The Killing Ground

Six

It was past ten by the time Carter finally cleared the city and took to the secondary roads that led northwest into the Adirondack Mountains. The night was very dark, and fifty miles north of the city, traffic had thinned to only an occasional car or truck.

He lit a cigarette and settled back as some of the tension began to dissipate. He was hurt, he was confused, and he was wary of the apparent ease with which he had been maneuvered.

Sigourney’s murder had only been the teaser, the one act guaranteed to get his attention, the one thing that would bring him out in the open.

In New York, Lashkin had been another ploy, there only to lead him to Lydia, who provided him with the notion that Kobelev was still alive. Kobelev, the puppet master, was the driving force behind the new Komodel. Kobelev, the master spy, was running Ganin. If it were true that Kobelev was still alive and was running Ganin, they would be a nearly unbeatable combination.

As he drove, Carter’s mind went back to his nearly fatal encounters with the Russian, the first one five years earlier aboard the Akai Maru, an oil tanker bound for the West Coast.

Kobelev’s diabolical scheme had involved the radioactive material Strontium 90, with which the tanker’s load of oil had been contaminated. Had the shipment reached the refineries in California, and had it been refined into gasoline, hundreds of thousands of people would have been contaminated.

As it turned out, the shipment was intercepted, but several good people had been killed, and Carter had vowed to stop the man.

By then Kobelev had risen high within the ranks of the KGB, and when it was rumored that he would soon be promoted to head the Komitet, Carter was assigned to go after him.

Hawk’s dangerous plan was to set Carter up as a traitor. Carter would defect to the Russians, offering his services to Kobelev himself. When he got close enough to the man, and in a position where he could manage an escape, he would pull the trigger.

Against an ordinary man the scheme would have worked, but Kobelev had been ahead of them every step of the way.

Carter had defected, had been accepted by Kobelev, and had been sent to Europe on a test mission in which he was to kill the child of a CLA operative whom Kobelev wanted to turn.

Once the Killmaster had proved himself, Kobelev’s plan was to have Carter return to the States to assassinate the President.

In the end, however, Kobelev had shown his true colors. He murdered his own wife in front of Carter’s eyes, and then Kobelev’s beautiful daughter murdered her father in retribution. Or so Carter thought.

Carter could still see her at the foot of the stairs in Kobelev’s dacha outside Moscow, plunging the blade of a knife into her father’s back. He would see Kobelev going down, the life ebbing from his body.

Carter and Tatiana Kobelev had run, escaping from the Soviet Union. Back in the States, the girl was to point out the Soviet operative who would assassinate the President. Instead, at the last moment, she pulled out a gun and very nearly succeeded in killing the President herself. Carter had stopped her with one bullet from his Luger, downing her but not killing her.

He skirted Albany and pushed on to the northwest, stopping sometime after midnight for gasoline and something to eat at an all-night truck stop. He was tired, mentally as well as physically. In his mind’s eye two visions kept alternating like flashing neon signs. The first was Sigourney’s body, and the second was his final confrontation with Kobelev.

AXE used Kobelev’s daughter as bait to lure the Russian out of the Soviet Union. And it had worked, to a point, though his coming out was well prepared, his field intelligence was superb, and the troops he surrounded himself with were the very best in all of the Soviet Union.

The end had come aboard the Orient Express on its final leg into Istanbul, high in the mountains of Bulgaria. It had been winter then. Carter had killed Tatiana Kobelev on that mission, and he and Kobelev were in a duel to the death atop a car of the speeding train, the Russian agent set on revenge. Suddenly the timbers of a bridge had rushed at them. At the very last moment, Carter had dropped down. Kobelev’s back had been to the bridge.

“You can’t fool me—” Kobelev’s words had been cut off by the sickening thud of wood against bone. He was slammed facedown on the car, the back of his head little more than a raw flap of skin and bone. Carter, who was sprawled only a few feet away, had reached out to hold the body, but before he could get a grip, the vibration of the train had moved it to the edge, and it had slipped out of his grasp. Kobelev had hit the ground below and rolled into the icy froth of the river.

Then the water had its way, tumbling and smashing the body against the rocks, burying it in torrents of foam.

Was it possible that Kobelev had survived? Carter asked himself for the hundredth time, his thoughts coming back to the present. It was nearly impossible to believe, and yet the man had fooled them all before.

If it were so, if Lydia Borasova was telling the truth, if Kobelev and Ganin were working together, it would end this time. He would make sure of it. No matter what, it would end this time.

It was nearly dawn by the time Carter reached the McCauley Mountain ski area north of Albany, then turned down a narrow gravel road that led back to Little Moose Lake.

Several years earlier, Hawk had confided to Carter that he owned a small cabin retreat on the remote lake. No one within AXE, or anywhere else for that matter, knew of the existence of the place except for Carter. It was the one place in the world sacrosanct to Hawk. It was a place Carter had run to once before. Sooner or later he knew that Hawk would show up, once his boss realized that Carter had dropped out of sight.

The next step would be Europe, Carter figured. But now he needed time to think. Time to slow things down. When the confrontation came, he wanted it on his own terms. He did not want to barge in out of balance. It was what Kobelev and Ganin were trying for.

A half hour later he made the final turn down a narrow, rutted lane, emerging at length into a small clearing at the water’s edge in the middle of which stood Hawk’s cabin, a small, ramshackle affair.

Carter switched off the engine and the headlights, and sat for a long time, watching the sun come up and feeling, for the first time in days, at least a small measure of peace. Here was a place of order, of authority. Hawk’s indefinable stamp of personality and power was everywhere. It was comforting just now.

After a while Carter got out of his car, lit a cigarette, and walked down to the lakeshore. A fish jumped out toward the middle somewhere, the ripples of its movement expanding outward.

