Carter Nick : другие произведения.

The Inca Death Squad

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Школа кожевенного мастерства: сумки, ремни своими руками
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  Annotation
  
  
  JOB OPPORTUNITY: SOUTH AMERICA
  
  Help wanted:
  
  By Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB), one (1) AXE agent, KILLMASTER rank, to serve as personal bodyguard to Soviet Minister Comrade Alexander Alexandrovitch Belkev, on tour of Chile. Must be willing to assume full responsibility, do odd jobs and, repeat, must be KILLMASTER rank.
  
  Job filled by:
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Duties:
  
  1)To deliver new-style bullet-proof vest to Comrade Belkev; to demonstrate final test of its power to safeguard against assassination.
  
  2) To guard Belkev's life with his own, under all circumstances.
  
  3) To stop a coup that could burn South America to the ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Chapter One
  
  Chapter Two
  
  Chapter Three
  
  Chapter Four
  
  Chapter Five
  
  Chapter Six
  
  Chapter Seven
  
  Chapter Eight
  
  Chapter Nine
  
  Chapter Ten
  
  Chapter Eleven
  
  Chapter Twelve
  
  Chapter Thirteen
  
  Chapter Fourteen
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  The Inca Death Squad
  
  
  
  
  Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
  
  
  
  
  
  OCR Mysuli: denlib@tut.by
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter One
  
  
  
  
  I pulled a towel around my waist and walked into the next antiseptic white room. So far AXE's new medical officer had checked my eyes, nose, throat, blood pressure and pedicure. I'd gone up and down a stepladder long enough to scale the Great Wall of China.
  
  "You must have a tremendous rate for healing," he said as he looked at the pinkish scar tissue over my chest.
  
  "I have a hell of an appetite, too."
  
  "So do I," he answered as if that gave us a common tie. "It just turns to fat on me."
  
  "Try outrunning a bullet once a day. That'll trim you down."
  
  The medical officer shook his head. "You Killmasters have the most gruesome sense of humor."
  
  "An occupational disease."
  
  He led me into a reaction chamber and sat me down. I was used to it. The chamber is a dark box. The man in it, me, holds a cord with a button and waits. A light appears and you press the button. The light can appear directly in front or at either side and it appears at random intervals. You can't time it beforehand and since you don't know where it will be, the peripheral vision gets a grueling workout. The reaction time — how fast you push the button after seeing the light — gets read out in thousandths of a second by a digital computer on the outside.
  
  And the tester doesn't say, "Ready? Go." The light appears and you push the button as if your life depends on it. Because, in a nasty way, it does. In the field, the lights shoot back.
  
  A pinpoint of light appeared at 80 degrees left. Already my thumb was down. My conscious mind was disengaged because thinking takes too long. This was strictly between my retina and my thumb.
  
  Another light from another awkward angle, and another. The test goes on for half an hour, although it seems like half a year when your eyes are dry from not blinking and the lights are appearing two and three at a time. You switch hands on the button because using one thumb produces a breakdown in the axons of the nervous system. Then, just in case you get confident, they make the lights dimmer and dimmer until you're straining for a glimmer the equivalent of a candle at a distance of three miles.
  
  Finally, when I was about to trade in my eyes for a used cane, the black sheet at the side was pulled away and the doctor stuck his head in.
  
  "Has anyone ever told you you have fantastic night vision?" he wanted to know.
  
  "Yes, someone a damn sight cuter than you."
  
  He seemed miffed by that.
  
  "Of course, it's not quite fair. I mean, you designed this yourself."
  
  That was true. I had created the reaction chamber during my last forced stay in AXE's infirmary. Occupational therapy was what Hawk called it.
  
  "Please sit down. There's one more series," the medico said.
  
  I found myself back in my chair in the chamber, wondering what the hell was going on. Now, the doctor said, I was to push the button as soon as I saw a red light. I wasn't supposed to do a thing if the light was green. In other words, no more simple motor response. This time it was judgment and reaction piled on top of each other, with the added fillip of using Red for Go and Green for Stop.
  
  By the time this torture ended, another half an hour had gone by and I was burning as I took my cramped self out of the chamber.
  
  "Look, Hawk worked up this little idea," I said as I emerged. "Let me tell you what you can do with it."
  
  Then I held my breath. My man was gone and in his place was a very cool, very smashing blonde. They'd put a white jacket on her too but somehow the effect was different, more like a tarpaulin over a pair of 12-inch naval guns. And if I was looking her over, she was returning the compliment.
  
  "Doctor Boyer was right. You are a remarkable specimen," she said coolly.
  
  "How long have you been here?" I demanded to know.
  
  "Since right after you went in. Doctor Boyer went to lunch."
  
  Typical.
  
  She looked down at her printout.
  
  "These are extraordinary times, N3."
  
  I can always tell when one of the girls in the agency wants to keep a relationship formal because that's when she will use my Killmaster rank. Actually, there is no N1 or N2 anymore; they were killed in the line of duty. At any rate, the blonde in the white jacket had obviously been filled in on the amorous exploits of Nick Carter — and she wanted no part of them.
  
  "Extraordinary times: .095, 090, .078, and so on. And not one slip on the green lights. Very fast and very sure. By the way, you're quite right, the colors were the director's idea."
  
  I bent over her shoulder and looked at the chart. If she thought I was concerned about the reaction times, she was wrong.
  
  "Well, Doctor Elizabeth Adams, if I'd known you were testing me, I would have made my responses slower so we could spend more time together."
  
  She ducked under my arm and stood up. The movement was neat, precise, no-fooling.
  
  "I've heard one or two things about you, N3. Enough to know you're just as fast with no lights on.
  
  I thought I detected a note of reluctant interest. Maybe she was just shy, not used to agents romping around in nothing but towels. Then:
  
  "You do exercises to keep in shape?" she asked, the professional veneer cracking a bit.
  
  "Yes, I do, Miss Adams. Elizabeth. Maybe I could show them to you sometime. Like sometime tonight perhaps?"
  
  "There's a rule about testers becoming involved with the agents."
  
  "This is not a proposal of marriage, Elizabeth. This is a proposition."
  
  For a moment I thought she might scream for Security. She frowned and bit her lips.
  
  "The director told me you were a very direct man," she said.
  
  "And what did the other girls around here tell you?"
  
  She was silent and then, marvel of marvels, she smiled. It was beautiful.
  
  "They used words like very fast and very sure, Mister Carter. Now," picking up her charts, "I'll send someone with your clothes. In the meantime, I'll think about our little discussion."
  
  Male chauvinist pig that I was, I whistled as I put my clothes back on and went to join the sardonic old man who ran the most efficient espionage agency in the world.
  
  I found Hawk in his office searching through his desk for one of the cheap cigars he loves to smoke. I took a seat and lit up one of my own gold-tipped cigarettes. The other agencies — Central Intelligence, Department of Defense, the FBI — put a lot of their money into interior decorating. AXE, to put it mildly, does not. We have the smallest budget and the dirtiest jobs, and Hawk's offices show it. Personally, I sometimes think he prefers it that way.
  
  He sat silently for a while. I don't press Hawk about getting to the point. In his roundabout way the old man is always dead center. Finally he reached over to his desk drawer and took out a sheet of paper. I recognized it immediately by its cheap grayish cast as the letterhead of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, otherwise known as the Soviet Committee for State Security, or simply the KGB.
  
  "A 'friendly' took this out of a politburo file," Hawk said as he handed it to me.
  
  I whistled when I saw by the date that the report was just two days old. Like I said, Hawk was not someone to ever be underestimated. The gist of the report was the really interesting part, though. Especially since it concerned yours truly.
  
  "It's wrong. It has me down for the Kraznoff affair okay but it has the Chumbi explosions assigned to a new Killmaster."
  
  "Exactly. I've had other reports from the same source. You'll be interested to know that the Russian estimate of AXE strength is more than double what it actually is. You account for five agents by yourself." A trace of a grin showed on his thin lips. "Don't get cocky. They say that I am 'the most twisted genius since Rasputin.' What I'm trying to get across is that the boys in Moscow have not been able to keep their eyes as open as they should."
  
  He had me sitting on the edge of my chair. I was hooked now and he knew it; and I was beginning to agree with the Russian estimate of his personality.
  
  "How would you like to have some lunch?" Hawk changed the subject.
  
  The commissary sent up trays of roast beef and cottage cheese with peach halves. Hawk gave me his roast beef and took my cottage cheese. He was welcome to it.
  
  "How do you like the Russians' analysis?" he asked.
  
  "I think it's a sign we're doing a good job."
  
  "What about them? How do you think the opposition is doing? I don't want any political mumbo jumbo from you, N3. I get that every time I ride in an elevator with anyone from the State Department. You've been hand-to-hand with these people for some time. What I want from you is an assessment of the quality of manpower the Reds have been putting against us."
  
  It was something I really hadn't given much thought to. Now that I did, some interesting things were coming to mind. Like the kid in the Chumbi Valley I didn't have the nerve to kill. And the confusion that let the Russian ballerina and me slip out of the heart of Moscow.
  
  "Damn it, sir, they're slipping."
  
  "Yes. N3, they are. Expanding operations around the world — the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, the Chinese border — has given the Russians more headaches than they'd ever imagined. They're in the big leagues now and they're finding the going a little tougher than they thought. They're having all sorts of logistical problems with their new airfields and ships and, most important, with a thin line of top agents that's getting thinner all the time."
  
  "Sir," I went direct, "would you mind telling me what you've been leading up to?"
  
  Hawk stuck a new cigar into his tight grin.
  
  "Not at all. How would you like the idea of renting yourself out to the Russians for a while?"
  
  I almost jumped out of my chair and then I said he was kidding.
  
  "Not a bit, N3. Maybe you haven't known it, but ever since you stepped into that reaction chamber this morning, you've been on a lease to the KGB."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Two
  
  
  
  
  We met the Russians on an abandoned civilian airfield in Delaware. There were three of us and three of them.
  
  Kasoff and I recognized each other immediately by our files. He was a well-dressed, elegant Muscovite, a tour director for Aeroflot when he wasn't on duty to the KGB. The two thugs with him weren't so elegant. Both looked as if they lifted weights at the same health club and bought their suits from the same pushcart.
  
  Besides Hawk and myself on our side there was AXE's Director of Special Effects and Editing, Dr. Thompson. He carried a box with the lettering, "Deluxe Formal Wear."
  
  "The famous Nick Carter. A pleasure to meet you." Kasoff said it as if he meant it.
  
  The cool spring breeze made his thugs' coats cling to the bulges under their armpits. They wore .32's from the size of the bulges. Despite the amiable greeting, I was conscious of what to do if things got ugly. I wouldn't be able to reach the Luger but I could eviscerate Kasoff and follow through across to the throat of the man to his left before anyone else could reach a gun. I'd take my chances from there. Maybe Kasoff read my thoughts because he raised his hands.
  
  "You're on our side now," he said in Russian. "Please, I know your reputation. That's why we asked for you especially."
  
  "Before we start talking, let's get comfortable," Hawk suggested.
  
  There was an empty terminal at the field. I was about to break the door open when Hawk produced a key. He always thinks of everything. There was even an urn of hot coffee waiting for us and Hawk did the honors of pouring the refreshment into paper cups.
  
  "You see, we Russians and you Americans, we agents on both sides, are merely pawns of our respective governments. A day ago, bitter enemies. Today, if you read the papers, we enjoy a billion-dollar trade agreement between Moscow and Washington. Trucks, turbines, grain. Instead of fighting a Cold War, our countries have become clients. The times are changing and we poor agents must change with them."
  
  "You have to remember that I read more than the papers," I said acidly. "Like the secret report on how you shot down an American plane over Turkey so you could capture an information drop from one of our satellites."
  
  Kasoff's eyes lit up momentarily.
  
  "That is off the track. The main thing is that in many parts of the world today American and Soviet interests are identical." He studied his manicured nails. "Like in Chile, for example. I trust your Spanish is as good as your Russian?"
  
  "My agent speaks half a dozen Spanish dialects," Hawk remarked and sipped his coffee. He wasn't boasting, just putting the Russian in his place.
  
  "Of course, of course. We have a very high regard for his abilities," Kasoff said quickly. "Very high."
  
  Then he went into his sales pitch without further ado. Chile now had a Marxist government; it was a country with strategic copper reserves. Moscow's problem was one the Russians were having to face all over the Communist world: their fight to the death with Red China. There was a new underground army, consisting of Maoist students and Chilean natives. They called themselves "MIRistas" and they were trying to take control of the Chilean government. The United States had already lost Chile to the Communist world and, with it, Chile's copper. The Soviet Union was willing to make that copper available to the world market again and at the same time promise no Marxist subversion of the neighboring South American nations.
  
  "After the Cuban missile crisis, we know just how much that promise is worth," I said dourly.
  
  "We all learned a lesson," Kasoff replied evenly. "Everyone but the mad-dog Chinese, that is."
  
  "Get to Belkev," Hawk told the Russian.
  
  "Ah, yes. Perhaps, Mister Carter, you remember the Castro tour of Chile. A new tour will start in two days, undertaken this time by our good comrade Alexander Belkev of the Ministry of the USSR. His object is to cement Russian trade agreements with the Allende regime. We have reason to believe that the MIRistas may try to cut his visit short by violent means, and here is where you come in. We want you to deliver something to Belkev when he arrives in Santiago."
  
  At this, Dr. Thompson opened his box, revealing an elegant-looking dinner suit. He displayed it with the pride of a new parent.
  
  "As you probably know, N3, the United States makes the best lightweight bulletproof vests in the world. The reason Castro looked so stout and dumpy when he was in Chile was that he was wearing the Russian model, no offense intended. The model we see here was created for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations when it had to protect some Asian leaders of slight build. Feel it."
  
  I took the jacket in my hands. Despite the shields in its front and back, it couldn't have weighed more than six pounds.
  
  "We added the back shield especially for Belkev. The normal vest has only one in front. Inside there are overlapping Teflon-coated plastic plates. They will withstand direct shots from a .45-caliber automatic pistol. In fact, the coat will withstand a bullet from any known handgun."
  
  Kasoff eyed the vest with envy. I could remember a few times when I could have used it myself.
  
  "And you want me to deliver this to Belkev? That's all?"
  
  "Deliver it and fit it on him. Regrettably, the comrade is a suspicious man," Kasoff said with a straight face. "We felt that he would put more trust in this mutual arrangement between our countries if someone on as high a level as yourself performed this mission. It is a small thing to ask and it will go far in affirming American-Soviet cooperation and trust."
  
  A breeze flitted through the terminal's dilapidated walls, but there was no wind strong enough to ever blow away the stink of this proposal. It allowed the perfect setup for someone to collect a hundred thousand on the head of Nick Carter. Only my confidence in Hawk kept me from telling Kasoff right there that he could stuff the vest up his Aeroflot fuselage.
  
  "And when I deliver this plastic suit to Belkev, my job is done?"
  
  "Precisely," Kasoff murmured like a cat with canary feathers on its lips. Then he turned to Hawk. "Carter will be in Santiago by five o'clock tomorrow evening, right? There is to be a reception for Comrade Belkev at the Presidential Palace tomorrow night."
  
  "He will be there," Hawk replied. I could see that Kasoff wasn't going to get any details.
  
  The Russian took the rebuff in good grace, as why shouldn't he? He shook my hand.
  
  "Good luck, tovarisch. Maybe we will meet again sometime."
  
  "I'd like that," I said. In a dark alley, I wanted to add.
  
  On the way back from the airfield I tried to get the lowdown from Hawk. We sat alone in the back of his limousine. Dr. Thompson was up front with the chauffeur. The glass partition was up and the intercom was cut off.
  
  "You will fly by Air Force jet to Santiago. We still have good relations with the Chilean military and you'll get all the cooperation from them you need, within their constitutional limits."
  
  "I still don't understand why you have to send me as a delivery boy, sir."
  
  Hawk looked out the window at the Delaware countryside. The dark earth was emerging from winter and there were scattered patches of pale grass over the fields.
  
  That part of it doesn't seem important, I know," he said softly. "There's a lot more involved than Belkev's vest. Even with that contraption, the man will be vulnerable. He's going to be followed and who knows what will be tried on him? Certainly the MIRistas will try anything to put him away, in which case Soviet-American relations could really go into a nosedive." He shrugged. "That's about all I can tell you. If everything goes well, you'll be back home in two days. If not, you'll get the rest of your orders in Santiago."
  
  There was one more if he wasn't mentioning but we both understood it. This way, if I were captured by the Russians and tortured, I wouldn't be able to tell them any more about the Santiago mission even if I wanted to.
  
  "Incidentally, I can add this much," Hawk went on. "If the Russians do break their promise, Kasoff won't five to the next day. If you remember, he let me use his lighter to fight my cigar with. He's got a new fighter now. It looks exactly like his own but it contains a radio-triggered pack of plastique explosive and the casing is of anti-personnel darts. It will kill him if he's in the same room with it.
  
  It's that kind of cold comfort that a Killmaster calls happiness.
  
  Because I was flying in a supersonic military jet to Santiago, I still had a few hours left before takeoff. Hawk had to attend a meeting with Naval Intelligence and so I was alone in my AXE office when a soft knock came at the door. Doctor Elizabeth Adams opened it and walked in.
  
  "I've thought about your proposition," she said airily.
  
  So much had happened since the session at the reaction chamber that I scarcely remembered what she was talking about. I didn't have to.
  
  She locked the door behind her and took off the white jacket and a second later she was naked and letting down her long, blonde hair.
  
  We made love there on my desk, the pile of memos and reports crackling under our bodies.
  
  Somewhere along the line someone had put a white jacket on this female and told her she was nothing but an unfeeling brain. Now that the white jacket was off, so were all her inhibitions. Memory of Kasoff and the vest faded like a bad dream, a nightmare washed away by the silky skin of her passion.
  
  I'd heard you were good but not anything like this," she whispered.
  
  "You're not so bad yourself, Doctor."
  
  "Elizabeth, please."
  
  "Liz."
  
  Her fingertips trailed down across my back. "I mean… well, this has been fantastic." She kissed my ear.
  
  Then, as she began to disengage herself, Kasoff came back to mind, along with the realization that I was late for a briefing on Chile's top-dog Reds. I sighed and got to my feet.
  
  Elizabeth watched me with wide eyes. Even naked I still wore the ugly Luger on my left side, the stiletto in its sheath on my left forearm and the gas bomb taped to the hollow of my right ankle. Symbols of active duty.
  
  "Then it's true," she said. "There was a rumor that you had a new assignment. That's why I decided to come when I did."
  
  "Well," I said, looking at her beautiful body sprawled over the mess of papers on my desk, "you certainly did that."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Three
  
  
  
  
  Santiago is like most of the large capitals of South America. It is a spread-out city of modern, unfinished buildings next to timeless ghettos, of wide avenues basking in the sun and narrow byways where the dark faces of Indians glower with the repression of centuries. Santiago was once the showcase of democracy in South America, where even a Communist could win a fair election.
  
  There are only ten million people in Chile but a million of them five in Santiago. The whole country is no deeper than the western edge of the Andes Mountains, just 250 miles across at its widest point; but Chile stretches out for 2,650 miles and makes up half of the entire continent's western coast. You couldn't find a better base for subversion if you could draw the map yourself.
  
  The people are sick of the Reds. Wait until the next election, then you'll see," explained the Chilean Army colonel who met me at the airport.
  
  "If there is a next election," I volunteered.
  
  The colonel delivered me to a new, bone-white hotel that soared above Santiago's busiest avenue. It had been taken over by the government from its American owner just the week before, the colonel told me. The Belkev delegation was going to have the top two floors all to itself.
  
  A maid showed me into my room. It looked as if I were the first guest to ever use it, a suspicion that was confirmed later when I learned that the hotel had been nationalized on the day it was finished. I locked the door and opened the windows. Twenty floors below cars crawled up and down the avenue, policemen motioned frantically and pedestrians jaywalked. The only sign of the change in Chile that I could see from where I stood was the large red banner that hung on the wall of a building across the street. It proclaimed: The Heroic Chilean People Will Not Rest Until Every Yankee Is Dead Or Driven From Our Country. It was a big banner.
  
  I checked my watch. I had two hours until Belkev's triumphal entry into the capital and I was dead tired from the flight. I put the lights on low and slipped into a second-level Zen trance.
  
  "Señor."
  
  I came out of the semiconscious state and looked at my watch again. Only twenty minutes had gone by.
  
  "Señor, an important message for you," the voice outside my room told me.
  
  "Put it under the door."
  
  Hesitation. The sound of feet shifting. More than one of them. I was wide awake now, slipping off the bed and moving to the side of the door as I drew out the Luger.
  
  So far the conversation had been in Spanish. Now my caller tried Russian.
  
  "I can change money for you. Rubles or dollars. Many more escudos than the official rate."
  
  "No comprendo."
  
  More shuffling of feet outside.
  
  "This room has been reserved for someone else. You must leave immediately," the voice announced.
  
  I tried the phone. It was dead but that didn't necessarily mean a thing, not in a South American hotel. At the same time someone was twisting the doorknob without success. His effort gave me an idea. There was a door to the adjoining room. It was locked but I shivved it open with a plastic credit card. One more benefit of capitalism. I entered a suite that was identical to mine. Then, gently, I opened the door to the hall.
  
  There were two of them, big boys wearing open-collared white shirts and carrying iron bars that they'd probably brought in under their belts.
  
  "What's the message, muchachos?"
  
  They saw the Luger first and then me. They didn't drop the iron bars, I give them credit for that.
  
  "He's a Yanqui," one said venomously. "He won't shoot."
  
  "You don't rule us anymore, pig. Touch us and the people in the street will tear you apart."
  
  They advanced through the hall toward me. This is one of the problems in dealing with amateurs. They never know when you're serious. Any rational Russian would have been meekly humming the "Volga Boatman" by this time.
  
  "Anybody on the floor downstairs?" I asked as they neared me.
  
  "Nobody. Nobody who will save you," the first one snarled.
  
  "That's fine."
  
  The left front of the first one's shoe blew apart. He looked down in shock at the place where two of his toes had been. Now there was just a hole in the carpet.
  
