Earthfire North

Eight

The tires crunched over what could only be crushed stone. And the air, Carter realized, was much too sweet for a city. They had to be outside in the country somewhere.

The car turned left and began ascending a steep hill punctuated with tight curves. When they hit a level spot, they stopped.

The two men in the front got out, and the driver opened the rear door. "Out!" he shouted in German. He reached in and grabbed Carter by the arm and pulled him off the back floor of the car.

The air was cool here, laced with a pine scent. The driver and the other man guided the blindfolded Carter across a grassy area, and then they started up a steep set of stairs. Carter stumbled purposely on the first step, falling to his knees.

"Scheisse!" the driver muttered in disgust. He cut through the cloth blindfold and pulled it away. Light flooded Carter's eyes, blinding him for a moment. He turned his head away until his vision began to return to normal and he was able to see the outlines of the mountains, the sun sparkling off the snow at the higher elevations. August. Still snow. They had to be many miles from Mainz.

"Raus!" the driver snarled, and they started up again.

High above, a small chalet was set into the face of the cliff.

"Kirschwasser?" Ziegler asked, opening a bottle. Carter stared sullenly into the crackling fire. The general poured himself a drink, then came back to where Carter was seated. The driver and the other one stood by the door. They seemed bored.

"Do you prefer German, or would you rather speak in English?" Ziegler asked, taking a seat across from Carter.

Carter held his silence. If he could get the man angry, he might make a mistake.

"German, then," the man said. "Apparently you are fluent with the language, whereas my English… well, I have been lax over the years. "Ziegler took a sip of his drink. He seemed expansive. "The last time we talked, you represented yourself as a reporter. We checked with Amalgamated Press and found, of course, that you are on the payroll. But I think you are more than a mere reporter. Your facility with weapons suggests you have had training."

Carter looked nonchalantly out the large plate glass window which afforded a spectacular view of the mountains.

"I get quite cross when I am ignored, Herr Carter," Ziegler said. There was a slight edge to his voice.

"Untie my hands," Carter said, looking at him.

"Very well." Ziegler motioned for the men at the door. The driver came over and cut the bonds holding Carter's wrists. Carter brought his hands around in front of him and rubbed his wrists to restore the circulation. His fingers were numb.

"I'll have that drink now," he said.

"A glass for Herr Carter," Ziegler told his driver.

The man went to the bar, poured a drink, and brought it over. His face was devoid of expression, his eyes hooded.

Carter sipped thoughtfully. It tasted harsh yet bracing. If there were any drugs hidden in the drink, he couldn't detect the taste. "Quite a setup here. Herr General," Carter said. "Your Berghof?"

"You might say so," Ziegler said. "But that was another war in another time. We are here and now. And a project of mine is being seriously imperiled by your meddling."

"Sorry about that…" Carter started to quip, but Ziegler cut him off.

"I will find out how much you know about my personal business and for whom you are working."

"I have nine more fingers," Carter said, studying his bandaged hand. "Care to try for two out of ten?"

Ziegler smiled. It was the last expression Carter would have expected from the man, and it gave him a chill. "There are other methods, "he said. He looked up at his men still at the door. "Bring her in."

"Her?" Carter asked. He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The driver stepped out of the room. Ziegler got up and went over to the fireplace where he took a poker from the stand and wedged it among the glowing coals.

"Ziegler… you bastard," Carter said. The other man by the door had pulled out his gun. He was staring at Carter. The slightest move and it would be all over.

The driver returned a moment or two later, pushing Roberta Redgrave in front of him. She had obviously been roughed up.

Carter started to rise, but he was looking into the very large barrel of a.44 magnum. He slumped back.

"Spare us any emotional displays," Ziegler said without looking around. He picked up a wooden bellows and began fanning the coals around the poker, which he had jammed between two logs.

Roberta seemed dazed. Her hair was matted with sweat. Carter guessed she had been drugged. Her skin was clear and unbruised, and her clothing, while wrinkled, didn't seem torn or soiled, but she had a look about her that told him she had been psychologically abused.