Had he made a mistake, Carter asked himself, in falling in love with Sigourney? Had he left himself open to attack? Had he become vulnerable?

The noise of a helicopter came to him on the gentle breeze somewhere from the south. He looked up, startled out of his introspection in time to see the machine swooping in low across the lake.

Carter pulled out his Luger and headed in a dead run toward a stand of trees to the west of the cabin, keeping low and dodging back and forth as he ran.

How could Ganin have found out about the place? It was impossible!

The helicopter came in overhead, the wash from the rotors whipping the tree branches. Carter threw himself flat behind the trees, rolled over, and brought Wilhelmina up ready to fire.

The chopper pulled around in a tight, skidding turn, then set down gently between the cabin and the dock.

Carter pushed back farther behind the trees as the passenger door popped open and a man stepped out. For a long moment Carter just stared across at him. But then he got to his feet, holstered his Luger, and stepped away from the trees.

“Nick!” Hawk shouted over the noise of the engine.

Carter hurried across to him, and they shook hands. “How’d you know I’d be here, sir?” he asked. He glanced at the pilot, whom he recognized from AXE Operations. No one in AXE knew about this cabin except for Carter, and now this pilot. Whatever brought Hawk here so fast had to be extraordinary.

Hawk ignored the question. Instead he turned away, stuck his head through the open passenger doorway, said something to the pilot, then slammed the door, and he and Carter stepped back.

Moments later the machine rose, circled left, and then keeping low, screamed back south across the lake. When it was finally out of earshot the silence was almost deafening.

“Smitty suggested we watch Comrade Lashkin,” Hawk said.

“I see,” Carter said. He had gone off half-cocked. No doubt Ganin had probably watched the entire operation as well. The entire thing smelled of Kobelev’s manipulations.

“I figured you might be up here,” Hawk said. He looked into Carter’s eyes, real feeling in his expression. “Comrade Lashkin was a draw to get you to New York. They wanted you to kill him. He was useless baggage for them. And now your next draw is Paris.”

“Why Paris?”

“Bob Wengerhoff, our chief of station there, was found shot to death this morning.”

The timing was wrong. It could not have been Ganin, at least Carter didn’t think so. He would have bet almost anything against it. “I don’t think it could have been Ganin. I’m sure he was in New York, watching the entire operation.”

“A Soviet diplomatic jet took off from Kennedy shortly before ten. Bound for Paris. We alerted our office there, but Wengerhoff had apparently been under surveillance for days. They knew exactly where he would be every moment.”

“Ganin wants me in Paris.”

Hawk nodded. “But what did you get from Lashkin? Anything?”

“Lashkin may have been nothing more than a red herring. It was his secretary they wanted me to talk to.”

“Borasova,” Hawk said. “She was briefly held, but they let her go early this morning.”

“Has she made contact with her embassy, or anyone at the U.N.?”

Hawk’s eyes narrowed. “We’re watching her, of course. But she’s under house arrest by her own people. Apparently she flies out tonight, back to Moscow.”

She was the key. But not the one Kobelev was expecting. The puppet master had made a mistake.

Hawk was closely watching Carter, understanding something else was coming and patient enough to wait for it.

“It’s Kobelev, sir. The pupper master.”

“Nikolai Fedor Kobelev?” Hawk said, incredulous. Carter nodded.

“Impossible! You saw him die yourself.”

“I thought he was dead,” Carter said, turning his mind again back to the train. “He should have been dead. But there was no way to confirm it.”

“Is it possible?”

Was it? Carter asked himself. Was if possible, or was Kobelev’s name in itself just another lure, more bait to insure Carter’s compliance?

“It’s Kobelev, all right. The entire operation stinks of him.” He shook his head. “Lashkin was just the bait — it was Borasova who told me it was Kobelev. Kobelev is coming after me. Kobelev is alive.”

“Kobelev and Ganin,” Hawk said softly. “Good Lord, what a combination.” He looked up, his white hair ruffling in the breeze, and pulled out a cigar. When he had it lit, he led Carter up to the cabin, where inside he put on a pot of coffee. “The chopper will be back for me in an hour. We have until then to make some sort of an intelligent decision.”

Carter pulled out the cups and a bottle of brandy from the cabinet. He laid them out, then sat down.

“This time,” Hawk said, “you’re not going off half-cocked. If it is Kobelev and Ganin, you’re going to have to be careful. More than that, you’re going to have to beat them at their own game.”

“For that I’ll need help.”

“You’re damned right. But unofficially. As far as our operations are concerned, you’re still on vacation.”

Carter sat forward fast. “You think there’s a leak within AXE?” The thought was chilling.

“I’m not going to take any chances, Nick. Three times we’ve been up against Kobelev, and three times we’ve failed. This time he’s got Ganin, and he’s expecting on winning big. But we’re going to stop him. Once and for all, we’re going to stop that madman.”

“He’ll be coming out of the Soviet Union.”

Hawk held his reply for a moment. Then he nodded slowly. “He wants you dead. But he could have had you killed with Sigourney. Possibly again in New York.”

“But they didn’t even try.”

“Which means he’s luring you. First to New York. Next to Paris.”

“And beyond that to some... killing ground of his choice.”

“Eastern Europe?”

“Possibly. Only he knows at this point. But I’m sure he’ll want to be there when it happens. He’ll want to see it happen.”

Hawk poured them both a brandy.

“I’m going to Paris,” Carter said. “But first I’m going back to New York.”

“Lashkin’s secretary?”

Carter nodded. “I think he’s made a mistake with her. I think she’s the loose end. She was there with Lashkin to provide me with the information Kobelev wanted me to have. Now that she’s fulfilled her obligation, she’s being recalled home. She’s our key now. I’m taking her to Paris with me.”