  "Positive there's nobody?" I asked again and aimed at his right foot.
  
  "Wait!"
  
  The iron bar fell from his hand to the floor. The second brute let go of his weapon also. I put the gun back in its holster and shook my left arm. The stiletto dropped into my hand. The boy in the rear took one look at that and turned to run.
  
  "Please don't do that," I asked.
  
  This time they seemed to believe me. At least they spread-eagled very agreeably against the wall when I touched their bodies lightly with the knife's tip.
  
  "You see, you've done all sorts of bad things, boys," I explained patiently as I frisked them. "You don't even know me and you insult me. For all you know, I'm a great guy. You offer to exchange money and the two of you don't have a hundred escudos between you. And, worst of all, you wake me up when I'm asleep. Insults, lies and rudeness, and I haven't even been in this city for an hour. Now I certainly hope you can make this up to me. I said, I hope you can make this up to me."
  
  One of them got the hint.
  
  "H… how?"
  
  "Tell me why you did all this."
  
  "We're just workers. We don't know anything about politics. Now look at me, madre mia, no toes. What am I going to tell my wife? We don't know anything, we were just paid some money. I'm bleeding to death, señor. You're a madman."
  
  "No, just a professional, which is what you're not."
  
  I was relieved to know it. One little skin cut and they babbled, not that they knew much. I felt so sorry for them that I gave them back their iron bars and watched them slink off muttering about the loco Norteamericano.
  
  The Garcia brothers were two small-time punks who often worked for the Movimiento Izquierdo Revolutionario (MIR). Today their bosses were at the airport waiting for Belkev and so when an unexpected lone guest checked into the Belkev floors, the brothers thought they would do some investigating. What was most interesting was that they had hoped to learn Belkev's itinerary around the country, a schedule that the Chilean government had been keeping a close secret. In all, I found the incident mildly refreshing and informative. Better than a nap, even.
  
  If only I'd known how cute the Garcia boys were when compared to Alexander Belkev.
  
  Comrade Belkev came down the avenue in a limousine with President Allende and his Minister of the Economy. By this time the government's Communist wing had brought out just enough civil servants to line the streets and wave back at the grinning Russian visitor. Maybe it was the lack of good red meat in the nation's stores that accounted for the people's dreary cheering.
  
  Then Belkev was getting out of his car, surrounded by bodyguards, and entering the hotel. When the presidential limousine drove off, more cars pulled up, carrying Belkev's entourage. Instantly my mind went back to the briefing notes I had received at AXE headquarters:
  
  Alexander Alexandrovitch Belkev, age 45, height 5' 7", weight 210. Born Volgograd. Educated Volgograd Gymnasium, Moscow School of Mines. War service, Assistant Political Commissar 1944-45, relieved of duty for participation in atrocities in Berlin sector. Rehabilitation and installation in Soviet Party Congress, 1954, as young apparitchnik in Krushchev clique. Switched to Brezhnev after coup. Cunning, violent bureaucrat who has lost appointment to Permanent Politburo due to shocking sexual appetites.
  
  
  
  It was a damned ironic biography. During the capture of Berlin, Russian soldiers had run amok, murdering and raping throughout the city. What on earth could Belkev have done that singled him out? Another odd point was more understandable. The leaders of the Kremlin might plot the death of millions, but they were invariably sexual prudes. How often those two characteristics — murder and sex — went hand in hand!
  
  I grabbed the attaché case containing Belkev's vest and went upstairs to his suite. The first thing I saw proved that Alexander Belkev, at least, was no prude.
  
  He was sitting on a sofa stripped to the waist, rolls of fat hanging over his belt. He had a surly, badly shaven face. His skin was as white as the belly of a frog and it glistened with oil, oil being rubbed into it by the hands of a beautiful girl. And there was more than one girl. The one with the oil was East German, judging by her accent. Two Cuban girls were pouring Johnny Walker into glasses at a bar, and a Russian brunette lolled over an easy chair, her eyes glazed with either drink or drug.
  
  "The man they call Killmaster," Belkev roared. "Come in."
  
  "I have the vest for you."
  
  He smiled and slid his hand along the German girl's thigh.
  
  "I have no time for vests now."
  
  I dropped the attaché case onto the coffee table in front of him and flipped it open.
  
  "Come on, let's get this over with."
  
  Belkev's hand stopped its stroking. His white skin turned red and he stood up shouting.
  
  "We get nothing over with until I want to. Maybe yesterday you were the famous Nick Carter. Today you are nothing more than another hireling from the KGB under my orders! You are dirt for me to step on if I want to. When I am satisfied with the vest, then you can go back to your America. I do not intend to try it on now. I am busy."
  
  My hand itched to reach out for that tire of blubber and heave it across the room.
  
  "When do you intend to try it on?" I asked grimly.
  
  "We will see about that. In the meantime, you are my private spy, Mister Carter. Alexander Belkev's private Killmaster."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Four
  
  
  
  
  La Moneda, the Presidential Palace, was lit up like a Christmas tree for the reception. Crack soldiers in the Fuerza Mobil lined the gates and patrolled the palace grounds with enough American-issue submachine guns to put down a small revolution. A lieutenant stopped me for a frisking as I emerged from the car. Belkev slapped his hand away.
  
  "Comrade Carter is with me," he boasted.
  
  Entering, we passed an honor guard in plumed helmets. A doughty man with a mustache whom I recognized as Dr. Salvador Allende, President of the Republic of Chile, welcomed Belkev and showed him to his place in the reception line. I took myself and my attaché case off among the potted palms.
  
  Dignitaries were arriving by the carload. Ambassadors, ministers, generals and the whole politburo of the Chilean Communist Party came by in tails and uniforms to greet the Russian. Star treatment was given to the Cuban ambassador and no wonder. Just six years earlier Dr. Allende had been the leader of OLAS, a Havana-based guerrilla front. He was the man who escorted the remnants of Che Guevara's guerrilla band over the Bolivian border.
  
  I took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and leaned against a marble wall, feeling about as comfortable as a bug in a Venus fly trap.
  
  "Señor Carter, do you think you could get me a glass too?"
  
  It was one of the Cuban girls from Belkev's harem. Her long black hair was drawn back into a mane that reached her buttocks and somehow she had snuggled herself into a sequin dress so tight that it would have given a man the bends. She had olive skin and dark eyes, and if there were a sexier woman in the Presidential Palace, I didn't see her.
  
  "How would a bottle do?"
  
  She was every bit as bored as I was. Together we went into the ballroom and found a table where the magnums stood in ranks.
  
  "I'm afraid Alejandro doesn't like you," she said.
  
  "Alexander, you mean? I guess not, which makes us even. Do you like him?"
  
  It didn't take much champagne to loosen her tongue. A sympathetic ear was all she really needed.
  
  "My sister and I were in the Women's Militia in Havana when Alejandro saw us. We were ordered to make him comfortable."
  
  "Did you?"
  
  She made a wry face.
  
  "Anyway, it's better than the Militia."
  
  Rosa and her sister Bonita were daughters of a Cuban family that had owned one of Havana's hottest nightspots when Castro closed the city down. They were incredibly beautiful females, sporting all the necessary talents and tastes for the wide-open life of Las Vegas, and their attributes were ebing sorely wasted on the gross appetites, of Alexander Belkev.
  
  "I am twenty years old and Bonita is twenty-two. From the age of five we have been trained as flamenco dancers and singers of the cante jondo."
  
  "Things are tough all over."
  
  "You don't believe me. You think I am just some slut of Belkev's, don't you? Come dance and I'll show you."
  
  I gestured at the attaché in my hand.
  
  "Sorry."
  
  The orchestra had been busily playing all this time, hacking out mostly sedate waltzes that even the most arthritic diplomat could follow. Rosa, fire in her eye, marched over to the bandleader and whispered in his ear. The man nodded and grinned and then spoke to his musicians.
  
  When the band struck up, Strauss had been dropped for a fiery flamenco beat. Rosa raised one hand high over her head and snapped her fingers. Her tight dress strained over her full breasts and sinuous body. Immediately the Latin came out in the crowd, and they circled around her, clapping with enthusiasm.
  
  Rosa's eyes stayed on mine as her heel clicked on the ballroom floor in staccato. Her sexuality filled the great room, making it pulse in time with the guitars. As she twisted her body around, her long black mane swirled through the air, lashing out like a whip. With hundreds of eyes focused on her, she danced only for me. I was her challenge. When she pulled her skirt up for the tempestuous climax, I saw her fine dancer's legs, slim and tapering like a young thoroughbred's. When she ended with her hands high in the air, the room exploded with applause, mine included.
  
  Every man there must have dreamed of taking her physically on the spot, and eyes followed her when she came back to me. I had a cold magnum of champagne waiting for her.
  
  "Do you believe me now, Señor Killmaster?"
  
  "I believe you and I toast you. To Rosa, the bellisima of the ball."
  
  "And to you," she raised her glass, "the first man I ever wanted to dance for desnuda."
  
  Desnuda means naked, and I could just imagine what affect a nude and dancing Rosa would have on my senses.
  
  The band had gone back to waltzes. It stopped abruptly and slipped into the national anthem of the republic. At this everyone turned toward the entrance of the ballroom where the president had just entered with Belkev. Allende accepted the honor patiently and with good humor. Belkev's small eyes scanned the ballroom until they found Rosa and they narrowed when they saw that she was with me.
  
  If anything, the President looked relieved when the Russian left his side. Belkev bulled his way through the dancers to Rosa's side.
  
  "What are you doing with this imperialist murderer?" he demanded.
  
  Rosa shrugged her lovely shoulders.
  
  "You yourself said he was your private spy, so why shouldn't I be with him? Besides, he's very kind."
  
  "You stay away from her," Belkev ordered me in Russian. "That's an order."
  
  "I don't understand. He's an Yankee. How can you tell him what to do?" Rosa asked with all the obstinacy of someone who has had too much champagne.
  
  "He is nothing but a paid killer. I am a minister and I give the orders."
  
  "Put a gold medal on a pig and you still have a pig," I commented in Cuban Spanish.
  
  Rosa giggled so hard that she almost dropped her glass. Belkev grew furious and asked her what I said.
  
  "He's a naughty man," she teased.
  
  "Rosa, your thighs are a cool river and I am very thirsty," I continued.
  
  "Very naughty," her laughter burst out.
  
  People had begun to look at us and Belkev was finding it difficult to control himself.
  
  "You keep quiet and stay away from my woman," he ordered me again.
  
  "I'll leave you alone altogether if you'll just take this vest that I've been trying to give you." I lifted up the attaché case for him to see.
  
  "That stupid thing. Why should I worry about it?"
  
  "Belkev," I said with no humor in my voice, "if I weren't on a different kind of assignment right now, I could kill you." Suddenly my Luger was nudging his tubby gut, the movement hidden from the rest of the reception guests. "Kill you without a second thought and you couldn't do anything about it."
  
  "You're insane!"
  
  "You're the second person to say that today. No, I'm not crazy, I'm just fed up with playing games with you. If you don't accept this vest now, I'm walking out. I'll just tell your superiors that you refused to cooperate."
  
  Belkev looked down at the shaft of metal hard against his belly. He cooled off and I could almost see him thinking.
  
  "All right, Carter, I'll try it on. Anything to get rid of you."
  
  The Luger went back in its holster and we went out a side door. With a glance Belkev picked up the Russian ambassador and a pair of his bodyguards. Rosa trailed behind.
  
  Once we were out in the corridor, Belkev asked the ambassador if the Russians had the run of the palace.
  
  "Anything you want. Those are the president's wishes."
  
  Excellent. Where could we find a place of great privacy?"
  
  The ambassador was a thin, dyspeptic individual. In his tuxedo he looked like a strung-out, worried corpse.
  
  "I understand that our hosts might take it amiss if we invaded a government office. However, there is a large, unused basement under the palace where political prisoners used to be held."
  
  "I don't think we need that," I interjected.
  
  "But I think we do," Belkev said. "After our little transaction, you can go on your way. I won't need you anymore."
  
  A Chilean palace guard let us into a narrow stairway. The main areas of the Presidential Palace might have been lit and alive, but the stairway and the basement it led to were right out of a horror movie. Light bulbs in metal cages lit a stinking corridor. The sound of the orchestra was gone, the tinkle of champagne glasses was absent and all we heard were the sounds of our heels and the stealthy scurrying of rats.
  
  "Here," the guard said. I noticed that his collar tab carried the red insignia of the Chilean Communist Party. That meant he wasn't regular military and I couldn't expect any favors from him. He opened an iron door.
  
  There were no electric lights inside. Instead, a battery-powered lamp threw a dim circle. I saw on the far wall two rusty manacles hanging from the stone blocks. This wasn't a room, it was a dungeon.
  
  "What the hell are you up to?" I asked. As I turned, I found out. The ambassador's bodyguards were leveling their automatics at my heart.
  
  "Ask a stupid question…" I answered myself out loud. "By the way, killing me puts the death sentence on some of your own boys. That won't make you very popular when you get home."
  
  "Frankly, Mister Carter, I think we would be only too willing to swap a dozen bodies for yours. Killing you is not what I have in mind, however. Open your case."
  
  I have to give Belkev credit for that move. I was the only man in all of South America who knew how to open the attaché case without blowing himself up. There was no key to the lock; the device was nothing but an electric contact attached to a fragmentation explosive. I took out a plastic pin and slid it under the lid; the case popped open.
  
  "You see, Rosa, I do understand the Killmaster," he grunted, motioning the bodyguards forward. "He has a gun and a knife strapped to his left arm. It's all in his file."
  
  They took off my jacket and shirt, removed the two weapons and then dragged me to the wall. Each of them clamped one of my hands into a manacle.
  
  "How do you like it, Killmaster?" Belkev gloated. "Being tied up like a goat? Even dying as a member of the KGB instead of your beloved AXE?"
  
  "I thought you said you weren't going to kill me.
  
  "Oh, I'm not. You have to understand that I never liked this idea about accepting a bullet-proof vest from you Americans. I mean, what if the vest were not bullet-proof? What if I went out in a crowd thinking it was and got shot down by the first fool with a pistol? Wouldn't that be a cute trick for AXE to play? I would be dead and you would be safe in your airplane. No, I am not that naïve, Mister Carter. You are going to have to prove to me how good your vest really is."
  
  "How can he do that while he's chained to a wall?" Rosa asked.
  
  "Very simply," Belkev replied. "If he is still alive, I will take the vest. If he is not, I will send the vest back with his body."
  
  A cold feeling surged through my guts. What if this whole scheme were Hawk's planning? Would he have set Belkev up with a phony vest? I knew that Hawk's mind was always full of devious ideas and if this one backfired, I would be the first one to know about it.
  
  The bodyguards took the vest out of the case and strapped it around my chest. It felt even fighter than it did when I had held it in my hands at the airport in Delaware. I wondered if it was even sturdy enough to deflect a .22 short, let alone a hunk of lead from an automatic.
  
  "Consider yourself an American salesman, Killmaster. Sell me your product."
  
  "I couldn't interest you in a vacuum cleaner, could I?"
  
  The Chinean guard handed Belkev his .45. Belkev pushed the carriage back, moving the first shell into place.
  
  "Always a sense of humor," he commented drily.
  
  He aimed the bulky gun at the center of my chest. No one said a word; even the rats were suddenly quiet. I remembered that the .45 automatic had been created to kill by shock when the U.S. Marines found their regular handguns couldn't stop berserk Huk tribesmen during the Phillipine insurrection. Odd facts like that come to mind when you're looking down the barrel of a .45, and all you can do is to hold as still as you can.
  
  There was a flash and simultaneously a gigantic fist slammed me into the wall. My ribs felt as though they were on fire, and I had no breath. My stomach heaved up against my throat. Then there was the click of the new shell sliding into position. My head bobbed drunkenly.
  
  I didn't see the gun this time but I did see a black star explode on the jacket over my heart. The heart skipped a beat and my lungs ached for air. When I looked at Belkev and the others, I couldn't get them into focus. I heard Rosa's horrified scream and dimly saw Belkev's toady grin. My legs jerked like a puppet's as I tried to regain my balance.
  
  No blood, I told myself. Just shock and lack of air. I'm alive.
  
  "The vest seems to do its job," Belkev sighed. "However, there is no guarantee that someone will try to kill me with a handgun. I wish to see how the garment stands up to a machine gun."
  
  "Comrade, the agreement was very exact," the ambassador intervened. Belkev's taste for the grotesque was beginning to frighten him. "The Americans made no claim about anything like a machine gun."
  
  "A submachine gun," Belkev corrected himself. "A little one."
  
  The Chilean guard was dispatched to bring the weapon. Belkev helped himself to one of my cigarettes and then slid an arm around Rosa's waist.
  
  "You like my taste in women; I like your taste in cigarettes."
  
  "What happened in Berlin, Belkev?" I spit the words out with my first gasp of air. "What did you do in the war that made them break you?"
  
  He wasn't surprised or upset. He was proud.
  
  "It was just a little game, a game much like this. But the poor fools had no bulletproof vests. There would have been no trouble if I hadn't killed a comrade by mistake. I was merely having a good time and drinking. You understand."
  
  "Yeah, I understand."
  
  "Naturally. How many men have you killed? A hundred? Two hundred?"
  
  "Not like this. Not the fat coward's way."
  
  He flushed, then regained his composure. "It's much more difficult to aim with a machine gun, you know," he said.
  
  The guard came back with the gun Belkev wanted. Belkev checked it over to see that the magazine was a full one and then released the safety. It would be so easy, so easy, his eyes told me. Even if the vest didn't rip apart under the unfair test, with the tiniest hitch of the shoulder, the spray of bullets would cross my face.
  
  "Please be careful," the ambassador pleaded.
  
  That goes double, I thought. I didn't say anything, though.
  
  Belkev ground the cigarette out under his foot and cushioned the automatic rifle against his stomach. "Against any known handgun," a voice echoed in my brain. Rosa sobbed. Belkev squeezed the trigger as if he were making love to it.
  
  The first slugs hit the wall to my right and beat out a pattern toward me. Too high! I thought. Stone shards sliced my arm. Then the spray was coming directly at eye level. I snapped my face away from a shot that smacked beside my ear. I waited between milliseconds for the next bullet, for the one that would spread my skull up to the ceiling.
  
  Instead, the vest started dancing, bucking and straining under the hot hail of the submachine gun. Again the air was kicked clear out of my lungs. My legs stiffened desperately to keep me from pitching headfirst into that deadly rain. The erratic pattern moved off to the wall on my left side, tearing apart the stone.
  
  Belkev's finger never left the trigger for a second and he swung the submachine gun back to me. The fabric of the vest was completely ripped from the plastic plates, plates that were now distorted and pockmarked. Dead slugs made grooves around my neck. I managed to catch Belkev's eyes. They weren't even in the dungeon. They were back in Berlin, back watching the jiggling bodies of the German prisoners he had mutilated beyond recognition. The submachine gun wasn't going to wander again. Blow after blow smashed against me, further bending the plates, threatening to penetrate them.
  
  I managed to keep from falling. Then I realized that he was no longer going for my face. The fine of bullets were ripping right down the center of the vest, traveling down past my chest to my stomach and parts below. Because the vest had been made for Belkev's girth, it nearly covered me to the groin. That was exactly what Belkev had noticed and that was exactly how he was going to put an end to Nick Carter; no orders from above could stop him now from reliving his greatest triumph. The slugs were already pelting against the lower edge of the battered vest. I knew there was no more protection — and no more hope.
  
  Belkev lowered the barrel the last significant inch, aiming it directly between my legs. His face was sweaty and gleaming. Nothing happened. He squeezed the trigger again. Then he ripped the magazine off.
  
  "It's empty. Get me another one!" he roared at the guard.
  
  The hypnotic spell that had built in the dungeon was broken. The ambassador shook his head bluntly. Even the bodyguards appeared sick from tension.
  
  "It will look very strange. It is one thing to borrow a gun," the guard said, "but to ask for more ammunition will make trouble."
  
  "Comrade, we must return to the reception," the ambassador chimed in. "We are gone too long already. It would be an insult if we are missing."
  
  "I'm not finished!" Belkev shouted.
  
  "Please, please, remember yourself, Comrade Belkev. You've proved your point. The vest works." The ambassador glanced at me and looked quickly away. I wondered what kind of a sight I made. "Now I must insist that we return. The Maoist bandits would make only too much of your absence. They are probably this moment trying to turn the president against you."
  
  The submachine gun fell from Belkev's hands to the stone floor. He shook himself and wiped the perspiration from his jowls with a handkerchief. Rosa started to come to me and the ambassador pushed her back into the grip of the bodyguards.
  
  "Come, comrade," the ambassador said soothingly. "Regain your self-control. Tell me, what did the president say to you in the reception line? Tell me all about it."
  
  He nodded to one of the bodyguards. The goon crossed the floor and stripped the vest off me.
  
  "Loathsome pig," he whispered as he left me manacled to the wall.
  
  If it was any consolation, I knew he wasn't talking about me.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Five
  
  
  
  
  A pair of regular Army officers took me back to my hotel room in a curtained limousine. They fussed around me apologetically until I chased them out and attended to the job myself.
  
  My arms were crisscrossed with superficial cuts and there were some burns around my neck made by dying bullets. But the ugly part came when I looked at my chest and stomach. I looked as if I had been caught in a stampede. There were a hundred blackening bruises; I felt around tenderly for signs of broken ribs. I've seen a lot of badly mutilated bodies and for a fleeting moment I had an all-too-vivid picture of my own body, mutilated, had the vest failed. My stomach turned over.
  
  Belkev! If I could ever get my hands on him, he was going to be a dead Minister of Trade.
  
  A few shots of Scotch returned the circulation to my aching body. Every movement brought a new agony and a new reason for me to skin the Russian alive. I tried to sleep but without a pain killer, it was impossible and so I was wide awake when I saw the doorknob turn. Despite the protest from my bruised muscles, I slipped out of bed to the side of the door.
  
