Night of the Warheads

Four

Nick Carter sighed in contentment as the strong yet wondrously gentle and feminine hands floated down over his bare back. They moved like feathers over his naked buttocks, then slid between his legs.

The fingers did amazing things, until the pleasure threatened to turn into pain.

"You like?" asked the sultry voice.

"I love," Carter replied and rolled over onto his back.

She was gorgeous, all five-foot-ten of her, full of pleasurable angles and even more pleasurable curves. Her breasts were bare, as was the rest of her, and they hung like two huge melons directly above Carter's eyes.

Her name was Delores, and Carter had met her on the flight back from Madrid three days before.

The attraction had been instantaneous and mutual.

"What do you do?" she had asked.

"I'm a reporter for Amalgamated Press and Wire Services," Carter had replied without blinking. "I'm just getting off an assignment in Spain. And you?"

"I'm rich."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I like to read, gamble, play tennis, travel, and make love… not necessarily in that order."

Her eyes had said the rest.

"I have to file my story when we land. It should take about two hours. Can I meet you for dinner?"

"Sure." She scribbled her address. It was near Carter's apartment in Arlington. "I'll have something brought in."

"You don't have to."

"I want to. By the time you get to my place you may not be hungry… for food, I mean."

Carter wasn't sure she was legit, but with that face, that figure, and all that blond hair, he wanted to find out.

It should have taken him two hours to file the Spanish report. He did it in just fifty minutes and took another ten briefing Hawk.

The prisoner confirmed just about everything. Nels Pomroy was indeed the go-between. Whoever the head of the far left wing of ETA was. he wanted Julio Mendez out of the way. Pomroy had hired a freelance shooter originally, but the guy had obviously failed or balked on the contract at the last minute.

When the arms unexpectedly fell into Pomroy's hands, he hatched the plan to trade off with the Latinos for Freedom.

The prisoner they had captured had so spilled his guts that his buddies in Mexico and Belize would be under surveillance within twenty-four hours. At the first sign of any more activity, they could all be picked up by the local police or security organization.

All nice and neatly wrapped up.

"Maybe," Hawk said. "And maybe not."

"But that's about as much as I can do," Carter said.

Hawk nodded. "Take a week. Relax, but stay in touch."

"Will do," Carter replied, and ten minutes later he was giving a cabbie Delores Teller's address in Arlington.

She met him in a sheer negligee that didn't hide a wispy pair of panties and a bra that couldn't begin to contain the occupants of its cups.

"Hungry?"

"Yeah."

"Food?"

"No."

"The bedroom's this way."

That had been three days before. They had eaten several meals, but as yet they had never put their clothes back on.

Among the other delightful things Delores did, she gave massages. About the time Carter figured he was going down for the last time, Delores gave him a massage.

It never failed.

"What are you looking at?"

"The bottom of your breasts. They're amazing."

"Why?"

"They don't sag."

"I do exercises. Want to go to Monte Carlo?"

That was another odd little twist to her personality. She often changed the subject in mid-sentence, and it was always interesting to Carter to hear the new thought she came up with.

"Why Monte Carlo?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. I think you'd be a ball to be with in Monte Carlo. We could read, travel, gamble, play tennis…"

"And make love all at the same time." Carter grinned.

"Yeah. Want to?"

"Can't right now, Delores. But we can make love."

"All right."

That was something else Carter liked about Delores. She was a very agreeable lady.

She leaned forward until her breasts grazed his face.

"Kiss them, Nick, honey. Make them hurt with your kisses the way you did before."

Her breasts were milky white and the nipples were darker than pink, almost crimson in the dim light.

But it wasn't the color as much as the touch.

Carter reached with both hands and caressed the smooth flesh. The nipples seemed to harden at his touch, and she forced them one by one to his lips.

His eyes rolled upward to hers. They were green, widely set in her beautiful face, and right now they were flashing with an animal sensuality that told Carter she did not want to wait much longer.

"Delores, you amaze me. Lie down."

Her laugh was genuine, coming spontaneously from the long, clean line of her throat. And it was no little-girl giggle; it was the throaty chuckle of an amused woman.

"Why? Because it's only six o'clock in the morning?" she said, sliding into the bed beside him.

"That's one reason," Carter said, burying his face in her blond mane and rolling his hips between her thighs. "But there are about a million more."

Their bodies collided, and they were instantly in the throes of a lusty rhythm. Her breaths and sighs, her clutching hands and her heels hitting his bullocks were all spurs, making Carter pound into her body with a force that he thought had left him long ago.

