The Killing Ground

Five

Carter had dinner at a small restaurant on 38th Street, checked his car, and was back on Lashkin’s block a little past eight. He walked past the corner where Lashkin’s building was located and glanced up at the windows. Lights shone. They were presumably still up there. The one bodyguard stood out front in the shadows.

Around the corner he passed the gate, and then making sure no one was coming, he hoisted himself up over the brick wall and looked down into the courtyard.

The second bodyguard was nowhere in sight. But there were enough bushes and even a couple of trees to conceal him from Carter’s vantage point.

A cab turned the corner and came down the street as Carter pulled himself the rest of the way over the wall and dropped down into the courtyard. He crouched in the shadows for a full two minutes, every sense alert for the presence of the bodyguard, for the sound of an alarm. But there was nothing.

At length, he pulled out his stiletto, and keeping low, he moved away from the wall, deeper into the courtyard, the back of the neighboring brownstone to his left, and the backs of other apartment buildings looming overhead straight across.

Carter slowly circled around to the right, but hearing a noise just ahead of him, he stopped in his tracks. It had sounded like a metallic crackle, or a hiss.

“Nothing here,” someone said in Russian. The voice obviously came from a walkie-talkie.

The courtyard bodyguard murmured some reply that Carter could not make out, though he could tell the man was very close. Possibly fifteen or twenty feet away. A siren sounded somewhere down toward 34th Street.

Carter inched forward, then stopped again as a match flared just beyond a bronze statue. A moment later cigarette smoke drifted back to him. The bodyguard grunted, then moved to the left of the statue and sat down on the low bench, his back to Carter.

Gripping the stiletto lightly in his right hand, never taking his eyes off the big Russian, Carter silently stepped past the statue and directly up to the man.

At the last moment the Russian, sensing he was no longer alone, started to turn, but by then it was too late for him. Carter flipped his stiletto over and, gripping the haft firmly in his right hand, clipped the man sharply at the base of his skull behind his right ear.

The Russian’s head snapped forward, his body went slack, and he slumped down onto the grass, his eyes fluttering, his left leg twitching.

Working swiftly now, Carter sheathed his stiletto, stepped around the bench, pulled off the Russian’s tie and belt, and trussed the man’s arms and legs together at his back. The man was just coming around as Carter stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth.

“Listen to me, comrade,” Carter said in Russian. “I wish you no harm.”

The Russian came fully awake, and for a moment or two he struggled against his bonds. But it was no use. He settled down.

“That’s better,” Carter said, continuing to speak in Russian. “If you move, if you try to escape, I will come back and surely kill you. Do you understand?”

The Russian looked up at Carter, his eyes narrowed. But he nodded.

“Very good. It will only be a few minutes, I promise you. Be a good boy now.”

The Russian was a pro. He was studying Carter’s face, making sure that if and when he got out of this, he would be able to provide an accurate description.

“My name is Nick Carter. I want you to know that, comrade. I wish Comrade Ganin to know that as well. Tell him I was here.”

The Russian’s expression did not change.

Carter reached inside the man’s coat and withdrew his wallet. He flipped it open and in the dim light studied the diplomatic identification. The man’s name was Yuri Pavlovich Mosolov. He was assigned as a trade specialist with the Soviet delegation to the U.N. Carter returned the man’s wallet, then straightened up and hurried across the courtyard to Lashkin’s building. The rear door was secured only with a simple tumbler lock, which Carter picked in less than twenty seconds.

Inside, a dimly lit corridor ran the length of the building. In front was the elevator, but to the right of where Carter stood — just within the doorway, there was a flight of stairs.

He hurried to the top floor, checked to make sure no one was in the corridor, then went down to the front apartment and listened at the door.

Music was playing softly from within, and Carter thought he heard a woman laughing.

He stepped aside, out of the range of the peephole in the door, and knocked loudly.

The music stopped a moment later.

Carter knocked again. “Comrade Lashkin,” he said urgently in Russian.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice asked from the other side of the door. “Who is there?”

“It is me... Mosolov. Open, hurry!”

