Circle of Scorpions

Eight

Italian justice is swift, particularly when it comes down directly from government indictments and the charge is aiding and abetting revolution and arms smuggling.

It was even swifter in the case of Ali Maumed Kashmir aka AXE Killmaster Nick Carter. This, of course, was helped along by the mountain of evidence against him, and the very quiet interventions and urgings of the SID and the even quieter American secret agencies.

His photograph, the face partially swathed in bandages and almost unrecognizable after the severe beating on the beach, was splashed across every newspaper in the world.

His home in New Jersey was raided, and records of ten years of illegal arms smuggling were confiscated. Men in his employ were anxious to testify to save their own skins if Kashmir were brought back to the States to stand trial.

But that would be a long time in the future. Italy wanted him first.

A woman, Naomi Bartinelli, was arrested in New York City and charged with aiding Kashmir in his worldwide arms deals. Several other underground terrorist organizations and business dealings of international crime families were compromised when the woman's computer records were seized in her Manhattan apartment.

Two days after the affair on the beach south of Livorno, Kashmir was arraigned. Three days after that, the trial took place. A week later, he was found guilty and sentenced to fifty years in the maximum security prison, Castel Montferrato.

One piece of strange evidence leaked out during the trial. The SID men had been able to carry out this brilliant raid against the Liberta revolutionaries because of a tip. The leak — that it was an informant — of course was not made through newspapers or to the general public. It was slipped to the underworld and known terrorist cells in Rome, Florence, and Milan.

Clothing, a bag, and papers found in a pension in San Remo clearly stated that the arms had been purchased from a man named Oakhurst in Amsterdam. Oakhurst had tried to cross Kashmir, and he had paid for it with three of his best people.

It was all too apparent to Nicolo Palmori and his lieutenants that this man Oakhurst was the one who ripped the SID.

Two days after the sentencing of Kashmir and the seven members of La Amicizia di Liberta Italiana to Castel Montferrato, a meeting of Liberta leaders was called in Florence.

It was almost midnight when Cariotta Polti parked a Hat sedan in Florence's Piazza Indipendenza. In the passenger seat beside her sat Sophia Palmori, a blond wig entirely covering her raven black hair.

Wordlessly, the two women got out of the car and crossed the piazza. They reached the Via Zanobi and turned left. The street, lined with well-renovated old houses and an occasional cafe, was barely two cars wide.

Since it was so late, neither the street nor the cafes were overly crowded. The women turned into the second cafe they came to.

They sat in a rear booth and ordered wine. When the carafe of harsh local red came, both women poured glasses for themselves but neither drank.

They sat, stone-faced, barely glancing at the well-dressed young people around them.

One by one, three young men came up with open propositions. They were rebuffed or ignored. The men left quickly, and after the third one had made his try, no others approached.

Sophia was the first to rise. She moved through the tables and down the hall to the ladies' room. Inside, she opened the towel holder, withdrew a key from behind the roll, and unlocked a second door marked Storage. She replaced the key and moved into one of the stalls to wait.

Three minutes later Cariotta entered, and both women went through the door, locking it behind them. The stairs were steep and narrow, and they led deep into the subbasement beneath the cafe and apartments above.

At the bottom of the stairs was another door. Cariotta knocked, and light gleamed through a peephole.

"Yes?"

"It is Cariotta and Sophia."

The door opened at once, and the women entered. It was a large, barnlike room with little furniture. Two iron beds with dirty mattresses graced one corner. A makeshift kitchen with a coffeepot on a hot plate was in another. There was no rug on the bare floor, and the rotting boards looked as if they hadn't been swept in a year.

So went the glamorous life of a guerrilla terrorist constantly on the run.

Above a large round table flanked by several chain, a bare, low-watt yellow bulb hung, barely illuminating anything outside the sphere of the table.

"My baby!" Nicolo Palmori growled in a whiskey voice, and he folded his fat arms around his daughter.

He planted a sloppy kiss on each of her cheeks and turned to Carlotta, who was forced to undergo the same welcome. Her stomach turned as, over the terrorist leader's shoulder, she saw Wombo take the young girl in his huge arms and invade her mouth with his tongue.

