly consults with me on security matters!"

Hasan took her arm. "But this is no place for a beauty like you, out here in the dust and the sun! Let's find a more congenial spot. We can drink mint tea and get to know one another better."

"That would be nice," Sultana said.

Off they went. Carter knew that Sultana was in good hands. Or was it the prince who was in good hands?

Catching the Killmaster's eye, Faranyah flashed him a nod, a wink, and a smile. Then she hurried off after her mistress.