“Yuri Pavlovich?” the man said, unlocking the door.

Carter pulled out his Luger, and as the door came open, he pushed his way inside.

Lashkin was shoved aside, and he cried out in alarm. Carter brought up Wilhelmina as he closed the door behind him.

“Believe me when I tell you that I do not want to shoot you, Petr Sergeiovich, but I will if you do not cooperate,” Carter snapped in Russian.

The apartment was small but very tastefully decorated. Lydia Borasova, wearing only a filmy negligee, appeared in the doorway from the bedroom.

“Petr...” she started to say, but then her hand came up to her mouth and she stepped back.

“Get back out here, Miss Borasova,” Carter ordered.

She hesitated. She was obviously very frightened.

“Who are you? What do you want with us?” Lashkin asked.

“Nick Carter. I have come here to talk with you about Arkadi Ganin.”

Lashkin turned white, and he stumbled backward, off-balance, as if he were on the verge of collapse.

Carter motioned for Lydia to come out. “I don’t want to hurt either of you, but I will if I have to,” he said.

The woman came the rest of the way out into the living room, and she and Lashkin sat down together on the couch.

Lashkin, suddenly conscious that his girl friend was nearly naked, looked up. “Let her put on something decent.”

“Your friend was not so considerate of my girl friend,” Carter said harshly. “She stays.”

Lashkin wanted to protest, but he was too frightened. “I don’t know this... Arkadi Ganin of whom you speak.”

“Yes, you do. He was most recently in Cuba under the cover name Hildebrandt. Does that name mean anything to you, comrade?”

Lashkin started to shake his head, but Lydia touched his sleeve. He looked at her.

“Tell him, Petr, and then he might go,” she said. She was a very good-looking woman, with an intelligent face.

“Shut up,” Lashkin hissed.

“If you value your life, comrade, you will listen to her. She is making sense.”

“Either you kill me, or... they do it. Either way I lose,” Lashkin said fatalistically.

“You die here and now, or live to take your chances another day. Your choice,” Carter said.

Lashkin held his silence.

“Petr?” Lydia said in a small voice.

“What do you want of me? I know this Hildebrandt. He was here in New York a few days ago. So what?”

“Here to see you?”

Lashkin just looked at him for a moment in stony silence. “He came to my office. He spoke with me. All right?”

“About what, comrade? What did Hildebrandt wish to tell you?”

Again Lashkin was reticent.

Carter prompted him. “You are number two in the KGB hierarchy here. I know that, so let’s not tell lies now.”

“He checked in with me, that’s all,” Lashkin blurted.

“Was he running an operation here in New York?”

“Not that I was aware of,” the KGB officer said. He glanced at Lydia, who had an odd, frightened look in her eyes.

“It’s standard procedure for visiting operatives to check in with you?”

Lashkin looked back at Carter. He nodded. “Yes. We don’t want—” He realized he was going too far, and he clamped it off.

Carter just looked at him.

“Hildebrandt was here. I have told you what you wanted to know, now get out of here,” Lashkin said finally.

“What did he look like?” Carter asked.

Lashkin shrugged. “I don’t know. Tall, dark. He was quite a good-looking fellow. I really didn’t look at him that closely.”

“That man was Arkadi Ganin. I believe you know that name,” Carter said.

Again Lashkin paled, and his hand shook as he wiped beads of sweat from his upper lip. “I don’t know this... Ganin. I have never seen him.”

“Yes, you have. Just a few days ago, here in New York. He told you why he was here?”

“He was just passing through.”

“To do what?”

“I don’t know. I swear to you! I think he was merely establishing a trail. A track.”

“Why would he do that, unless he wanted someone to follow him? Why, comrade?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did he stay?”

“The Grand Hyatt, I think.”

“How long was he here?”

“A couple of days, that’s all.”

“And then?” Carter asked.

“He took a plane to Cuba, and that’s all I know!”

Carter stepped around the couch and went to the windows that looked down on the street. Lashkin and the woman turned and watched him. He edged the curtain aside and glanced down. There was no one there. The bodyguard was gone.