There were two other men in the room besides Palmori and Wombo: Nordo Compari. and a man Carlotta knew only as Pocky.

Both of them were homicidal maniacs and were rarely out of Nicolo Palmori's sight. Compari was almost as big as Wombo, with flat, irregular features, black, greasy hair, and rotten teeth. Pocky had boyish features and unruly blond hair. He was over thirty, but he could easily pass for twenty. His most noticeable feature, other than his vacant blue eyes, was the steel claw he wore in a black leather rig in place of his right hand.

"Sit, sit, everyone sit," Palmori wheezed. "Nordo, pour soroe wine!"

Carlotta accepted the glass and managed not to wince when Compari's hand caressed hers while handing it over. He had been trying for over a year to seduce her, but Carlotta had always managed to keep him at bay. Once, she had done it by slicing an eight-inch gash across his belly when he was drinking and had tried too hard.

It didn't seem to deter him. He still tried.

Palmori started to rant.

"We must be avenged for this insult! Seven good men in prison because of one pig's petty greed and need for revenge!"

"Eight men," Carlotta said. "Kashmir was almost our sole supplier of arms."

"True, but he too is a pig! Ali Kashmir has served what purpose he had. For all we care now, be can rot in Castel Montferrato with Pietro Amani. But our seven comrades and their revenge?… Ah, that is another story"

As Palmori spoke, his fat belly rising and falling over his belt, Carlotta let her eyes trail around the table. These, she thought, were the remnants of the Liberta leaders. If the necessity hadn't arisen to free Pietro Amani, she would have been able to rig their self-destruction months before.

The only one in the room with any brains, besides herself. was Sophia. And Sophia was obsessed by, of all things, the Liberta cause and sex.

God help the next man Sophia decides to fall in love with after she tires of Wombo, Carlotta mused. The huge beast would probably kill both of them when it happened!

"Do you agree, Cariotta?"

"What…? I'm sorry, my mind was roving…"

"Now that we know the identity of this Oakhurst. and where he is, don't you think we should take action?"

"Definitely," Carlotta replied, sipping the bad wine.

Most definitely, she thought. If one of us takes out Oakhurst, then Interpol. the SID, the Mossad, or any number of other agencies won't have to bother.

Palmori was outlining a plan. He had nearly finished, when Cariotta realized that she was to be the instrument of ending Émile Dobruck-alias-Oakhurst's useless life.

"But, Nicolo, you have already ordered me to set in motion a plan to liberate our comrades from Castel Montferrato. How can I do that and go to Brussels at the same rime?"

"That is true…"

Sophia immediately stood, a slanted, leering smile on her lips. "I will go to Brussels," she said, taking a deep breath to expand her large breasts even larger in the too-tight sweater. "It will be easier for me, a young woman, to lure this pig anyway."

Nicolo nodded in agreement.

Carlotta thought, You silly bitch, go!

"I will go along with Sophia as a backup," Pocky said, lifting his right hand and smiling.

The claw in his leather rig had been replaced by an eight-inch spike.

Castel Montferrato was an awesome fortress perched high above the plains of Alessandria Provence, thirty miles southeast of Turin.

It had been passed down from family to family since the Middle Ages. Now, because of its impenetrable thousand-foot walls, its watch turrets, and its gigantic interior as big as a small city, it was a prison.

No longer did marauding hordes try to breach its four-foot-thick walls from the outside. Now Castel Montferrato kept men inside its walls.

Like all Italian prisons, Montferrato was run on the gratuity system. That is to say that if a palm is well greased, the palm will pat the back of the one who does the greasing.

Ali Kashmir was such a one. Because of his notoriety — and his ability to obtain lire from outside the walls — he was exempted from labor and just about had the run of the prison.

Unlike the penal theory of American prisons, where there is ideally some attempt at rehabilitation, Italian prisons are solely for incarceration. But like American prisons, the inmates are thrown into the pool and told to swim as best they can with the other sharks.

Carter learned this only too well the first week. The basic precept of each man was survival. And survival was accomplished only through respect.

