The Killing Ground

Nine

Arkadi Ganin stood in the broad corridor just around the corner from the elevator, listening for Carter to turn and go the other way. Surely the American would not take the service elevator back down. He would have to suspect it was a trap.

Behind Ganin, lying on the floor, was the body of the old Frenchman, who had begged for his life. Ganin felt a twinge of genuine sadness for the old man who unfortunately had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. His death had been unavoidable.

Kobelev had predicted this. He had foreseen that Carter would somehow come up with Borodin’s name. He predicted that the American would come here and kill the man.

The only thing Kobelev had not prophesied was Carter returning to New York to snatch Lydia Borasova. Ganin had to admire the American’s cunning and skill, yet in the end it would not be enough. In the end — although he probably would not beg for his life — Carter would die.

Carter was close now. Just around the corner, barely a few feet away. Ganin raised his silenced pistol. He did not want the final confrontation to come then and there, yet he was very wary of the American, very respectful of him.

Kobelev had been nearly insane with rage earlier on the telephone. He wanted his woman back. He wanted her in Moscow so that he could strangle her to death with his own hands. He would cut her into little pieces and mail them to her parents. Then he would kill them. Anyone who had ever known or loved Lydia Borasova would die.

But not Carter.

“Listen to me, Arkadi, listen very closely. I do not want him killed yet. He must come to me first. It has all been arranged. He must come to me. He must!”

Carter turned, going the other way down the corridor. Ganin could hear him moving away, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Seconds later the stairwell door bumped closed, and Ganin eased around the corner. The corridor was empty.

He took his set of elevator keys out of his pocket, activated the service elevator, and took it downstairs. Going out the side door, he raced around to the front of the apartment building, stopping just before the corner.

Five minutes later Carter emerged from the opposite side of the building, paused a moment, then crossed the street and hurried back toward the Champs-Elysees.

Ganin, wearing a maintenance man’s coveralls, climbed into his van and headed slowly up the street behind Carter, a cigarette dangling languorously out of the corner of his mouth.

Carter rounded the corner at the Palais de l’Elysée, and Ganin sped up to catch up with him. He did not want to lose the American. Kobelev wanted another challenge thrown at him. For that they would need to know at what hotel he was staying, and whether or not he had the woman with him.

Ganin came around the corner down the Avenue Montaigne, but Carter was gone. Only a few cars were parked on the street, and there were absolutely no pedestrians.

“Damn,” Ganin swore aloud. Had he underestimated the American? Without slowing his pace, and without it being obvious that he was searching for someone, Ganin continued down to the corner, then sped back toward the Place de la Concorde.

He parked the van along the side, pulled off his coveralls, threw away the cigarette, donned a wide-brimmed borsalino, and hurried on foot back the way he had come.

Carter had apparently suspected he was being followed. He had ducked in somewhere to see who came up behind him. A van. Not an Italian on foot...

There was something about the maintenance man in the service van that had passed moments ago that bothered Carter. But the van had disappeared and had not come back around the block. Was he jumping at shadows?

He could feel Ganin’s presence now much more strongly than before. It gave him an itchy feeling between his shoulders. Borodin had been expecting him. Did that mean Ganin was close at hand?

Carter glanced back toward St. Honoré. Had Ganin in fact been in the apartment building? Had Ganin taken the old Frenchman out of the elevator?

He took a step back, but then stopped. He was being stupid. Had Ganin been there, he’d be long gone by now. The confrontation would come, but not just then.

Carter looked down toward the Rond Point, then turned on his heel and hurried around the corner to the Avenue Roosevelt, the back way to the hotel, stopping every now and then at random intervals to duck into doorways, to bend over to tie his shoes, and see what was behind him. But if Ganin was there, he was not able to detect him.

Hawk’s words kept coming back to him: Against Ganin... you’re going to have to be whole. No, more than that — you’ll need a hundred and ten percent.

Carter knew that he was nowhere near that. He was tired, he was battered from his encounter with Borodin, and the wound in his right leg was throbbing so badly he could hardly concentrate on anything else.