  A figure entered, holding a gun. My hand came down like an ax over the intruder's wrist and the gun flew across the floor. One arm went around his neck, cutting off his breath, and the other went around his torso to grab what I expected to be Comrade Belkev's corpulent chest.
  
  My hand had barely made contact when I knew I had the wrong man. In fact, it was not a man at all. I turned her around, my hand clamped over her mouth. It was Rosa.
  
  "You were supposed to finish me off?" I asked with some surprise.
  
  She shook her head negatively and I saw anger instead of fear. I took my hand away.
  
  "You are wrong about me again. I was worried about you. I slipped away from Alejandro when he got drunk and I was bringing this back to you."
  
  I turned the lights on and bent down to pick up the gun. It was empty. When I stood up, Rosa was pulling the long stiletto from its hiding place between her breasts. She turned it, handle out, and gave it to me.
  
  "Gracias."
  
  "Look at you, poor man. You should be in a hospital."
  
  Timidly she reached out to touch my chest and then drew her hand back quickly.
  
  "The beast!" she hissed and proceeded to further vehement appraisals of Belkev's character.
  
  "Well, we agree on that. Alex Belkev is not Albert Schweitzer."
  
  "What do you do now? Kill him?"
  
  She saw how much the thought tempted me. I shook my head.
  
  "Not this time. Tomorrow I return to the States."
  
  "Take me with you. Me and my sister."
  
  That suggestion made me blink.
  
  "It's not that I disagree with Fidel's revolution," she said hurriedly. "It's just that I am a dancer, not a militia woman. Remember the bandleader? I knew him from the time he used to play at my father's place. There are hundreds of other people I know in New York. If I could just get there, I wouldn't be any trouble. I could work at night and keep house for you during the day."
  
  "I have a houseboy who does that right now. I think he'd resent the competition."
  
  "You won't take me?"
  
  "I can't. Maybe at another time."
  
  Some of the spirit seemed to leave her. I poured a fresh drink for myself and made one for her.
  
  "Where is Belkev right now?" I asked.
  
  "At a party. He thinks there is a wife of one of the ministers he can seduce. He is a lecher."
  
  It was spring in the United States. Here in Chile it was the start of fall. A cool breeze traveled the length of Bernardo O'Higgins Boulevard and wafted into the room. With a sigh Rosa finished her drink and put it down.
  
  "I have to go."
  
  "Don't. Stay here tonight."
  
  A smile broke through her melancholy.
  
  "I didn't think you'd be able to do anything in your present condition."
  
  "You forget. He ran out of bullets."
  
  "Yes, he did."
  
  Rosa was smiling broadly now. She crossed the room to the door, locked it and turned the fights out. In the gloom I heard her dress rustle to the floor and dimly saw her step out of the white haze of her panties.
  
  I lay back on the sheets as Rosa delicately straddled me. Her ripe breasts swayed and touched my chest soothingly as she leaned over to kiss me. Our mouths opened and we kissed deeply, our passion driving away the ugliness of the night. The discipline of dancing had given her body a unique muscular control and she was an erotic mixture of cool and warm, hard and soft.
  
  All the romance of Havana as it used to be was encompassed in Rosa's beauty and skill. My body felt no more pain. I had just that sort of enormous sexual hunger you have only when you're with a woman who you know can satisfy it. The entire nightmare of the Chilean mission was made worthwhile by knowing her that night.
  
  "Oh, señor," she shivered with delight.
  
  I held her satiny, olive hips as she sank down to meet me.
  
  "There's no Belkev now," I whispered. "No AXE, no KGB. Just us. You said you wanted to dance for me. Dance now."
  
  The pale illumination from outside the window curved over her face and streaked down her breasts and belly. In my hands her hips twisted and surged, nearly driving me off the bed yet drawing me deeper and deeper into her.
  
  "Make it last. Make it last forever," she begged.
  
  Her thighs suddenly engulfed me and a hot, searing sensation spread through me. Blindly I released into Rosa all my pent-up fury. And in the act of love the tension and the anger was changed into something else, something sweet and thirst-quenching, something that both of us needed badly.
  
  Later the night air cooled our bodies. My head rested on one of her thighs and we shared a glass of Scotch that was balanced between her breasts.
  
  "You cannot believe how good that was for me, Nick." She said it so softly that it was almost as though she were talking to herself. "When a girl travels with a man like Belkev…"
  
  I turned my head and looked past the valley between her breasts, past the glass and to her face.
  
  "You don't have to say any more, Rosa."
  
  She reached down to touch my cheek.
  
  "I'll dance for you anytime, anyway you like. I could love a man such as you."
  
  "Shhh."
  
  She laughed easily, good-humoredly.
  
  "You're very kind for a man with the name of Killmaster. I hope that sometime you will come to Cuba."
  
  "I don't know when, but I'll drink to that."
  
  I lifted the glass from her chest. It left a wet ring between her breasts and I leaned over to kiss the spot. Rosa's arms went around me.
  
  "Would you mind doing it again?" she asked. "If it would cause you too much discomfort…"
  
  "Occupational therapy," I averred. "My boss is a firm believer in it."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Six
  
  
  
  
  The plane that was waiting for me at the military base outside Santiago was a Chilean Air Force Shooting Star. I expressed some surprise about this but since the pilot had the right password, I accepted the pressure suit and helmet and climbed into the back of the jet.
  
  "I thought an American plane would be waiting for me," I remarked through the intercom.
  
  "There were rumors that something had happened to an American at the palace last night. If you leave in this way, no one will notice. I have to cut off now and talk to the tower."
  
  The staccato conversation between pilot and control tower sounds the same in any language. I listened just enough to catch that we had a flight path for a Pacific patrol, which meant that the plane would probably touch down a little way up the coast where I would meet my regular contact.
  
  "Azul Número Cinco Cinco Tres, tiene permission…"
  
  The last words of the voice in the tower were wiped out by the roar of the jet's engines. The Shooting Star's wings undulated as we rolled out onto the strip. Like the weaponry of every Latin American nation, with the exception of Cuba, it had been bought secondhand from the United States at cut-rate prices. Unlike some other nations, though, the Chileans kept their planes polished to a high gleam inside and out.
  
  My head snapped back as the jet rocketed down the airstrip. For a moment the friction of the earth held us and then we were climbing into the blue skies that Chile's national anthem sings about. At 10,000 feet the pressure eased a bit and the plane's nose ducked low enough for me to see that we were making a pass directly over the capital.
  
  "Callampas, mushroom huts," the pilot said as we approached a thick, dark fringe of hovels at the edge of the city. "We call them that because they sprang up overnight. When Allende became president, all the poor people from the villages came to Santiago because they thought he would give them money and land. They've been living there for two years now because there is no money to hand out."
  
  One wing dipped and we banked over the old-fashioned buildings of Santiago's business district.
  
  "The rich people either ran away with their money or sent it to Argentina or Uruguay. This was a very rich country seventy years ago. You know what made us rich? We were the world's greatest supplier of nitrates. Fertilizer. Manure. Then artificial fertilizers were invented and the market collapsed. So look at us, drowning in our own manure."
  
  The wing dipped again and I saw that we were over a prosperous upper-class section of the city.
  
  "Our new president said that he refused to five in the Presidential Palace because it was too grand for a Communist president. So he stays here in the Providencia district."
  
  He pointed out a small, elegant townhouse. I caught sight of the upturned faces of bodyguards, squinting at the plane. We finished our pass of the city and slid on out toward the ocean, the Pacific looking as calm as its name.
  
  We picked up speed until the coastline could barely be seen. Fishing boats bobbed in the waters underneath us. Then the jet made an abrupt wheel from north to south.
  
  "What's going on?" I asked. "I thought you were taking me to my contact up north."
  
  "I have other orders."
  
  Orders? I checked the fuel gauge on the panel. It was full. At least he wouldn't be able to eject and leave me in a flying coffin.
  
  "Orders from whom?"
  
  "Don't worry, Señor Carter. I'm not about to play games inside a cockpit with a man of your reputation. We are going south because that is where AXE wants you. The only radar that can pick us up now is Air Force operated and we are cooperating. I don't know why you are wanted where I'm taking you and I don't want to know."
  
  I understood. While the usual soldier in the Chilean Army served for only one year, the pilots in the Air Force were professionals. The Reds had just started infiltrating their men into its ranks.
  
  The long coastline seemed to be endless, but finally we started to lose altitude and down below I saw the southernmost spot a man can go unless he swims or is in Antarctica; it's the crooked tip of South America that's called Tierra del Fuego. We landed at the Air Force base at Punta Arena. The frigid air cut right through our pressure suits as we emerged from the plane.
  
  The air itself was gray with the cold that was sweeping up from the polar cap. Some officers threw a sheepskin coat over my shoulders and drove me by jeep to the Army headquarters nearby.
  
  "Welcome to the Division del Sud," a small, wiry general greeted me when I was delivered to his Spartan office. There was a potbellied stove in the corner of the room but the snifter of brandy he offered me afforded more immediate warmth.
  
  "This isn't quite where I'd planned to be," I commented.
  
  "Frankly, it's not where I want to be either," he replied, "but Señor Presidente decided to send some of us officers from Santiago down to this forsaken end of the earth. We call it Siberia," he winked. "A soldier's lot is not a happy one, eh? And the winter is just beginning."
  
  An aide-de-camp entered bearing an earthenware pot of stew and a loaf of bread.
  
  "It's not very good fare for someone who has been entertained at the Presidential Palace," the general suggested.
  
  "But you never know just what you're going to get there," I said as we sat down at the table.
  
  "So I hear." He broke the loaf of bread in two and gave me half of it. "Forgive me for not introducing myself but I think it's best if we not use names. You're not supposed to be here. If you were, I'd have to arrest you. Officially, of course."
  
  The stew was plain but good and we finished it off with a bottle of red Chilean wine.
  
  "Suppose you do tell me why I am here," I proposed at the end of our hasty meal. "I'm beginning to feel like a soccer ball, bouncing from one end of the country to the other."
  
  "Perhaps on a wild goose chase," he speculated. "But it may be a Peking goose. You are a good horseman, I'm told."
  
  "I can manage to stay on."
  
  "We will need every experienced hand available and I am told there is no one more able than you. Consider this exciting event a routine part of your special assignment on behalf of our two countries. As planned, together we will engage with the enemy.
  
  I wondered if Hawk had authorized this little foray on my part. If he had or hadn't, there was nothing I could do but make, the best of the situation and join in.
  
  We went from the general's office to the radio room. It was full of officers, their attention turned to the reports that came intermittently from the receiver.
  
  "…heading to the Boca del Diablo… fifteen, twenty at the most now…"
  
  "The nation is divided into four military districts. There is a nominal division in each one," the general informed me. "Of course all the divisions are undermanned because the government has so many troops guarding the mines. But no one is as undermanned as we are. The government doesn't think we can do anything here with just a cavalry regiment but freeze to death. Maybe we have a surprise for it."
  
  "…slowing down now… definitely coming near their camp."
  
  "What kind of a surprise?" I asked the little general.
  
  "You'll see."
  
  The aide-de-camp reappeared with a pair of fur-lined campaign coats. The general put one on with open glee, and I saw that the other officers were watching me with envy.
  
  When we ran out onto the barracks ground, I saw that an olive-green helicopter was waiting, its rotors turning slowly in the wind. We climbed into it and as soon as we had our legs folded in, the copter lifted off the ground, pulling backwards and up hard.
  
  Tierra del Fuego is a rocky promontory fit for little else than the raising of sheep. Wisps of fog drifted straight up in the sky and we sliced through them, never any higher than fifty feet above the ground. We sheared over craggy cliffs, scattering sheep as we swooped down through valleys.
  
  "We knew something was up when the MIRistas appeared," the general shouted over the noise of the rotors. "They have been busy seizing farms up and down the countryside — except for here, because what is there to take? Here everyone is equal and gets his full share of cold and rocks. So we have been keeping an eye on them, thinking they might try to blow up some planes or try to raid our armory for guns. Instead, they have vanished again."
  
  A downdraft sucked us toward a cliff. Coolly the pilot let the plane fall into the stone face until the natural turbulence around the promontory kicked it up and out of danger. This man knew his stuff.
  
  "Then we got a report saying that a freighter had anchored off our coast. There was nothing ordinary about that because storms come up so fast around here that a captain would be mad to come close to these rocks. We traced the freighter. It was Albanian, its last port of call was Shanghai. Now why would a freighter from China anchor here without sending a distress signal?"
  
  The copter fluttered down to the valley floor. As soon as we stepped out, a troop of mounted soldiers emerged from behind boulders, submachine guns strapped to their saddles. The breath from their horses steamed in the freezing air. The captain in charge saluted and dismounted.
  
  "You can see that in this place cavalry doesn't mean tanks," the general told me before we reached the troops.
  
  The captain spoke briefly to a soldier carrying a radio and then, without preamble, to us.
  
  "They're in their camp, General, just as you said they'd be. The scout says their gear is spread out as if they plan to leave early in the morning."
  
  "Very good," the general replied. "Ask him how we should go about entering this camp of MIRistas."
  
  The man on the radio-phone relayed the question.
  
  "He says there is a path up the canyon and they are watching it. But they aren't watching the cliffs behind nor the fire swamp."
  
  The general nodded with satisfaction. He was a man of action and he was obviously relishing every second.
  
  "Then they are dead," he announced.
  
  There were extra horses provided for us. I found myself on a big bay gelding, no doubt a descendant of horses brought over by the conquistadors. The general ordered one of the men to remove the machine gun from my saddle strap.
  
  "I'm sorry, but if worst comes to worst, I will have to report you as an observer. I can't give you a gun. If you object to the condition, you don't have to come."
  
  "You couldn't keep me away." I still had a thing or two up my sleeve, but I didn't mention any of it to the general.
  
  There were twenty of us climbing through gray-green underbrush on our horses. The air, already freezing, became colder and thinner. Sooner than I'd expected, we were on a ridge with a thousand-foot drop on each side, stiff gusts of wind trying to knock us off the narrow trail. From time to time the gale would drive a whole cloud into our midst and we would have to stand stock-still, blinded until the mist moved off.
  
  "It would be safer to use the canyon trails, of course," the general said with a happy shrug, "but that would deprive the MIRistas of the joy of our surprise."
  
  Finally we began to descend and a man in shepherd's garb stepped out on the path. He lowered the submachine gun in his hands when he was sure of who we were. In his pack I saw the antenna of a radio. Obviously he was the captain's scout.
  
  "Two guards," he said. "Each watching the canyon. I can show you the way to come over the cliffs."
  
  "How long would that take us?" the general wanted to know.
  
  "Seven, eight hours."
  
  "In which time they may be gone. That's no good. We'll go the other way."
  
  The other way was through the swamp, one of those strange phenomena that gives Tierra del Fuego its name — Land of Fire. I saw why the prospect of crossing it chilled the soldiers more than did the wind and why the scout had not suggested it even though it would bring us to the MIRistas' camp within an hour.
  
  A solid, seemingly impenetrable field of fumes lay in front of us, the ghostly exhale of vents in the earth. Mile after mile of weird landscape stretched between us and our adversary, a lifeless minefield in which one wrong step would pitch horse and rider into a bubbling hot spring from which no one was ever rescued. The horses themselves danced nervously at the sight of the fuming barrier.
  
  "Please don't think the Chilean soldier is such a coward that he fears a little hot bath," the general said. "This is just the start of the swamp. There is more."
  
  More what, he didn't say. The scout went to the head of the fine on his horse, a surefooted pony. The rest of us followed in single file, each trying to control his own reluctant mount. One by one we slipped into the eerie curtain of smoke.
  
  The sound of hooves was lost in the steady hissing of steam. The ground was as firm as rock at one time and suddenly it would crumble and invite a rider into a fatal misstep. Then I'd heard a desperate whinnying as a soldier pulled for his life on his reins. At other times the ground would shake with the belch of escaping steam; rocks would hit us and a geyser a hundred feet high would appear where a second before there was nothing.
  
  I looked at my watch. Fifty minutes had passed since we entered the swamp. We must be close to the camp. What more could there possibly be?
  
  Then I saw it. First the flickering of one blue flame and then another. With every step through the shroud of steam I could see fifty more darting flames licking the ground. "Fire swamp," the man with the radio had said. We were entering a natural gas field, a gas field that was on fire.
  
  The general glanced back at me grimly and tied a kerchief over his nose. Everyone did the same, including me. The fumes were nauseating now, acrid and penetrating, but what could you expect? This was no haunting landscape anymore, this was a descent into hell. Instead of a geyser of steam, a fiery tower of flaming gas erupted thirty feet away, sending long shadows of our rearing horses over the terrain. Now I knew what the soldiers were really afraid of. If we were observed by the MIRistas before we emerged from the fire swamp, no one would live to tell the tale for they needed only one grenade to make the whole area blow like a volcano.
  
  Each minute was an hour, every step a gamble with the devil. Behind us a new pillar of fire reached to the sky, covering over the trail. There was no turning back now. The man in front of me slumped in his saddle and started to fall off his horse. I squeezed my gelding in close to him and caught him. The fumes had knocked him unconscious; his skin was a sickly green. Still, we moved on like couriers against Armageddon.
  
  The general raised his arm and the column halted. There was just one more screen of fire left and beyond that we could see a border of rocks and the camp itself. The steady hissing sound of the flaming gas covered the metallic sounds of submachine guns moving from saddles to hands. With silent signals, the general and the captain divided the soldiers into two groups that would sweep from north and south in order to eliminate escape. I gave myself my orders. If there were a Chinese representative in the camp and if he saw capture inevitable, he would kill himself; even if he didn't, the general's machine guns might do it for him. My job would be to dash into the midst of the surprised MIRistas and snatch the Chicom before it was too late. My thoughts were that, had anyone else given me those orders, I would have told him to go to hell.
  
  The mounted soldiers gripped their guns with a mixture of relief and anticipation. The general's arm came down. Two lines fanned out at a canter, increasing their speed to a gallop as they separated. From where I was, just inside the swamp, I could see the nearest sentry; he was nervously staring down the canyon trail trying to locate the horses that sounded so close. Just as he turned and saw the troops, two submachine guns sounded and he did an involuntary dance of death.
  
  The men in the camp were jumping to their feet, firing with sleep-dulled eyes at the two waves of cavalry coming in from each side. I whipped my horse on out of the flames, racing to the center of the trapped MIRistas. As I'd expected, they were too busy coping with the wings of the main attack to notice a lone rider bearing down from a third side. They were surprised and terrified, and I'd closed within ten yards before the first terrorist wheeled his AK-47 on me. I fired my Luger just as he pulled the trigger on his fight machine gun and then I was pitching onto the ground, rolling clear of my dead horse. I came to rest on my stomach, ready for a second shot, but the MIRista was on his knees, propped by the rifle he still held. There was a dark hole in the middle of his forehead.
  
  The general's attack was closing in strong and the defenders were crumbling. At least half of them were casualties or they were dead. The rest were snapping off shots from prone positions. Only two were apart, busy beside the campfire, and in the fire's glow I caught sight of the large, angular cheekbones of one of Mao's messengers. He was rapidly feeding scraps of paper to the fire's coals.
  
  There was no time for zigzagging. I ran straight over the bodies of moaning terrorists to the Chicom and the MIRistas' leader. The heavy greatcoat the general had given me tugged as a pair of shots went through it. A MIRista leaped to his feet and swung a machete up at my head. I ducked and planted a foot in his stomach. Another man jumped over the fire, his AK-47 held high over his head. He never got a chance to fire it. My shot caught him while he was in the air and his body landed in the fire like a sack of potatoes.
  
  The head MIRista jumped back from the dead body and pulled a .45. I was already firing when I caught out of the corner of my eye the glint of swinging steel. A MIRista I hadn't seen knocked the gun out of my hand. A second swing of his machete sliced toward my neck. I ducked underneath the weapon's saber edge and pulled the man toward me. When we straightened up, I had control of the machete and I pressed its edge against his Adam's apple, holding him in front of me as a human shield.
  
  "Drop the gun!" I yelled at the MIRista chief.
  
  He was a big man with a red beard and small eyes. He made his decision in a second, firing and blasting open his friend's chest with one slug after another, trying to tear him apart until one bullet would get through to me.
  
  Before that could happen, I heaved the dead man at his chief. He sidestepped the flying body but by that time I was in the air, tackling him and bringing him down in the middle of the smoldering campfire. My head jolted back from the force of his elbow, my hair singeing as he pushed me deeper into the fire. His fingers searched for my throat as he cursed loudly.
  
  He didn't seem to notice that I had a grip on the lapels of his fatigues. I yanked forward and brought him facedown in the coals. When he came up screaming, the edge of my hand met his nose like a blunt machete. As the blood spurted out of his mouth, I was already turning my attention to the main target.
  
  The Chinese messenger was slipping the barrel of his automatic into his mouth. One of Mao's sayings, "All power comes from the barrel of a gun," popped into my mind as I acted, seizing his hand not to tear it away from the gun but to paralyze the pressure point in his wrist.
  
  He sat there in the middle of the battle, regarding the gun aimed at his mouth and wondering why no bullet emerged from it to blow off his head. Confused and pathetic, he stared up me. The last shots died down and the general, flushed with excitement, one arm bleeding from a wound, was the first to join us. Tenderly he eased the gun from the Chicom's paralyzed hand and looked back at the trail of MIRistas I'd left behind.
  
  "You are not supposed to be here, Señor Carter. But if you were present, I would say that you are a magnificent warrior."
  
  Back at Punta Arena, we interrogated the messenger at the barracks. Unfortunately the interrogation started without me because the Chileans were so excited by their catch that by the time I entered the room, the entire raid and the fives of a dozen men had been wasted.
  
  "I don't understand," the officer in charge said to me. "I only started when he became like this."
  
  The messenger was sitting stock upright in a chair in the middle of the room under a powerful light. The first thing I noticed was that he didn't blink. I passed my hand in front of his face and his eyes didn't follow it. I clapped my hands next to his ear. Nothing. I stuck a needle into his arm. Still nothing.
  
  "He's in an induced catatonic state," I said. "His breathing has slowed down and so has his heartbeat. You say he wasn't this way when he came in?"
  
