Night of the Warheads

Twelve

Nick Carter dumped the ski boots and skis in a large garbage bin and replaced the boots with his street shoes.

He emerged from a ravine behind a long row of hotels at the dark end of Les Escaldes. Gingerly, he walked parallel to the main street a hundred yards to his right.

Avenue el Pico was a tiny side street of shops and apartment houses. Louisa's hotel was on the comer of the main street and el Pico.

Carter stood, the snow turning his head and shoulders white, at the dead end of el Pico.

Between him and the hotel were four wide apartment buildings. There was no way he dared walk boldly through the hotel lobby by himself up to Louisa's room. There were only two ways: over the roofs or with Louisa's help.

He decided to try the latter first and crossed the street to a cellar beer garden. Just inside the door was a narrow hall with coats lining the walls on both sides.

Carter fingered through them until he found a high-collared topcoat approximately his size. He tugged it on and pushed through the door into the main room.

It was full, mostly youths around long, bare wooden tables. There was much laughter and clanking of heavy beer mugs as Carter pulled the fur collar up around his mutilated face and made his way through the tables toward a sign marked Teléfono.

It was perfect: a wall phone near a rear exit.

He dialed the hotel, and a sleepy-voiced concierge answered on the eighth ring.

"Señorita Louisa Juaneda, por favor."

"Uno momento".

Carter fidgeted as the phone in Louisa's room rang. Twice, men passed within three feet of him on their way to the john.

Tonight, Carter thought, it would be just his luck that the real owner of the coat he wore would have bladder problems.

"There is no answer, señor."

"Gracias."

It took him another two minutes to find the number of the club.

"Cabaret Amour."

"Si, I would like to speak to Señorita Juaneda, por favor."

"Employees cannot receive calls."

"This is important… an emergency."

"She is onstage."

"Can you give her a message?"

"I have no pencil."

Carter's fingers tingled. He could feel them curling around the man's neck.

"I told you, this is an…"

The line went dead.

Carter cursed and checked his watch.

It would be at least another two hours, maybe more, before Louisa would leave the club.

He couldn't be on the streets for two hours, particularly in this cold with his head swimming.

He had to get under cover, and quick.

Not wanting to expose himself in the cellar room again, he darted through the rear exit door and skirted the building until he was back on Avenue el Pico.

Slowly he lit a cigarette and cupped it in his hands as he carefully studied the four buildings leading to the hotel.

If he could only get one of those roofs…

"Perdóneme."

Carter had been standing directly in front of a bakery shop door. He moved aside as a bent old woman passed him. A set of keys jingled in her hand, and three sacks of groceries were cradled in her arms.

She was halfway up the stoop of the end apartment house when Carter sprinted after her. By the time he reached her, she had unlocked the door and was struggling to tug it open.

"Allow me, señora."

She stepped through without a word. When Carter offered to step in behind her, she whirled in the threshold, belligerently blocking his way.

"Mi amigo…" Carter said, gesturing up the stairs.

She growled back at him in a guttural speech he could not understand and gestured toward a bank of buzzers head-high outside the door.

When he smiled and started in anyway, she placed a well-aimed kick at his shin and pulled the door closed behind her. A finger, prominent with swollen knuckles, pointed again at the buzzers, and her seamed face glowered at him through the glass.

"You are a nasty old bitch," Carter whispered.

She nodded, turned, and began hobbling up the stairs.

Carter waited until she was out of sight, and then began randomly pushing all the buttons.

Nothing.

He moved back to the sidewalk and up the street to the next apartment house.

This time he got several vocal replies.

"It is I, José Cartero. I am so sorry, but I have left my key in my flat again. If you would…"

The door was still buzzing angrily as Carter hit the stairs four steps at a time. There was a pull-down trapdoor above the top-floor landing, complete with a narrow ladder.

In no time he was back in the snow, sprinting across the roofs.

The hotel was a floor taller than the roof of the last apartment, but it was equipped with an old-style, pull-down fire escape. It was the way of European buildings built close together. You could go from building to building, but not down the front or rear on the outside.

The trapdoor ladder was the same in the hotel. From the top floor, he avoided the elevator and took the stairs. On the third floor he searched for 312 and quickly found it.

There were two locks. One was a turnkey beneath the knob, and the other was a newly installed deadbolt in the panel above it.

Carter ran Hugo's blade through the crack and down. The deadbolt had not been locked. The bolt on the turnkey responded to a gentle shaking of the door. Slowly he was able to inch it open with the blade of the stiletto.

Once inside, he closed and, with a sigh of relief, locked the door behind him.

There were two rooms: a living room and a tiny bedroom alcove behind a set of bedraggled, tattered curtains.

Shunning any light. Carter searched until he found a bottle and a glass. It was gin, but at that moment he couldn't have cared less.

The radio was in the alcove on a tiny stand. He whirled the knob until he found Radio Andorra, poured a full glass of the gin, and sprawled across the bed to wait.

"Nick! Nick!"

The voice oozed down to him, and mentally he tried to swim up to meet it. It was difficult, very difficult. His arms didn't seem to want to swim, and his mind was in a fog.

Again the voice, oddly familiar, tried to reach him. But only when it was coupled with an iron band gripping his left arm did he respond.

Like a shot he came to an upright position, at the same time Hailing out with his arm. This lasted for a few seconds, until a bolt of pain flew from his left arm clear across his body to the fingertips of his right hand and back up to numb his brain.

Like a deflated balloon he crumpled back to the eiderdown quilt and struggled to lift his eyelids.

Louisa Juaneda's dark, flashing eyes and smoldering features came into focus above his face.

"Jesus, I didn't know it was you. I almost skewered you with this before I realized!"