"Good, so good," she growled, biting his lip even while kissing it.

"Only because you are so wild," he replied.

At last her passion peaked. It drew a scream from her lips and an arch from her body that brought Carter to his own climax.

At first he thought it was some new, strange sound coming from Delores. By now he had learned that during — and even after — lovemaking, the woman could indeed come up with strange sounds.

And then he realized that it was the beeper.

"No… where…?" she groaned, feeling him slide out of her.

"Have to… telephone," he replied, padding across the room.

"Nick…"

"Sorry." He dialed, and even at six a.m. there was only one ring.

"Amalgamated."

"Extension two hundred."

The mechanical gnomes made clicks on the line, and Ginger Bateman's husky rasp filled his ear.

"Two hundred."

"It's me."

"Come… pronto."

"Oh, Christ…"

"Here, Nick. Now!"

"It's six o'clock in the morning."

"You think I don't know that? I slept here last night. P-R-O-N-T-O!"

"Your Spanish is lousy," Carter hissed, but she had already hung up.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Delores was sitting up in bed, her breasts a huge, tantalizing shelf over her folded arms. Anger and rejection were already starting to form in the green pools of her eyes.

"I have to go into the office for a while."

"You don't…"

"I do."

She practically broke the bed when she fell back on it.

"Damn all you people who work for a living. When will you be back?"

"As soon as I can. I promise."

"You mean it?"

"I mean it."

"I hope so," she said, sitting up again. "There's something about you that's… well, nice."

"You, too," Carter said and kissed the tip of her nose. At the door he paused and turned. "Delores…?"

"Yeah?"

"If I don't get right back… I mean… well, how about leaving word with your service where you'll be?"

"Then it might be a while?"

"It might," he admitted.

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

He turned. She was smiling and her eyes said, "It's me again."

"Yeah. Just check my service."

It was torture all the way to Dupont Circle not to remember how she looked, naked, sitting in that bed.

It was one half hour later to the minute when Carter arrived at the Amalgamated Press and Wire Services Offices. Amalgamated put out a couple of magazines a month and ran a small news service. But it was all a front for AXE and allowed the ultrasecret agency to have field offices all over the world under the guise of "news gathering services."

Out of these field offices operated the men with «N» designations. Nick Carter was one of them: "N3, Killmaster." There had once been N1 and N2, but they had long since bought the farm.

Agent N3, Nick Carter, was top dog among the field agents.

But that meant nothing when David Hawk said "Jump!"

Or, in this case, "Pronto!"

Carter was through final security within two minutes of his initial arrival and at Hawk's office thirty seconds after that.

"He's waiting."

Ginger Bateman sat behind her desk, partially hidden by a mountain of papers. Normally she was the most perfect composite of brains and beauty the Good Lord could fashion from a hank of hair and a hunk of bone.

Now she was a mess.

Her sable hair with its brilliant deep-red highlights was in total disarray, and there were lines around her eyes and mouth that did not agree at all with her perfect features.

"I thought all was calm."

"All was calm, but all of a sudden ail is chaos. The big man has had us all running all night like there was no tomorrow."

"You look like hell."

"Thank you, Nick. We've been going for two days, twenty-four hours a day, nonstop."

"What's up?"

"The missile heist in Germany a few months ago. Remember it?"

"I read the bulletins."

"Good, then you're briefed. Go on in."

She dropped her head into her hands and began massaging her temples with the tips of her fingers. For the moment Carter forgot Delores.

"Hey…"

"What?"

"Dinner tonight?"

"Impossible," she said with a chuckle.

"Why?"

"You'll be in Paris."

"Then we'll dine at Maxim's."

The beautiful features cast off their weariness for a second, and her lips spread in a wide smile.

"You're incorrigible…"

"And in love, and hungry, and horn…"

"Scram… before he swallows his cigar."

She buzzed him through the massive oak doors, and Carter entered the walnut-walled inner sanctum.

The air conditioner hummed at full throttle, but it was fighting a losing battle with the brown rope wedged in the corner of David Hawk's mouth.

"Carter. Good, sit! Drink?"

"No, thank you, sir. It's a little early for me." He coughed, twice, and lowered himself into a huge leather antique. The chair was so soft that Carter could barely see the other man over the piled top of the huge mahogany desk.

"Good. You familiar with this?"

A stapled file folder flew across the desk and landed on Carter's lap.

"Yes, sir. I've kept up with the bulletins."

"Well, as of this morning they're outdated. We think we might have a link between the missiles and the disappearance of two men: Adam Greenspan and Lorenzo Montegra."

"Who are they?"

