Ruby Red Death

Four

The Cozamor Lodge was a sprawling, attractive-looking place nestled against the backdrop of snow-covered mountains and black forests.

Carter took a turn around the parking lot before heading for the entrance. There were several two-door Volga sedans, several black, so it was impossible to tell if the blonde — who had disappeared somewhere in the village below — had preceded him.

There was valet parking, and the young man informed Carter that all his gear and bags would be delivered to his room.

Inside, a sloe-eyed beauty behind the reception desk gave Carter a nice smile, a room key, and copied down all the details from his passport. Two bellmen appeared with his belongings and led him through a maze of corridors.

The cell-like people’s luxury room had bare, unpainted cement walls, a single, narrow bed, a chair, a washbasin, and sound-deadening wall-to-wall rubber matting on the floor.

Carter tipped the two bored bellmen and succeeded in wrestling the window up an inch to let out some of the stiflingly excessive heat.

He built a drink from a bottle in his bag, and shaved. At seven sharp, sporting a change of clothes, he walked back out to the lobby. He was passing the desk, when the girl with the sloe eyes called out to him.

“Herr Bunder, there is a message for you.”

She handed him a small white envelope. The alias, Emil Bunder, was scrawled across the front of it along with his room number. The hand was definitely feminine, and the flap was tightly sealed.

He tore it open. The message, in the same hand, read, I am in the bar.

Carter turned to the receptionist. “Who left this?”

“I really don’t know, mein Herr,” she replied with a shrug. “I was in the rear at the switchboard, and when I returned it was here on the counter.”

“Danke.”

He pocketed the envelope and the note and moved on through the lobby. At the entrance to the disco, he paused and glanced inside.

The music blasted through the small, darkened room, amplified by several hundred watts of electronic equipment. The crowd was varied, men in suits and ties and women in clinging dresses, dancing hip to hip with young boys in jeans and child-women in tight sweaters and unbelievably tight stretch pants.

Carter couldn’t spot the Volga-driving blonde, and moved on through the nearly empty dining room into the bar.

There were three men at the bar and two others at a nearby table. But what caught Carter’s eye was the woman who sat alone at a table next to the windows. She must have just come in because she still had snow in her dark brown hair. She was wearing dark corduroy slacks and a short leather jacket.

She glanced up just as Carter stepped through the door. Her eyes seemed to leap at him from clear across the room. He was about to move forward, when he suddenly spotted color and movement out of the corner of his left eye.

The color was red, a matching sweater and slacks outfit. The movement was the Volga-driving blonde.

She curled an arm around Carter’s neck and came up on her toes to kiss him lightly on the lips. “Emil, you got my note,” she breathed. “Over here, I already have a table.”

Carter darted a last quick look at the brunette, and followed the blonde with a light sigh. He had almost made a very real blunder.

You will be contacted, Lorena had said.

He had almost tried, mistakenly, to do the contacting.

He moved around the table and held the chair for the blonde. She sat down, and he found himself staring down over her shoulder. It was quite a view. A long mane of honey-blond hair and firm, full breasts filling the front of the sweater.

There was a carafe of wine and two glasses already on the table. She poured as Carter took the opposite chair.

“Since we’re such old friends,” he murmured, “you’d better give me a name to call you.”

“Jarvia.”

“And you drive a black Volga sedan,” he said, taking the envelope and a pen from his jacket pocket.

“I did today, all the way from Budapest. I almost contacted you at the pension, but decided to wait until you got here.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. What’s this?” she asked, as he slid the envelope and pen across the table toward her.

“Would you mind writing on that? Something like, ‘I am in the bar.’”

Her smile was magic, wide with white, gleaming teeth, as were her eyes, blue and bright. “Of course.” She wrote. Carter checked it against the note. They matched perfectly. “Satisfied?”

“For now,” he replied. “When do we go skiing?”

“We don’t have to. He is here, close by. Go to your room and get a coat. Meet me just over the hill there, beyond the tennis courts.” She nodded her head to the window.

Carter followed her gaze and saw a swimming pool covered for the winter, and a line of snow-covered tennis courts surrounded by tall fences.

“There is a path just beyond the courts,” she continued. “Follow it to the top of the hill. I’ll meet you there.”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Just whom am I meeting?”

“Still testing me?” The toothpaste-ad smile hadn’t left her face.

“Just answer the question.”

The table was mirror-topped. She bent forward and breathed hard on it. Then she printed with the tip of one finger: VADIM VINNICK.

Carter erased it with his sleeve, and stood. “Five minutes.”

The lane was steep and icy in spots. It was also narrow, with mid-grown fir trees lining the way. Every fifty yards or so there was a dim yellow light mounted on a pole.

About halfway up, she stepped from the shadows of two trees. She wore a knee-length fur coat now with a white scarf knotted at her throat.