The entire center of the compound was a courtyard. Part of the area was for craft shops, where the more skilled prisoners could set up small shops to make and sell their wares to the other, more wealthy prisoners. The rest of the area was used for exercise and recreation, and brawls that decided the pecking order.

It was in the afternoon of his third day that Carter was first tested. He was standing alone, idly watching some of the older inmates playing boccie.

They were goons, two of them. They moved in on each side of him.

"You are the dandy, the rich one, Kashmir, who doesn't have to sweat in the laundry!"

"I am Kashmir," Carter replied in a quiet voice.

"You are not Italian!"

"I am Lebanese."

"Ah, then you sponge off our Italian state! It is only right that you should pay for your food and lodging in this wonderful hotel our government has provided for you!"

"Yes, that's true, Kashmir. We — my friend and I — will collect for the state, each week."

The boccie game had slowed to listlessness, the players now more interested in the drama on the sidelines. A circle of inmates had formed around Carter and the two men challenging him.

Carter looked to the one at his left, then swiveled his gaze to the other man on his right.

"Both of you can go to hell."

One swung a roundhouse right, while the other grabbed Carter's arms and pinned them to his back. He caught the one swinging in the kneecap before the blow landed. The man was still cursing and screaming in pain when Carter kicked again. This time Carter's booted toe caught him full in the face.

His nose spouted blood, and a few teeth dribbled from his mouth as he went down.

The other one, holding Carter, roared and tried to break his shoulders by crossing his arms behind him.

Carter leaned forward, his legs off the ground. He curled his feet behind the other man's ankles and lurched backward.

They both went down with Carter on top, his tailbone crunching into the other man's crotch. His scream of pain made the previous one sound like a whimper, and Carter's arms were free.

He rolled away and to his feet as the first one came up off the ground in a lunge, his face a bloody mask.

The man had about forty pounds on Carter, so the hit was effective.

They both went down, but on the way Carter managed to grab the man's thumbs. By the time they hit, he had curled them both back. Both thumbs snapped like twigs.

This addled the man long enough for Carter to roll him over. Then he sat on his chest and methodically battered his face until it was a pulpy mass.

When there was no movement beneath him, Carter stood and walked back to the second man, who was still rolling on the ground, his hands cupping his ruptured testicles.

Carter was vaguely aware that the other inmates had crowded around them in a tight circle to shield the battle from the prison guards.

Not that the guards would interfere anyway; it made for a better show.

Carter drop-kicked the man in the chest. He rolled over and got two more vicious kicks in the kidneys.

Carter was just sighting in on the back of his neck, when be felt a hand tentatively touch his shoulder.

"Signore…"

Carter turned his head. A weathered old face covered with beard stubble was beside him. "Si?"

"I think, signore, that if you kick him one more time he will die."

Carter looked at the body at his feet. "Yes, that would be awkward," he murmured.

He stepped away and walked through the silent crowd. They parted like a wave before him and slowly dispersed.

No one paid any attention to the two mangled men on the ground.

That evening, after the six o'clock meal had been served in the huge dining hall, Carter was heading back toward his cell. He was almost there when a ferret-faced little man with droopy eyes and sloping shoulders fell into step behind him.

"Signore Kashmir?"

"Yes?"

"One of the men in the courtyard today… Anzio…?"

"What about him?"

"He is in the infirmary. They say he bleeds bad inside. They say be will die."

"So?"

The little man shrugged and smiled, showing crooked and broken teeth. "It matters no more to me than to you if the pig dies, but he has friends."

"And that means that I need friends, right?"

The smile grew wider and uglier. "That is right. In here, there are only two kinds of men, signore… common pig criminals like Anzio and political prisoners such as myself."

"Headed by Pietro Amani."

True. Since you already have some affiliation with the Liberta, it would be wise for you to seek out Signore Amani and request his protection."

"For a price, no doubt."

Again the shrug. "Signore Amani respects the fact that you were aiding the Liberia when you were arrested, but in here you roust earn your own way. A man like you, with your talent, could be very useful to our side."

"No, thanks."

"Signore Kashmir. Signore Amani does not take no for an answer. He is a boss, and bosses must control."

"Not me."

The grin faded. "This is the only offer that will be made."

