The Killing Ground

Eight

It was almost midnight by the time Carter and Lydia reached Washington, D.C., and took a cab over to the Mariott Twin Bridges Motel across the Potomac. They checked in as man and wife, under the name Bardon, and got a first-floor room with a patio door so that they would have a second exit in case of trouble.

Word most certainly would have already gotten back to Kobelev that Carter had successfully snatched Lydia, and the reaction would be swift. Right now orders had undoubtedly gone out: Get Carter and Borasova! At all costs!

Before they had gone back to their room, Carter made a brief call to Hawk’s private number, informing him where they were staying. He used the house phone as an extra precaution.

They ordered a couple of drinks and a plate of sandwiches from room service, and a half hour later Rupert Smith, AXE Operations chief, showed up. Carter let him in.

“What have you got for us?”

Smitty was looking across the room at Lydia, who had just taken a shower and was sitting propped up in bed, wrapped only in her bathrobe. She smiled.

“Lydia Borasova, Smitty,” Carter said.

“I’ve heard of you, Miss Borasova,” Smitty said. He was obviously taken with her.

“You have me at a disadvantage, Mr...?”

“Smitty is good enough,” Carter said. He turned back to the Operations man. “None of this is in the daily log.”

Smitty shook his head. “He told me the score.” He carried a slim attaché case that he placed on the table and opened. From within he pulled out several items, the first of which were their airline tickets.

“British Airways, the Concorde,” he said. “You’ll be in London at four-thirty in the afternoon, local time. An XJ6 Jaguar sedan, license GK777-77, will be waiting for you in long-term parking at Heathrow... 5B54. In the glove compartment are your tickets for the Channel crossing. You’ll leave immediately.”

Carter glanced at the tickets. “In Paris?”

“You’ll be at the Lancaster on the Rue de Berri near the Champs-Elysees.”

“I know the hotel,” Carter said.

Next Smitty pulled out their passports, international driver’s licenses, and other identification papers. “You’ll be traveling as husband and wife... Robert and Elizabeth Scott. You’re an engineer from Chicago in Paris to speak with the Aerospatile people.”

The passports and other papers were perfect, of course. “No one has been alerted to our coming?” Carter asked.

“Not a soul. It’s just Hawk, myself, you... and Miss Borasova,” Smitty said. He passed Carter a small vial, keeping it hidden in his hand. “This might help you sleep tonight.”

Carter understood, and he nodded. “Thanks,” he murmured. Then in a louder voice, “Has there been any reaction to her disappearance?”

“Not a thing, as far as we can tell. But they know she’s gone. We watched the apartment. They all left.”

“Good,” Carter said.

Smitty studied his face for a moment. “Would you like me to stick around outside tonight?”

Carter shook his head. “Thanks anyway, Smitty.”

“One more thing. Hawk wonders... if you’ve given thought to Paris. Specific thought.”

“Yes, I have.”

Smitty nodded.

“Good night, Smitty. Thanks for your help.”

The Operations chief lingered a moment longer, but he knew better than to interfere in such a delicate operation when it was running. Before and after an assignment he was a stickler for detail, and for justifications. But he allowed AXE operatives a relatively free hand when they were in the middle of the fray. Wisely so.

They shook hands. “Good luck,” Smitty said, and he left.

Carter poured Lydia another glass of Perrier, dropping one of the powerful sleeping tablets into the glass. When it was dissolved, he brought it over to her.

“No, thank you, Nick,” she said, looking up. She had been watching television. Some late movie on cable.

“Drink it,” Carter insisted.

Her eyes narrowed. “I won’t run, you know. I won’t telephone him. I won’t betray you. I want my freedom.”

“I know,” Carter said gently. “But it’s a little too soon for me, and there is too much at stake right now.”

She nodded. “I understand,” she said. She took the glass from Carter and drained it in one swallow. She handed the glass back, then rolled over and closed her eyes. “What time does our plane leave in the morning, Mr. Scott?”

“Eight,” Carter said. “I’ll wake you in plenty of time.”

Across the room, he poured himself a drink, lit a cigarette, then took out Wilhelmina and sat down, prepared for the long vigil.