Lashkin had started to rise when Carter turned back. He stopped, Lydia’s hand on his arm. There wasn’t much time. If the front guard discovered his partner had been compromised, they’d both be on their way up.

Carter flipped the Luger’s safety to the off position and stepped aside so that he had a clear shot both at the door and at Lashkin.

“Who did this Hildebrandt say he worked for?”

“He didn’t say,” Lashkin replied. He was obviously lying.

“There isn’t much time, comrade. If your people start coming through that door, someone is bound to get hurt. Them, you, perhaps your lady friend here?”

“Tell him,” Lydia prompted.

“Shut up!” Lashkin said.

The front door burst open. Carter swiveled as the two Russian bodyguards barged in, their weapons raised.

Carter fired twice, catching the lead man in the chest, the two shots driving him backward into the corridor against the second man, who snapped off a shot that went wild, bringing down some plaster from the living room ceiling.

The girl screamed, and Lashkin leaped over the couch.

Carter stepped aside, fired one shot to his right, catching Lashkin high on his chest, just below his throat, then pulled around once again and fired another shot, this one blowing the second bodyguard’s forehead completely off, blood spurting out of the man’s eyes, bone and bits of brain and hair splattering the corridor wall as he was flung backward.

Both guards were dead; there was little doubt of it. Carter spun back to Lashkin, whose body was draped backward over the couch. He was clawing at the terrible wound below the base of his neck as he tried to breathe, blood bubbling from the wide, dark hole.

Lydia was sobbing in terror, trying to help him, but it was clear he was going to die.

“It was Kobelev!” she rasped. “He engineered this! He sent Ganin after you!”

Impossible. Kobelev was dead. Carter had seen him die with his own eyes. She was lying. “He’s dead!”

“No,” she said. “He is alive. He has started Komodel with Ganin. They are waiting for you.”

“Where?”

“Europe, somewhere in Europe.”

A siren sounded outside in the distance. Someone had reported the shooting. Carter raced to the door. No one moved in the corridor. He turned back, hesitating a moment longer. Was the woman the key to this thing? There was no time. He could not take her with him.

“How do you know this? Who told you Ganin was working for Kobelev?”

“He did, you bloody fool!” Lydia shouted in English. “Hildebrandt was Ganin. He was here. He talked to me, told me that he was going to kill your girl friend, and that you would be coming.”

Lashkin gasped his last breath, and his body went slack, sliding off the couch to the floor. Lydia looked down at him. “It’s too late for us now,” she murmured.

Carter did not want to get trapped there. He did not want a forced shoot-out with the police, nor did he want to be held.

He slammed the door, locking it, and slipped the security chain in place. Lydia was watching him wide-eyed.

“Take me with you!” she cried, stepping over Lashkin’s body.

Carter brushed past her and raced into the back bedroom, where he threw open the casement window. The fire escape led down into the courtyard. No one was down there, yet, but the sirens were close now, and there were a lot of them.

“He’ll kill me!” Lydia cried. “Take me with you! Please! Don’t leave me here!”

Carter turned back to her. Was she the key? Was she the bait Ganin had set for him? Europe, she had said. Kobelev and Ganin. Was it possible? It made his head swim. He was there when Kobelev died! He had seen it with his own eyes!

Lydia had tom off her negligee and was pulling on a pair of slacks that had been lying on the floor. Her breasts were large and well formed, with dark pink nipples erect now that she was frightened.

He had been maneuvered! Kobelev had once been called “the puppet master.” This was his doing. It stank of the man’s perverse genius.

Carter holstered his Luger and ducked out the window onto the fire escape. Lydia leaped around the bed to the open window.

“Don’t leave me!” she cried, reaching for him.

Carter eluded her grasp, looked into her eyes for a long moment, then without a word turned and scrambled down the fire escape.

At the bottom, he leaped down to the courtyard and looked up, but the blond head was gone. Europe, she had said. She was the bait. The Cuban with his dying breath had named Lashkin, leading Carter to New York. But it was the woman who had Ganin’s information.

