Ruby Red Death

Nine

The flight was long and boring, a Lufthansa out of Frankfurt nonstop to Rio. He’d seen the movie twice before on other flights, the food, even in first class, still tasted like half-cooked plastic, and the foghomlike snoring of the passenger seated behind him kept Carter from getting much-needed sleep. Even the attentions of the comely and well-endowed flight attendant did little to ease the boredom. The 5:30 A.M. landing came none too soon.

Customs gave him no trouble with the Fabian Huzel passport, and less than an hour after landing he was in a suite at the Leme Palace.

He direct-dialed the Rio office of Amalgamated Press and Wire Services, Buck Waters’s private number. He let it ring three times and hung up. He dialed again, let it ring once, and hung up again.

Then he dialed the switchboard operator. “I’d like to send a telegram, please, and charge it to my room.”

“Go ahead, senhor.”

“Senhor Enrique Bolivar, Rancho Corinto, Paranavi. Have arrived Rio. Await your instructions transportation. Suite Eleven-ten, Leme Palace, Huzel. That’s it.”

The girl read it back. “Will there be anything else?”

“Not for the moment. Thank you.”

Carter took the elevator to the basement and the exercise, steam room, and pool.

“Just towels and a locker, please,” he said to the attendant.

“No massage, senhor?”

“No.”

He undressed at the locker and showered before doing a few laps in the pool. Then he tied a towel around his waist and entered the steam room. Two men were already on the benches, a fat, wheezing businessman, and Buck Waters.

Carter climbed to the top bench, settled back with his eyes closed, and let the soothing steam envelop him. Fifteen minutes later the fat man left and Waters slid down the bench until he was right beside Carter. He took a Beretta automatic from between his legs and passed it to the Killmaster.

“What else do you need?”

“Put out the word that an old SS general named Erwin Bittrich is heading this way to contact his Odessa pals.”

Waters chuckled. “What’s left of the Odessa is a bunch of old, old men who could care less anymore. After Mengele went, the rest of them gave up. The Fourth Reich is dead, Nick.”

“I know that and you know that, but some people might still get antsy.”

“Is someone really coming?”

Carter nodded. “Traveling Swiss under the names Otto and Magda Goldolph. The Mossad got anybody down here left as bait?”

“Yeah, a couple. I do a little checking now and then for them, but they haven’t turned any stones over for a while.”

“No matter,” Carter said. “Put Otto in touch with them. He’ll take the ball from there. And let it be known that he’s looking for an old traitor, a Gruppenführer named Graf von Wassner.”

“Will do. Then what?”

“Get Otto four good men, all locals and armed to the teeth. He’ll take it from there.”

“Anything official on this?”

“Nothing on paper.”

“Jesus, Nick, the crap you come up with.”

“Nature of the beast,” Carter replied, rising. “I’ve been in a steel cocoon all night. Gonna get a few hours’ sleep, then lay down a bit of a smoke screen.”

“You want some company?” Waters asked.

“Not yours,” Carter said with a grin. “Got a hunch I’ll have someone on my heels from the other side until I leave Rio.”

Back in the suite, he stripped and passed out.

It was just after two in the afternoon when Carter’s mental alarm went off. He called room service and ordered coffee. He showered and shaved while he was waiting for it, then stretched out on the bed to drink it.

He was getting dressed when the phone rang. “Yes?”

“There is an envelope in your box, Senhor Huzel. It came by messenger.”

“Thank you.”

Ten minutes later he checked at the desk. There were two envelopes. His name was scrawled across both of them, but in different hands. He ripped open the first one, and smiled.

Welcome to Brazil, Herr Huzel, the note said in fancy typed script. A car will pick you up at your hotel at nine sharp tomorrow morning. Bolivar.

The note in the second envelope made the hair on the back of Carter’s neck stand up: Huzel: I am in Room 419. Give me a call this evening. Perhaps we could have dinner and conversation. Verna Rashkin.

The note brought home to Carter the one chance they were taking. The two people he would be bidding against for the jewels were Ravel Bourlein from Paris, and Verna Rashkin from New York.

Vadim Vinnick’s words came back to him: “It is highly unlikely that such adversaries have ever met face-to-face. All three of them make an effort to keep a low profile. But it is possible. If that happens, you must be prepared to change the plan midstream.”