London’s Heathrow Airport was a madhouse; nevertheless, Carter and Lydia managed to clear customs and find the sleek Jaguar sedan by five-thirty. Carter had gotten a few hours sleep on the supersonic flight and he felt pretty good, although the wound in his leg was still giving him some trouble.

They made it down to Dover, driving very fast, in time for the last Hovercraft passage across the Channel to Calais. From there they took the E5 to Boulogne, then south through Abbeville and Beauvais on the long haul to Paris.

Lydia had been talkative during the trip, but as they neared Paris she quieted down, a wan note in her expression. Carter suspected she was frightened of being so close to Kobelev’s operation. Frightened of her part in the plan.

“His name is Lev Ivanovich Borodin,” she said when they were a few miles outside of Paris. They had been driving in silence for a long while.

Carter glanced over at her. “Kobelev’s man?”

She nodded. “He works out of the Tass office as a journalist. Gives him the reason to travel around the country.”

The night was overcast and very dark. There was not much traffic at that hour.

“How do you know this?” Carter asked.

“He was there... outside Moscow, at the dacha. I met him before he was posted to France. Kobelev thought highly of him. Called him his up-and-coming Red star. He has cold eyes. He is just as bad as Kobelev.”

“In what way?”

“He is ruthless,” she flared, looking over. “In order to be Kobelev’s handmaiden you must first kill.”

“Not so unusual—” Carter began, but Lydia savagely cut him off.

“A child! You must kill a child to prove you are above compassion. Even the state comes second to your loyalty to Nikolai Fedor.”

Carter’s trial assignment with Kobelev had been to kill the child of a CIA operative in France. “Borodin killed a child?”

“I saw it with my own eyes. She was a young girl, perhaps eight or nine, from one of the collectives outside Moscow. Kobelev just sent for her, and somehow she appeared. Borodin strangled her, slowly. He crushed her neck. He enjoyed it!”

Carter’s hands were cramping up, and he realized that he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly he was losing feeling in his fingers. He loosened his grip.

Lydia’s eyes were glistening. “You don’t know how it was... how it still is.”

“Will he still be in Paris? Might he have been reassigned?”

“He is still there. Kobelev doesn’t move his people around until they’re kicked out.”

If Carter had had any qualms about simply killing a Soviet operative, they were dispelled by Lydia’s story. Knowing Kobelev as he did, he did not doubt the truth of her tale.

“But listen to me, Nick. This Borodin is very good. He is intelligent, he is quick, and he is very strong.”

“I’m not an eight-year-old girl he can so easily strangle.”

“No, but you are tired, you have some injury to your right leg, and you have revenge in your soul because of the death of your lover. All distractions.”

“What are Borodin’s weaknesses?” Carter asked after a few moments of silence.

“He has none. Not even conceit.”

It was four in the morning when they woke the sleepy concierge at the Hotel Lancaster, got their key, and went up to their room.

Carter unpacked his weapons in the tiny bathroom, out of Lydia’s sight, and when he emerged she was lying on the bed fully clothed except for her shoes. She was nearly asleep.

“Mmmm?” she said, half rising.

“Go back to sleep,” Carter said gently. “I’m going to check outside to make sure we weren’t spotted coming in.”

“Don’t go,” she said.

“I’ll be right back. In the morning you can tell me more about Borodin.”

He slipped out the door before she could protest further, but he did not immediately go downstairs. Instead he waited by the door, listening. He could hear Lydia stirring, then she went into the bathroom. Moments later the toilet flushed, and he heard the bed springs creak, then nothing.

Five minutes later he turned and quietly went down the back stairs and out into the predawn darkness.

He figured he had only a couple of hours to find Borodin, do what was necessary, and then get clear. Once the dawn came, it would be impossible for him to make any overt moves against Kobelev.

Ganin was somewhere in the city. Although Carter did not know the man, had never met him, he had an empathy for him. He could feel Ganin’s presence. Somewhere, watching, waiting. Somewhere in the city to lure Carter another step closer to Kobelev’s killing ground.

Half a block from the hotel Carter found what he was looking for: a telephone kiosk. He managed to get a sleepy operator to respond, and he placed a credit card call to Smitty’s special information number in Washington.