The sirens were out front as Carter hurried across the courtyard, through the gate, and down to the corner.

Police cars were coming up the street as he ducked into the shadows of a recessed doorway. When they passed, he continued around in a wide circle to where he had parked his car, then headed back out of the city, this time going north, toward the Adirondacks and a refuge.

Arkadi Ganin stepped back away from the second-floor window in the apartment building across from Lashkin’s just as two police cars joined the four already there. He let the curtains slowly drop back into place.

A jumble of voices came from the speaker of a portable monitor set up on the table beside the bed. Ganin listened to the police conversations picked up from the telephone in Lashkin’s apartment, and from the bodyguards’ walkie-talkies.

He smiled to himself, shut off the receiver, and packed it in his suitcase.

Carter had indeed been set up. The guards had unwittingly done their parts, Lashkin, the complete fool, had done his, and the girl... Ganin hesitated a moment. He was pleased with her. She had reacted exactly as he thought she would. She had said and done what he thought she would, even to the point of throwing herself at Carter.

But best of all, Ganin stood in awe of Kobelev. The man had predicted every single maneuver in a delicate ballet. Even the finer nuances, such as Carter not killing Mosolov in the garden. Instead he had simply knocked the man over the head, tied him up, and had gone in. It was — Ganin, thinking now in English, groped for the word — it was quaint, definitely naive. But it was exactly as Kobelev had predicted it would be.

Finished, Ganin pulled on his jacket, checked the tiny efficiency appartment a second time to make sure he had left nothing incriminating, and then, his single suitcase in hand, left the back way.

It was still early. There was plenty of time for his overseas call, plenty of time for a good night’s sleep on his flight to Paris.

More sirens were converging on the apartment building. Soon — but not soon enough — the police would expand their search for the killer. Carter was well away, though. Ganin had to chuckle to himself. If the American had not been successful in his efforts to escape, Ganin had planned on stepping in and somehow lending a hand.

Two blocks from the apartment Ganin hailed a cab and took it over to the Tudor, a hotel just around the corner from the U.N.

After he checked in, he went back out, walking aimlessly for several blocks until he came to a telephone booth where he placed a credit card call, under the name Hildebrandt, to a number in Helsinki, Finland.

It was answered on the third ring by a gruff-voiced man speaking English. “Yes.”

“It’s Bruno,” Ganin said softly despite the transatlantic hiss and signal loss. Signal-enhancing equipment, along with voice-print analyzers, were attached to the line.

There was a hollow silence on the line while the electronic identification procedures were automatically carried out by the equipment in the basement of a Helsinki apartment house.

Fully sixty seconds after the call was answered, another connection was made, a distant telephone began ringing, and Ganin stiffened slightly.

This time the line was answered on the first ring. “You’re leaving within the hour, is that correct?”

It was Kobelev. He knew.

“Yes.”

Again there was a silence on the line. Ganin could almost visualize Kobelev at his desk. He would be hopping from foot to foot, the metal plate in the back of his skull glinting dully. He would look the fool at this moment, excited as he was. He was anything but.

“He is activated,” Ganin said. “It was exactly as you predicted it would be. It is only a matter of time now.”

“No variations on the theme?”

“None. It was exactly as you said it would be. Exactly.”

“I know him, you must understand. I know his soul. He was mine — he was in my grasp at one time.”

Ganin was afraid the man might say something compromising over the open line. “I will go ahead. I will be there when he arrives.”

“Yes, you will, Arkadi,” Kobelev said.

Ganin couldn’t believe that Kobelev had used his name. Chances were, the line was not being monitored, at least not from the New York end. But in Finland it would be dangerous. Or... was Kobelev playing even a deeper, more devious game? After all, the girl was the loose end. Kobelev had predicted Carter would not kill her, and he specifically forbade Ganin from silencing her. Were there plans within plans? Kobelev had carefully maneuvered Carter into this situation. Was he also playing with Ganin?

“You will call me from Paris and let me know the next stage,” Kobelev said.

Ganin hung up.