  "No, he was just scared. Then I asked him what message he was carrying and suddenly he became like this. Do you think he is faking?"
  
  I could have beaten the officer's head against the wall, but there was no point in blaming him.
  
  "You questioned him in Spanish, of course."
  
  "Of course. None of us speak Chinese. He must speak Spanish or why would they have sent him?"
  
  The answer was that Peking never would have sent him had he spoken Spanish. It was all a part of their effort to control every bit of subversion from their headquarters in China. The messenger would have been taken to Santiago, where a translator would have received the message he brought. If anyone had asked him his purpose in Spanish — as might happen were he captured — he would fall at once into a post-hypnotic trance. It had all been taken care of in a laboratory that specializes in psychological conditioning, and all it took was a tape producing the trigger question in phonetic Spanish and English and an electric generator to provide the pain. And a Mao-worshipping volunteer. Had I been five minutes earlier, I could have tiptoed all around the messenger's mind, using Cantonese. Now all we had was a man who was as good as dead, and dead men tell no tales.
  
  "How long will he be like this?" the humiliated officer wanted to know.
  
  "With reconditioning by a trained psychologist, he might snap out of it in a month. Without that, it will be six months on the inside. At any rate, he's of no use to us."
  
  "I'm sorry. Forgive me, I…"
  
  He had nothing to say either. I took one last look at the messenger who had dragged me through hell. Believe me, if he could have laughed, he would have.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Seven
  
  
  
  
  Although the messenger didn't talk, the raid wasn't a complete loss. I found this out during the flight back to Santiago as I pieced together the scraps of paper that had failed to burn. They were written in Chinese characters and they were charred, but I knew that AXE's special-effects and editing lab would get information from them if anyone could. I couldn't wait to jump into an American jet and head home.
  
  The capital city appeared below, followed by the airport. When we touched down, I expected to see a U.S. Air Force jet sitting next to us. Instead, the man who greeted me in a closed limousine had a face that I recognized as having been at the Presidential Palace. He was one of Allende's own cabinet ministers. I was reluctant to join him but the chauffeur with the gun was most persuasive.
  
  "What now, a command performance back at the palace?" I asked the minister.
  
  "You got anything from the Chinese?" he demanded abruptly.
  
  He was a lean man with a pale, intelligent face. Now that I was alone with him, I wondered why I hadn't paid more attention to him at the reception. I also wondered how the hell he knew about the messenger. His next words answered both questions.
  
  "In Chile, Mister Carter, the seasons are backwards because here the world is upside down."
  
  It was the password. He was my contact from AXE.
  
  "Just what he couldn't burn," I said, getting down to business. "Nothing that will help us until it's analyzed."
  
  "There is no time for that. Read this."
  
  He handed me a report. On the bottom of the page was a scrawled initial that I recognized as Hawk's. The gist of the report was enough to make me search for a cigarette and bite hard on the gold tip.
  
  I knew the background. A U.S. Air Force reconnaissance satellite had routinely dropped its titanium tube of information-bearing magnetic tape about Soviet missile construction as it passed over the Turkish border. At a predetermined altitude the tube's drogue chute opened up and it floated down to where an American jet — stationed by prearrangement — could snatch it with an apparatus that was no more than a glorified hook. Only it was a Mig 23 that did the snatching this time. Our plane was in a thousand pieces over the Caucasus Mountains, shot down by the Mig's missiles. Naturally the Reds claimed that the incident took place on their side of the border, but then they compounded their piracy. On our satellite's next pass over Russian territory, they tracked it and launched a Cosmos Interceptor from their pads at Tyuratam. The killer satellite stalked our spy-in-the-sky for one orbit and then both of them blew up, sending millions of dollars and rubles showering over the earth and launching what could have been a full-scale war for control of the skies.
  
  Two days later — the day I arrived in Santiago — it looked as if just such a costly war were developing. A team of CIA operatives infiltrated the Tyuratam base, where they tried to seize the still-sealed data tube. They managed to take control of the blockhouse and abort a second Cosmos killer but they were wiped out before reaching the room where their main objective, the tube, was kept. All this happened without the Americans or Russians hearing a word of it and now the two governments had decided to negotiate a truce before each had its entire space program destroyed by the other.
  
  What caught my eye was the agreement providing that the KGB would personally deliver the sealed data tube at the Finnish border in return for which concession the United States would furnish a personal bodyguard for a high-ranking Soviet minister on tour of the Republic of Chile. The minister was identified as A. Belkev and the bodyguard was AXE Killmaster N3. Me! Now I knew why Hawk had been reluctant to talk further at the airport. The stakes went far beyond the Chilean MIRistas and their proposed coup. Hawk had played it soft, thinking he was protecting me in case I were captured. I didn't know now if I appreciated all that consideration.
  
  "This has to be a joke," I told my contact. "Belkev did his best to kill me and I'd like to return the favor if I ever have the chance. Besides, why not let the Russians keep the tube? We can put a new satellite up and get the same information again."
  
  There's more involved than just a satellite," my contact said. "AXE has information that the MIRistas have coordinated their efforts with Maoist terrorists in Peru and Bolivia. A simultaneous coup is planned for all three countries. The signal is to be the assassination of Belkev. Then a quarter of my continent will fall under Chinese domination."
  
  "That's crazy!"
  
  "I wish it were. But all our armed forces, good as they are, have fewer than forty-eight thousand men. The armies of Peru and Bolivia have both been subverted by Maoist agents. If a coup occurs, who will help us? America, after Vietnam? Hardly likely. Russia? They are even farther away than China."
  
  "That still leaves Argentina and Brazil. They both have big armies and they're not going to stand still for Chairman Mao grinning at their borders."
  
  He nodded as if he already had the answer for that. As it turned out, though, I did.
  
  "There must be some information in the papers the messenger had. We have no time for laboratories, Mister Carter. I understand you can read Chinese."
  
  The curtains had been drawn over the car windows and I had no idea of where we were going. When the limousine stopped, I found that we were in the basement of a ministry in the middle of Santiago. I was led into a bare room without windows, without even a table or chair. There was one fluorescent fixture that filled the room with a greenish glare. Before he left, the minister gave me a pair of tweezers with which to handle the charred papers.
  
  "You think of everything, don't you?" I commented.
  
  "A Dr. Thompson at AXE said you'd need them."
  
  Six hours later my back ached from all the crawling around on the concrete floor I had done but I had what I was looking for. I had managed to piece together hundreds of disjointed Chinese characters on badly scorched paper and I understood at last why Hawk had been so eager to assign me to Chile. After I knocked on the door and told the guard I was ready, I lay down on the cold floor and had a well-deserved cigarette.
  
  The minister walked around the squares of blackened paper I had reassembled.
  
  "I'm disappointed," he said. "How can you make anything out of this?"
  
  "It's not a love letter," I replied. "This is a military analysis and the Chinese military mind isn't very different from any other. In other words, it's specific and repetitious, enough so that I can grasp the general idea." I bent down and pointed at one character after another as I spoke. "Here, for example, is the repetition of the character denoting the sea with a modification meaning south. South Sea."
  
  "Very interesting. I wish I had time for a lecture," he said sardonically.
  
  "Now wait a minute. You dragged me down into this garage to do in one afternoon what it usually takes a team of analysts with slides and enlargements and chemical preparations a week to do. Now that I've done it, you'll damn well listen to this. It won't take long. As I was saying, we have a number of references to the South Sea. Here is a reference to the sea again but modified this time to mean also a ship going under it."
  
  "A submarine."
  
  "Now you're catching on. What is involved is a submarine of the Chinese South Sea Fleet. That's not so earth-shattering. It's not a new character in the Chinese language. It also means a missile, or rather a number of missiles. The modification is relatively new, however. Atomic. So what we have so far is the weapon."
  
  "The weapon for what? What has this got to do with Chile?"
  
  "I didn't know the answer to that until I reached the last page, where I found the first reference to Chile by name. The sub is sitting a hundred miles off the Chilean coast at this second. It arrived inside a specially fitted Albanian freighter. Once the assassination of Belkev has been completed and the coups start, the Chinese sub moves to the Chilean port of Antofagasta."
  
  "That's where I come from."
  
  "Well, the MIRistas have some nice plans for it. Antofagasta will be the first city seized so that the sub will berth with no trouble. That's when the terrorists announce that they have atomic missiles aimed at the capital cities of half the other nations in South America. Which will be true. There's no mention of it in the message but I'm sure we're dealing with a G-Class submarine armed with a Chinese version of the Russian Sark missile. Here on this past page is the character for terror and the distance of 1,700 kilometers. That's the radius of the missile's range, a circle of blackmail that takes in Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and Buenos Aires. If anyone raises so much as a hand against the MIRistas, these cities will be turned into a nuclear wasteland.
  
  "Say we try to interfere. Suppose we send up our antiballistic missiles to shoot down their missiles. The result will still be at least a dozen nuclear warheads exploding over the continent, and let me tell you that one feature of Chinese missile technology has not been the development of clean warheads. South America will be radioactive from the Amazon River south."
  
  "If nobody interferes?"
  
  "Then the whole western shelf of South America is turned into a second China Sea."
  
  The minister fiddled in his pockets anxiously. I handed him one of my cigarettes and fit it for him.
  
  "You're very calm," he commented. "How do we manage to stop the coups, then?"
  
  "By not letting them start. The cue is Belkev's death. Much as I hate to say it, we — I — have to keep him alive." I added an expletive in English that showed my true sentiments but the minister didn't catch it.
  
  "Then all we have to do is put him under guard at an army base."
  
  "No. That's the last thing we want to do. Once it's obvious that we're on to the MIRistas' plans, they'll change them. Belkev has to remain out in the open, a fat little target for anyone who wants to take a shot at him."
  
  I swept the charred pieces of paper together and made a pile of them and lit it. I didn't want to leave any clues behind. The minister got down on the floor in his pin-striped suit and helped.
  
  "Remember," he said, "Chile has been a democracy for one hundred and twenty years, far longer than the great majority of nations. We will continue to be one and if the Reds try to institute a dictatorship, we will fight with more than words."
  
  I told him that if he had any words, he should say a prayer for the worthless life of Alexander Belkev.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Eight
  
  
  
  
  Every assignment has its silver fining, I thought as I saw Rosa and Bonita crossing over from their balcony to mine. The scene behind them was one of the most spectacular in the world, the Andes mountains capped with snow and glowing in the moonlight. We were staying in a parador, an inn, in the Indian town of Aucanquilcha, the first stop on Belkev's itinerary and no less than the highest town on the face of the earth.
  
  "Buenos noches," the sisters said together as they slipped into my room. "Belkev is sleeping like a stuffed pig."
  
  For the moment Belkev was the furthest thing from my mind. I was busy glorying in scenery that had nothing to do with the Andes either. Rosa and Bonita were nearly twins, the only difference being that Bonita was a bit shorter and plumper. They were both wearing silky bikini nightclothes that were almost transparent, and just in case I did become confused between them, I knew that Rosa wore a gold necklace and Bonita a silver one.
  
  They made themselves at home, going straight to the bar where I had a selection of rums set up.
  
  "Are you as talented as your sister?" I asked Bonita.
  
  She ran her hand inside my shirt and over my chest.
  
  "I am a singer." She giggled. "If you are as talented as I hear you are, maybe you will make me sing something beautiful."
  
  "He will," Rosa promised her. She made a concoction of the rums and handed the glasses around. "He is like the rum. Enough to go around."
  
  "We don't have much time," Bonita whispered. "The other girls will notice that we are gone."
  
  I realized that Bonita was unbuckling my belt in between her giggles. Rosa embraced me from the back and I could feel the press of her breasts through my shirt. The two of them fluttered around me like a pair of exotic butterflies until all my clothes were on the floor. Then Bonita embraced me, sliding her hips against me until my excitement was beyond dispute by the United Nations.
  
  Our glasses emptied and the rum cool inside us, the three of us lay naked on the bed. They took turns in kissing me and as I sprawled out luxuriously, each draped a thigh over me, so. I ran my hands down over their flanks, weighing the possibilities.
  
  What one fantastic Cuban girl can do, two can do better. When the bottles and we were drained, the moon was shining through the window over the Andes.
  
  "God, we've been here for two hours," I said, catching sight of the clock on the bureau. "I thought you both had to get back"
  
  "Sshhh," they said as one.
  
  I had lost track of which girl was which in the lovemaking. All I knew now was that one had a gold necklace and the other had a silver one. Just to move my hand I had to withdraw from a sea of warm flesh that tried again and again to make me forget time.
  
  "This could develop into an international incident," I warned them.
  
  "We are an international incident," Rosa teased. "You know, hands across the border."
  
  "Not hands," Bonita corrected her.
  
  "Can't you two be serious?"
  
  "He sounds just like Fidel," Bonita pouted.
  
  She shifted toward me so that I was sandwiched between their bodies. I felt a skillful hand slide down my thigh.
  
  "Olé, and I thought he was finished," a delighter voice said.
  
  "Who is that?" I asked.
  
  "Does it matter?" lips whispered into my ear.
  
  Let me tell you, in the dark all women are not the same. I knew who it was each time and it was no surprise when Rosa pulled away.
  
  "Madre! We have to go now," she whispered. "They must have heard us in Havana."
  
  "Not yet," Bonita sighed, her hips still locked to mine and riding out the last throbs of pleasure.
  
  Needless to say, I was in no hurry to leave either, but what made us cut the encore short was the sudden opening of doors and the sound of running feet in the hall. In a second someone would be pounding on my door.
  
  "Vamonos ahora," Rosa said.
  
  They were going out through the balcony when the knock came. I knew who was there on the other side, one of Belkev's regular bodyguards, a balding, suspicious type. I took a last look to make sure the balcony was clear before opening the door wide enough to allow his popping eyes a peek.
  
  "Didn't you hear that noise? Why are you here instead of protecting Comrade Belkev the way you agreed? Was someone in here?"
  
  "Sure. The singing assassin. Let me know if you catch him."
  
  I slammed the door and went back to bed, this time to sleep.
  
  The bodyguard was still staring at me suspiciously the following morning when our happy entourage was taken by a guide on a junket through Aucanquilcha. Belkev appeared to be well rested and he was nasty; he'd slept through the whole rumpus. Bonita and Rosa looked like they'd be willing to play again and the rest of Belkev's harem eyed me speculatively. I kept my eye on the Aucanquilchans who manage to live 17,500 feet above sea level.
  
  The exertion of walking into the town square was enough to exhaust Belkev, especially in the thin air. Even I felt my lungs demand oxygen and yet we were in the middle of a hardy, barrel-chested race of Indians who looked to be capable of outrunning the llamas that followed them. Wearing colorful, rough llama-wool ponchos, their highly slanted eyes shaded by red and green wool caps, they stared at the outsiders among them. They may have been small in stature but they were perfectly adapted to their rigorous environment, carrying on their lives atop a pinpoint of civilization set high in the sky by the starkly beautiful, treacherous Andean range.
  
  We were in Aucanquilcha because it is one of the last strongholds of the Inca Empire. Much of the stonework of the village dates from the days of the empire; it is incredibly fitted, mortarless stone masonry that has survived five centuries of use, and the people milling around us were the purest descendants of the masons who had built it.
  
  "I think I'm going to be seasick," Belkev muttered to me.
  
  "Don't look for any sympathy from me, comrade."
  
  "I should have killed you when I had the chance."
  
  "Do you have the vest on?"
  
  "Of course."
  
  We entered a one-story building, one of the few modem structures in the village. It was a museum that was run by the state and the curator met us at the door, gaped at the unexpected number of females, recovered and directed his abrazo to Belkev. Belkev gave him a pair of half-hearted kisses on the cheeks and then disengaged from the embrace.
  
  "I'd like to sit down."
  
  "The air," the curator said sympathetically. "I always keep a little brandy on hand for visitors."
  
  While Belkev sat gasping on a chair in the foyer, the curator fetched a small shot glass of brandy. He was giving it to Belkev when one of the bodyguards caught his arm.
  
  "He would like you to take a taste first," I explained to the curator.
  
  He hesitated but it was more from insult than fear of poison. After a haughty sip, he handed the glass to Belkev.
  
  "Very good," Belkev thanked him. He downed the brandy in a gulp and belched loudly.
  
  "You are Russian too?" the curator asked me with curiosity.
  
  "On rental." He looked confused. "Never mind, it's an inside joke."
  
  I left the group and wandered into the two exhibit rooms. It was an odd collection that the museum housed, consisting mostly of odds and ends that had been salvaged after the Spanish conquistadors had looted the land. Still, it was strangely effective. On one wall was a map detailing the extent of the Inca Empire, stretching nearly the length of the continent's western coast, and enclosed in cases around the other three walls were the pitiful remnants of that once great civilization.
  
  I was aware that Belkev had come up behind me.
  
  "The Incas ran their empire much as the Romans did," I observed, "conquering lands, colonizing them, building great roads a thousand miles long to link their cities, and bringing up the sons of conquered kings in their capital of Cuzco so that the new generation of nobility would be Incas too. No one can tell what heights the Incas might have reached if the Spanish had not arrived when they did. After all, the Incas were only beginning their empire when Pizarro and his men destroyed it."
  
  "Some empire when a handful of adventurers could destroy it almost overnight," Belkev said mockingly. I think he was trying to save face after his humiliating arrival. In any case, the curator, overhearing the remark, bridled.
  
  "The downfall came about only through an unfortunate combination of factors," he said testily. "Pizarro arrived at the end of a devastating civil war. The defeated side immediately joined the Spanish, in effect creating an Indian army under Spanish leadership. Second, the Incas were ravaged by epidemics of smallpox and measles, each brought to the New World by the Spanish. And, most important, the Incas were unused to European treachery. Pizarro visited the Inca emperor under a flag of truce, kidnapped him and blackmailed his armies into surrendering."
  
  "Is this an attack on the good intentions of the Soviet people?" Belkev demanded unpleasantly.
  
  The curator denied any such motivation; in fact, he didn't know what Belkev was talking about. Belkev looked as if he didn't quite believe the denial — and why should he when political attacks within the Soviet Union were subtly conducted in just such historical allegories? Somebody should have explained the situation to Belkev but I was rather enjoying the misunderstanding.
  
  "The Europeans, that is, the Spanish, took every bit of art made of gold or silver and melted it down to ingots for shipment to Spain. What we have left of the sophisticated art of the Incas is mostly pottery and some woven artifacts," the curator went on.
  
  Rosa recoiled at the little bit of pottery on a shelf before her. It was a ceramic jug whose spout was disguised as a tiny statue. The statue was of a man tied to a tree. He was naked, his genitals were heavily emphasized and a vulture was picking at his flesh. Even over a span of five hundred years, his pain carried through convincingly.
  
  "This piece is from approximately two hundred B.C. It reminds us that the price of crime among the Indians was a heavy one. In this case the culprit was left to die by exposure to the vultures. After all, it was not easy to exist in these mountains and since the smallest theft could mean another's death, a criminal could expect the most hideous of penalties."
  
  We moved over to another glass case. It took a second for the eyes to adjust to exactly what they were seeing and then there was no doubt about it. What we were looking at was a headless mummy folded up in a foetal position. It was richly dressed in a robe that was decorated with expertly wrought jaguars but my eyes were captured by the abrupt termination at the neck.
  
  "The bodies of the dead kept wonderfully well in the dry air of Chile," the curator remarked.
  
  "Isn't there something missing?" Rosa asked.
  
  "Oh, the head? Yes. This young man died in one of the Inca wars of conquest. It was common practice for a soldier to take the head of his enemy. We have graveyards full of headless corpses."
  
  He led us to another display.
  
  "As a matter of fact, the head was severed by one of these, I'm sure." He pointed to a wicked-looking instrument residing decorously in a velvet box. It resembled a knife but the handle came out at the back rather than at the end. The handle was decorated with inhuman-looking gods and the sharp edge of the moon-shaped blade glinted menacingly.
  
  "We have some other artifacts typical of the Inca wars," the curator went on proudly. "A quilted suit made of cotton and used as armor, for instance. And a bow and arrow. The men of the mountains were famous for their skill with this weapon while the Indians of the coastline were best known for their spearthrowers. Once two hostile Indian armies came together and launched an artillery of slings and strangulating bolas, with which they had great skill. When the combat came down to hand-to-hand fighting, they fought with war clubs and this uniquely Inca weapon known as a 'Headbreaker.' "
  
  The Headbreaker consisted of a pair of jagged bronze weights suspended from cords. The crusaders used much the same kind of weapon, but only against metal armor. The use of a weapon such as this on an unprotected head must have produced dire results.
  
  The room had one more horror to delight us with. The curator must have been keeping it as his piece de resistance — a human skull strangely distorted and carrying in the elongated bones a gold plate.
  
  "The pride of our exhibit," the curator told us, rubbing his dry hands together. "In many regions of the old empire infants' heads were deliberately deformed by applying pressure with boards. A child would grow up with a head that was excessively long, absolutely round, high or short, depending on what the local standards of beauty were. As you can see, the standard here was a long, narrow head."
  
  "It looks like a snake's," Bonita said, recoiling.
  
  "Interesting," Belkev observed, "but primitive."
  
  "Ever hear of a nose job?" I asked him.
  
  "The remarkable feature of this skull is, of course, the gold plate in the form of a triangle. This was done by trephining, the surgical removal of skull bone by cutting or drilling. It was actually widely practiced by the Incas of the mountains, although the survival rate for the operation was probably no better than even. Most trephining was done for medical reasons but there is a theory that it was done to some young men to mark them as personal bodyguards of the emperor."
  
  "Why didn't the Spaniards take the gold out of this head?" I wanted to know.
  
  "Ah, that's an interesting sidelight. This skull dates from one of the later Indian uprisings against the Spanish. It was during either the seventeenth or the eighteenth century, hundreds of years after the fall of the empire. The skull wasn't discovered until twenty years ago. Now, let us pass on to the other room."
  
  The second room was full of woven articles. After a dutiful ten minutes of listening to the curator, the mayor of Aucanquilcha rescued us and escorted us to his residence for lunch.
  
  Over beer, spiced cavie meat, a kind of potato called oca and pineapple, Belkev recovered some of his spirit.
  
