The Devil's Dozen

Fifteen

“I don’t understand,” I said, as King casually laid his hand over the butt of his Luger. Vera edged away from me.

“Nick Carter, the best agent from the very best agency. Killmaster, the man the Russians and the Mafia have a $100,000 reward for,” King introduced me to my name. “You understand very well, just a little too late.”

I looked at the screen.

“But it’s not a match. It says Carter is six foot three. I’m not that tall.”

“Carter is a very feared man. Your enemies have given you an extra inch in their imaginations just from fright.”

“You have no picture of Carter?”

“Not a good one, and it doesn’t matter. The incredible reaction time, the command of languages, the intelligence and personality, body structure, everything else matches. Who but Nick Carter would have dared take on the Mafia by himself? I should have thought of you immediately.”

I felt the small barrel of a Beretta in my ribs.

“It was my mistake, father. I’ll take care of him,” she said. Her face was taut with hate.

“Your father’s made a mistake,” I insisted.

“The computer chose you. I only pushed the button,” he answered equably.

I could have disarmed both Vera and her father, but the room’s guards were listening and cutting off all escape routes with M-16s.

“Then the computer is wrong. All I know is that I am Raki Senevres.”

“To eliminate Nick Carter,” King allowed, “I am willing to kill Raki Senevres. You’re dead right now, young man.”

“I’ll be executioner, Raki. You’ll be sorry you ever tried to use me,” Vera twisted the barrel.

“The computer is wrong. You can see one discrepancy already in the height. The ‘brain’ doesn’t demand a perfect match, right?” I argued. “Keep running through the memory bank. Let’s see who else I am.”

My voice was full of righteous anger. Vera’s gun was still shoved in my side, but there was hesitation in her eyes.

“That would be pointless,” King said.

“Pointless? Or would it show up your computer as a little less wonderful than you claim it is? Maybe you’d just use any excuse to get rid of me and keep Vera for yourself.”

“What about that, Father?”

Vera looked sideways at her father. Speculation was on her face. King glanced nervously at her Beretta.

“All right. It’ll serve no purpose but I’ll go to the end of the tape.”

The tape began whirling again and immediately halted.

“Ergon Zag,” Vera read from the screen. “Hungarian Committee of State Security. Assassin. An exact physical match. He doesn’t speak Turkish at last report. But a match.”

King started the tape a third time. Thirty seconds later, it stopped again for a third match.

“Wolfgang Muhler, East German State Police. A match except for personality. Go on, father.” The tape started and halted. “Andrei Lubov. Russian. KGB.”

Vera stopped the tape.

“Father, maybe you owe Raki an explanation or an apology.”

“Why? Don’t you understand? The Communists are recruiting doubles for Carter. We have the real one.”

King was right, but his own good work had undone him. The Reds were collecting doubles of me in hopes of infiltrating AXE. Hawk and I had known about the plan for a year. But I had to silently thank King for the scrupulousness of his files. I’d counted on the perfection of his system more than he had.

“Let’s forget it. It was a mistake, Vera,” I said.

“No mistake, Carter,” King answered.

“His name is Raki. He’s the only man I’ve ever met that I could respect, father. We’re lovers. We’ve killed men together. Raki and I can control the whole narcotics trade around the world. If you want to stop us, you’d better have something else than this.”

Vera ripped the tape off the computer spool and threw it across the room. Her father moved, and she swung the Beretta towards him.

“If Raki is who you say he is, then I’ll kill him for you. If he’s not and you touch him, then I’ll kill you.”

King looked over the gun’s barrel at me. There was no expression of defeat. He was not a man who had ever been bested, and he was not bested now. He was only waiting.

“Very well, Vera. Your friend is safe, until you choose otherwise.”

The night’s entertainment was over. We all went to our rooms. In mine I put a chair in front of the door, not against the door handle to lock it but a foot in so that any intruder would trip in the dark, accidentally. No weapons were allowed to be brought to Snowman; Vera had warned me about fluoroscopic inspection. With the pillow case, I made a serviceable garrot. Then, not quite as snug as a bug in a rug, I went to sleep.

The first Mafia chiefs began arriving in the morning. Iroquois copters kept shuttling them in on the landing pads. The Mafiosos carried nothing larger than attaché cases, a wise precaution. If twenty family chiefs around the country suddenly were seen with suitcases at the same time, that would be a veritable public announcement that an underworld convention was taking place.

Most of the chiefs had a holiday air. They soon got into comfortable, flashy resort outfits provided by the management. The huge living room filled with blue jokes and amber scotch. I had more drinks pressed into my hand and more slaps on the back than a man at his retirement party. One of the gang, Nick Carter, also known as Raki Senevres, played pool, swam, and steam-roomed with the cream of the country’s notoriety.