The dawn was just breaking when Carter circled his hotel twice before he slipped in the back way and hurried upstairs to his room.

He listened at the door for a moment but could hear nothing, so he let himself in.

Lydia was sitting up in bed. She was awake, a terrified look in her eyes. When she recognized who it was she sagged in relief.

“I didn’t know what happened to you,” she said. She made no move to get up.

Carter closed and locked the door, then went to the window and looked down at the street. Traffic was beginning to pick up with the morning, but there was no sign of the van or the maintenance man he had seen driving it.

“What is it?” Lydia asked. “What happened?”

Carter turned, and she realized that he was in pain. She shoved the covers back and jumped out of bed.

“What happened to you?” she cried.

“I’m all right,” Carter said.

She helped him to the bed, took off his shoes, and helped him take off his jacket. “You went to Borodin,” she said. “You killed him? You went up against him?”

Carter looked up. “He won’t kill little girls again.”

Lydia studied his face for a moment, then glanced at the window. “But you suspect you may have been followed. By whom?” She looked back. “Ganin?”

Carter shrugged. “He’s probably here in the city.” The last few days were finally starting to catch up with him. The room was beginning to go gray and soft.

He pulled out Wilhelmina from his holster and handed it up to Lydia.

“It’s time I trusted you,” he mumbled. “Can you use it?”

Lydia took the Luger in both hands almost as if it were some sort of an offering. She nodded.

Carter lay back on the pillow. Her figure was swimming above him.

“Sleep now,” she said. “There will be no more battles. I will be here...”

It was dark. Carter lay nude on his stomach. He awoke to someone massaging his shoulder muscles with strong, sure fingers. He was aware that the entire day had passed, although he had no idea of the time.

“How do you feel?” Lydia asked above him, her voice soft, husky.

“What time is it?”

“About ten. You slept all day,” Lydia said. She was straddling his hips. She got off, and he rolled over onto his back.

“No trouble?” he asked. He was stiff and still very sore, but he felt a lot better.

Lydia shook her head. Her long blond hair was down, and she was nude, the nipples of her large breasts erect. “It will come, though,” she said. “I can feel it.” She began gently massaging the muscles of his chest, her fingers lingering here and there around the various scars he had collected over the years.

Carter started to get up. He was hungry. After he had something to eat, he wanted to telephone Hawk, to see if Kobelev and Ganin had reacted to Borodin’s death, and if another lure had surfaced. But Lydia pushed him back.

“Not yet,” she said. She reached down and kissed his nipples, taking each between her lips and rolling her tongue around them.

The room was warm, but she was shivering. Carter could feel her entire body shaking. She was frightened.

He lifted her head, looked into her eyes for a long moment, then she came into his arms and they kissed deeply, her mouth hot and demanding. He felt a sense of betrayal to Sigourney, but this was different; this was not love. It was nothing more than two people alone, comforting each other.

When they parted, Carter gently eased her over onto her back, kissed her chin, lingered at her neck, and then kissed her breasts.

She arched her back and moaned with pleasure, her shivering intensifying.

Carter stroked her thighs, her legs opening, and he worked his way down between her breasts to her navel, and to her hard, flat belly with his tongue. Her hips rose and fell, and her breath came faster.

She reached down and took his head in her hands, guiding him lower, between her legs. “Oh, God, it is wonderful,” she murmured in Russian. “Please... please.”

She was moist and ready. When Carter touched her with his tongue she jerked violently as if she had received an electric shock.

He raised his body and looked at her face. Her eyes were half closed, her lips parted.

“Yes?” she breathed. “Yes... now?”

Carter moved up, and she took him in her hands, guiding him inside her, her hips thrusting up to receive him, her legs coming up, locking around his back, her hands on his buttocks urging him against her.

He lingered, deep inside her for a long time, her hands up and down his back, and he kissed her breasts, taking the nipples in his mouth.

She moaned loudly, her entire body in barely controlled motion as Carter withdrew, then thrust within her again.