It took almost five minutes for the connection to be made and the proper identifications to be verified.

“Yes?” Smitty said.

“Lev Ivanovich Borodin. Works for Tass in Paris. I need his residence address.”

There was a silence on the line, as if Smitty had not heard. Carter knew better.

A police car passed slowly along the avenue, the two officers eying Carter, but they did not stop. A few minutes later Smitty was back with an address Carter recognized off Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré, very near the British embassy, and only a dozen blocks from where he stood.

He hung up before Smitty could ask the inevitable question, pulled up his coat collar against the chill morning air, and headed down to the Rond Point and from there up past the ornate Palais de l’Elysée to St.-Honoré.

Already the early-morning delivery vans were beginning to make their rounds, and the air smelled of fresh bread and croissants.

The apartment building was a tall glass and steel affair, the sort that most Parisians hated in the center of their city, complete with a security guard in the lobby beyond locked glass doors.

Carter went around back to the service entrance, where soon — within the next hour or less — the tradesmen would begin showing up, and he rang the bell. He took out his Luger.

“Qui,” a voice came from the speaker.

“It is me, you fool, let me in,” Carter growled in very bad French, putting as much of a Russian accent into it as he could.

“Who is this? I will call the police. Go away!”

“You idiot, it is I, Borodin, of 1107! Let me in or I will have your job!”

“The front door—” the Frenchman sputtered.

“If I wanted to use the front door, I would have come in that way? Now be quick!”

If anyone showed up in the next few minutes, or if the Frenchman inside had his wits about him and telephoned security at the front door, the game would be up.

The latch clicked and the door started to open. Carter shoved his way inside, bringing Wilhelmina up into the face of a startled old Frenchman.

“Mon Dieu!” the man squeaked.

Inside, Carter let the door shut and lock, and backed the Frenchman up against the wall of the small office. To the right, swinging doors led to a loading dock, and straight back was a service elevator.

“Make a sound, monsieur, and you will die here tonight,” Carter hissed in perfect French. The old janitor’s eyes were wide, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He nodded.

“You have the master key for the apartments?”

The man was too frightened to lie. He nodded again.

“And the key for the elevator?” Carter snapped. “Be quick!”

The Frenchman glanced toward the elevator, and nodded a third time.

“Bon,” Carter said. He pulled the man around and aimed him toward the elevator. “Your keys — quickly! We are going to the eleventh floor. I wish to speak with Comrade Borodin.”

The Frenchman fumbled out his keys and handed them to Carter. He and Carter stepped aboard the elevator, and Carter motioned for the man to take them upstairs.

“Which key operates this car?” Carter asked.

The white-haired Frenchman looked from Carter’s eyes to the outheld keys, and pointed to one.

Carter inserted it into the elevator lock-out control, flipped it over, and the car stopped. He turned it back on, and they continued up.

Next, Carter holstered his Luger, pulled out his stiletto, and cut the emergency telephone cord.

“Now, listen to me, my old friend,” he said. “I wish you no harm. I swear to God, I do not. So if you cooperate with me, and do nothing to sound an alarm, this will all be over in a few minutes, and it will be an adventure you can tell to the police, and then to your wife. You will be a hero.”

The Frenchman blinked. “I do not wish to die, monsieur.”

“And you will not, if you do as I say.”

“Oui.”

“I will lock you in the elevator. It will only be for a few minutes. When I am finished with my task, I will return, we shall ride together to the ground floor, and I shall leave. No noise. No alarm. Do you understand?”

“Oui, monsieur. I understand. And it will be as you say.”

“Very good,” Carter said.

They arrived at the eleventh floor. Carter stepped aside as the doors came open, but the corridor was empty. He flipped the key, withdrew it, and quickly stepped off the car. On the outside he inserted the key into the emergency override lock and flipped it left to Stop. Slowly the doors closed on the frightened Frenchman.

With the building’s master key in one hand and Hugo gripped loosely in his left, Carter hurried down the broad, thickly carpeted corridor to Borodin’s apartment.

