Night of the Warheads

Thirteen

Carter squinted through the crack between the curtains and surveyed the main street of Les Escaldes all the way across the river to Andorra-la-Vella.

It had stopped snowing hours before, around noon. Now the sun was slipping beyond the mountains, turning the day into the orange predecessor of the night.

Louisa had returned from Barcelona at about three with good news. The contact had been made with Cubanez. He had agreed, to the letter, with every request and suggestion Carter had made.

Now it was a waiting game.

It had been a long, harrowing afternoon of boredom for Carter. For hours he had paced, lighting cigarette after cigarette right off the glowing stub of those already smoked down to his fingers.

Through the thin pane of the window he could hear the chatter and laughter of the people on the street below. Most of them were shopkeepers and workers heading home after earning their daily bread.

It gave Carter a strange, momentary longing to be one of them, just another Willie Worker heading home to a pretty wife, a good home-cooked meal, and a few beers and television until bedtime.

"Maudlin," he hissed aloud, "sentimental bullshit!"

He lit another cigarette and plastered his cheek against the window. He craned his neck until he could see the tower of Radio Andorra high atop the Pic Padern Mountain far to his left.

Then his gaze flowed downward until he could distinguish the crenelated walls and soaring towers of Alain Smythe's villa.

Somewhere above or below the villa at that very moment, Ramon Cubanez and one or two hand-picked men were casing the layout.

At least, Carter hoped they were up there.

His watch read 5:40.

It would be a full half hour before complete darkness.

The music on the radio stopped abruptly, and an announcer's voice came droning in with the latest bulletin on the mass killer, Nicholas Carstocus.

Carter smiled.

In Dallas, Texas, or in New York City, a double homicide would rate four lines on page twelve.

In Andorra, it was a "mass murder" that took up the first two pages of the morning paper and rated at least four "update bulletins" per hour on the radio.

Carstocus was still at large somewhere in the country. Then he had slipped over the border into Spain.

The latest update had him spotted simultaneously in Barcelona, Spain, in Perpignan, France, and having a drink in the lounge of a ski lodge in Ronsol, about three and a half miles from where Carter now paced.

There was a tap on the door. Carter grabbed the automatic and pressed his ear against the panel.

"It's me… open the door!"

He threw the two locks and yanked the door open. Louisa entered quickly and Carter locked it behind her. When he turned, she had already shed her coat and was halfway out of her skirt and blouse.

"Contact?"

"Yes," she nodded, selecting a dark green, shimmery thing and sliding it over her head. "About ten minutes ago. I'm to meet this Cubanez in the lounge of the Hotel Roc Blanc."

Carter sighed and dropped into a chair. "Then they got in all right."

Again she nodded, applying a brush vigorously to her lustrous hair. "They snowshoed over the Sierra de Enclar from Os de Civis on the Spanish side."

"And the equipment?"

"I don't know," she said, changing her shoes and giving herself a last appraisal in the mirror. "The man who contacted me didn't have much time to talk."

Carter scowled. He had told Cubanez exactly how to get the hardware in — a helicopter drop — and where — in a ravine above the village of Canillo about two and a half miles from the villa.

He only hoped that Cubanez had not taken it upon himself to change Carter's basic plan.

"I'm ready. I should have him back here within the hour."

"Fine," Carter replied, "but make it look good."

"Didn't I make it look good to you?"

"Perfect." He stood and brushed her forehead with his lips. "An hour."

"How's the arm?" she asked, moving to the door.

"Sore as hell, but I can shoot."

"An hour," she said, slipping through the door and closing it behind her.

Carter locked it, then started pacing again.

The decision to make a full-scale, guerrilla-type assault on the villa was his, but it would take some of the edge off an international incident if Cubanez was in on it. As a representative of the Spanish government, Cubanez had no authority in Andorra, but he could take a lot of heat off if something went wrong.

Also, explanations would be more acceptable if they came from him instead of the "mass murderer," Nicholas Carstocus.

But the bottom line was still not to let anything go wrong. If possible, the ideal would be to get in so fast and get it over with so quickly that the Andorrans — police and civilians alike — would never suspect there had been an incident.

Each minute was a passing eternity as night enveloped the peaceful country outside the window.

Carter passed them by imagining the scene in the Roc Blanc lounge. Louisa would be nursing a drink. Cubanez would sidle up to her table and ask if he could join her.

The game would progress just as it does in singles bars all over the world, until Louisa was "seduced."

They would leave the Roc Blanc and walk, arm in arm, a bit unsteadily toward her hotel. In the lobby, the concierge would frown at the young singer's obvious promiscuity, but he would say nothing.

At that moment, Carter heard the elevator at the end of the hall open and Louisa's by now familiar laugh.

Seconds later, her key was turning the deadbolt and Carter was moving into the bedroom alcove, Wilhelmina in hand.

Just in case.

When the door was shut and again securely locked, Carter leathered the Luger and stepped into the room.

"Buenos noches, mi amigo." Cubanez said with a wide grin. "You look like hell."

"Gracias," Carter replied. "And you look like an aging Latin roué."

"Wasn't that the idea?"

"Right. Let's get to work."

"I'll change," Louisa said, darting into the alcove.

From inside the large, fur-trimmed coat he wore, Ramon pulled a series of maps. Then he shed the coat and slid into a chair beside Carter, spreading the maps out on a table.

"You pick some real tricky ones," he said, smoothing out several Polaroids of the Smythe villa and the countryside surrounding it.

"I didn't say it would be a piece of cake," Carter replied. "Before we get into that, what about my hunches?"

"Looks like bull's-eye on every one. Our ferret in the ETA in San Sebastian tells us that the word went out immediately after the news of de Nerro's death hit the streets."

"It is de Varga."