Slowly he made love to her, for the moment the terrible vision of Sigourney’s body gone from his mind, lost in the comfort and pleasure of the here and now.

Lydia eased into the gentle motion with him, her pelvis rising deliberately to meet his, her mouth open, her tongue flicking out, her eyes glazed.

They seemed to hang in a state of suspended time, their pleasure building by slow degrees.

Gone, too, from Carter’s mind, for the moment, were thoughts about Kobelev and Ganin, and about the Russian he had killed that morning. Gone was his hunger and pain. All that was left was pleasure.

It went on for an eternity, higher and higher they went, until in the end they rose together in a blinding explosion, wave after wave of intense sensation that neither of them wanted ever to end.

When it was over, Carter lay back, and Lydia sat up to look down at his face. There was a sad expression in her eyes.

“It will never be like this again, will it,” she said after a long time.

Carter smiled gently. “Nothing stays the same,” he said.

“In the States...” she began.

“You will find someone.” Carter answered her unspoken question.

The bedside telephone rang, shattering the fragile mood, and Carter sat up with a jerk. Lydia reared back, her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide.

The phone rang a second time. Carter picked it up.

“Yes?” he said.

“Are you rested, Mr. Carter?” a man’s voice said in English, with a barely discernible Russian accent.

Carter got out of bed and took the phone with him to the window, the cord barely long enough to reach. There was a lot of traffic outside, but nothing suspicious.

“The maintenance van on the Avenue Montaigne,” Carter said softly.

“Very perceptive of you,” the Russian said.

“Arkadi Ganin.”

Ganin laughed, the sound dry. “We think it terribly unfair of you to have taken the girl. Nikolai is very angry.”

“The spoils of war,” Carter replied. He motioned for Lydia to get dressed. “But you know where we are, why not come up here and get her?”

“It’s not I who cares about the girl,” Ganin said. “In any event, how do you suppose I found you?”

“You followed me. But you made a mistake.”

“Yes?”

“You allowed me to rest. You should have come in for the kill directly after Borodin. Or was that poor old building employee too much for you?”

There was a very long silence on the line.

“What’s the matter, Arkadi Konstantinovich? Has Kobelev pulled your leash up tight?” Carter taunted. “Tell me, has he had you kill the obligatory child yet? Are you good at that sort of thing? I understand it’s Komodel’s initiation rite.”

Ganin did not rise to the bait. “I expected more from you than that, Carter. Much more. Perhaps Kobelev was exaggerating.”

Lydia was pulling on her clothes. She had grabbed her suitcase and was throwing the rest of her things into it.

“What do you want?” Carter said.

“You.”

“Not yet. Kobelev means to see me dead. I’m sure he wants to see me crawl on my hands and knees, but not here in Paris, not yet.”

“Do not be so sure...”

“No, Kobelev’s killing ground has already been set. Somewhere farther to the east. Finland, perhaps. Maybe Austria or Switzerland. Somewhere at risk to him, but a place I am sure to come. So, what do you want now?”

“As I said, Carter, you. But this time I’m going to give you a real chance at me. It is time, I think, that you and I meet.”

“If and when I see you, I’ll kill you, Ganin.”

Ganin laughed. “You will try, Mr. Carter. That is all you can say for certain.”

Carter grabbed his Luger from the nightstand, levered a round in the chamber while holding the telephone cradled on his shoulder, and slipped the weapon’s safety off. Back by the window he looked outside.

“Show yourself,” Carter snapped.

“Sure,” Ganin said. “Across the street, second floor.”

Carter looked across the street. A figure appeared in the window of a second-story apartment.

Ganin’s laugh came over the phone. “I think it’s time we meet, Mr. Carter. The Eiffel Tower, shall we say?”

“What time—” Carter began, but the connection was broken.

Carter threw the phone down and began pulling on his clothes. Ganin had found them at the hotel by following him that morning from Borodin’s apartment. It meant there was a very good possibility that Kobelev’s man did not know about the Jaguar sedan parked in the hotel’s lot.