King kept his suspicions to himself; he knew what Vera’s reaction would be if he didn’t. During supper, he was the genial lord of the manor. I discovered that he was more than just that, though.

“Mr. King,” said the chief to my right, “is what you might call a consigliere to all the families. The FBI was putting pressure on the Swiss government to release the names on our numbered accounts, and the Swiss were giving in. That’s a hell of a thing to have happen, you know. You work all your life to put away a little money, and then some stinking little banker hands out your name, and you’re up on income tax evasion.”

“Terrible,” I commiserated with him.

“Sure. So Mr. King put together what you might call a cover story. We give the money to him, he deposits the money in investments in little companies, like each investor is his own company. Mr. King set up the banks himself in Switzerland and Luxembourg and Nassau. The hell with those numbered accounts.”

The system certainly had its mutual advantages. The chiefs got the double protection of corporate anonymity and the reluctance of any King-owned bank to cooperate with Federal agencies. King, in return, got the interest on a capital that must have amounted to a billion dollars. And I’d thought the marzipan stunt was cute.

“Been showing Raki a good time here, Mr. King?”

“Oh, I think we’ve kept him busy,” King kept his sangfroid. “Just as we’ll keep you busy.”

The remark was greeted with excitement. As we left the long table, Vera explained why.

“While we were eating, some other guests were being brought in. My father understands what makes a vacation spot popular. When the guests return to their rooms they will find their bed partners.”

“Women?”

“Not hot water bottles, Raki. Father believes that a little pleasure mixed with business helps to do away with hard feelings, and he thinks there will be some hard feelings after tomorrow’s auction. After all, there will be one winner and many losers.”

I caressed her waist.

“And what about me? Do I get a girl, too?”

“If you want one. They’re very cute. Some German girls from Munich and Thai girls from Bangkok. Take your choice.”

“How about an Italian girl from Izmir?”

“No. I promised my father that I wouldn’t until everything was settled.”

“The auction?”

“More than that. Whether you’re with us or against us.” She kissed me. It started out as the sort of peck that tells you to be patient, but I caught her and held her until both our mouths were open, and her hips ground into mine.

Vera pushed me away.

“No, please. Wait a little longer. By tomorrow evening everything will be over. And tomorrow will be just the start for us, Raki. Just the start.”

I was alone in the dining room. I refilled my glass with vodka and walked slowly to the picture window’s view of the Cascades. The sun was gone, and the ice crags seemed to float on a haze of blue.

What if I didn’t send a signal to Hawk? If I didn’t, if I kept being Raki Senevres, in twenty-four hours I would become one of the richest, most powerful men on earth. I would also have at my side and in my bed a remarkable, incredibly beautiful woman. Together, as she said, nothing could stop us. We would have unlimited assets, control over the Mafia’s investments and a fortress that defied attack. Not that we would need Snowman anymore. We could buy a small country, if we wanted. We could take over the Mafia and squeeze the Corsicans out of France. With what I knew from intelligence reports, we could blackmail any politician here or abroad into acquiescing to our demands.

And there would always be Vera Cesare King. Sexually irresistable. Highly bred and spirited. Fiery and lovely. Brave to a fault. What more could I ever ask in a woman?

The mountains spread out, moonlight diffusing over ice, a dreamlike world covering the hidden sensors of King’s trap. I left the window to go to my room and send the signal Hawk was waiting for.

The sounds of drinking and sex filled the corridor outside my room. I went to the bathroom and found the shaver as I’d left it. I screwed the back off and uncovered the transmitter.

By now Hawk would know the exact position of Snowman. A U-2 recon flight would be finished, and its photographs analyzed. Hawk would know the layout of Snowman with an accuracy leaving room for no more than six inches of error. My fingernail tapped on the transmitter in code: BY AIR AT 500. I repeated the message for a solid minute.

I checked my watch. It was 10:00, seven hours until AXE’s raid. I doubted that King would have any Cobras in the sky when AXE started dropping its own copters onto the roof. There was the heavy caliber machine gun on the roof to be disposed of, though.

I wandered away from the guest quarters back into the living room. With all the activity that was going on in the bedrooms, the rest of the criminal resort was deserted. Outside I could see King with his bodyguard. On one of the landing pads was a giant Chinook copter taking on fuel preparatory to flying the girls out in the morning. I hoped for their sake they were gone before five o’clock.

I slipped out a side door into the cold night air. A Snowman guard was at one corner of the surrounding patio. He stared out at the mountains.

“Cigaret?”