Carter slipped the envelopes into his pocket as he entered the bar.

He would liked to have broached the problem after he had arrived at Rancho Corinto.

The hotel bar was about half full. He took one of the stools and ordered a vodka and orange juice. He sipped it slowly, watching and listening to the others in the bar. They were mostly couples, but there were a few solo men, sitting alone as he was. Nobody seemed to be paying any undue interest in him.

He had a second drink and went into the dining room. He had scarcely ordered when he was pretty sure he spotted Bolivar’s man.

He was dark and young, too young to be hanging around the lobby of the Leme. His manner and his suit didn’t indicate that kind of money. It was also the dark, watchful eyes. They were trying not to dart Carter’s way, but they did. And each time, the Killmaster picked up on it.

Carter stretched lunch and lounged over coffee. By the time he paid the check and walked through the lobby, he knew he would have a tail. The dark young man was literally dancing to be after him.

Outside, Carter crawled into the first cab in the line. There were two names in Huzel’s book with his Rio code, Roberto Perrez and Delgado Raffini. Huzel hadn’t done business with either of them for over two years, but that wouldn’t matter.

Carter gave the driver the address of Roberto Perrez.

Halfway down the block, he took a quick squint out the rear window. He saw the young man dart from the front door of the hotel and slide into a waiting sedan. The driver had the car moving before the passenger door was closed.

It was a working-class neighborhood filled with apartment buildings, all dingy and looking alike. Carter had the driver wait and went looking. There was a Perrez on the third floor of one building. He walked up some stairs and rang the bell. After a moment the apartment door opened and an old woman looked out.

“I’m looking for Roberto Perrez,” Carter said. “Does he live here?”

“He used to live here,” she said. She had a slight accent.

“I wonder if you could tell me where I could find him? Are you his mother?”

“I was his mother.”

“I don’t understand. Aren’t you still his mother?”

“My son is dead, senhor... almost seven months now.”

“Seven months?”

“How you know my son?”

“I did some business with him,” Carter replied.

Her face suddenly became very hard. “Then you are a thief like my son. That’s how he die, stealing.”

She started to slam the door. Carter held it. “I’m sorry, Senhora Perrez, I didn’t know.”

“Go away.”

Carter fluttered two one-hundred-dollar bills in her face. “The fact is, I owed your son some money. Since he’s gone, you might as well have it.”

She studied Carter’s face, then snatched the money. The door slammed and he returned to the cab. The taxi was waiting. So was the sedan, a half block away. Carter gave the driver the next address and settled back in the seat.

One look told him that the passenger in the sedan was writing down the address Carter had just left.

He wasn’t so lucky with Delgado Raffini. The Raffinis had moved and no one seemed to know where they had gone. They weren’t listed in any phone directory, but then the poor or the underworld of Rio were probably never listed. Also, the neighbors took him for police and would say nothing.

More for show than anything else, Carter tried the local stores. It was a druggist who, for a twenty dropped on the counter, came up with an address. He thought that Senhora Raffini had returned to his store to fill a prescription some time after she had moved. He dug around in a drawer until he found it, and gave Carter an address several blocks down the same street.

It was also an old, run-down building. Carter walked up to the third floor and knocked.

The door was opened by a small, dark-haired woman in her early thirties. She must have been very pretty once, but now she looked gaunt and tired.

“Senhora Raffini?”

“Sim.”

“I’d like to talk to your husband, Delgado. Is he home?”

“Who you, police?”

“No. I’ve done some good business with your husband in the past. I haven’t heard from him for a while.”

She threw back her head and laughed. “And you won’t for a long while. The asshole is in prison!” Suddenly she pulled open the loose robe she wore. She was wearing nothing beneath it. “But you can do a little business with me!”

Carter pressed a hundred into her hand. “You tell Delgado when he gets out that Amsterdam is still buying.”

He left her with her mouth — and robe — still open, and returned to the cab.

“Where to now, back to hotel?”

“Not quite yet,” Carter replied. “Just drive around for a couple of hours. Show me the city and a couple of nice bars with naked women.”

Carter leaned back in the seat and smiled as he lit a cigarette.