  "A very impressive museum," he said, "but you should come to Russia sometime and see a progressive folklore. Maybe I can arrange for one of our cultural advisors to come and help you with your national arts."
  
  The mayor, who also dumpily looked like a local form of potato, smiled modestly.
  
  "More beer, Comrade Belkev? Good. No, take the bottle. So, at last two great Communist parties join hands and work for the future. I have been a party member for years, as I suppose all of us here have been."
  
  Belkev gave me a glare that was supposed to keep me quiet.
  
  "I am pleased to hear that," he told the mayor. "I thought that your town might have been a little, let's say… backward. It's very encouraging to know that the people are participating in the socialist revolution."
  
  The mayor paled a bit and Belkev was observant.
  
  "Is there something wrong?"
  
  "I'm afraid that we are not backward at all in some respects. Even here the MIRistas are busy with their revisionist lies. We have them under control, however, I assure you."
  
  "You must crush them mercilessly," Belkev advised. "Just as we did with Trotsky."
  
  "You killed him in Mexico, didn't you," I commented.
  
  "A deviationist is the lowest form of life there is," Belkev snarled.
  
  "Not in Aucanquilcha. You can't get any higher."
  
  The mayor looked back and forth between us with dismay.
  
  "Your humor is out of place, as usual," Belkev warned me over the table. "You'll pay for this when we get back to Santiago."
  
  "Uh, perhaps you would like to see the wild vicuña herds in the mountains," the mayor suggested to change the subject.
  
  That's just what we ended up doing, Belkev agreeing to the outing only after he learned that he could see the vicuñas from the back of a pack horse. We didn't see any vicuñas but the Andes were a show in themselves, breathtaking stalagmites that scraped the top of the sky. The Himalayas might be higher but they have nothing to match the perpendicular walls of the South American range.
  
  We traveled cautiously on a narrow trail cut into the side of the mountain by Inca roadbuilders, zigzagging over mile-deep drops in a system that not only spoke highly of the Indians' engineering skill but also of their military foresight. There wasn't a spot on the trail that couldn't come under crossfire from at least two positions. It was built for ambushes.
  
  "I think I'll go look at the edelweiss," I told Belkev's bodyguards.
  
  "Edelweiss?" Belkev exclaimed. "There isn't any edelweiss here."
  
  "I'll find some," I said and, leaving him to puzzle it out, I left my pony and climbed up the rocky mountain face. I was in the best of physical condition but my body was still adjusted for sea level and it was soon gasping for air. The Indians not only have abnormally large lungs, they have a higher count of red blood corpuscles that gives them an especially fast and efficient distribution of oxygen to their body tissues. Nevertheless, I climbed to a level a hundred feet above the trail and moved in tandem with Belkev's party down below, my lungs crying for air.
  
  If an ambush were to be set up, it would have to be made from the high side of the hill. To begin with, it's easier to shoot down. More significant, one of Aucanquilcha's hardy Indians would have a much better chance to escape uphill for the very reason that I was having difficulty in traveling laterally.
  
  There were moments when I felt as if I were walking on top of the world and I knew this was another effect of the lack of oxygen. I saw the people below me on horseback as if through the wrong end of a telescope and beyond them the Andes descended precipitously to where, far below, there was only a blur. I sat down to rest on an outcrop of rock and idly I began to look around.
  
  I still don't know why I noticed the crouched figure. It was about three hundred yards away and as motionless as stone but instantly I knew what it was. I knew that as soon as Belkev's pack horse moved within range, the figure would spout a rifle with a telescopic sight. I knew it as well as I knew that I couldn't reach either the figure or Belkev in time to make a difference. I pulled the Luger out of my jacket, intending to fire a warning shot, and then I froze. Belkev's horse was inching around one of the innumerable zigzags and the sudden sound of a gunshot was likely to scare both the horse and rider off the miniscule trail.
  
  Desperate now, I found the gun's silencer and screwed it on. Every second brought the Russian that much closer to certain death. Using my left arm as a rest, I sighted on the faraway target. As the rifle I'd expected to see emerged in the lens, I squeezed the shot off.
  
  A tuft of dirt spurted up ten feet in front of the would-be killer. I had accounted for the fact that a silencer reduces velocity but I hadn't realized what a beating my gun had received in Tierra del Fuego. Now the figure turned and found me. The rifle barrel swung quickly in my direction.
  
  With a ten-foot lead and a prayer, I hugged the trigger again. The top of the boulder he was leaning on sparked as the bullet hit and he slipped around behind the rock. Odds were that the slug had gone on and caught him in the chest but even so, I waited for his re-emergence. Below, unaware of what was happening, Belkev and company ambled on, taking in the view in the other direction. Slowly, never taking my eye off the boulder, I cut over the side of the mountain toward the man with the rifle.
  
  But when I reached the spot, there was no one there. A spent bullet, flattened by impact with the boulder, lay on the ground. There was no blood. I knew in a second where my man had gone, though, and why I hadn't seen him leave. Directly behind the boulder there was the mouth of a small cave. I had to get down on my hands and knees to enter it. My gun was in one hand and with the other hand I flashed a pocket light around the walls of the musty interior. Nobody shot at me and I crawled in.
  
  The cave expanded enough that I could move in a crouch, through sheets of spider webs and dust. The air was close and musky, stagnant like the air in a tomb. A ragged hole through the shrouds of webs told me where my quarry had gone and I followed, inching my way ahead behind the tiny beam of light. The cave led toward the center of the mountain and then curved back upon itself. The air began to be colder, fresher. I ran the last thirty feet with the knowledge that I was too late and sure enough, the increasing light told me that I was emerging at another exit, one farther down the mountain face. The rifle was lying right outside, abandoned. Its owner had disappeared.
  
  I went back through the cave with the sense that I'd missed something. My pocket light picked up the pug face of an upside-down sleeping bat. My footsteps echoed, the sounds muffled by the tapestry of webs. Ahead I could see the light at the entrance. It made an even circle in the black cave and was too round to have been formed naturally.
  
  I swung the beam against the walls and brushed back the dense webs. Carved into the wall there was a stone niche and in the niche there was a row of jars, each jar three feet high. A pattern of painted jaguars covered the jars, the colors faded. I reached out and touched the side of one of the vases.
  
  Four hundred years had turned the clay into little more than dust. At my touch the pottery crumbled into dirt and fell on the floor; I felt my back turn cold with horror. Encased in the jar was a mummy that was just like the one I had seen in the museum. This one was headless too. It was folded up in such a way that the jar must have been built around it. But there was one difference. Between its leathery side and arm there was a skull — an eyeless, elongated skull that had been crushed half a millenium earlier by a Headbreaker.
  
  The cave might be an archeologist's dream but it was a nightmare to me. The fetid stench that had been trapped in the jar with the body spread out and filled the air. I wiped my hand on my jacket and left, squirming my way out of the small entrance as fast as I could to taste the thin, clear air outside.
  
  I met Belkev and the others as they wended their way back to the village. While the girls were obviously happy to see me, Comrade Belkev looked as dyspeptic as ever.
  
  "I hope you had fun running around in the mountains instead of doing your job," he spit out at me. "A man has to be crazy to ride on these trails. I could have been killed. Just what would you like me to tell the KGB about this?"
  
  "Tell them you were right. There's no edelweiss."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Nine
  
  
  
  
  Rosa and Bonita arrived with a friend that night, the East German girl called Greta. She was a bouncy athlete with freckles covering everything that her skimpy nightclothes didn't.
  
  "She said she would tell Belkev about us unless we brought her along," Rosa said ruefully.
  
  "Out!" Greta ordered them.
  
  The sisters seemed to hold a silent debate on whether or not to toss her out the window but discretion won and they departed by way of the balcony. As soon as they were gone, Greta turned to me.
  
  "Three's a crowd," she said.
  
  "Well, I have three drinks here. You take two of them."
  
  She was twenty-two and she had competed in the last Olympics as a freestyle swimmer, leaving the competition only because, according to her, all the other girls on the swim team were lesbian. She wrinkled her turned-up nose in disdain as she talked.
  
  "You were using something the first time I saw you in Belkev's suite. What was it?" I asked her.
  
  "Cocaine." She shrugged. "I have traveled with the swine since Berlin. I need something to make me forget. Now I have found something better."
  
  "What's that?"
  
  That was when she took off her gown. The freckles stood out everywhere. She was well muscled — and agile. And skilled and hungry. Her fingers raked my back urgently.
  
  "Yes, Nickie, oooh. Oh, I can feel the ground moving."
  
  "You read that someplace."
  
  "No, it really did move." She added uncertainly, "I think."
  
  After that we stopped talking. Dimly I heard someone pound on a door downstairs. Then there was more pounding. A sound like a heavy truck makes rumbled outside the window. A boiler pitched in with a muted roar. My mind works very slowly under the circumstances but I did remember that there are no trucks in Aucanquilcha and that the inn has no boiler. When the walls started to shake and the bed began to dance in the floor, I came to.
  
  "Earthquake. Get your clothes on," I ordered her.
  
  I pulled my pants on while Greta got into her nightgown and we were just in time because the fights suddenly blew. Glass from falling pictures scattered over the floor. We could barely keep our balance. Screams could be heard in the hall as people rushed about.
  
  "Let's go. Nobody will see you."
  
  The scene was one of complete chaos. Belkev was in a panic, knocking down everybody in his mad scramble for safety. Dust rained from the beams supporting the roof. The mayor was already downstairs and with a heavy-duty flashlight he waved us through the doors to the street.
  
  The mountain seemed to be trying to rid itself of the village. The trembles that had interrupted our lovemaking were now a full-scale heaving of the earth. Animals ran squealing with terror, their noise only adding to the confusion. The Indians in the village emptied their stables in order to save their livestock, and llamas ran around wildly in the marketplace, their white coats shimmering ghostlike in the dark.
  
  Then, as unexpectedly as it had arrived, the quake subsided and with astonishment we could once again hear each other talk. Greta clung trembling to my arm while Rosa and Bonita tried to hold onto each other.
  
  "These are young mountains," the mayor averred, mostly to calm himself, I suspected. "They are still building."
  
  There was no guarantee that the quake was over but the Indians were already rounding up their animals. One of the bodyguards ran up to me.
  
  "Where is Belkev?" he asked breathlessly.
  
  "I don't know. He ran out of the inn like a rat leaving a sinking ship."
  
  The lights in the inn went back on. The bodyguards, their guns drawn, began to run through the streets calling Belkev's name. There aren't many streets in a village the size of Aucanquilcha, and they soon returned with their dismal report. Belkev was gone.
  
  "We will have to search from house to house," one of them announced.
  
  "You do that. I have another idea," I told him.
  
  They snorted with impatience and ran off to perform their mission, the mayor hard on their heels.
  
  "Why don't you move your mattresses down to the first floor?" I suggested to the girls before I left. I didn't really expect them to do that but it would give them something to argue about and take their minds off their fears.
  
  The inhabitants of the village watched me with nearly Oriental detachment as I hurried through the dirty streets. It was possible that the MIRistas were holding Belkev in one of the houses — but I doubted it. This was not the usual sort of MIRista I was fighting, judging by my experience earlier in the day. Nor was this the usual sort of town, Aucanquilcha. It was an ascent into a bloody past.
  
  The ancient temple overlooked the village. It had withstood this earthquake just as it had withstood a thousand before it, and in the moonlight its silhouette was stark and timeless. The Incas built for grandeur. Their temples were sites to which their enemies were taken to be awed into submission. If the enemy was not properly awed, he ended up in the temple again, this time as a human sacrifice. The huge stone steps led up the face of a pyramid that brought the Incas past the carved Gods of the Gateway. The stones I silently climbed now had once been painted with sacrificial gore. And they would be again if I was right.
  
  I'd followed intuition, but only to a point. From the episode in the cave I had learned that the killer was familiar with the secrets of Aucanquilcha's history and that he was determined to wield them in his assassination of the Russian. I expected that he would even go so far as to make use of the ancient sacrificial table on top of the mountain's temple. But I hadn't followed the ghastly logic far enough and as I reached the last step at the top of the pyramid, I froze.
  
  Belkev was there on the table, lying on his back, his hands and legs hanging down, his head motionless on the edge of the stone table except for the movement given it by the swinging weights of the bola that was coiled around his neck. His eyes were closed and his face was discolored by impending strangulation.
  
  What paralyzed me, though, was sight of the figure standing over him. As the moonlight struck it, I realized what it was that had caught my attention earlier when the killer had tried to catch Belkev on the mountain trail. It was the reflection from the gold plate set into the middle of his elongated skull. This was no ordinary MIRista trying to dress up a murder as sacrifice; it was the real thing, wearing cotton armor decorated with jaguars and a gold belt hung with weapons. His face was handsome despite the distortion of his skull, his eyes as black as obsidian and as narrow as slits. Despite the cotton armor, it was obvious that he was a man of great physical strength. I wondered where the MIRistas had come across him and how many of his kind remained back in the hills. More, I wondered if the MIRistas knew of the powers they were unleashing. Most likely they did and they would see that they were used to the hilt.
  
  The Indian lifted Belkev's head and placed it on a stone neck rest and then unwound the bola from Belkev's fat neck, revealing ugly red welts like the marks of a hangman's noose. The Russian stirred and his mouth gaped open for air.
  
  The Inca raised an object that gleamed over Belkev's head. I never would have recognized it had I not seen one similar to it earlier in the day. It resembled the gruesome sacrificial knife in the museum but it was heavier, sharper. With one chop the blood from Belkev's guillotined neck would spew twenty feet down the temple steps.
  
  "Atahualpa, I presume," I said as I stepped up to the top level of the pyramid.
  
  It was the Inca's turn to be surprised. He froze, arms suspended in the air. I had used the name of the last Inca emperor and it threw him off more than I'd dare to hope. Then, just as I recognized him from our previous encounter, he also recognized me. The gold crescent of the sacrificial knife swooped down.
  
  Belkev had been watching us with a growing grasp of his situation. As soon as he saw the Indian decide to act, he rolled off the table and hit the stones with a thud. At the same moment the edge of the head chopper bit into the neck rest.
  
  The Indian was not deterred. Because I had come from bed, I had no gun: I had only the knife in its arm sheath. When it slipped into my fingers, his expression was more amused than frightened. The taunting look in his eyes told me that the rifle had never been his weapon, that blades were his forte.
  
  "Start running, Belkev, and don't stop," I shouted.
  
  Belkev scrambled to his feet and headed for the steps. He hadn't gone far when the Indian snatched up the bola and threw it, all in one motion. The bola wrapped itself around the Russian's feet and he went down heavily on his head. The Indian laughed and said some words in a language that I didn't understand. Then he picked up the sacrificial knife and threw it at Belkev's prone body.
  
  The weapon twirled like a planet, spinning straight toward Belkev's heart. Instead of cutting into it, though, it crashed into the armored vest and ricocheted off into the dark. At this I stepped over the Russian's body to meet the Indian's next attack.
  
  From his waist he loosened a strange apparatus consisting of a pair of bronze chains that were attached to a gold handle. At the end of the chains there were wicked-looking, star-shaped metal balls. It was a Headbreaker! He swung it high around his head and the massive balls whistled. Then he started to come around the table, his bare feet padding on the cold stone like jaguar paws.
  
  I had already seen the evidence of the damage a Headbreaker could wreak upon a victim. From the way he swung the thing, I knew that he was an expert in its use and that I wouldn't be able to defend myself and Belkev at the same time. I hooked the body of the unconscious Russian with my foot and pulled him onto the stairs where he tumbled down the steps out of sight, a tub of lard that would go to the victor.
  
  With each onslaught of the primitive Headbreaker I found myself forced back toward the edge of the stairs. There in the moonlight I tried to gauge the Indian's style. A barroom brawler swinging a broken bottle lets the momentum of his swing carry him off balance. But this was an adversary who was capable of swinging fifteen pounds of jagged metal without pitching an inch. He reminded me of the samurai, who were trained to incorporate their swords into their bodies, thereby combining a philosophy of combat with sheer nerve that made them the perfect fighting machines. Even as the whistling swing of the Headbreaker's weights missed my chest, his follow-through was bringing the bronze stars around again, this time at a new and unexpected angle.
  
  Suddenly they reached for my feet. I jumped, just as he had calculated, expecting me to land helplessly in the path of his backswing. Then his narrow eyes widened a shade as my bare foot shot out and smashed into his chest, kicking him backward ten feet and onto the stone table. A lesser man would have had a broken sternum but the Indian only rubbed his chest thoughtfully and approached me again, this time with some caution. As he stepped forward, he spoke words I could not comprehend.
  
  "I can't understand a word you're saying," I told him, "and it's too bad because one of us is saying his last words."
  
  By this time the stiletto was circling in my palm as I looked for the opening that would allow me to plunge it through his heart. Simultaneously the Headbreaker rattled in his hand as he also searched for an opening. When the chains tangled for a second, I lunged forward behind the tip of the knife. He danced out of the way and swung the Headbreaker at the same time. I ducked as the bronze stars danced over my head.
  
  "You're okay with those things, my friend. Now let's see how you are without them."
  
  I feinted another attack and the Headbreaker came whistling down like a locomotive. I caught his hand and yanked the gold handle from it. As his body bulled into mine, I sank a left hook into his belly. It was like pounding a stone wall. Headbreaker and stiletto both fell onto the stones. I had a grip on his quilted armor and I smashed his jaw down to the headbreaker I call my knee. As he bounced off it, I hacked his shoulder.
  
  This was supposed to be the scene where he sank to the floor. Instead, he jumped up and almost kicked the wind out of me. Two conclusions came to my puzzled mind. One, South American Indians are expert at playing soccer or any other sport that involves kicking. Two, I thought I smelled the faint, acrid scent of lime leaves. The Incas, like most other people in that part of the world, habitually chewed coca and lime leaves as a narcotic. Possibly my enemy was so doped up on cocaine that it would take a bullet to make him feel pain.
  
  And I realized one other thing only too well; I was sucking air in gasps, just like Belkev. I was exhausted by the ordeal of the fight. All the Indian had to do now was to stay on his feet until I dropped. He knew it as well as I did. I swung a lazy left hook at his jaw. He dropped under it and scissor-kicked me to the stones. An elbow to his windpipe kept him off my back until I got to my feet again, weaving like a drunk.
  
  One of the early Aztec rituals of bravery called for the matching of one captured warrior against four Aztec soldiers, three of them right-handed and the fourth one left-handed. The lone warrior had to fight them one at a time with a war club that was edged with feathers; his opponents used clubs edged with obsidian blades. I didn't know whether the Incas practiced the same torture but this situation was coming pretty close to it. The Indian was as fresh and as strong as when we started but I was dead on my feet, starved for air and ready to drop.
  
  He didn't even bother to use the bola remaining on his gold belt. Each time I set myself on my feet he launched a flying kick that jolted me back to my knees. I knew that soon I wouldn't even be able to rise. My body was numb and sick from lack of oxygen; I was moving woodenly, slowly. I even prayed for the KGB to arrive with a rescue squad but I knew it was still playing Gestapo games in the village. Just one or two more falls to the stones and I would be finished.
  
  Confidently the Indian took a long leap and kicked out both feet at my head. It was easy enough for me to drop but as I did so, I raised my arm and grabbed the dangling bola, pulling at it with every bit of strength I had left. The Indian screamed as he felt his momentum carry him off the platform; then he vanished with a tangle of flailing arms.
  
  I was on my hands and knees, heaving for breath and unable to follow his descent. Had he been able to climb back to the top of the steps at that moment, I am sure I would have lain down and let him kill me. But he didn't return and with every second my heart calmed down and I could feel renewed sensation in my limbs.
  
  My knife and the Headbreaker were gone, kicked off the platform during the fight. All I had left was the gas bomb, useless under the circumstances. On the other hand, I had Belkev — and Belkev was good bait.
  
  I slid over the edge of the platform and worked my way down the steps in the moon's light. There was utter silence. In five minutes I had located the Russian. By putting a thumb to his temple, I ascertained that he was dead to the world in a temporary sense only. The bola was tangled around his legs. I unwrapped it quickly and stole back into the shadows.
  
  The Indian would be returning now, stalking Belkev and me. I forced my heart to a slower beat, even at the risk of losing consciousness for lack of oxygen. There was no risk too great when I considered that anyone who lived in the high Andes would have to be supremely aware, ever alert to the slightest sign of danger. I was right, because I felt his presence before I saw him.
  
  The Indian was a wispy shadow, a bit more solid than the shadows around him. He slipped along the dressed stones of the temple wall only ten feet from Belkev's lumpy body. There he was motionless in one spot for ten minutes by the count of my heartbeat before making up his mind that I must have headed back toward the village for help. Now his attention became fixed on the inert body sprawled in front of him; I let the adrenalin flow through my veins to speed my last reserves of energy.
  
  The moonlight picked up the gleam of the sacrificial knife as it flew through the air. At that moment I swung the bola once and let go. The Indian looked up just in time to see the two weights whirling toward his head — but not in time to move. An ugly, wheezing sound came from his mouth as the weights tangled around his throat. His eyes bulged and his body went rigid. In a moment his sphincter muscles would relax and he would foul himself where he stood. He was dead, hung, his neck broken. He collapsed like a house of cards, one leg giving out and then the other, and he pitched forward over Belkev, the knife still in his hand.
  
  I rolled his body over, breathing with relief. I was forcing the knife from his rigid fingers when my heart thudded again. A cloud had moved away from the face of the moon and I saw the dead man's face clearly. There was no gold plate in his skull. It was a different man — it was the Indian's bait.
  
  I dove for the ground before I even heard the whispering of the Indian's bola whirling for my throat. Metal grazed over my back and smashed into the wall. I saw a figure with a gold blaze on its head racing toward me, leaping over the body of the dead man and swinging a second bola high overhead. I hugged the wall and rolled to the side as one of the weights dug up the ground next to my ear. Then I swung my bola up and caught his, using his strength to lift me off the ground. Our weapons uncoupled and each of us swung at the same time, the weights colliding and ringing eerily through the night.
  