“There is a road at the view-top leading down the other side. I left my car up there.”

She started off, and Carter stopped her with his voice. “Where are we going?”

“To Lillafored. It’s about—”

“I know where it is,” he replied curtly. “Isn’t a teeming village a little dangerous for a meeting like this?”

For the first time, the beauty-pageant smile disappeared and her lips became a tight line across her face. “I have my orders. I only do as I am told.”

“How close are you to Vinnick?”

She tried to smile again, but it was a weak effort. “How close can a man and woman get?”

“Then you should be able to tell me who sent me over, shouldn’t you?”

Her hesitation was enough. Carter started forward, but stopped when her hands came out of the pockets. Held steady, its barrel not wavering from Carter’s chest, was a Rommer exactly like the one under his belt in the center of his back.

“Herr Bunder... or whatever your name is... I have no time—”

That was all she said. The gun dropped from her hands. Shock filled her face and she pitched forward into the snow.

The only sound had been two muffled pops like champagne corks coming out of their bottles. The sound had been very near, somewhere in the darkness of the trees.

The woman had barely hit the ground when Carter dived back into the shadow of the trees, dragging his own gun into the clear.

“If you are armed, don’t shoot. I will show myself,” came a voice from the shadows.

“You do just that,” Carter hissed.

The tall brunette in the leather jacket stepped into the light. A silenced revolver dangled from the index finger of her left hand. Her right hand was held far away from her body.

“My name is Ilse Beddick. You are an American agent. Your name is Nick Carter. You were sent here by Lorena Zorkova. This” — she nodded at the body on the ground — “is Jarvia Karoly. She is an agent of the Hungarian SSB.”

Carter stepped out into the light himself, slipping the Rommer back into his belt.

“Why?” he said.

“They probably saw Vadim and myself slipping across the border last night. They know Vadim has made contacts in the West, but they want proof to unseat him.”

“The Hungarians?”

“Vadim will explain it all to you. This one didn’t realize that I recognized her. Help me!”

Carter took the shoulders and she the feet. They dragged the lifeless form a good fifty yards off the trail before the brunette called a halt.

“Clear the snow away enough for a grave. There’s a maintenance shed down by the tennis courts. I’ll be right back.”

By the time he had cleared an area down to the ground, she had returned. She was carrying a small spade and two buckets of water. Carter saw the intent at once, and went to work.

Trying to get through the crust was like trying to dig through cement. He had to jam the shovel against it with all his strength and then jump straight-legged on the upper edge. It took him fifteen minutes to break through. The rest was relatively easy going. He dug a pit more than deep enough for the body.

Then, after shoveling the crusty snow in first, he turned and dragged the body to the hole.

“Wait.”

Carter watched as the brunette went through the pockets of the fur coat and came up with the keys to the Volga. She also took the blonde’s purse. Then she literally kicked the body into the hole.

Carter shook his head. This was one very cold lady.

He shoveled the snow in and stamped it down with his boots. Carefully, he smoothed the top layer with the back of the shovel. He turned to the buckets of water. A thin layer of ice had already formed over the top. He broke it with the shovel and poured the water evenly over the grave. In an hour, the top layer would freeze and it would meld with the rest of the snow.

“Good, that should confuse them for a while.”

“What now?” he said.

“I’ll get rid of her car. You drop the buckets and the shovel off in the shed.”

“And then?” Carter said.

“You’re going skiing. Here’s a map of the number Two run off the north side. Right about here, there will be a sign on your right, danger, trail closed. Take that trail.”

He glanced at her. “I take it the trail isn’t dangerous?”

She nodded. “I put the sign up myself. I’ll meet you halfway down the alternate run, about here.”

“Where is Vinnick?” Carter asked.

“In an old farmhouse about two miles farther on. I was not supposed to bring you down until tomorrow night, but they have forced a change in plan.”

“Just who are ‘they’?”

She started to reply, then stopped. “I think it better that Vadim explain all this to you.”

Abruptly, before the Killmaster could ask her anything further, she started up the trail.

Carter picked up the buckets and the spade and started down.

It all fit. Or at least he hoped it did.

The blonde, Jarvia Karoly, had followed him from the Pension Galpi in Budapest. It stood to reason he had been made at the frontier by the SSB officer. That was how the blonde had picked him up.

Ilse Beddick, being with Vinnick, wouldn’t know what name he was traveling under, or where he would be staying in Budapest.

He remembered the look on the brunette’s face when he’d walked into the bar. He could see now that it had been a look of recognition. He also remembered the snow m her hair. Obviously she had just entered the bar from the outside. That probably meant that she had just arrived at the lodge.

It fit, he thought.

He just hoped that Vinnick, when they met, could answer the rest of the questions rambling around in his mind.