Butcher of Belgrade

Two

It was late afternoon of the next day when I arrived at Orly Airport near Paris. The weather was cool but clear, and the taxi ride to the Prince de Galles Hotel at 33, Avenue George V was very pleasant. Paris looked the same, except for the ever-burgeoning traffic on the streets. There were a few buds on the trees that lined the boulevards. I remembered some of my favorite streets with nostalgia: the Rue Reaumur with its ironwork balconies, the Montparnasse area, and the lovely Rue du Faubourg Poissonniere that led down to the Folies. But I had no time for any of that now. I had to find Jan Skopje.

By dark I was checked in at the Prince de Galles. I called Skopje at the number he had given us and reached him. His voice was deep with a thick accent and tense.

“Come to the Three Graces Square near the Folies,” he told me. “At seven. The sooner the better, as you Americans say.” There was a small nervous laugh. “I will be at Duke’s Bar, just down the block from my hotel.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

Before I left the hotel, I checked the Luger I called Wilhelmina. I considered such precautions to be among the reasons I was still alive while a couple of Killmasters who had preceded me were listed as Cold War casualties in a special file Hawk kept in a locked drawer of his desk.

Testing the stiletto I called Hugo, I flexed my left arm. The deadly little knife slid neatly from the arm scabbard and down into my hand. I nodded to myself, satisfied that I was as prepared as I could be for what lay ahead, and then I went down the stairs and out into the spring sunlight.

I had an early dinner at the Chez des Anges Restaurant on the Boulevard de Latour-Maubourg coq au vin, oeufs en meurette, and a balloon glass of excellent Burgundy wine. Then I took a taxi to the Place de la Republique.

Because I knew the area and because I felt like being particularly cautious that evening, I walked the rest of the way. There were a lot of strollers already on the streets, and I was glad to mingle with them and lose myself. I saw a large knot of young people enjoying the spring night around the Belleville Metro station. Then I walked under the crumbling archway that had once closed off the Cite de Trevise and found myself in the small square that Skopje had mentioned. It had the look of old Paris — a tiny park with a fountain.

There were three hotels on the square, all small, and Duke’s Bar was situated in one of them. I went in and looked around. The place was deserted — obviously the way Skopje had wanted it. I found him sitting at a table near a rear door that led to a back room. I walked over to him.

“Flowers are blooming at the Tuileries,” I said.

He studied my face. He was a tall, lanky man with a sallow face and dark rings under his eyes. “It will be an early spring,” he said carefully.

I sat down across the table from him. We were alone in the place, except for the waiter at the bar. “I’m Nick Carter,” I said. “And you’re Jan Skopje.”

“Yes. It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Carter.” His manner was even more nervous than his voice had been on the phone. “We must make this meeting brief. I believe they have found out where I am living. I don’t know what they have in mind, but I don’t want them to see me with you.”

“Bulgarian agents?” I asked.

“I am not sure. They might be Topcon men. They...”

A waiter came and took our order. Skopje waited until he had brought the drinks and left again before he resumed the discussion.

“There is a man watching my hotel,” he said quietly. He looked over his shoulder toward the swinging doors of the back room where the waiter had just disappeared. Then he turned back to me. “The stolen device will be taken aboard the Orient Express two days from now at Lausanne, Switzerland. The train stops there in early morning.”

“Why Lausanne?” I asked.

“Topcon headquarters is in Switzerland. I don’t know where.” He watched the front entrance of the place closely. The waiter came back into the room and went to the bar.

“Who will be carrying the stolen device?” I asked.

“This is a particularly big operation for Topcon. Therefore, the head of the organization will convey the stolen property.”

“And who is that?”

Skopje opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. His eyes opened wide, and his mouth dropped open even farther. I heard a faint noise behind the swinging doors at Skopje’s back and saw one of them moving. Skopje’s jaw was working soundlessly as he grabbed in vain at a place in the middle of his back. Then he slumped forward on the table.

I reached for Wilhelmina as I rose from my chair. Then I saw the small dart sticking out of Skopje’s back. “Skopje?” I said, lifting his head. But he was already dead.

Just then the waiter turned toward us and saw what had happened. I ignored his shouts and slammed through the swinging doors to a small kitchen and storage area. A door leading to the alley was open.

Moving through the dark doorway, I entered the alley cautiously, Luger in hand. There were heavy shadows, and at first I saw nothing. Then I caught a glimpse of a dark figure emerging in the lighter street beyond.

I ran down the alley, and as I reached the sidewalk, stopped and looked to my right. The man was running down the block, people staring after him.

I holstered the big Luger and started after him. He rounded a corner, and I followed. I was gaining on him. He rounded another corner, and we were on the Rue Bergère. Dazzling neon lights splashed against the darkness. The man was still running up ahead. I kept after him. Tourists and native Parisians stopped and stared. The man disappeared down a narrow side street, and I lost him again.

I ran to the entrance of the street and looked down it into the blackness. He was nowhere in sight. I saw only doorways and a couple of alleys and another intersecting side street. I pulled Wilhelmina out again and proceeded more cautiously. He could be anywhere, and I had the disadvantage of having to flush him out.

I checked each doorway as I passed. They were all empty. It was just possible that he had made it all the way to the intersecting street before I had reached the corner. I passed an alleyway and saw nothing in it. I moved slowly to the next one, sure now that I had lost him.

As I stepped into the entrance of the alley, there was a movement beside me. Something came down hard on my right wrist, and I lost Wilhelmina. Big hands were grabbing me and hurling me off my feet, and I thudded to the cobblestones, bruising my back and shoulder.

When I looked up, I saw that there were two figures standing over me. One was the thin, mustachioed man whom I had been chasing along the Paris streets and beside him was his big, bald hulking comrade, the man who had clobbered me with a piece of board and knocked me to the ground. The thin one held a length of iron pipe, a foot and a half long, in his hand. I wondered if they had lured me here to kill me.

“Who are you?” I asked, hoping to stall them. “Why did you kill Skopje?”

“Ça ne vous regarde pas,” the big man said, telling me it was none of my business.

“Dépechez-vous,” the other one added, urging the big man to get on with it.

He did. He kicked out at my face with a hobnailed shoe. I grabbed at the foot and stopped it from crushing my head in. I twisted hard, rolling so I could keep the pressure on. In a moment there was a crack of bone as his ankle broke. He yelled and hit the pavement.

The wiry one swung the pipe at me, and as I rolled away, it cracked loudly on the paving stones near me. The pipe descended again, but this time I grabbed it and pulled hard. He fell to the ground on top of me, losing the pipe. He then struggled to free himself, but while he was flailing about, I chopped at his neck and heard the snap of bone. He was dead when he hit the pavement.

When I got to my feet, the big man was trying to get back into the act. Just as he struggled to one knee, I kicked him solidly in the head, and he crashed to the pavement. Dead.

I looked for and found Wilhelmina, then went through their pockets. There was no I.D. Because they had spoken French, I figured it was more likely that these were Topcon men from Switzerland rather than Bulgarian agents. Jan Skopje had confided to AXE that he had worked for KGB and Topcon and had helped plan the theft of the monitor device. When Skopje had defected, either Topcon or KGB had to shut him up. It had evidently been Topcon’s job.

I had just about given up on finding anything of value on the bodies when I discovered a small slip of crumpled paper in a pocket of the slim man. It was in French: Klaus Pfaff. A Gasthaus Liucerne, L. Minuit le deuze.

I noticed a tag on the inside of his jacket; it bore the initials H.D. As I slipped the paper into my pocket, I examined the slim man’s physical appearance carefully. Then I hurried into the shadows of the Parisian night.