Two more folders found their way into Carter's hands. Instead of case files, these were dossiers.

"Look them over, N3, all of them, carefully," Hawk rasped. "And think about our recent soiree in northern Spain while you're at it. I'll get us some coffee."

Carter lit a cigarette, thought of Delores, thought of Ginger Bateman, and opened the first folder.

It was titled: MISSILE THEFT — EUROPE — TOP SECRET…

It had all begun on a clear but moonless night six months earlier, outside Enschede, near the Netherlands-West German frontier.

Because of increasing peace marches that had nearly developed into riots in The Hague and Rotterdam, NATO Command in Belgium had decided to remove eight medium-range missiles from the Netherlands.

It was not an earth-shaking decision. The missiles were practically obsolete and would have been replaced or removed soon anyway.

They were moved across the West German border in a caravan consisting of two sixteen-wheeler semi transports, a staff officer's car, and two armored personnel carriers.

In addition to heavy ordnance in the personnel carriers, four men armed with heavy-caliber machine guns rode on the top of each trailer.

From the standpoint of hardware, the caravan could have held off a small army.

Their destination was a NATO-leased factory outside Hamburg. Once there, the missiles would be broken down into components, deactivated, and sent on to Frankfurt in separate shipments. From Frankfurt they would be flown back to the United States and either destroyed or stored.

They never reached Hamburg.

Outside Bremen, the caravan entered a long runnel. Just before the far end of the tunnel, a large section of the roadway had been dynamited, making it impassable. Over the end of the tunnel, a huge polyethylene tent had been secured.

The officer in charge, sensing an attack on his cargo, ordered his men to the rear of the caravan. There, guns primed, they began to lead the vehicles back out the end of the tunnel they had just entered.

They never made it.

Another charge had been set at that end of the tunnel, as well as another airtight polyethylene cover.

Through the vents in the roof of the tunnel, a deadly gas was pumped into the semidarkness by a powerful generator.

Chaos reigned supreme in this sudden gas chamber, but it only lasted a few minutes.

They died to a man.

Runners were placed across the blown-out portion of the roadway, and the trucks continued on their journey… only now in the hands of hijackers.

From the time the missiles left the tunnel, it was ail speculation bolstered by the accounts of a few witnesses.

Their final destination inside Germany was evidently the northern port of Bremerhaven.

That same night, a Libyan-registered freighter sailed from Bremerhaven. She was the Star of Ceylon, and her first port of call was Malta.

She never arrived.

Rounding the tip of Portugal, thirty miles out and still some distance from Gibraltar, the Star of Ceylon radioed a mayday. There had been a massive internal explosion in the bowels of the ship. Fire had already spread from bow to stern.

By the time Portuguese and Spanish air-sea rescue units had arrived, the Star of Ceylon had sunk with all hands.

The lines between NATO headquarters and Brussels went wild. The Mediterranean fleet attempted exploratory dives, all to no avail.

The question hung like a leaden cloud over all concerned…

Had the eight obsolete but still deadly missiles gone down with the ill-fated Star of Ceylon?

Or had the missiles been off-loaded from the freighter before her «accident» had taken place?

Carter closed the folder and dropped it on Hawk's desk. He rubbed the room's smoke from his eyes and heard a cup rattle against a saucer at his elbow.

"Cream or sugar?"

"Black," Carter replied.

"Finished?"

"Just the missile file. Not much I didn't already know, except the supposition about current whereabouts."

"Read the dossiers," Hawk replied, "and I'll fill you in."

Carter opened the first folder and read quickly.

Two weeks after the missiles' theft, Adam Greenspan, architect, arrived in Milan, Italy.

His intent was a few weeks of skiing at the Rapiti resort in the Dolomites near Bolzano.

After renting a Mercedes at the Milan airport, Greenspan supposedly drove north toward Bolzano.

He never arrived.

There was only one clue to his disappearance. Before leaving Milan, he had made one stop at the Hotel Excelsior Gallia to meet a woman. The doorman remembered putting the woman's bags into the trunk of the Mercedes.

The doorman usually remembered Mercedes. They went along with large tips. Adam Greenspan was no different. He had tipped the doorman ten thousand lire.

The woman had been registered at the Excelsior under the name of Carmen D'Angelo.

Normally, the disappearance of an American architect would not raise very many eyebrows. The disappearance of Adam Greenspan did.

Reason?

He was a genius in his field, one of the few experienced designers of concrete launching pads and storage silos for ballistic missiles.

Carter looked up from the Greenspan folder and whistled.