  One clean hit with one of the bola's weights could stave in a chest and a successful throw could garrot a neck. There was no choice of weapons and no Dr. Thompson at hand to invent a bola-proof coller. I had to beat the Inca on his ground with his weapon; it was the way he had planned it.
  
  When our chains linked, he dashed me up against the wall. Our legs lashed out at each other's bodies, searching out openings for disabling blows to the groin or knee. It was my turn, then, to slam him into the wall, stringing the bola across his throat. Before I was able to cut off his wind, he delivered his weapon into my kidney, doubling me up. He followed through at once, swinging the bola on an uppercut to my face. I deflected it but my whole left arm was numbed by the blow.
  
  We were moving away from the pyramid now, entering a courtyard that was populated with grotesque statues that were half-man, half beast. These were the old Inca gods, awaiting deliverance of a dead enemy. With one arm limp, I was no longer able to use my bola as a shield and the Indian attacked me with renewed frenzy. The time had come for the killing blow. I was crippled and winded. We were both bleeding, our footprints daubed the ground red, but the killer could taste my death. As I clumsily dove away from the bola the weapon caught my thigh, deadening it. I rolled back to my feet and almost toppled over. There was no sensation whatsoever on the whole right side of my body.
  
  I waited, my back pressed against one of the statues. Close enough that I could feel his breath, the Indian wound up to throw the bola at his leisure. He knew that I wasn't going anyplace. Then, before I was set, the balls were rushing at me like deadly, twirling planets. They wound around my head and the bronze chain cut deep into my throat, cinching it shut. The Indian drew his sacrificial knife and leaped at me, prepared to carve my heart out while it was still pumping.
  
  He was in the air, unable to stop himself, when I was able to swing my bola, one-handedly, up toward his head. The heavy metal ball crashed into his jaw and traveled on into the middle of his face, driving the broken bones into his brain. The gold plate popped out of his skull; he was dead even before he landed.
  
  Painfully I took hold of the bola that was wrapped around my neck and found that it was wound around the neck of the statue too. Had it not been, I would have been the one stretched out on the courtyard stones.
  
  When I finally returned to Belkev, I found him huddled there in the dark, quavering and petulant. We started down the trail that led toward the village and with every step he took, he became braver.
  
  "Any decent bodyguard wouldn't have let them get hold of me. It's not my job to defend myself. It's your job," he said nastily.
  
  But on the way down, the mountain heaved one last sigh before settling down and when the aftershock was over, the Russian had once more paled into terrified silence.
  
  His bodyguards took possession of him as soon as we reached the outskirts of Aucanquilcha. The mayor and the museum curator were also there to greet us and I told them to go up to the temple if they were still looking for items of historical interest. The curator took off like a sand flea and returned to town an hour later, his eyes accusing.
  
  "There was nothing there," he said. "I searched everywhere. Maybe you were fighting with a ghost."
  
  "No ghost did that," the doctor who was still attending my cuts and bruises told him, pointing to the purple discolorations that covered my arms and legs. "Or that," he added, pointing to the raw, red circle that went around my neck.
  
  "But there was nothing there, nothing at all," the curator protested.
  
  "Except this," I told him and handed over a triangular plate of gold.
  
  He examined it carefully, turning it every which way between his fingers. Then I saw the sudden fight of understanding spring to his eyes. He dropped the gold piece hastily and rubbed his hands with washing motions, his eyes searching mine as though he were seeing me for the very first time.
  
  "How?" he whispered hoarsely.
  
  "I guess the gods decided to switch sides," I grinned at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Ten
  
  
  
  
  Two days later the cool air of Aucanquilcha was almost a sweet memory. We visited the nitrate works at Santiago, the copper mines of Chuqucamata and the sands of the great Atacama Desert.
  
  There is no desert quite like the Atacama. It covers most of the northern half of Chile. Its flat miles fade into a white horizon barely distinguishable from a colorless sky. Lizards and snakes wait for night before leaving their stones, and during the day little life is to be seen except for the giant condors that venture from their aeries high in the Andes in search of carrion. The Atacama is the driest desert in the world, its stretches more forbidding than the Sahara or the Gobi, and there is no better reminder of the fact than the black silhouette of one of Chile's national birds passing overhead.
  
  "I wish I were back in Germany," Greta murmured, looking out of the tent where I was making sure that there were no scorpion holes in the ground where the girls would be sleeping. Greta was dressed in some sort of skimpy athletic fieldsuit that reminded me of how rudely we'd been interrupted the evening of the quake.
  
  "Join the Communist Party and see the world. You should appreciate your opportunities. Well, no insects seem to be running loose around here."
  
  She clutched my arm as I was going out through the flap and pulled me to her. Obviously she wore no bra under the T-shirt.
  
  "Stay and keep me company. Please. Then I won't have to think about this terrible place."
  
  "In the middle of a small camp in the middle of the day with a crazy, would-be lover and his bodyguards all over the place? That doesn't strike me as the most favorable situation for young romance, Greta. The sun goes down here, too."
  
  "But what if Belkev chooses to come to me tonight? You don't know the things he makes me do."
  
  "You know the old saying, 'Politics makes strange bedfellows.' "
  
  I went from her tent to the line of Land Rovers that provided our transportation across the Atacama. The one concession to Belkev's fear was at the head of the line, a jeep with a light machine gun mounted on the rear. I found Belkev and his bodyguards at the Land Rover that carried our food and water.
  
  "Here comes the Killmaster," Belkev sneered.
  
  "How do I know he isn't dragging me into this desert so he can assassinate me?"
  
  "It was your idea to come this way, Comrade," I told him. "You were afraid to fly or -take a boat, remember? Too easy to plant a bomb in one of them."
  
  "It is very safe this way, Comrade Minister," his bodyguards assured him, "as long as we have water. There are no Indians around and we are in constant radio contact. We should reach the government station by tomorrow night."
  
  Belkev turned on his heel and stomped back to his tent, where he kept his supply of vodka.
  
  "He is perhaps a good expert in trade but he is a coward," the chief bodyguard said. "He didn't even thank you for saving his life. I will do that for him."
  
  "Forget it."
  
  "Just one thing, Carter. Why are you making such efforts to protect Comrade Belkev's life? I have been trying to figure this out since you joined us. I will be frank with you — I have no orders to kill you if something happens to Belkev and you are not involved in his death. If I did have, I could understand your concern."
  
  "You could just call it professional pride."
  
  The bodyguard mulled that over.
  
  "You are good, as good as your reputation. I would like to meet you again sometime under other circumstances. It would mean something to be the man who liquidated you."
  
  "Flattery will get you nowhere."
  
  "But you still haven't answered my question. Why would AXE be so interested in the hide of a swine like Alexander Belkev? Don't tell me about the information swap on the missile silos. You know something else."
  
  "And you would love to beat it out of me, I'm sure."
  
  "True, but please don't confuse that wish with the sick impulses of Comrade Belkev. It is my goal to ensure the success of the work of the Party, nothing else. We will win, you know."
  
  "Sure. Today Chile, tomorrow the world."
  
  "In a sense, yes."
  
  The charming conversation was ended by a call to supper. A folding aluminum table was set up and everyone sat down to a meal of canned meat and potatoes. The main taste, however, was that of tin and I wasn't surprised when Belkev proudly informed me that the cans had come all the way from the Soviet Union.
  
  "My favorite. Mulliginsky stew," I complimented him.
  
  "We have it in Cuba too," Rosa said. "We call it ropa vieja."
  
  Belkev was delighted by this homely coincidence between allies until I told him that the translation for ropa vieja was "old clothes."
  
  Before he got too drunk, I left the picnic and fetched my gear. I wanted to sleep in the desert, away from the camp, because there was a very slim chance that the MIRistas might attempt to make an attack in the Atacama. Slim, but still a chance. If so, I would operate better by myself than I would in the confusion of a melee.
  
  I found a relatively high spot about two hundred yards' distance from the tents and built a windbreak of underbrush. Then, while it was still light, I made a complete circle of the area, checking every possible avenue of approach the terrain afforded.
  
  The Atacama is not a desert of sand dunes. It is more of a wilderness of packed-solid, absolutely waterless ground. The few things that grow are gray, stunted bushes and stringy cacti. I cut one of the cacti open just to see how much liquid was stored in this kind of natural water barrel. The flesh inside it might have yielded a drop under a factory press but should we ever become dependent on living off the land, the odds on survival were slimmer than a scorpion's waist. At least the condors would have a good meal out of us, especially out of Belkev.
  
  As I circled about my private camp, I was able to pinpoint the natural route of infiltration should the MIRistas be crazy enough to venture into the Atacama. There was a rill, apparently formed many years earlier, that lay directly below my camp-right where I would have wished it. Satisfied, I retraced my steps and decided it was time to correct the damage to my gun if I could. I picked out a strong-looking cactus and sat down some yards from it, taking my time and holding the Luger with both hands, my forearms resting on my knees. There was a yellow knob on the plant and I used that as a bull's-eye before squeezing off my first shot.
  
  A hole appeared, two inches left of the knob. I fired off another shot. The hole widened a centimeter. The barrel had a bias of about ten degrees. I did some judicious hammering with a rock and tried the gun again. A new hole skewered through the hole, this time an inch lower. In a fire fight that inch could mean the difference between life and death. On the other hand, more crude hammering might close up the long barrel and leave me with no weapon at all. I aimed the gun a fraction of an inch higher and blasted the yellow knob apart.
  
  Before the pieces had hit the ground, I was diving to the dirt and aiming the gun at my windbreak.
  
  "Come out!" I yelled.
  
  A shock of red hair appeared and then I saw the face of Libya. Of all the girls in Belkev's harem, she was the only one who hadn't given me a second look.
  
  "Don't shoot," she said. "I am quite convinced after your demonstration that you can put a bullet where you wish."
  
  I motioned with the end of my gun for her to stand up. Lilya was an amazon of a woman who generally stood with her hands planted on her wide hips. At first glance she had reminded me of the Press sisters but her waist was slim and her broad face, while not attractive in a cute Hollywood way, had a powerful sexuality to it that was worth ten cardboard smiles.
  
  "I followed you after supper but you were gone when I arrived. What were you doing?"
  
  I didn't see any reason to lie to her. I explained my scouting the area and then I asked her why she had followed me. By this time we were sitting on my bedroll and sharing a cigarette.
  
  "You think I don't know what is going on between you and the other girls?"
  
  She leaned back on the pillow of the bedroll, her red hair spreading out. Inside her tacky Russian blouse her breasts billowed like firm pillows.
  
  "What about your boyfriend?" I asked. "Won't he miss you?"
  
  "Alexandrovitch? He is angry at you and when he gets angry, he gets drunk. He is in a stupor already. He won't wake up until morning and by then I will be back. I am disgusted with him. We all are for the way he ran out during the earthquake. Now that we are here in the middle of this wasteland, I don't see why I should have to stay around with him. I am free. Look, it is the sun going down."
  
  The sun had seemed to loom larger and redder as it neared the horizon and now it cut into the earth and saturated the desert with a bronze glow. Everything that had been ugly and desolate only a few moments earlier became strangely beautiful. It was what I might have imagined the Martian desert to look like. Then the aura was gone and the desert was swathed in darkness. We watched the lamps light up in the camp down below.
  
  "This Chile is so different. I don't know if we Russians will ever get used to it," Lilya sighed.
  
  "It doesn't look like the Chileans themselves ever got used to this particular place. As far as I can tell, we're the only people in it."
  
  "I know."
  
  Her rich sensuality bathed the desert night with an air of intimacy. She watched me with dark eyes as she unbuttoned her blouse and laid it on the ground. Most of the Russian women I'd ever made love with were lithe ballerinas in comparison with Lilya. She was strong enough to turn a small car on its side but her wide shoulders were more than matched by the creamy expanse of her breasts.
  
  "Come here, my Killmaster," she ordered.
  
  For once I found myself matched with a woman almost as strong as myself, a woman possessed of the most primitive and urgent desires. Nothing was forbidden and nothing was left to chance. Every inch of her body was passionate and alive and by the time we joined in the ultimate embrace, we went down as the sun had — aflame and glowing.
  
  Afterwards we snuggled down into the bedroll and she presented me with a small bottle of vodka that she'd smuggled out of Belkev's tent.
  
  "If I'd known you were coming, I'd have brought a glass," I said.
  
  "Ummm. Are all American spies good lovers?"
  
  "We have a special course in it. After all, there are standards to uphold."
  
  "You uphold them very well," she laughed. "You do everything well. I wish I could have watched you fight the Indian. I don't think the minister is worth such risks."
  
  Her lips sipped the vodka and she passed the bottle back to me. I propped myself on an elbow in order to drink from it.
  
  "The manufacturer of this bedroll forgot that I might have guests. It's a little cramped."
  
  "I like it," she giggled, easing her body against mine.
  
  "I'm going to call you Nikita. Since you're working with us, you ought to have a Russian name."
  
  "Nikita Carter," I tried it out. "I don't know how the boys back home would like that."
  
  "The girls out here like it very much. My Nikita, I wish you would stop taking so many chances with your life for that worthless Alexander. I would so hate to see anything happen to you. Please promise me you will be more careful."
  
  "I promise."
  
  "I don't believe you," she pouted. "You say that now but whenever anything happens, you throw yourself in front of Belkev. Can I tell you a secret that you won't tell anyone else? Belkev is a fool, an idiot. No one in Moscow cares whether he ever returns."
  
  "Then I tell you what. Let's all jump into the Land Rovers early in the morning and leave him here. We'll give him a bottle of vodka for the night and a bottle of suntan lotion for the day."
  
  "I like that idea," she smiled. Her fingers caressed my chest. "I'd like it even better if I knew that I was going to see you again. Where do you go from Chile, Nikita?"
  
  "Back home. I work as a professor in erotic incunabula when I don't have any assignments."
  
  "Are you fooling me? Yes, you are fooling me. You're always joking, Nikita. I never know when you're telling me the truth. I would feel much relieved if I knew why you were guarding Belkev. This way I imagine bad things that make me worry.
  
  I put my hand over hers.
  
  "You're a beautiful girl, Lilya," I told her.
  
  "Thank you."
  
  "Do you think I'm telling you the truth?"
  
  "Well, I don't know but I'd like to believe you."
  
  "Good, because you are. Beautiful and incredibly sexy. And here's something else that's the truth. You're probably the sexiest agent in the whole KGB."
  
  She snatched her hand from mine.
  
  "You're playing jokes on me again. Or do you think everybody is a spy?"
  
  "No, just you. The Kremlin would never let a lecherous old fool like Belkev go around the world unless it could control him and the only way a man like that can be controlled is through sex. You're the one who's always with him, making sure he shuts up and goes to bed when he's had too much to drink and starts to blab. No man could do that with Belkev and so they assigned you to the job. And since his men down there in camp haven't been able to discover the reason I joined the fun, you thought you could find out." I ran my hand over the skin of her satiny belly. "Now, Lilya, if anyone could, you could. But you can't."
  
  "You bastard!"
  
  It was the first thing she'd said in English.
  
  "You wanted the truth."
  
  "Let go, you killer."
  
  She stripped the bedroll back and stood up. Naked and angry, she was a virago.
  
  "If I ever see you in Moscow, I will have you killed. It will be my pleasure."
  
  I pulled the Luger from my side of the bedroll and handed it to her.
  
  "Go ahead, Lilya. Do it now. I understand there's a fat reward and a dacha in the country for the girl who does it. Just pull the trigger."
  
  Without hesitating she aimed my gun at my forehead. A cool breeze tugged at her long red hair, playing it around her shoulders. I looked up at the dark end of the barrel. She steadied the gun with both hands and pulled the trigger.
  
  Click.
  
  She stared down at the weapon, amazement on her face. Then she dropped it on the ground. I reached out my hand to her.
  
  "You see, Lilya, we're not in Moscow yet."
  
  The anger faded into amusement. She threw her head back and laughed at herself; then she took my hand and crawled back into the bedroll.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Eleven
  
  
  
  
  Belkev was bloated with a hangover. He pushed aside the canned Russian peaches and demanded another cup of coffee. If there's one thing you can get in South America that's good, it's coffee.
  
  "After just one more day of driving and a train ride to Santiago, I will be rid of you," he told me arrogantly.
  
  "That's too bad. I thought we were becoming fast friends. That's the whole charm of a trip like this."
  
  His mouth moved as if to say something in reply but his brain didn't function. Scowling, he lowered his jowly face over his cup.
  
  "I shouldn't give you any," Rosa said as she held a steaming mug before me.
  
  "Why not?"
  
  "You know why not." She glared at Lilya. The redhead had reverted to her KGB mold. It was as if the night before had never happened, her eyes told me.
  
  "Don't be angry," I told Rosa as she relented and gave me the cup. "I was busy last night keeping the MIRistas away."
  
  "There weren't any MIRistas."
  
  See.
  
  The bodyguards returned from their tour of the trail leading out of camp. Their chief sat down next to me.
  
  "We can pack everything into the cars as soon as the minister has finished his breakfast. R's a long ride but at the station a special train will be awaiting us. We should have no trouble from there on.
  
  "Fine."
  
  He studied me for a second before he got up to help the others dismantle the tents.
  
  "I told her she wouldn't get anything, Carter," he said, looking down at me.
  
  "But you're wrong, she did."
  
  I let him take that any way he wanted to and went back to my coffee. As I set the mug on the table, I felt the faintest vibration run through my fingers. Just a tremble from some faraway earthquake, I thought. Chile was full of them.
  
  "The condors are out early today," Greta observed.
  
  "That's a cheery thought to take on the ride ahead," Lilya answered.
  
  The tremble I felt in the table was growing stronger. I searched the sky; I didn't see any condors. But I did see a jet plane bearing down on us fast. The only reason I could see it was that in the flat desert the eye could cover fifteen miles of sky in any direction. The chief bodyguard had also seen it and he was running toward me.
  
  "Down! Everybody get down," he yelled.
  
  The Cuban girls stood up and waved their handkerchiefs at the plane as it drew near. Belkev raised his bloodshot eyes with a total lack of interest.
  
  The plane came over us low, one wing dipped. The table rattled in response to the roar of the engines, a roar that drowned out our shouts. It barreled by and climbed into the sky.
  
  "American," the bodyguard said. "A Starfighter."
  
  "What kind of a plane was that?" Belkev asked after the answer. "It looked more like a missile than a plane."
  
  "Starfighter," his bodyguard repeated.
  
  "It had Chilean Air Force markings on the tail. I'd heard that we were turning some Starfighters over to Chile. Trust the Defense Department to keep on selling its planes even when its customers have gone Red."
  
  "It's obvious," Belkev said. "They sent the plane out to guard us. It's about time too."
  
  The jet crossed overhead at a high altitude.
  
  "I radioed in this morning. The Army said nothing about a plane," the bodyguard complained.
  
  "So what? You can radio them now and thank them. Go on."
  
  The bodyguard walked over to the Land Rover that had the transmitter, shaking his head. Belkev dabbed his lips with a paper napkin.
  
  "See? It's coming back now," he said with great self-satisfaction.
  
  The Starfighter had lost altitude and was sweeping back down the desert toward the camp, preparing to pass directly over us. Everybody was standing and waving. The Starfighter dipped its nose and tilted down toward us. This was the point at which my thoughts jelled. Nobody sends Starfighters out as cover aircraft. The Starfighter is a highly specialized bomber/fighter, a fuel guzzler, an attack plane.
  
  "Dive, everybody dive!" I yelled.
  
  Plumes of dust twenty feet high began to cover the ground a hundred yards away. Pretty spangles of light gleamed from the plane's cannon. Belkev stood gaping, directly in the middle of the flight path.
  
  I bowled him out of the way with a block a Minnesota Viking would have been proud of. He landed heavily on his back and rolled under the table. I scrambled to reach the protection of a dismantled tent. The ground we were lying on, crawling, hugging, erupted under the stitchwork of 20 mm. shells. Through the smoke I saw the table over Belkev go flying through the air. The girls' screams emerged through the thunder the Starfighter's engine made as the jet pulled away from us.
  
  The whole center of the camp was torn apart by the strafing. I ran over to Belkev and discovered that his luck was still holding. He was cowering in the fetal position, untouched. One of his bodyguards had not been as lucky. We found his body crumpled on torn-up ground, a gun in his hand unfixed.
  
  "You Americans are behind this!" Belkev yelled.
  
  "Shut up."
  
  He grabbed my shirt and started to flail at me. I slipped under an inefficient right and held on to him with a half-Nelson. By this time the chief bodyguard returned from the Land Rover, looking puzzled.
  
  "The Air Force sent no plane out."
  
  "Well, they're sending one now, aren't they?" I wanted to know.
  
  "Yes. But it will be ten minutes before they can have anything here. They say we will have to hold on."
  
  The tacit point was that we had as much chance against the Starfighter as an ant has against a shoe. The only reason we hadn't been wiped out on the first run was that the strafing had commenced too soon and scattered us. Even now we heard the whine of the engine as it lost altitude and the plane began its second attack. I shoved Belkev into the bodyguard's arms.
  
  "Here it comes!" Greta screamed.
  
  I had to talk fast so they could hear me before my voice was drowned out in the jet's throaty roar.
  
  "There's a rill fifty yards to the left where we can get some protection. Run for it when I say 'go.' I'm going to be bringing up the rear with this." I shook my left arm and the stiletto dropped into my hand. "This is for anybody who falls back. Okay, here he is. Go!"
  
  The trail of dusty plumes began to cover the camp again, working its way directly at us. For a moment the group stood hypnotized like an animal awaiting the strike of a cobra. Then, as I brandished my knife, it broke and everyone ran pell-mell for the rill. The trouble was that no matter how fast we ran, it was not fast enough to escape the nightmare that followed us. The air itself was churning from the force of the heavy lead raining through it. Geysers of dust reached me, bracketing my footsteps. Bonita fell down and I picked her up without stopping my stride. We couldn't see the others for the falling dirt and we were still stumbling forward when we fell into the rill. When I looked up, I saw that the Starfighter was nearly a mile past the camp and climbing for another pass.
  
  "Is everybody here?" I called out.
  
  A chorus of terrified voices answered me but no one seemed to be hurt.
  