"You may be interested to know that your friend is an operative with the BND," Ziegler said. "The Bundesnachrichtendienst." He kept pumping the bellows, the coals around the poker white hot now.

Carter's stomach flopped. Roberta an operative with the West German secret intelligence service. Was that why she had allowed him to approach her so easily? If it were true, she was good… very good indeed.

"Roberta?" he called out.

She didn't look up.

"She's in no condition to talk at the moment," Ziegler said, chuckling. "Although I'm sure we'll hear a great deal from her in a moment or two." He took out the poker and examined it. The first six inches of the thing glowed a bright red. "Sit the bitch down," Ziegler said, turning around.

The guard by the door pulled a chair out from around the coffee table, and the driver shoved Roberta down into it.

"Wait a moment," Carter said. They all turned to him except for Roberta, who stared down at her knees. When he spoke again, he made his voice sound strained, as if he were very frightened and totally intimidated by Ziegler and his methods. It was his only hope, at least for the moment.

"I'll tell you whatever you want to know. Just don't hurt her."

"I was right about you, after all. You are a sentimentalist," Ziegler said. He jammed the poker back into the fireplace and sat down.

"I am a trained intelligence officer," Carter said. "You were right. You had me pegged… although I don't know how."

"Who do you work for?"

The government… the U.S. government, that is. But you have to believe me when I tell you that I'm here in no official capacity. I'm on leave."

"Interesting," Ziegler said. "Then why exactly is it you are here?"

"I've come to find out why Dr. Coatsworth was killed. She was a friend."

Ziegler took a cigarette from a silver case, then pushed the case back into his shirt pocket. "You certainly must think that I'm a fool," he said. He got up, went over to the fireplace, got the poker, and when he turned back he was smiling.

Carter could feel the sweat beginning to form on his chest.

Ziegler held out the poker, and the driver came across and took it from him. The other man trained his pistol on Carter.

"You don't have to do anything so crude," Carter said.

The driver brought the poker behind Roberta's chair. The son of a bitch was looking forward to it.

"I'm the only one who knows of the Odessa connection," Carter said. "I swear it. Hurting her won't change that."

Ziegler chuckled and nodded. The driver delicately touched the tip of the red-hot poker to the back of Roberta's neck, just below her ear. She screamed and jerked forward, falling facedown on the carpeted floor.

The stench of singed hair and burned flesh was strong in the air.

"You son of a bitch! You bastard!" Carter shouted in English. "Kill her and you'll have to kill me, and then you will be screwed, Herr General!"

The driver had gone around to the front of the chair, where he knelt down beside Roberta who lay there moaning.

Ziegler motioned for the man to hold up. "I will be screwed. Curious. Whatever do you mean by that, Herr Carter?"

"The nuclear power plant you're building in Iceland. You're diverting steam from Reykjavik to panic the Althing. You're bribing Josepsson and others. Lydia found out about it."

Ziegler looked at his driver. "There isn't much else we can do with either of them. Kill them both. We'll see who comes looking for them." He started to turn away, but then he looked back. "Make it look like an accident."

"Jawohl, mein Herr," the driver said with obvious relish.

"But be careful, for God's sake," Ziegler said, looking at Carter. "This one is dangerous, I think."

The driver yanked Roberta to her feet after he put the poker back in its rack. She seemed only vaguely aware of what was going on. The other man lied Carter's hands behind his back, then jerked him to his feet.

Together the four of them went back outside, then down the long stairs to the parking area. There were several cars and a couple of small trucks parked there.

They went directly to a BMW sedan on top of which were a pair of skis in a rack. The guard shoved Roberta in the passenger side in the front, and Carter was shoved in the back. The driver and guard got in, and they pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the very steep road toward the base of the mountain. One side of the road was a sheer rock cliff that rose hundreds of feet above them. On the other side was a drop of at least a thousand feet to a rock-strewn ravine.

The car was no doubt registered to Hemispheric Technologies, and when the accident was "discovered," they'd claim he was an employee on holiday. Eventually Hawk and the West German government would figure out what really happened, but by that time Ziegler would have erased any personal connection with the incident.