"That's only part of it," Hawk said. "Go on."

Carter took a sip of the coffee, chain-lit yet another cigarette, and opened the folder with MONTEGRA written across its top right-hand comer.

Lorenzo Montegra was a first generation Mexican-American from San Diego, California. His coworkers at Hughes Aircraft in L. A. disliked Montegra, but they admired his brains and skill.

Why the dislike?

Because Lorenzo Montegra had it all. At Stanford University, he had been one of the highest-ranking amateur tennis players in the world, as well as a Phi Beta Kappa in physics and math.

As an independent consultant to Hughes on systems and radar, he had made a small fortune.

And Montegra enjoyed his wealth. He had movie-star good looks and the athletic physique to go with it.

Women — even the wives of his coworkers — had a soft spot in their hearts for Lorenzo.

And he for them.

Two months after the theft of the missiles in West Germany, Montegra was seen almost constantly in the company of a woman from Olivera Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Her name was Maria Estrada, and no one was surprised when Montegra announced that he was spending his entire vacation at the woman's villa outside Ensenada, Mexico.

Indeed, they all sighed with relief. Maria Estrada was perfect for Montegra. She was darkly beautiful, as only Latin women are. She had breasts, hips, and thighs that would make the mouth of a corpse water. And she obviously had money: a home in Los Angeles and a villa in Ensenada.

Maria Estrada fit Lorenzo Montegra to a T.

Perhaps they would marry, and then all the married men who moved in Montegra's circle could breathe easier.

But it didn't happen that way.

Four days after their arrival in Ensenada. the couple went deep-sea fishing. They, two deckhands, and the fishing boat's skipper were all lost in a freak storm.

The storm was a freak because it came up with no warning, not because it was a killer. It was no more than a light squall. Four other fishing boats had been out in it at the time, and all four of them had reached port easily and safely.

Carter tossed both folders on the desk and lifted the cup and saucer with hands that were now shaking visibly.

"What do you think?" Hawk asked through what had now become a heavy pall of blue-gray smoke between them.

"Heavy. If there is a connection, the missiles are alive and well, and somebody plans on mounting and firing them."

"It looks that way," Hawk said, nodding. He mashed the mangled remnants of his cigar, then immediately clipped and lit another. "Of course, if we green light an agent to go into the field and do something about this, we must assume that the missiles are not in a freighter's hull sitting on the bottom of the ocean."

Hawk rarely smiled. Now he was grinning like a cat about to make an easy kill.

"I take it." Carter said, "that we now have something that allows us to make that assumption?"

"You take it right, Nick, thanks to the Yucatan-Spain-Basque connection."

"What?"

If anything, the grin widened. Hard to do around a cigar, but Hawk managed it. His hamlike hands found yet another set of papers before he spoke again.

"Balikin Arms Limited of Amsterdam shipped — legally — a large consignment of light and heavy mortars, machine guns, automatic rifles, handguns, and ammunition out of Germany with an end-use certificate for Malta."

The hair stood up on the back of Carter's neck, and his knuckles gleamed white as his fingers gripped the coffee cup.

"The Star of Ceylon," he whispered.

"Neat as a pin," Hawk replied.

"I'll be damned."

"I don't think it's too much to assume that, if they offloaded a shipment of arms for use as barter material in a kill, they would overlook eight missiles."

Here Hawk leaned back and diligently applied a desk lighter to the end of his cigar. By the time it was boiling smoke, the smile on his broad face had been replaced by a studied frown.

"When all this began to dovetail so neatly, we dug back into the Greenspan and Montegra disappearances. It didn't take a genius or a computer to see how they fit."

"How was the connection made?" Carter asked, lighting a cigarette himself in self-defense.

"A woman." Hawk searched the mess on his desk for a moment, found what he wanted, and then continued. "We've pretty well established that the woman in Milan at the Excelsior Gallia — 'Carmen D'Angelo' — and 'Maria Estrada' in Los Angeles were one and the same."

"That's a little too much coincidence."

"You're damned right it is! We would have been stymied at that, however, if we hadn't dug a little further into Adam Greenspan's life."

"And…?" Carter sat up a little straighter in his chair now.

The missile theft was big, but for all intents and purposes, the military could take care of its own problems. If the problem had been passed along to AXE, with the kind of operatives the agency used and their methods of solution, then it had gotten even bigger and more dangerous.

"A little over a year ago, Adam Greenspan Finished overseeing the installation of six silos at a secret base in West Germany. He took a three-week vacation skiing in Gstaad, Switzerland. While he was there he met a woman named Armanda de Nerro."