  "Are we safe here?" Greta quavered.
  
  "Don't be a fool," Lilya snapped. "On his next pass, this dirt will crumble like dust. Then on his next pass, he will kill us."
  
  "There are the trucks," Greta cried hysterically, pointing at the Land Rovers. "Why didn't we run for the trucks?"
  
  "Because it's a lot easier to hit a truck than it is to hit a running man. The trucks would only be deathtraps," I told her.
  
  The rill wasn't much better than that. The pilot of the Starfighter had cut his turn shorter this time, as though he were gaining confidence. Already he was bearing down on us again but this time he held off on his cannon until we were looking almost directly into the cockpit. One of the bodyguards began to squeeze off shots and I had to reach out and yank him back into the cover of the trench.
  
  "You're not going to bother him with that," I yelled but my words were lost in the rattle of the plane's cannon. The whole side of the rill blew up under the fire. Chunks of earth flew a hundred feet into the air. We were covered in a shower of debris. When the cloud of dirt finally cleared, there was nothing left of the earth bulwark. The arm of the bodyguard I was holding was soaked in blood. He cursed in Russian.
  
  I crawled over to Belkev.
  
  "Give me your vest."
  
  "Never. Go away."
  
  There wasn't time to argue. I drove a fist into his jaw and watched his eyes roll back. Then I stripped the vest from him. As I was putting it on, Lilya grabbed the bodyguard's gun and aimed it straight between my eyes.
  
  "Where do you think you're going?" she snarled at me.
  
  "Hold it, Lilya. The next pass will be the last one unless we do something fast. I'm going over to the jeep and I'm going to need this thing a hell of a lot more than he does."
  
  She glanced at the jeep sitting back at the camp. It was a good distance away but I had remembered the light machine gun that was mounted on the rear.
  
  "You wouldn't have a chance," she said.
  
  "Maybe not, but a little action will give us some time until the other planes arrive. Who here can drive a jeep?"
  
  Lilya lowered the gun and shook her head. The bodyguard growled that he could have had he the use of both arms. Then Rosa and Bonita spoke up.
  
  "We drove one all the time when we were in the Women's Militia."
  
  "Well, if we ever get out of this alive, you can thank Fidel for me."
  
  The Starfighter was coming in with less speed this time and from a different angle, one that would carry it the length of the rill instead of across it. Anyone caught in its range would be a mouse in a trap.
  
  "Come on!"
  
  We jumped out of the trench and ran across the torn-up ground. The jet's wings momentarily wobbled with indecision as the pilot spotted us. Even at the lower speed he was traveling at three hundred mph and didn't have much time in which to make up his mind. We took advantage of our surprise appearance and ran in a straight line rather than zigzagging. From behind us the noise of the jet's engines grew louder. I waited for its cannon to blow us off the face of the earth.
  
  The Starfighter wheeled to the right and to the left, first spraying us and then spitting at the people in the rill. But its momentary hesitation had hurt and it was too late to get a good bead on us. Frustrated now, its angle lost, it climbed steeply, becoming only a dot in the sky.
  
  We leaped into the jeep, the girls piling in the front seat and me in the back. The keys were in the ignition and Rosa had the motor running smoothly while I fed a plastic belt of ammunition into the machine gun. As I worked, I gave her directions on where to start driving when the Starfighter returned for the kill.
  
  "We are going to have a bullfight, yes?" Bonita called out to me.
  
  "Exactamente."
  
  The jet turned furiously toward the camp. There was no doubt — it was headed straight for us. At the last possible moment I touched Rosa on the shoulder and the jeep lurched forward. We raced about fifty feet in first gear, then she made a ninety-degree cut to the right and double-clutched into third and we were off.
  
  The Starfighter hung in back of us. I could sense the growing rage of its pilot. The fighter was equipped with air-to-air missiles that were useless against us. He had wasted precious time already and other Chilean jets were bound to have scrambled by now. Still, he had cannon and a rack of five-hundred-pound bombs, and that was overkill if ever I saw it.
  
  Rosa was skillful. The jeep used every undulation of the desert's hard ground to throw his sight off, a fact that also made things difficult for me, for now I was looking directly into the approaching nose of the jet. I rattled off ten inches of the belt as I bounced around in the rear of the jeep. The plane never wavered.
  
  A wake of geysers shot up behind us.
  
  "Right, turn right!"
  
  The pattern of dust plumes crept close to the tires and spewed in the air, making it impossible for me to see what I was shooting at.
  
  "Left!"
  
  The jeep leaped as a shell took off part of its chassis but the trail of exploding earth curved away from us as the jet screamed past. I was just starting to breathe again when the whole desert seemed to blow up. I hadn't seen him release the bombs from his rack. A heavy stone careened into my chest; only the armored vest prevented it from coming out my back. Miraculously Rosa kept the jeep moving while the machine gun spun on its mount and I lay dazed on the floor.
  
  "He's back, Nick!"
  
  The Starfighter was cutting its turns sharper and lower, covering the desert floor near the speed of sound. I was barely standing when the pilot squeezed the flight stick and the cannon once again began hammering on the desert as the fighter approached us. Rosa turned the wheel sharply to the right and held it there, wheeling the jeep in a circle.
  
  "No! Cut the other way."
  
  We were headed directly into the tide of bullets that were sweeping at us. The jeep's windshield was shattered by a flying rock and the vehicle screeched on two wheels as we sailed through the line of fire. The Starfighter immediately banked into another turn to bring the rain of death back over us.
  
  The jet's cannon was an MK 11, a twin-barreled, air-cooled, gas-and-recoil-operated automatic weapon that fired electrically primed 20 mm ammo from an 8-chamber revolving cylinder. It was all quite a change after confrontation with an Indian swinging a bola. The time it took for the pilot's trigger to fire the shell was one three-thousandth of a second. That's what's called instantaneous reaction. The only edge we had lay in the reaction time between the pilot's brain and his finger on the trigger. I could probably halve that time. The problem was that unless I hit him — or a fuel line — the fire I had available would have about as much effect as a hard rain. The Starfighter was a hell of a plane.
  
  "Rosa, how are you?" I suddenly asked.
  
  "Scared, Nick. When are the other planes going to be here?"
  
  Not in time, I knew that now. The pilot should have finished us off long ago, and our luck wouldn't run forever.
  
  "Just do as I say. Keep the jeep at thirty until he's on top of us, then cut right and step on the gas. You won't be able to hear me when he gets too close so just keep turning away from the direction of the bullets. He's going to come in really low and slow this time."
  
  That's just what he did, cutting over the ground no higher than fifty feet so that he could get the longest angle possible. I braced my feet and let loose with the machine gun. I could just about see the shells dancing off the Starfighter's nose. He returned the fire smothering us in the dust of his lead, each bullet capable of piercing the jeep from side to side. Rosa cut the wheel desperately as the plane kept on coming in, the pilot throttling back hard and hugging the trigger. From the bomb rack two tear drops could be seen as they spiraled through the air. Bonita screamed. The jeep's rear wheels slipped and spun on the ground as Rosa tried to turn away from the falling cylinders.
  
  One bomb landed fifty yards away; the other one was just about in our laps. The jeep was tossed up in the air like it might have been a toy car. It came down on its side, throwing us out like dolls, and kept on bouncing. My vision turned red as I groped to my feet; I wiped the blood out of my eyes. Rosa and Bonita were half-buried in earth and Rosa was bleeding from her ears after the concussion of five hundred pounds of explosive. They were both alive — but not for long. I don't know how much time I'd lost dazed on the ground but the Starfighter was making its last turn for the final coup de grace.
  
  I raced over to the jeep. It had settled on its wheels. The windshield had been sheared off and the machine gun was bent double. I jumped behind the wheel and switched on the key. On the second twist the motor turned over. Bless all the boys who make jeeps, I muttered out loud. I'd gone a distance of one foot when I realized that something else was drastically wrong. The right front wheel was gone. Not blown. Missing.
  
  "Okay, flyboy, it's just you and me now. I hope you don't mind going in circles."
  
  It zoomed over the desert like a gigantic mechanical condor sweeping in for the pickings. I cut to the right and held the wheel. Had I as much as tried to go to the left, the vehicle would have rolled over. The lace of 22 mm shells spun by the Starfighter's Gatling picked up behind me. With every bump the right front end of the jeep slammed off the hard ground. Now the bullfight had really started. Maybe I was crazy, I told myself, but suddenly I was sure I had this bull.
  
  The Starfighter is one of the most sophisticated planes ever produced — so sophisticated, in fact, that many pilots won't fly it. In West Germany they call it the Widowmaker. The plane is built along the lines of a missile; the fuselage is thick and snub, the wings are razor-sharp and short. Take your hands off the controls of any other plane and it will glide on the aerodynamic lift of its wings. The Starfighter has all the glide pattern of a brick, which is the reason it was given such a powerful engine. I already knew by the fact of my very survival that this pilot was eager but inexperienced. As I had been told earlier, the MIRistas were just starting to infiltrate the Chilean Air Force. The man who was trying to gun me down must have been one of the first to enter. He was using one of the best hammers in the world to kill an ant — but in his hands it was a hammer that could backfire.
  
  I curled around inside his line of fire, ignoring the cannon. Once, then twice, the jeep shook as he hit home. The ricocheting shells bounced around inside the chassis, some of them striking my vest like Death trying to claim my attention. I felt the dry heat of the afterburner as he climbed away. The bull was ready.
  
  With the jeep's motor running, I sat still on three wheels as he returned. I was secure in the grim knowledge that — one way or another — our war was going to end now. The pilot knew it too. Two miles away he was throttling back, setting me in his sights, easing down at a relative creep of two hundred fifty mph.
  
  The skill of a bullfighter is judged by how slowly he can turn a fighting bull around himself. I pushed the jeep as fast as it could go, tearing great ruts in the ground as it bounced along. Another kind of rut followed me too, the one put down by the cannon and meant to be my grave. Then, instead of trying to cut inside his path, again I widened my circle until it was large enough that the plane could turn with me, making it as easy for him as I could. Behind me the Starfighter's great engine throttled back again — and again. The cannon caught up with the jeep. A second tire went, blown out. I lurched on until another shell flew past my head and cracked open the hood. Smoke billowed out within seconds and I rode the tortured jeep to its death at ten miles per hour. When it came to a complete halt, I sat at the wheel and waited.
  
  The cannon ceased their activity too and there was an eerie silence. Then the Starfighter flashed overhead, its powerful engine quiet. The whistle of the wind around the wings created a doleful cry. I dove out of the jeep and covered my head.
  
  I don't know what went through the pilot's brain during that last, long second of flight. He must have realized that he had made the fatal error of dropping his speed below the necessary two hundred twenty mph necessary to keep the missile-like Starfighter airbound. When he switched on his afterburners and flamed out. The Starfighter turned from a weapon into a coffin. He was too low to eject — and the only way to re-ignite a jet engine is to dive for speed.
  
  Whatever his thoughts were, brain, trigger finger, cannon and a million dollars' worth of Starfighter flared into a bomb that rocked the Atacama, sending forth a black and red ball of fire that rolled upward a thousand feet. As secondary explosions erupted into new fireballs, I wearily picked myself off the ground and hobbled back to what was left of the camp.
  
  The bullfight was over, and in bullfights the bull never wins.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Twelve
  
  
  
  
  The military train pulled into Santiago's Mapocho Station and I saw that the government officials were fined up on the platform to welcome that returning hero, Alexander Belkev. Soldiers in steel helmets paced the catwalks in the old Victorian-style station, keeping a wary eye on every person in the crowd. At first I thought their presence was for Belkev's protection but then I saw the confident figure of President Allende marching down the platform toward us.
  
  Belkev stepped forward and received his reward, an Allende kiss; then, arms around each other, the two men walked down the platform, leaving us behind. The only one of our entourage to follow was the chief bodyguard, his arm in a sling.
  
  When the platform was finally cleared of all the bureaucrats, Belkev's girls departed too. I went down the ramp to the baggage area. There a hydraulic lift was lowering a metal coffin carrying the remains of the bodyguard who had been killed in the desert. The baggage master was looking around for someone authorized to sign the delivery receipt.
  
  "I'll take that," I said.
  
  "Have you identification?"
  
  "I'm with the KGB, can't you tell?"
  
  I signed "Nikita Carter" with a flourish and added the address of the Russian consulate. It was the least I could do for a man who had taken on a Starfighter with a handgun.
  
  From the station I went to a "safe" doctor and had my wounds stitched up. None of the plane's bullets had reached me but I had soon discovered that the armored vest was so badly battered that its framework had dug into my chest in a dozen places. Afterwards I wandered out for a stroll on Santiago's avenues and later wolfed down a meal of rare Argentine steak and good Chilean wine. It made me feel almost human again.
  
  I was lingering over some espresso with lemon peel when two hands softly crept around my throat.
  
  "Rosa."
  
  Smiling, she released me and sat down.
  
  "How did you know?"
  
  "Just be happy that I did. I thought you and Bonita had been shepherded back to the hotel."
  
  Instead of replying, she stared at my plate. I waved to the waiter and signaled for another steak. It came hot and rare from the grill and after she'd devoured most of it, I was able to get some response from her.
  
  "No more of this. You simply have to take me and my sister back to the United States, to New York. I am not going to spend one more day with that pig and his canned goulash."
  
  "You know I can't do that, Rosa."
  
  Her limpid dark eyes gazed at me imploringly. Sure, she was acting — but not without valid motivation.
  
  "You have to. You will. I know you, Nick. Bonita and I risked our lives for you in that jeep. My ears still hurt and I am bruised all over my body. I did it for you — and in return you will take me back to New York."
  
  She spoke with finality and then turned briskly to dessert, a caramel custard liberally dosed with rum. The trouble was that she was right; she had risked her life for me. I would be pretty low if I weren't willing to go out on a limb for her now.
  
  "Rosa, how on earth am I going to explain it when I turn up with two Cuban bathing beauties?"
  
  "We can be your interpreters."
  
  "I speak Spanish."
  
  "You could forget. Oh, thank you, Nick. Thank you. I knew you would do it."
  
  "I didn't say I would, damn it." I lit a cigarette and literally fumed. Then, knowing when I'm being made a sucker of, I sighed. "Okay, I'll work out something."
  
  "I know," she crowed triumphantly and gulped her last spoonful of custard before standing up and taking my hand. "Now I have a treat for you. Once you saw me dance at a dull diplomatic reception. It was nothing. This time you will see me dance the real thing."
  
  We caught a cab and left the wide avenues of Santiago behind as we entered a district of narrow, twisting streets and close-together houses built in another century. We went into a corner cafe that was festooned with soccer and bullfight posters. Clusters of old Spanish guitars hung from the ceiling beams. Obviously Rosa had been busy during the afternoon for the proprietors welcomed her with enthusiasm and a white-haired man immediately took down one of the guitars and started to tune it.
  
  This time there was no thought of politics, no trade minister from Russia, to poison the scene. Rosa danced while the old man sang, her grace drawing his voice back to its former powers of youth and vibrancy. I clapped out the rhythm, joined by the rest of the impromptu audience. I had no doubt in the world now but that Rosa would attract customers by the hundreds at New York's Chateau Madrid.
  
  Flushed and giddy, she flew to my arms and I could feel every heartbeat of her excited body against my chest. We left the cafe and went straight to the hotel, straight to my room. Her ruffled flamenco dress dropped to the floor like a fluttering bird and I carried her over to the bed.
  
  Our lovemaking echoed her dance, passionate and wild. She savored the last drop and fell asleep on my chest, her legs still wrapped around me, a smile on her lips.
  
  A knock on the door woke us up.
  
  "Nikita, it's me, Lilya."
  
  "Not now, Lilya. I'm sleeping."
  
  "You don't understand, I have to see you."
  
  "I'm busy."
  
  "You're sleeping and you're busy? Ah, I understand," she said, her voice accusing. "Then you better get rid of her, whoever she is. Belkev is missing."
  
  Rosa and I sat up as one. I wrapped a sheet around her quickly and shoved her into the bathroom. Then I dressed and let Lilya in.
  
  "Where is she?"
  
  "Never mind that. What do you mean, he's missing?"
  
  "Is it one of those Cuban girls? I'll kill her."
  
  "Belkev, remember? What happened?"
  
  Lilya's red hair flashed as her eyes searched the room. Reluctantly she got down to the subject.
  
  "There was a welcome-back reception at the Ministry of Trade. There were a number of students in attendance from the University. Some of them were girls. They were a little bit pretty. At least Belkev seemed to think so, judging by the way he was making up to them, inviting them to join him here at the hotel. I told him it wouldn't be allowed, that we would have to first check to see whether they were MIRistas or not. He said none of the girls would have been allowed at the reception if they were."
  
  Go on.
  
  "Well, I thought he was going to follow orders but we became separated in the crowd and when I tried to find him, he was gone. A soldier who was on guard outside the Ministry said he saw Belkev get into a cab with two of the girl students."
  
  I started to unbutton my shirt.
  
  "Aren't you going to do anything?" Lilya asked, indignant.
  
  "Look, I've done my job. One way or another I managed to keep this pervert of yours alive all across the whole nation of Chile. I got him back to Santiago and delivered him safe and sound into the hands of your security apparatus here. If he's so anxious to get himself killed, that's your headache. I'm finished."
  
  "I'll put every agent we have at your disposal."
  
  "I know. I know how you work. Thugs running up and down the streets like madmen and getting nowhere. I bet you don't even have the cab driver.
  
  "We will."
  
  "By that time Belkev will be feeding the sharks in the ocean."
  
  She slammed the door on the way out. Rosa emerged from the bathroom.
  
  "Nick, I thought you were staying here with me. Why are you putting on your gun?"
  
  I strapped the knife sheath to my wrist and tested it. The stiletto slipped into my palm.
  
  "You told her you weren't going to help. Now you've changed your mind? You must be crazy."
  
  "I'd be crazy if I wanted to have the whole KGB trailing after me." I kissed her on the forehead. "Don't wait up."
  
  I caught a cab on Bernardo O'Higgins Boulevard and gave the driver an address that was a block away from the Ministry run by my AXE contact. There never had been any question as to whether or not I was going after Belkev. The problem was how to do it without involving the KGB with AXE's setup in Chile or giving the Beds a chance to blow the rescue operation with one of those shootouts where everyone ends up dead, especially the hostage you're trying to save. The coup conspiracy had to be stopped no matter what my personal feelings were about Belkev. The way I felt about Lilya had something to do with it too. You can't sleep with a woman, even if she is your enemy, without becoming a little bit involved. Belkev's death was automatically her sentence when she returned to Moscow.
  
  I found that the Ministry's back door was beginning to open even before I knocked. There stood the minister himself, a little disheveled and obviously upset. It was nearly ten p.m., and Belkev had been missing for more than an hour.
  
  "I've been waiting for you," he announced. "This is very bad news indeed about the Russian. We were on the verge of arresting the ringleaders in all three countries. They can still defeat us if they assassinate him tonight."
  
  "Can't you move the raids up?"
  
  "Impossible. Everything is already set. Do you have any idea of where he might be?"
  
  "That's what I was about to ask you. Don't you know where the people who took him live?"
  
  He shook his head.
  
  "They used false names in order to get into the reception. It was all done very cleverly, using those girls to take advantage of his primary weakness, and at the last hour too."
  
  The minister looked suddenly old, old and beat, as he paced the bare floor where I had not so long ago put together the charred pieces of the Chinese messenger's papers.
  
  "Okay, the MIRistas aren't idiots," I began. "Let's even say they're cleaver, in which case Belkev is probably still alive. That's the way clever amateurs work. Their sense of timing is all off and they're too cute."
  
  "What does it matter? They have him and it's only a matter of hours before he is dead."
  
  "We'll have all the answers — and a lot more too — when I find him."
  
  Ten minutes later I was back in a cab, skimming over a list of addresses where MIRista agitators were known to hang out. The first address was that of a discothèque, a playpen for poor little rich boys whose daddies paid for their Marxist games. When I entered the place, I felt everybody's eyes follow me. I went across to the espresso machine and then asked the counterman if a Russian had been in earlier with two girls.
  
  "No, nobody like that has been in, Señor. Espresso o con leche?"
  
  The hostility was thicker than the coffee. I heard the sound of a chair being pushed back as I left. Instead of hailing a cab, I sauntered down the avenue and when I reached the corner, I turned abruptly and slipped into a doorway.
  
  Then I saw the young man with big shoulders standing there, his back to me. He pulled out a lead bar hidden under his vicuña sweater and looked around cautiously. I waited and just as he was walking by the doorway, my arm shot out.
  
  "Que…"
  
  I threw him up against the peeling plaster of the wall and drove a fist into his stomach as he bounced back. His fingers dropped the bar and I caught it before it hit the ground. While he was still sucking for air, I pressed the lead across his throat.
  
  "Where are they?"
  
  I eased the pressure a bit so he could answer.
  
  "I don't know who you mean."
  
  The bar pressed his head into the wall then while he flailed like a hooked fish.
  
  "Otra vez, chico. Where are they?"
  
  "Do what you want, pig. I won't tell you anything."
  
  It's funny how they always think that way. They haven't learned that courage, like money, is not something you get by wishing for it. In this case the boy saved an arm from being slowly, excruciatingly broken when he told me that Belkev and the girls had dropped in at the cafe and then left for another one. The way to verify such information is to tell your informant that he's coming with you and if the information proves to be wrong, both arms will be broken. I followed this procedure.
  
  "It's the truth!"
  
  "All right, you don't have to come with me. But you should be more careful when you carry a bar like this. You could drop it on your foot and hurt yourself."
  
  The second cafe was more blatantly political. It was a dingy, "atmospheric" place that was decorated with anti-American graffiti and populated by sullen types who hadn't yet learned that you can't hide a .38 revolver inside a turtleneck pullover. Catching sight of a phone on one wall, I was sure they'd been warned of my arrival. As I was moving toward the wine-stained counter, I saw one of the bearded patrons ease his hand out of his pullover.
  