When the guard had hurriedly tied his hands, Carter had flexed his wrist muscles; now he relaxed them, and the knots loosened slightly. As they had walked down the steep road, he worked at the bindings.

"Where are you taking us?" he asked the guard seated next to him. He had to distract the man.

The guard just looked at him and smiled. "A very short trip, mein Herr. You'll see." He laughed.

The thin nylon line was slipping.

"It's a shame," Carter said. "She's such a pretty girl."

The driver looked at him in the rearview mirror.

"What's a shame?" the guard in the back seat asked.

Carter shrugged. "She's a pretty girl. Helpless. You're going to kill us anyway…"

His guard's eyes narrowed. "What do you get out of this?"

"A cigarette, mat's all," Carter said, a tremor in his voice. "I know what you're up to. Maybe a drink. And then at the end you can knock me out.

The driver laughed out loud at the same moment the bonds came loose on Carter's wrists.

"You're going to let the opportunity pass you by?" Carter said disdainfully.

His guard sat forward, reached over the front seat, and pulled Roberta's coat open.

"What the hell…" the driver said.

"Shut your mouth, Karl," the guard snapped. He ripped Roberta's blouse open and yanked her bra apart, freeing her lovely breasts.

They had taken Carter's Luger and stiletto, but they hadn't found Pierre, the tiny gas bomb.

The guard was laughing lustily as he fondled Roberta's breasts. Unnoticed, Carter managed to reach around to unzip his own trousers, reach inside, and withdraw the gas bomb, then shove his hands back behind him just as the guard turned to look at him.

"Tell me, was she a great piece of ass?" the guard sneered.

Carter almost killed him then and there, but he held back. "You can find that out for yourself."

"Pull over, Karl," the guard said.

"Son of a bitch," the driver snapped. "There's no place here." He glanced over at Roberta's exposed breasts. "About a mile. Near the hairpin turn. I'll stop there."

Of all the weapons in his arsenal, Carter liked the gas bomb the least. The first whiff knocked one unconscious, and a few seconds after exposure, respiration ceased altogether. A few seconds was precious little time to prevent the wrong people from dying.

Another mile of twists and turns, and they came upon a large patch of ice in the shadow of the mountain. It extended a quarter mile to where the road curved in front of a scenic overlook. It would have been a perilous stretch of highway in any event, but the ice made it a certain deathtrap for the unwary.

The driver slowed almost to a crawl, and they still slid slowly to the bottom of the hill, the bumper of the car just nudging the low stone fence at the precipice.

Far below, a mountain stream punished itself against the rocks, looking like little more than a thin, silver ribbon tangled at the bottom of a canyon. A car could lie down there for days without being discovered.

"Here?" the guard in the back seat panted. He was pawing Roberta's breasts.

The driver seemed frightened. He wrenched the gear lever in reverse, turned around, and headed back up the hill.

"You gotta stop, Karl! Gott in Himmel! the guard slobbered. He was getting worked up.

Carter slipped his thumbnail into the gas bomb's trigger. Cyatelene gas — a cyanide derivative — began pouring through the tiny jets in the bomb's perimeter, filling the car with billows of smoke. The guard next to Carter started to turn around to reach for his gun, but he promptly dropped it and fell unconscious against the far window.

The driver started to roll down his window, but then he too slumped forward, and the car slowed, then stopped, and finally rolled backward at an angle across the road and down into a shallow ditch.

Roberta was out almost immediately, and the race began to get her outside before she took in too much.

Carter sprang forward, still holding his breath, unlatched her door, shoved it open, and pushed her outside as the car bumped to a halt.

He opened the rear door, his own perceptions beginning to become distorted, and fell outside, his legs rubbery. He'd held his breath, but the gas was affecting him anyway. Burnt almonds… it was all he could smell. For a split second he could not remember what it was he was supposed to be doing.

Then, summoning every ounce of strength and concentration he had, he pulled himself up toward where Roberta lay half in and half out of the car.