He was taking a very large chance coming here like this. Lydia had provided him with the name. And she was Kobelev’s woman. This could very well be more of the elaborate plan. It could be a setup. It was possible Borodin was not alone. Very possible.

At the door Carter listened, but no sounds came from within.

Carefully he inserted the master key into the lock and slowly turned it. The latch opened, and the door came ajar.

For several long, tense moments Carter stood stock-still, his every sense alert for another presence on the other side of the door. But there were no sounds, no movement, nothing.

Stepping aside, Carter shifted Hugo to his right hand and slowly pushed the door the rest of the way open. A narrow vestibule led into what appeared to be a wide living room. Directly across were several large windows, the curtains open, through which the lights of Paris shown dimly.

Carter stepped inside and softly closed the door behind him.

He waited in the vestibule until his eyes adjusted completely to the relative darkness. At length he could see the outlines of the couch, several chairs, what appeared to be bookcases along one wall, and an opening that probably led back to the bedroom.

The hairs at the back of Carter’s neck suddenly rose. Someone was there. Very close. He started to step to one side, when something very hard slammed at him from the right, smashing into his knife arm, his fingers going numb, Hugo slipping to the floor.

He tried to move out of the way, but was hampered by a low table, which crashed over. An instant later something that felt like a battering ram smashed into the side of his head, knocking him off his feet, the night exploding into a million bursts of light.

Carter kicked the table away and rolled over as a booted foot caught him squarely in his wounded right thigh, causing him to cry out involuntarily.

He rolled again, this time the booted foot missing his head by inches, Borodin grunting with the effort.

Although Carter was stunned, it was all the opening he needed. He scrambled backward and leaped to his feet in time to counter a huge, meaty fist. In rapid order he hammered three blows to Borodin’s chest, and a fourth to the side of the big man’s face, sending him staggering backward against the back of the couch.

The Russian recovered instantly, charging Carter like a berserk bull elephant, the weight of his rush sending them both back crashing into the wall.

Carter brought his knee sharply up into Borodin’s groin, putting every ounce of his strength into it, the air whooshing out of the Russian’s lungs.

Borodin smashed his forehead into Carter’s face once, then again before Carter could twist out of his grip and stumble out of the way.

The Russian was incredible. He swiveled lightly on his feet and charged, but Carter leaped aside, his bad leg nearly collapsing beneath him. But then he was in the middle of the large living room, with much more space in which to maneuver.

The Russian paused and shook his head. He smiled. “Nikolai Fedor said you would come to me.”

Had Lydia betrayed him after all? Had it been a setup?

“Two weeks ago he said you would be coming. I have been waiting!” Borodin grunted.

Two weeks ago... It suddenly connected in Carter’s mind. “It was you who killed Wengerhoff.”

Borodin laughed. “Just as I will kill you, Carter. This time it will be my show, not Ganin’s!”

The Russian leaped across the couch. It was a fatal error. For a moment the big man was off-balance, all of his weight on one leg. Carter jumped forward, slamming his foot just, below the man’s kneecap, Borodin’s leg breaking with a loud snap.

As the Russian fell forward, bellowing in rage and pain, he managed to grab the front of Carter’s coat and drag him down.

Carter twisted to the left, at the same moment shoving Borodin to the right, and suddenly he was behind the Russian, his knee in the small of the man’s back, his hands on the man’s forehead and chin.

“This is for the little girl you killed, you son of a bitch!” Carter swore, and he jabbed his knee harshly downward at the same moment as he yanked Borodin’s head back with all of his might.

The Russian’s neck snapped with an audible pop, and the man went slack, dead instantly.

Carter fell back, exhausted, battered, hurt, as he caught his breath. The Russian had been waiting for him. Kobelev had foreseen Carter’s move. He had orchestrated the situation in New York and again here in Paris. It meant Ganin would be setting up the next lure. The killing ground was coming closer.

After a long time, Carter got painfully to his feet, found his stiletto, and let himself out of the apartment.

He started down the broad corridor, but it wasn’t until he had gotten within ten feet of the elevator before he realized that something was wrong... drastically wrong.

The door of the car was open! The elevator was empty! The Frenchman had escaped!