"Right," Cubanez said. "Within the ranks, he claims that he has stayed undercover and hid the fact that he was still alive so he would be free to carry out the ultimate attack on the Spanish government that keeps the Basque people in 'imperialist chains. »

"And," Carter added, "Armanda de Nerro has only been acting in his stead all this time?"

"Right. Now, because the Spanish government has used the killer, Bluebeard, to assassinate Armanda de Nerro, Lupe de Varga himself has been forced to come into the open to lead the movement."

"Very neat," Carter muttered. "And I fell for it like a ton of bricks."

Cubanez shrugged. "It was well planned and you had no way of knowing. The police and news media are buying the love triangle bit, which also plays into de Varga's plan."

"And the police buying Maria de Nerro's killing as a suicide also plays into his hand."

Cubanez grinned, his stark white teem gleaming like ivory in his dark face. "But into ours as well. If we pull this off tonight, the whole thing will be dismissed as just another jet-set scandal, and no one will be the wiser that eight nuclear devices have fallen into the hands of fanatic terrorists."

Carter nodded and rifled quickly through the photos.

"When did de Varga and his crew move into the villa?"

"My guess is within minutes after Armanda de Nerro's murder was broadcast. It was probably easy. Her people thought de Varga was dead. When he turned up alive, knowing the whole blackmail scheme, and de Nerro was dead, they just accepted the new leadership."

"What about Alain Smythe?" Carter asked, selecting a blowup of the villa proper and studying it with rapt concentration.

"As near as we can tell, it is the same deal as De Palma and Sons Limited in San Sebastian. Smythe came up fast from nowhere. It takes a lot of money to get started in the fashion industry, and even more to branch out into allied businesses like perfume, design endorsements, and the like. Years, usually."

"And Smythe did it in less than three years," Carter growled.

"Did it big. We have not been able to confirm this, but when we do I imagine we'll find another Liechtenstein holding company behind Alain Smythe Enterprises. Armanda de Nerro was a very organized woman. My guess is that she owned Smythe. He had to go along with this or she could have — how do you say? — pulled the plug on his little empire."

"Good enough," Carter said. "Let's get to it."

Cubanez arranged maps and pictures in front of them, and started to explain.

The renovations of the villa had been little short of miraculous. To the ordinary eye it appeared that Smythe had faithfully restored a seventeenth-century castle to its former glory.

And he had.

But not for aesthetic reasons.

"The place," Cubanez intoned, "is literally a fortress. The moat is for real. These firing slits — here, here, here, and here — are not empty."

Carter accepted a magnifying glass and examined the picture where Cubanez had indicated.

On very close scrutiny, he detected 50mm mounted machine guns on the parapets behind the slits.

"They have mortars up there, too," Cubanez added. "At first glance they could hold off an army once they gave Madrid their ultimatum: an independent Basque nation, or Toulouse, Barcelona, and Madrid are ashes."

"So how do you figure on doing it?"

"A two-pronged assault," Cubanez replied, obviously warming to the task. "Actually, three. We send the jeep up the front road — here — as a diversion. It has a mounted fifty. It will not do any damage, but it will probably draw their attention and their fire. Meanwhile, we ski down the mountain — here — to these rocks."

"What about the fifties on the roof?"

"Hang gliders, all black, four of them. There is a lot of area on that roof, with a lot of chimneys, towers, and obstructions. All the fifties are in the rear. If they land in the front, the gunners can be knocked out before they know it."

"All well and good," Carter said, "but that still leaves us on the outside."

"Not for long, I hope," Cubanez replied, rubbing his hands together. "When they did the renovation, they also put in an addition here, to modernize and enlarge the kitchen."

"So?"

"So, the stone there is only a facade, masking a single brick wall."

"We could blow it," Carter suggested.

"Right, and be inside and spread out before they can regroup."

Carter lit another cigarette and calmly went over the whole thing one more time. He asked about equipment and personnel, and received quick, to-the-point answers from the able Spaniard.

"Good enough," he said at last. "Let's just hope that the villa is far enough up the mountain that the villagers won't think World War III has started."

"Thought of that, too," Cubanez replied. "I have a team here at Canillo, and another at Soledad. When the big boom goes, they will add a couple of their own."

"Dynamiting the snow to avoid avalanches?"

"Right."

"Ramon, you should have been a general," Carter said and chuckled.

"No, thanks. This is more fun," Cubanez replied with a grin.

"Okay, let's trade faces!"

They both undressed and traded their clothing. When that was finished, they stood side by side in front of a mirror.

Cubanez peeled off the close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard and passed it to Carter. It was quickly followed by the shaggy eyebrows, the mustache, and the sideburns. As Ramon washed the gray from his hair at the temples, Carter added some silver to his.

The fur-collared topcoat completed the ensemble.

"What do you think?"

"Perfect," Cubanez replied. "If you are stopped, only someone who had been very close to Nicholas Carstocus could recognize you."

"Good enough. Where's the car?"

"I will take you to it."

Louisa had slipped from the bedroom alcove. She had donned a pair of skintight black jeans, a layer of sweaters, and a heavy leather jacket. Fur-lined boots were on her feet.

Carter started to speak, but she held up her hand.

"I'm going. I've been baring my breasts and playing prostitute up here for six months. Now that it's finally happening, I want to be there!"

Carter looked at Cubanez, who shrugged.

"Ramon, what's the hardware?" Carter growled.

"Czech Skorpions for rapid fire," he said, "and our own Astra three-fifty-sevens for sidearms."

Carter turned to Louisa. "You ever fire an Astra?"

"No."

"The recoil can break your wrist."

"I'll use two hands," she replied.

"So be it," Carter said. "Let's go."

"See you on the mountain!" Cubanez said, going through the door.