Bolivar’s little boy would report back that Herr Huzel was his usual self... always doing business.

Carter gave the two in the sedan fits for another two hours. He stopped at several bars, establishing a routine each time. The driver would wait in front; Carter would enter, order a drink at the bar, watch one of the strippers gyrate a little, then return to the taxi and move on.

Each time, one of the two in the sedan — the young one or his partner, a cut-down version of King Kong with a Pancho Villa mustache — would check Carter through the windows or enter and have a drink.

By six o’clock, as Carter expected, they got bored with the game and just waited in the sedan.

It was then Carter decided to school them a little.

“Another bar, senhor?” the driver asked wearily.

“Yes,” Carter said, “let’s go back to that first one.”

The bar was about eight blocks from the hotel. When the driver stopped, Carter pressed a fat wad of bills into his hand.

“You’ve been a very understanding man. That’s it for today, but I do need one more thing.”

“Sim?”

“I won’t be coming out of this one. But I want you to sit out here for about a half hour before you leave. Got that?”

“Sim,” the driver said with a shrug, and picked up his magazine.

Very little had changed inside in the past two hours. The customers were the same, just a little drunker. The bartender polished the same glasses, and the same two girls were on duty, a redhead in a red dress peeling, the blonde watching her at the bar.

Carter slid onto a stool three down from the blonde. The redhead spotted him and moved down the runway.

Her red dress was resting on a chair at the end of the runway and she was now down to panties and a halter. She had a full-blown figure and she danced and strutted with a certain grace as she whipped aside the panties to expose a spangled G-string.

Carter glanced up and the halter came off to reveal what seemed like naked breasts, the net bra being almost invisible. There was a long moment when she faced him at the bar with wide-flung arms and a big smile. Then the spot went off and she relaxed in darkness. An instant later she had picked up the red dress and, holding it in front of her, hurried down the steps toward some black curtains.

The blonde had moved down to the stool beside Carter’s. She pressed her thigh against him and smiled.

“Change your mind?”

“Maybe,” Carter said, returning the smile.

The bartender remembered him as well, and brought him a light scotch. Carter took a sip, not really wanting it.

“Buy me a drink?” the blonde purred.

“How much do you make off drinks?”

“Half,” she said.

Carter slid a twenty under her arm. She looked at it, then him.

“Not here,” she said. “My room, across the street.”

Carter shook his head. “Is there a back way out of here?”

“You in trouble?” she whispered, her eyes wide.

“Nothing bad. I just need to shake a couple of bad boys out front.”

She slipped the twenty into her cleavage. “See those curtains back there?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait a couple of minutes and then follow me.” She slipped off the stool and sauntered away.

Carter waited, sipping the weak drink, then dropped a bill on the bar and followed. The blonde was waiting just inside the curtains.

“This way, through our dressing room.”

Carter moved in behind her down the dark hall and through another set of curtains. The redhead, still more or less naked, sat with her feet up on her makeup table, reading a magazine and drinking a Coke. She never looked up as Carter came through.

“This door leads to the alley behind the club.” She opened it and pressed a piece of paper into his hand. “You ever need anything else, the name is Gila.”

“Thanks.”

Carter stepped into the alley and the door closed behind him. He started to throw the slip of paper away, then thought, You never know, and pocketed it.

He walked in a wide circle to the rear of the hotel. Just in case they had another watcher in the lobby, he might as well confuse them all the way.

The freight elevator operator took him up to his floor, after Carter explained that he was in a hurry and didn’t want to go around to the front entrance. The operator accepted the excuse and a tip with a good-humored smile.

His key was at the desk, so he prowled up and down the corridor, calling softly for the maid. Finally she popped out of a tiny closetlike room, blushing and rubbing her eyes sleepily. She unlocked his door, smiling oddly now, and when she strolled away the grin lingered on her full, handsome face.

Carter shrugged, pushing open the door, and then he realized that the lights were on and smelled the tang of fresh cigarette smoke.

She was sitting in a low armchair, her slender legs resting on an ottoman. She uncoiled and moved toward him, her hand held out.