"Tell Signore Amani to stick his offer up his ass."

It was about midnight when Carter beard a key being inserted in his cell door. Through one slitted eye he saw Amani's emissary, little Ferret Face, sliding the door to the side.

He was expecting it. If they wont join you, do away with them. It was the rule. It maintained discipline. No one is supposed to buck the bosses.

The little man moved like a cat on soft-soled shoes through the door. Carter saw his hand move to his belt, then down to his side.

It would either be a makeshift stiletto or an ice pick. Probably the latter, they were easier to come by. As for the key to his cell, any inmate could get it, with the right bribe to the right guard.

It was the quickest way to solve a problem: an ice pick in the ear and a quiet burial outside the walls.

Carter waited until he saw the arm start down before he reached up with his left hand and locked his fingers around the man's wrist. At the same time, he kicked out and scissored his legs around the man's middle.

When his feet were locked behind the other's back, Carter pulled him in. Carter twisted the wrist around and filled his right hand with the man's greasy hair.

It was an ice pick, and now its sharp needle point was just drawing blood under the man's upthrust, stretched chin.

"Amani sent you."

Silence.

"You're going to die anyway."

"No… no…"

"Yes."

Carter rammed his shoulder against his left hand, sending the ice pick through the man's throat and up into his brain.

After shutting and locking the cell door, he stuffed the body under the cot. Then he lay down and set the alarm in his head at four hours.

A few seconds after four A.M., he awoke. Ten minutes later the guard passed by, making his last round before dawn.

Carter waited until his footsteps had completely faded before rolling from the cot. He unlocked the door, then hoisted the corpse in a fireman's lift to his shoulder.

On stocking feet, he padded to the end of the corridor and down to the second level. At this time of the morning, sleep was deepest. Not a single head came up from a pillow nor was one snore interrupted as Carter passed the cells with his grisly burden.

Amani's cell was number fourteen on the second level. As silent as death. Carter slid the man's arms through the bars of Amani's cell and secured them with the corpse's own belt.

Five minutes later he was back in his own cell, sound asleep with the door locked and the key hidden in one leg of the cot.

Near the end of the exercise period that afternoon, Pietro Amani groaned into a bench beside Carter.

He was a big man, well over six feet, with a once powerful athletic body that was now going to fat. Carter knew him to be just past his sixtieth birthday, but he looked ten years younger.

"You are a very relentless man, Kashmir." He spoke without turning his head toward Carter, and his lips barely moved.

"Am I?"

"Removing Guido's body without a report to the warden cost me a great deal."

"Did it now?" Carter dropped the cigarette from his lips and ground it under his boot.

"I don't wish to have a private war with you, and I don't want to see you on the other side."

"You won't."

"Good. I didn't think so. Power is everything in here, don't you agree?"

"I do."

"You and I, we have many years yet behind these walls. You would do me a great favor if you would help me save face by at least nominally giving me your allegiance. I will ask no more of you, and I promise that in the years to come I can help you."

"I don't think so."

Amani's neck began to redden, and his body grew tense. Carter hastened to explain.

"You can do very little for me, Signore Amani, in the years to come, because I won't be here."

"What?"

"I plan on escaping."

The big Italian laughed, a low, rumbling laugh from deep in his gut. "Many have tried, Kashmir, many. And none have succeeded. With bribes we can do practically anything we want in here, but even with bribes we cannot get out."

"I can and without bribes."

Slowly the mane of gray hair moved until Carter was staring directly into the man's clear blue eyes.

"I think you mean it, Kashmir."

"I do," Carter replied. "If you're a gambling man, you can make book on it."

"When?"

"Within the week."

Carter practically saw the little light bulbs go on behind the man's eyes.

Within a week.

If he could escape, he could usurp Nicolo Palmori's authority and take over the Liberia again. He could meet with the Russians and begin again his reign of terror that would topple the Italian state.

"Tonight, please, come to my cell after lights out."

"Why?"

"Because, Signore Kashmir, if you can get me out of this pigsty and to a certain part of the world in nine days' time, I can put you in touch with certain people who, in your line of work, can make you a very rich man."