A plan was beginning to form in Carter’s mind as he finished dressing and strapping on his weapons. Lydia was already by the door, so frightened she could barely keep still.

Hawk had also said that in order to beat Kobelev they’d have to play him at his own game.

It was foolish taking Ganin’s challenge and meeting him that night, but it was the one thing Carter knew he was going to have to do. If he couldn’t get a clear shot, at least the exercise would provide him, in some small measure, with an idea of just whom he was up against. Not some phantom figure on a computer printout, but a real flesh-and-blood person.

He grabbed his suitcase and opened the door a crack. The corridor was empty. He propelled Lydia out the door and down to the stairs as the elevator started up from the lobby.

Before they started down, Carter stood for a moment at the head of the stairs to listen. No one was there.

The elevator was just stopping at their floor when Carter and Lydia hit the stairs, taking them two at a time but making as little noise as possible.

At the bottom they turned right, going through a rear hallway, then out a side door to the small parking lot behind the hotel’s outdoor garden area.

From there, beyond a tall stone fence, they could see the top of the Arc de Triomphe, illuminated against the night sky.

An older couple were just climbing out of a maroon Mercedes, and they looked up, startled, as Carter and Lydia raced to the Jaguar, unlocked it, and tossed their bags inside.

“Down!” Carter snapped as he started the powerful engine and swung around to the exit.

Lydia ducked down below window level as the Jaguar burst out onto the Rue de Berri, the tires skidding on the pavement as Carter hauled the wheel around. They shot up across St.-Honoré, then left to Avenue des Ternes.

Three blocks later Carter slowed down and began taking random turns left, then right, and right again, then left. Sometimes speeding up, sometimes slowing down. On the far side of the Bois de Boulogne he pulled over to the curb, doused the lights, and waited to see if they had been followed. But there was nothing other than the normal flow of traffic behind them. No vans, no cars, or anything else pulled up behind or ahead of them. They had made their break.

In the far distance, across the river, the Eiffel Tower rose above the city like some majestic rocket ship. Ganin wanted to meet him there. But when?

It was getting late. Nearly midnight. But Carter felt better than he had for a long time. A part of him cautioned against rising to Ganin’s bait. Yet another inner voice told him he had no choice.

“I would like us to go now,” Lydia said, breaking into his thoughts. “Back to London and then to the States.”

Carter shook his head. “But we are leaving Paris tonight.”

She brightened. “Now?”

“In a little while. Before morning.”

She sagged again. “You are going off to meet him somewhere. What about me?”

“I’m going alone. You’ll take the car and pick me up at exactly two o’clock.”

“Where?”

“Along the Quai d’Orsay. Do you know it?”

“East of the Eiffel Tower.”

“That’s it. Come at two and again at two-thirty. But stop for no one or nothing else. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “And if you do not show up?”

“You’re on your own. Get back to the States however you can and put an ad in the Washington Post: ‘Nick’s friend would like to meet with Smitty, care of the newspaper.’ Someone will come for you.”

“Like Kobelev?”

“Possibly. It’ll be up to you,” Carter said. He flipped on the headlights and pulled away from the curb.

“Don’t do this thing, Nick,” Lydia said.

Carter said nothing, and she looked away.

“I had to try,” she said. “I’ll be there. At two, and again at two-thirty.”

Carter lit a cigarette, and they made their way through the fairly light traffic in silence for a while.

“This won’t be over with tonight,” he said at length.

“Perhaps it will be.”

“Not unless he kills me, and I don’t think he means to do that.”

“Then why are you going to him?” Lydia almost screamed.

“To kill him,” Carter said.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, all around the vast park, finally around to the Avenue de Versailles, which skirted the Seine on the opposite bank from the Eiffel Tower.

Near the Pont d’Iéna, which crossed the river directly in front of the tower, Carter pulled over, jumped out, and headed across on foot without looking back.

She would either be back at two or she wouldn’t. Carter found that he didn’t really care. Or at least he didn’t at that moment.

For now his every thought went forward, to the upcoming confrontation. Just him and Ganin.