From her neck to the soles of her feet, she was covered in smoky black chiffon, so thin it was almost as if the pigmentation of her skin had darkened and she was nude. Her long golden hair was done up in two thick braids and wound around her head like a moujik on market day. A gold chain was slung low around her hips, and dangling from it was a large gold medallion encrusted with semiprecious stones which, when it wasn’t swinging, served as an impromptu fig leaf.

“You never called me.” Her voice was husky, low, the accent Slavic.

“I’ve been busy,” Carter said in Huzel’s thick accent, his body tense as he took her hand.

“I am Verna Rashkin.”

Carter relaxed, dropped her hand, and stripped off his jacket. “How the hell did you get in?”

“I told the maid I was your friend.”

That explained the grin, Carter thought. “What can I do for you?”

She took a cigarette from her bag and fitted it into a holder. “I would like to propose a merger.”

“What kind of a merger?” Carter asked. She waved the holder around a bit, and when Carter didn’t produce his lighter she lit the cigarette herself, making a production out of it.

“It is stupid for the three of us to bid wildly against each other for Bolivar’s gems.”

“Three of us?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know Bourlein is here.”

“I didn’t,” Carter lied.

“Who else but the three of us could handle a buy like this?”

“True,” Carter said.

She moved forward until the tips of her breasts almost touched his shirt. “As long as the two of us are bidding together, we can outflank Bourlein.”

“What if it’s a closed bid, one time only?”

“Then we find out what Bourlein’s bid is.”

“How do we do that?” Carter asked.

“There are ways,” she answered languidly. “The important thing is that we don’t run the bid up on each other. Once the gems go to one of us, we split with each other.”

“I don’t like partners.”

Her arms came around his neck and the hard points of her breasts pressed his chest. “Don’t be a fool,” she whispered. “We can be more than partners.”

The kiss started off slowly enough, but it soon became feverish. Her lips were soft, knowing, insistent, drawing his tongue to meet hers in a flame-flicking duel. Her small teeth were sharp, playful; they caught his lip for an instant and he tasted blood. He bit back and she broke the kiss.

“You play rough,” she whispered. She leaned back and looked at him from eyes that were eager. Her tongue darted out to lick a drop of bright scarlet from her lip.

“I’ll play any way you want. Just lay down the rules and fill me in on them.”

“I like it rough.” She nipped at his earlobe and laughed when he pulled away. “Is that too rough for you?”

“Not at all.” Carter looked straight into her eyes and closed one hand over her breast. He purposely squeezed it harder than was necessary. “How about you?”

“The rougher the better.” She closed her hand over his so that the pressure increased. Then her nails raked the back of his hand and came away tipped with his blood.

With casual cruelty, Carter slapped her open-handed across the face. It left a red mark on her cheek. Her eyes glowed briefly and then closed. “Again!” she sighed. “Do it again!”

“No,” Carter growled. “You like it too much.”

“Bastard!”

She swung, but Carter caught her wrist. With his other hand he picked up her purse and guided her to the door.

“What are you doing?” she cried.

“Showing you the door, lady. Bolivar’s no idiot. He sniffs collusion between us, we’d never see home again.”

He opened the door and showed her into the hallway.

“You’re a fool,” she fumed.

Carter slammed the door and checked his shirt. A few drops of blood — hers or his, or both — had stained the front of it.

“Bitch,” he hissed, and peeled out of it. In the bath he got his bleeding lip to clot and then pulled on a fresh shirt. He was retying his tie when the phone rang. “Yes?”

“Herr Huzel?” The voice spoke German with a heavy French accent. Carter could hear a peculiar background noise, a whirring, mechanical sound.

“Yes.”

“I would like to meet with you.”

“Oh?” Carter’s voice was tentative.

“I believe I can be of great use to you.”

“In what way?”

“I can help you. In your business.”

Carter frowned. “What do you know about my business?”

There was a tense laugh from the voice at the other end. “I know all about your business, I’m afraid.”

“I see. You have a villa to sell?”

There was a roaring laugh from the other end of the line. “A villa? Dear me, you are an amusing man. Shall we say, Hernando’s at eight?”

The line went dead. Carter hung up, shaking his head.

It didn’t take a genius to guess that the man on the phone had been Ravel Bourlein. Another good guess was that Bourlein, like Verna Rashkin, wanted to make a deal.

Nice little group of people, he thought. Then thought again. Or a nest of vipers.