Carter blinked once and saw what could have been Hugo's gleaming twin in her hand.

"What happened?"

"It's a long story. Where's the bottle of gin?"

"You spilled it all over the bed. I have another." She moved quickly across the room and returned, pouring. "Here."

He took half the glass in one swallow, allowed the liquid to burn away the pain in his arm, and then again found her face with his now focused eyes.

"Armanda…"

"I know. It's on the radio and all over town."

"And the country." Carter shrugged, drinking again. "It's a small country. Are they looking for me?"

"In every trash can. What happened?"

Briefly, in short, staccato sentences, Carter relayed the night's events, not leaving out a single, gruesome detail.

To Louisa's credit, she listened raptly and did not blink even when he described the picture of Armanda de Nerro being blown apart right before his eyes.

"Are you sure it was de Varga?"

"It stands to reason. It couldn't be anybody else. And the face I saw in the doorway looked like it was a refugee from a burning building."

Carter tried to rise, and again the pain held him motionless a few inches off the bed.

"What is it?"

"A slight hole, somewhere in there," he replied, vaguely pointing with his right hand toward his left arm.

Deftly Louisa removed the fur-collared topcoat and snapped on a bedside lamp.

"Oh, my God…"

Carter looked down. The wound had opened up again, and the sleeve of his jacket was dark red from elbow to wrist.

"Get it off," he groaned. "Cut it with a knife."

Carefully she slit the seam at his shoulder and rolled the sopping cloth down and over his hand.

"I think I'm going to be sick."

"Can you wait five minutes? Where's the can?"

"This way."

She slid her shoulders under his right arm and guided him across the living room to a door he had not noticed when he first entered. Inside, she snapped on the light and stayed behind him, carefully averting her eyes from his arm.

"Grab one of those towels," Carter said, gritting his teeth and upending the bottle of gin over his arm. carefully leaving some to drink.

"Now what?" she asked.

"Sponge it off with the towel. Got any bandages around here?"

"I can make some."

"Do that." he said, swallowing a finger and a half and staggering after her into the living room.

He lay back on a sofa, measuring the remainder of the gin between his lips as Louisa carefully bound the raw. ugly wound.

"Now," he said, "what have you got for me? And let's hope it's good."

She stood and moved across the room. Quickly she tugged a bureau from the wall, reached behind it, and withdrew a manila envelope. Seated beside him again, she extracted the contents of the envelope and spread everything on the coffee table before them.

"Here is a list of all the architects, construction engineers, and building contractors that match the list of buildings constructed or under construction that you gave me."

"And…?"

"Nada," she said, then quickly added with a smile, "But…"

"The buildings I gave you were new structures. I left out renovations… right?"

The smile of satisfaction faded slightly from Louisa's face, and one eyebrow went up quizzically. "How did you know?"

"Just a guess," Carter wheezed and let the last of the gin trickle onto his tongue. "It's Alain Smythe's villa, isn't it."

"Yes," she said, nodding. "The architecture and structural renovations were done by De Palma and Sons Limited, out of San Sebastian."

"And the connection?"

"De Palma and Sons Limited is a closed corporation, wholly owned by a holding company in Liechtenstein."

"Which couldn't be traced," Carter said wryly.

"That's right."

"But I would lay my good right arm against my bum left one that either Armanda de Nerro or her mother owns the controlling stock in the Liechtenstein corporation."

"But how does Alain Smythe fit in?"

"Good question. I mean to find that out and, if possible, talk to Maria de Nerro."

Louisa's eyes clouded over, and her lower lip curled between her gleaming teeth.

"What is it?" Carter asked.

"She is dead," Louisa replied. "She hanged herself in her hotel room about an hour ago."

Carter smiled and took a swipe at his forehead with his good hand. "They don't waste time, do they? Another good bet is that now Lupe de Varga knows what we know. Did you find anything on the two Americans?"

"Perhaps one… the architect."

"Greenspan?"

"Yes. One of the bartenders at the club worked at a small dinner party last night at Smythe's villa. It was for a group of Spaniards. That's how he spotted the American. He only got a brief glimpse of him as he was being put into a car with three of the Spaniards as they were leaving."

"Damn…"

"What is it?" Louisa asked, seeing the sudden line of white along Carter's clenched jaw.

"Greenspan's job is done. Chances are, by now, that he's already dead."

"Good God, don't they have any…"

"Conscience?" Carter finished. "None. And if the engineer does his job, we'll find out just how little conscience they have."

"And his job…?"

Carter reached forward and quickly rifled through the huge stack of photographs she had spread on the coffee table. Finally he selected one and moved it between them.

"Smythe's villa?" she asked.

Carter nodded. "You see these turrets and towers?"

"Yes."

"Count them."

Slowly realization flooded Louisa's face. "Madre de Dios," she gasped. "There are eight of them!"

"And the engineer's job is to arm the missiles inside those eight towers."

Carter rugged a pad and pencil before him, and began to scribble. As he did, he barked questions and instructions at Louisa.

"'Do you think I'll be safe here until dark tomorrow night?"

"I should think so. Murder is pretty unheard-of in Andorra. I would imagine the police will call in investigative units from either Spain or France for help."

"I'll need fresh dressings for this," he said, indicating his arm, "and a clean suit of clothes. And I want you to leave for Barcelona tonight."

"Barcelona?"

"Yes." He passed the three sheets of paper that he had been scribbling on to Louisa. "Get this message to this guy as fast as you can."

She glanced down at the name on the paper and then looked back up at Carter. "Ramon Cubanez?"

"That's right," Carter replied. "What the hell, it's his show. He might as well get in on the end of it. And there's one thing you can go out and get me right now."

"What?"

"A bottle of scotch. I hate gin."