All he wanted to do was lie there and sleep. His muscles felt like lead. But he began to remember there was no time, and he managed to get up and stumble to Roberta's inert form.

He dragged her clear, then tried to pick her up, but it was hopeless. His muscles were too weak. He stumbled, dropped her, and ended up dragging her to the shoulder of the road, where he crouched over her prostrate body, panting. After several seconds the sharp, cold mountain air cleared his head, and his presence of mind returned. He took her pulse. It was dangerously weak.

Quickly he tilted her head back, pinched her nose, and started blowing air into her lungs. He kept it up for almost five minutes, but nothing seemed to be happening. God, he didn't want to lose her. Not like this.

He checked her pulse again. He felt nothing.

Frantically he put the heels of his hands together and began a rhythmic heart massage, her chest very small and delicate, her breasts tiny, the nipples rigid with the cold.

Her chest heaved after a few minutes, and her entire body shuddered as if an electrical current had run through it.

He continued to work feverishly, heedless of his own problems because of the gas. After a while the color began to come back to her cheeks, then her eyelids fluttered and opened.

"Nick," she breathed.

"Don't talk." He pulled off his thick workshirt, bundled it up, and placed it under her head. Then he got up and walked unsteadily back to the car.

After thirty seconds cyatelene gas combines with the oxygen in the air to form dicyateloxide, a harmless compound. But before its thirty seconds of potent life expired. Carter's bomb had taken its toll. The side of the driver's face lay against the steering wheel, his eyes bulging, his blackened tongue swelling out of his mouth. The guard in the back had fared no better.

He pulled the bodies out one at a time and dragged them off the road behind a jumble of rocks. Then he scuffed his tracks in the snow and went back to where Roberta lay on the gravel.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

"Woozy."

He helped her to her feet, and with an arm around her waist he helped her to the car. He climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine.

"Are you going back?" Roberta asked.

Carter nodded, put the car in gear, made a careful U-turn, and headed back up the mountain.

Rivulets of melting snow were cutting channels in the gravel when they pulled into the parking lot below the mountain house. One of the cars that had been parked here earlier — the tan Mercedes — was missing.

"He's gone," Roberta said.

"Maybe not. But I'm going to check one way or the other."

"You don't even have a weapon," she said.

Beside them on the seat was the driver's weapon. An American military.45 automatic. "This'll do," he said. "You wait here. If you hear shooting, listen for the last shot, then count to ten. If you don't hear another, take off. Understand?"

She nodded.

His strategy was simple. The chalet was a modernistic affair with large plate glass windows in the front that looked down on the valley. In back, smaller windows opened onto a solid rock face. These were the bedroom windows, he figured. They'd be empty now, providing him easy access.

He climbed up the back way, working his way around the side of the house to the rear windows, which were set a few feet off the rock base and only a few feet away from the face of the cliff on which the house was perched.

Curtains were drawn over three of the windows, but the fourth was open, and he could see that the room inside was a bedroom.

The window was unlocked, and within a few seconds Carter stood in the middle of the bedroom, holding his bream as he listened to the sounds of the house. But there was nothing. In fact, he thought, the house was too quiet, as if everything had been shut down.

He stepped out of the bedroom, hugging the hallway wall, the.45's safety off, its hammer cocked.

Within a few minutes he had checked the bedrooms, the living room and kitchen and bathrooms, but there was no one here. They had left.

He pocketed the heavy automatic, then left by the front door and went back down to the parking lot.

"Find anything?" Roberta asked. She was nervous.

"He's gone," Carter said, climbing in behind the wheel. He looked up at the house.

"Back to Argentina?" she asked.

Carter looked at her and shook his head. "I'd guess Iceland. But you and I have to talk."

"About…?"

"You and the BND, If we're going to work together, I'm going to have to know everything you have on Ziegler."

"And you're going to have to let me know what you have," she said. "A deal?"

Carter smiled. "A deal."

They shook hands. "Then what?" she asked as Carter started the car and they headed down the mountain.

"We're going to Iceland, that's what."