He almost jumped and then took the offered cigaret. I lit both of ours.

“You can get hypnotized by these mountains,” he said apologetically. “They don’t move, you know, no matter how long you look at them. Aren’t you a little cold?”

The question had a friendly tone but not enough of one to mislead me. The guards had been given special orders to keep an eye on Raki Senevres.

“I come from the Anatolian hills,” I said. “I’m used to cold.”

“You’re lucky. When my shift’s over it takes me an hour just to defrost.”

“You ought to switch. Learn computer programming like American matchbooks say.”

He laughed.

“What I ought to do is pull roof duty and spend all night in the nice, warm bubble pulling Z’s. You dig?”

“I’m afraid not. Goodnight.”

“Yeah.”

He stood with his back to me, smoking. I went to the door, opened and closed it, and slid into the shadow along the outside frame. The guard looked at the door and pulled out his radio.

“Control, this is Ricco. Mr. Senevres came out a minute ago. We engaged in conversation... No, no information was passed... He already went back in... Over.”

He immediately left his post for another. I climbed up the unguarded side of the lodge. It had been built with bare beams and unpolished stones for a rugged, handsome look; there was no lack of handholds.

The roof gun was .51 caliber with twin barrels. Anti-aircraft class, it would cut apart any copter ever built. The bubble was one-and-a-half-inch plastic, strong enough to deflect anything less than a rocket. The turret rollers were protected by steel, and from a special vent I could tell the gunner had a private air system inside the bubble so that he couldn’t be incapacitated by any gas attack inside the lodge. Even if AXE’s copters dropped tear gas on the special vent, he could close it off with enough air in the bubble to keep him firing for an hour or more.

The gunner, his features clear in the bubble’s light, read a magazine. Abruptly, he put it down. The turret whined and turned at the pressure of the gunner’s feet. His twin MG’s pointed in the opposite direction, the same direction the guard on patrol had been diverted to.

An Iroquois was landing on the pad near the Chinook. Whoever the late arrivals were, the attention of the guards had been distracted. I unscrewed the vent cover with my penknife blade. If the turret turned I was dead; there was no way I could pull my head and arm back fast enough. Snow from the last storm was left on the roof, proof of Snowman’s insulation. I used a handful of it to wet my handkerchief. Through the wet cloth I pressed a piece of heroin “candy,” mashing the morphine fudge into the fibers. I spread the handkerchief over the air intake and watched the prepared cloth spread over the grill. The turret stayed still, pointed at the unloading Iroquois. I screwed the cover back on and smoothed the disturbed snow. The turret whined. The twin barrels pointed in my direction, but by then I was gone.

Air would still reach the machine gunner. The amount of opium that he’d breathe would be very small. The opium was pure, though. Cut down, it would have serviced hundreds of hard addicts. Also, the gunner would be breathing it for hours. By the time the AXE copters appeared, he would be paralyzed in terms of Snowman’s defense.

Before the first guard returned to his post, I slipped back into the lodge. Whoever had arrived were being led to their rooms by King. The living room was empty, except for Vera. She was on a sofa by one of the fireplaces. She seemed to be expecting me.

“A walk, Raki? You must be freezing. Have a brandy.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t ask how she knew I was outside. My brandy had already been poured. I drained the glass. “You can’t sleep?”

“No. Maybe I have a case of nerves,” she said. She’d never had the problem before. “Do you have a case of nerves, Raki? Are you ever afraid of anything?”

“You’ve had either too much brandy or not enough, Vera.”

“My father doesn’t like you.”

“Your father doesn’t like losing. Tell him he’s not losing a spy, he’s gaining a partner.”

“He kills people he doesn’t like.”

The conversation was getting overfamiliar, and Vera was in a strange depression. Perhaps she had a foreboding that I was not who I said I was. I said goodnight and went to the guest quarters. All the sounds of merry making had died, and I checked my watch. It was 11:30, a little early for all bad boys to be asleep. I didn’t think about the fact much because I wanted a few hours of sleep for myself before five.

I went into my room and turned the light on.

Every Mafioso in Snowman was waiting for me. In the middle was King. Next to King were the new arrivals: Charlie DeSantis and a Turk. The Turk stood around six foot seven and weighed 340 lbs. His neck was as large as most mens’ thighs. His skull was shaved. His face was a scarred scowl, decorated with a mustache. If he’d pulled an arm off the nearest chief and eaten it as a late night snack I wouldn’t have been amazed.

King didn’t disappoint me, though.

“Raki Senevres,” he addressed me, “I want you to meet Raki Senevres,” and he patted the Turk on his back.

I was more than amazed.