Carter screwed his face into a frown of concentration. As fast as possible, he went through the computerlike memory bank of names in his mind, but he came up blank.

Hawk caught it and smiled.

"You wouldn't know the lady, Carter. In our line of work we rarely travel in her set. Anyway, we did a rundown, got some pictures, and did one hell of a lot of legwork."

"All three women are one and the same," Carter growled.

Hawk nodded. "Doorman and concierge in Milan nailed her straight. Italians don't forget beautiful women, particularly when they go along with big tips. A realtor in L.A. remembers renting the house to her as Maria Estrada, and a maid in Ensenada definitely identified de Nerro's photograph as her mistress at the villa that Estrada rented down there."

"Any way to tie her to Nels Pomroy as well?"

"Only by a roundabout connection through a Basque terrorist, Lupe de Varga. Her file can fill you in there later. De Varga had several connections with Pomroy… we think. Just how much came out of them, we don't know yet, but we're digging. In the meantime, the woman is the only real lead and/or link we have."

"And right now Armanda de Nerro is in Paris."

"No. How did you come up with that?"

"Bateman said I would be having dinner in Paris."

"You will, but not to meet de Nerro. What do you know about Andorra?"

Again Carter's mind switched into high gear, this time coming up with a winner.

"It's a principality nestled in the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France. It's small, about one hundred and eighty square miles. It's become known as the world's discount shopping center because of its lack of taxes and tariffs, and, lately, it's skyrocketed in popularity with the world's tax evaders."

"That's enough for now," Hawk said. "We've leased a villa for you in Andorra from a wealthy expatriate Englishman. Ever hear of Nicholas Carstocus?"

"No," Carter replied.

"You wouldn't have. He always operated very quietly under the international code name 'Bluebeard. »

"Bluebeard I've heard of," Carter said, his mental antennae now on full alert.

In one way or another, Bluebeard had been involved with fifteen or more high-level assassinations in the last ten years. He was a master craftsman, and no one had been able to get a line on what he looked like or his identity.

Carter said as much to Hawk.

"Not until about three months ago. The French secret service, SDECE, not only got a line on him, they uncovered him."

Hawk did a quick scan of some notes on a paper before him then spoke again.

"Carstocus was the son of Greek immigrants. He was born in New York and, as a child, had every advantage. His family clan were very wealthy restaurateurs. When the father passed away, young Nicholas took over the family business, and he prospered. When his mother died, he sold the business and started making the jet-set scene as an international playboy, but he kept a fairly low profile."

"But the French put something together?"

"Right," Hawk said, nodding. "About two years ago Carstocus moved to Paris, and Bluebeard's operations stepped up. A couple of months ago, the SDECE got enough proof to nail him."

"Where is he now?"

"Dead. He was very quietly killed while resisting arrest and now resides in an unmarked grave outside Paris."

"And I'm to take his place," Carter said. "Did he have anything to do with the stolen missiles?"

"Nothing. Evidently assassinations — the planning and execution of them — was all Carstocus cared about. It was his idea of success, proving to himself that he was just a little bit better than anyone else in the world. The money was secondary."

"Nice guy," Carter drawled.

"Paris SDECE has agreed to set you up with everything they have on Carstocus. From Paris you take off for Andorra.»

"Why Andorra?"

"Two reasons. The first is just theory, a wild guess. Andorra is at the opposite end of the Pyrenees from Basque country, around San Sebastian. Spanish Guardia Civil do not cross the border into Andorra."

Carter nodded. "So if the Basques were behind the missile heist and they are moving them into Andorra…"

"Exactly. The second reason you're going to Andorra is because Armanda de Nerro lives there."

Two more thick files were passed across the desk to Carter.

"One," Hawk said, "is the life of Armanda de Nerro. It makes interesting reading. The other is a background file on the ETA — the Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna."

"The Basque terrorist network," Carter said, hefting both of the files at once.

Hawk nodded. "That will be your homework on the flight from Dulles. You leave in two hours."

Carter checked his watch and frowned. "The last commercial flight has already left for Paris…"

"You're not flying commercial. The Vice-President is meeting day after tomorrow with the heads of the Common Market countries in Paris. I've managed to sneak you aboard Air Force Two as an Amalgamated reporter. Disappear right after you land at Orly, and check in with SDECE as soon as possible."

A last question popped into Carter's mind as Hawk stood. "Why Carstocus?"

"Because of his trade," Hawk barked, softening it with a lopsided grin. "We're going to leak the fact that Nicholas Carstocus is Bluebeard. That should make nice bait, don't you think?"