  I turned and kicked the gun out of his grip. As I had hoped he would do, he lunged from his chair with a roundhouse swing at my jaw. I slipped under it, grabbed him from the back and leaned him against a poster that read, "Death to Yanqui Imperialists and their Running Dogs."
  
  By this time his compatriots had their guns in hand, each angling for a clear shot at me. I shook my arm and the stiletto spilled into my fingers. I put its point at the bullyboy's throat.
  
  "You can shoot if you want to," I told them. "Either you'll kill him or I will if you don't."
  
  "Any of us are willing to die for the cause," a girl yelled from the other side of the cafe.
  
  "Really? Ask your pal here. It's his life you're playing with. Ask him if he's willing for you to shoot him."
  
  The man in my grip said nothing. I'd call him a boy except that I'd noticed that a lot of the "students" were in their thirties, which is a little too old to expect pardon for adolescent dreams of grandeur. Besides, these characters were responsible for a reign of terror that had included murder, kidnaping and sundry other atrocities.
  
  "We won't shoot," one of the older men finally said. Ostentatiously he put his gun down on a table top. "We won't shoot but neither will we tell you anything."
  
  At his words the others put their guns down next to his. I saw his point all too clearly. Time was working against me and so would any stalemate.
  
  "We know who you are and we know your reputation for brutality, Carter," the spokesman went on. "But even a man such as you wouldn't torture one of us in front of the rest." He looked around for assent. "So you might as well pack up your tools and get out of here."
  
  For a split second I weighed the pain I could inflict on the man I held gripped in my hands now against the nuclear holocaust that would ensue if I didn't move on him. He lost. I yanked his hair back hard and exposed his white throat to the eyes of others in the room. The stiletto was honed to needle fineness. I slid it in a semicircle above his gulping Adam's apple, cutting only the skin but drawing a curtain of blood.
  
  "The Bolivar apartment house," a girl screamed. "They took him to…"
  
  He leader muffled her mouth as I edged toward the door, my hostage as shield.
  
  "You can thank your girlfriend for your life," I whispered in his ear. Then I threw him back inside, to the floor, kicked my foot backward to shove open the door behind me and bowled over the first men to come after me.
  
  The Bolivar Apartamientos was a high-rise apartment house located between the university and Santiago's wealthiest section. It rose ten stories high over a modern boulevard, ten stories of glassed-in apartments and gleaming balconies. Belkev and I had somehow survived the attacks of vicious Incas from Chile's pre-Colombian past and the death-spraying cannon of a jet plane in the desert — only to arrive for the last battle at an apartment house that might have been found in Rome, Paris or Los Angeles. The sidewalks undulated in an expensive, multi-colored mosaic, the grass was green and freshly mowed and the doorman's uniform was new.
  
  "It's very late," he complained. "Who did you want to see?"
  
  I slouched drunkenly and when I spoke, it was with a slurred Cuban accent.
  
  "All I know is I'm supposed to be at a party. They said to come right over."
  
  "Who said?"
  
  I fumbled in my pockets for a nonexistent piece of paper.
  
  "I wrote the name down somewhere. I don't remember. Oh, yeah. They said to go right to the penthouse."
  
  "Ah, of course." He gave me a wry smile. "That's where they all are tonight. Everybody's partying. It must be the full moon." He moved to the intercom. "Who shall I say is coming?"
  
  "Pablo. They know who."
  
  "Bien." He pressed the button and spoke into a receiver. "Hay un caballero aqui que se llama Pablo. Dice que le esperan." He listened while a question was asked and then he answered, "Es mucho hombre pero boracho. Cubano, yo creo. Está bien."
  
  He hung up the receiver and turned to me.
  
  "You were right, they are expecting you. Push number ten in the elevator. Good luck."
  
  I got in the elevator and did as he said. He had told me they were expecting a drunken Cuban upstairs. I doubted it. I pushed number nine.
  
  The hallway on the ninth floor was empty and silent but the sounds of samba music filtered down from above. I went into the stairwell and took the steps two at a time.
  
  I pushed the door open gently. Two men were standing in front of the elevator, peering into the empty car, their hands in their jackets as if they had just put something away. Before I stepped into the hall, I opened my jacket so I could make an unobstructed move for my gun. Then I walked toward them. Startled, they regarded me with scowls and suspicion. Then one of them spread his arms wide in welcome.
  
  "Pablo, we thought you'd never get here. The professor and his wife have been asking about you all night."
  
  Okay, I told myself, they don't want any gunplay in the hall if they can avoid it. That means Belkev might still be breathing.
  
  "Well, the party can begin because I'm here now," I laughed. "Just show me the way."
  
  "That's what we're here for," he grinned.
  
  They separated, one at each side of me as we all walked together toward the last door in the hall. One of them rang the doorbell.
  
  "It'll really get lively with you here, Pablo," he informed me with a pat on the back.
  
  A miniature eye surveyed us through the peephole and then I heard the sound of a chain being unlatched. The door opened and we went in.
  
  The living room lay just off the foyer and the sounds of the party reached my ears. The way was barred by an exotic woman in a silk robe with an Inca pattern. She had pitch black hair and the throaty voice of an actress. When she spoke, she gestured with a gold cigarette holder.
  
  "Pablo, dear."
  
  She went on tiptoe to kiss me and put her arm around my neck.
  
  "I'm sorry I'm late," I murmured.
  
  "Don't worry, dear man. We just had to begin without you. Well, you know the procedure. You can take your clothes off in the maid's room."
  
  For a second I didn't understand. I didn't understand, that is, until one of the voices I heard in the other room happened to materialize into flesh by wandering close to the foyer's archway. It belonged to a blonde girl who was giggling and holding a drink — and absolutely naked.
  
  "Sure, I'll be out in a second," I said.
  
  "You don't want any help?" my hostess asked hopefully.
  
  "Thanks, I'll manage."
  
  The maid's room was right off the foyer. I staggered into it and closed the door, noticing that there was no lock on it. These people were cute all right. Belkev might or might not be on the premises. I wouldn't know until I joined the fun and games, and I couldn't do that unless I was stripped to the buff — which meant leaving my gun, knife and gas bomb behind. Well, there was no choice. I took my clothes off and folded them neatly across the bed. The weapons I placed under the mattress. I took a last look at myself in the mirror, saluted my image with a weak "peace" sign and went in to join the party.
  
  I can only say that it wasn't a party, it was an orgy. No wonder it had been so easy to sucker Belkev into it. Some of the couples were standing and talking together but most of them were entangled on the luxurious sofa and chairs and a few were unabashedly making love on the floor. The pungent aroma of marijuana filled the air.
  
  My hostess, even more attractive without her robe, nonchalantly stepped over an ardent couple and handed me a drink.
  
  "A toast to victory," she proposed.
  
  "Victory for the masses," I answered and took a cautious sip. White rum, nothing else.
  
  She ran her fingers down my chest and over the fresh stitches.
  
  "Pablo, have you been in a fight or something?"
  
  "I've been a bad boy. You know me."
  
  "Maybe tonight I will," she said pointedly and followed the statement with a nod toward a heavy-set, mustachioed man who was talking with some people who were seated on a couch. He looked like Neptune set amid a sea of writhing backs and twisting legs. "My husband is so jealous that it's difficult for me to have any fun at these parties. About all I can do is to watch everybody else have a good time."
  
  "I can see that they are doing just that."
  
  I glanced at her and caught her slyly taking mental notes on me.
  
  "Have another drink, Pablo."
  
  The lights were lowered before she returned. I had settled down with my back to a wall and was trying to look around the place without feeling like a damn voyeur.
  
  "Is this everybody?" I asked as she handed me a glass.
  
  A girl was walking toward us, her healthy breasts moving in the pale light. Someone tackled her from behind and she fell on her back with her arms flung open. A male body converged upon her.
  
  "Oh, there are some modest types off in the bedrooms," she said airily. "Tell me, Pablo, do you think I'm attractive?"
  
  She leaned forward so that her breast brushed against me.
  
  "Very attractive. I've always said that."
  
  She reached around to a lamp and turned it off. Now the living room was in total darkness.
  
  "Then what's holding you back?" she whispered into my ear. "It's dark. My husband can't see anything."
  
  She found my hand, drew it toward her.
  
  "It's just that I'm a little modest," I told her.
  
  "But you have nothing to be modest about, Pablo."
  
  "Maybe. Do you think anyone's in your bedroom?"
  
  "Let's go see."
  
  Again she took me by the hand and we wended our way through the tangle of people on the floor to a hall on the far side of the living room. I heard her open a door and we went in. Turning, she kissed me ardently and then turned on the lights.
  
  "Just like the Russian," a fully clothed man with a .38 aimed at my chest said with satisfaction.
  
  He stood in front of the bed with two other men, also holding revolvers aimed at me. There were two more men on each side of the door — the Garcia brothers promoted to submachine guns. One of them wore a sandal on his left foot. Belkev was crouched in the corner of the bedroom, naked and gross, a stocking stuffed in his mouth.
  
  "You did very well, Maria," the leader told our hostess. "Was it difficult?"
  
  "No, he is a lecherous pig like the other, just better equipped."
  
  "Thank you," I acknowledged.
  
  "That's enough from you, assassin." The leader jerked his gun angrily at me. "You almost ruined everything. Even tonight you tried to stop the revolution. You fool, nobody can stop it. Tonight the armies of the MIRistas will rise on the signal of the revisionist's death. Do you know what this is, this party? It is a celebration, the celebration of his death and yours. Even while you were on your way, we were setting the trap for you in the same way we set it for the Russian. And you walked into it. Don't you feel a little embarrassed now, standing there like that?"
  
  "It's been so long since I blushed. I do admit, however, that the situation looks bad, if that's what you want me to say."
  
  "MIRistas backed with the splendid nuclear might of the Chinese People's Republic. Three magnificent nations molded into one revolutionary army that will control the whole of South America," he went on fanatically. I don't think he even heard what I'd said. "And as a bonus, the one hundred thousand dollars the Chinese will pay for your death."
  
  While lie ranted I did some calculating and no matter whether I used new math or old, it looked as though he were going to fall into the reward. He was the closest to me; I could take him and one more besides, which left three men pumping bullets into me. Another move worth considering would be toward the lame Garcia brother. I had no doubt but that I could reach him alive and grab his machine gun. I also had no doubt but that I'd be dead before I had time to sweep the room. I glanced around for other possible weapons. It was the usual boudoir of a rich woman, filled with stuffed chair, a closet full of clothes, bed, night table, bureau and a vanity table crowded with night creams, hair spray, makeup and sleeping pills. Nothing that stood out as a weapon.
  
  "Someone is bound to hear the gunshots above the music. What if the police get here before the revolution does?" I parried.
  
  "We will shoot if necessary but we have a better plan. Do you see that balcony? In a minute two drunken foreigners who came to the party for an orgy will start a fight on it. Unfortunately both of them will fall to their death. We are the witnesses."
  
  The hostess stepped out of the way. A MIRista yanked Belkev to his feet and took the gag out of his mouth. At once the Russian began to blubber and sank to his knees like dough.
  
  "Get him up," the leader ordered.
  
  Two of his cohorts dragged Belkev to the door of the balcony and opened it. A cool breeze entered the bedroom, inviting us out to ten floors of darkness. I could see the lights of the university in the distance, some of them the victory beacons of MIRista students. Would there be some sort of signal sent to them from the balcony when we fell?
  
  Belkev was clutching a leg of the bed. One of our captors swung a gun butt on Belkev's fingers and the Russian released his grip with a cry of terror.
  
  "If nothing else, you at least know how to die," the leader told me.
  
  "That's what I keep telling people — 'practice makes perfect,' you know. While we're waiting for your men to get Belkev off the floor, would you mind if I had a last cigarette? It's a tradition with me.
  
  The MIRista considered the request and then shrugged. It would be his cigarettes and his matches I would use. How could they be dangerous?
  
  By this time Belkev was on his feet, looking around wildly and groveling for mercy. The barrel of a revolver sank into the tire of fat that quivered around his middle.
  
  "Hurry up," the leader told me.
  
  "Thanks, I'll light it myself."
  
  Now Belkev was in the balcony doorway, grudgingly inching backward to the railing. He looked down and, seeing the drop to the sidewalk, tears came to his eyes. I was standing next to the doorway, beside the vanity table, taking one long, last drag on a cheap cigarette.
  
  "You're a man, Belkev. Don't act like that," I told him.
  
  While their eyes were diverted to the half-insane Belkev, my hand moved — not too quickly, just curiously — and picked up an aerosol can of the hostess's hairspray. A Garcia brother was next to me. My movement meant nothing to him but a look of understanding was spreading over the leader's face. His gun was turning and his mouth was opening when I pressed the nozzle of the can and took the still-lit match to it.
  
  A five-foot tongue of flame shot out of the can and licked up the front of his shirt. The tongue arced to the Garcia brother who was standing even closer to me than the leader. He was pressing down on the submachine gun's trigger when his cotton suit erupted into fiery bloom. His finger, traumatized with shock, clamped down hard on the trigger as he collapsed in a spin. Even his brilliantined hair was on fire by the time he hit the floor.
  
  His brother, the one with the limp, was getting off the floor where he'd ducked when the shots were riddling the room. I ripped the spread off the bed and threw it over him, blinding him while I set the material into a curling field of flames. Some random shots spewed out from under the burning bedspread but were effective only in keeping the other MIRistas pinned to the floor. Frantically he tried to tear the burning fabric away; it clung to him all the tighter with tenacious red arms. A scream of agony that froze the blood burst out of the flames and the whole mass ran for what it must have supposed to be the door. It wasn't. He passed through the balcony doors like a banshee and hurtled out into the open air, a twisting meteor fed by the onrushing air.
  
  There were still two MIRistas who had guns while all I had was a quickly emptying can. In spite of the fact, they made a break for the door. I got a running start as the first one was just turning the knob and landed him on his back with a two-legged lack. His head smashed clear through the panel to the other side and there he hung, unconscious. I straightened up the last gunman's pistol and let him empty the .38 into the ceiling since nobody lived above. Then I came down on his shoulders with my hands stiff, breaking his collarbones. After that, just to be sure, I came up under his falling jaw and smashed it out of conjunction with the skull. I picked him up and threw him in what I considered to be the general direction of the balcony. My aim was better than I thought. He sailed out into the blue and disappeared.
  
  "Come on, Belkev. Somebody's got to start wondering where those bodies are coming from."
  
  "Not so fast."
  
  I spun around. The voice belonged to the black-haired hostess. She clenched a charred machine gun to her naked belly. As she told me that she was going to empty the last bullet into my body, she deliberately stepped around the bed and cut off my only escape route. The gun seemed particularly ugly in contrast to her fine, pale skin. It was the conjunction of death and eroticism — a fitting enough finale for any man.
  
  "I win," she said and braced her legs, ready for the bucking of the gun.
  
  Then her black hair suddenly turned red. Her eyebrows caught on fire and she dropped the gun and screamed. With inhuman strength she pulled open the broken door and ran down the hall trailing a great flag of fire, flames from her hair lighting up the whole corridor.
  
  In the bedroom the fire flickered and died in the mouth of the can that Belkev was holding.
  
  "Come on, comrade," I urged. "I think we've really worn out our welcome this time."
  
  Nothing will break up an orgy faster than a woman running through it like a Roman torch. Belkev and I fought our way out of the mass of terrified partygoers — all milling around and trying to get their clothes out of the maid's room — and went into the hall. There all we had to do was to stop the first two men who emerged from the apartment and take their clothes from them. Everything is so simple if you're organized.
  
  Downstairs the doorman was goggle-eyed in the crowd that was huddled around the bodies of the dead MIRistas. Belkev and I ran — if you could call Belkev's waddle a run — for a couple of blocks and caught a cab.
  
  For once he was full of camraderie and gratitude but I was remembering what I'd seen in the apartment. It was the sight of the aerosol can pointing directly at me right after he'd set the hostess on fire. If the can hadn't gone dry at that instant, Belkev would have killed me.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Thirteen
  
  
  
  
  "Confirm CPR G-Class sub," the sonar man told us.
  
  We were in an old Super Constellation, five thousand feet up and a hundred miles west of the Chilean coast. It's a funny thing about the old Connies — they can stay in the air forever and then the U. S. Navy deguts a bunch of them and turns them into flying computer centers. The captain in charge of the operation explained it to me.
  
  "If the G-Class subs were nuclear powered, we could track them by satellite because they leave a seam of heat through the ocean that we can pick up with infra-red scanners. But in a case like this, we have to go to the computers. We drop a pattern of sonar buoys on the ocean surface and then we sit back and let them do the work. They triangulate the position and depth of our target all by themselves, but that's just the start of it. Some pretty sophisticated forms of sonar are being developed now and one of them is holographic sonar, which means that these buoys send back a three-dimensional reading of the enemy so that we can make an exact determination of the submarine's origin and class. It gives us clues that tell us whether to attack and how." He smiled. "Of course I never thought I'd be sending out a human torpedo."
  
  "At least I didn't volunteer," I said, glancing at the tanksuit I wore.
  
  The Navy frogmen, also in tanksuits, laughed and at that moment a radioman came into our section of the plane and handed us a report.
  
  "Raids in Santiago, Antofagasta in Chile, La Paz and Sucre in Bolivia and Lima and Trujillo in Peru all carried out successfully," the captain read out loud. "Radio silence for one hour guaranteed."
  
  "Silence or not," he went on, "the Chinese are going to know things have fallen apart a lot sooner than that. We'd better get rolling."
  
  The three frogmen, the captain and I moved toward the rear of the droning plane. The bomb bay was open when we got there and suspended over it were three objects that looked as much like manhole covers as anything else.
  
  "Chrome steel with vacuum locks. They'll freefall the same way you do, to a thousand feet, and then the drogue chutes will open. The chutes will release at contact and these inflatable rings will expand. Over here is the gauge that will let you regulate the amount of air in the rings so that you can maneuver them under the water. The main thing is to work fast, before the Chinese can send out any men."
  
  "Approaching drop zone," the intercom relayed.
  
  "Good luck, whoever you are." The captain shook my hand and then the hand of each frogman.
  
  The Connie made two passes. On the first one the metal shields spilled out one by one, plummeting to the blue Pacific nearly a mile below. As the Connie turned, the rack that had held the shields was lifted out of the way and the four of us who would drop on the next pass stood by the gaping bay.
  
  "Over zone," the intercom blared again.
  
  I lifted my arm and stepped out into the rushing air. Spread-eagled, I fell in a controlled dive. The sea curved away on all sides. I spotted the shields ahead and below and angled my hands until I achieved a fifteen-degree deviation. The wind tugged at my wet suit and whistled around the air tanks strapped on my back. Staying in formation, the other divers followed.
  
  At a thousand feet I yanked the cord and bounced upright as the chute opened. Now it was a matter of pulling the red lead cords to direct me to the bullseye. I hit the water twenty feet from the nearest bobbing shield. The frogmen did even better, landing almost within arm's length. We disengaged our chutes and swam to the shields.
  
  "Jesus, look below," someone said.
  
  I looked down. Directly underneath us, just thirty feet below the surface, was the long metal cigar of the Chinese sub.
  
  I let all the air out of the ring and the shield started to sink. Carefully we guided it down to the aft deck and walked it along the top of the sub, making sure it didn't touch the sub's skin and give us away with a telltale ring. I pointed to a large hatch. It was designed to take a missile, not a man. Delicately we lowered the shield down onto the hatch. It fit perfectly — chalk up one more point for Navy Intelligence. A trail of bubbles drifted upward as the vacuum lock self-sealed. One third of the job was done. We went up for another shield, swimming past the other pair of frogmen as they walked their shield to a hatch.
  
  They were finished when we drifted down with the last shield. One of them waved to us as we approached. I thought the gesture meant to signify a job well done until the waving became frantic and I turned and looked behind us. There were four more frogmen in the water and they weren't from the U. S. Navy.
  
  There is no way in which two men walking underwater with a heavy load can move faster than four men who are swimming. While we continued on our way carrying the shield, our buddies swam past us to meet the four head-on pulling their knives as they went.
  
  Under the wet suit I was sweating. I couldn't turn around to see whether or not one of the Chinese frogmen had slipped through and was about to cut my back open. As gently and as slowly as we had done before, we set the shield down over the missile hatch and waited for the bubble to tell us it was locked. As soon as I saw it coming, I pushed off the deck of the sub, grazing past an arm whose hand held a knife. I ripped his air hose apart as he missed me and then swam over to help the two frogmen who had taken on uneven odds.
  
  One of them was losing a red mist from his back while a Chinese frogman neatly sliced his hose at the tank. There was the length of the sub's aft deck between us and no way that I could reach the pair before the knife made its last fatal stab. I didn't have to. The wounded frogman caught the other man's knife hand and spun him around. His flippered foot smashed into his opponent's chest, knocking the mouthpiece from the Chinese frogman's face. Then he used the loose hose for a hangman's noose, wrapping it around the throat of the man until the knife slowly dropped to the bottom of the sea. The Chinese frogman's body followed the knife even more slowly.
  
  Our helicopter was right on time, dropping a basket for us to scramble into and lifting us clear of the sea. The wounded frogman was exhilarated.
  
  "They won't be able to get those shields off until they get back to Shanghai," he yelled over the sound of the copter's rotors. "I just hope they try to fire those missiles."
  
  "How do you feel?" I yelled back. "I would have helped you if I could."
  
  "The hell with that," he shouted. "That's the trouble with you cloak-and-dagger boys, you don't want anybody else to have any fun."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Fourteen
  
  
  
  
  The fun, if you could call it that, was over. I was back in my hotel room in Santiago, packing my bag for the return trip home. Allende's government was making headlines about the MIRista plot it had uncovered and smashed through its own brilliant detective work.
  
  If that was the way they wanted it, it was okay with me. I set the bomb on my overnight bag and left a tip on the bureau for the maid. I planned to collect Rosa and Bonita and somehow con the Air Force into taking me and my interpreters back to the States together.
  
  There was a knock at the door. Out of pure habit I hesitated before going to answer it. After all, the Garcia boys were out of the way, there was no reason to be overly suspicious.
  
  "Who is it?"
  
  It was a submachine gun. The center panel of the door was shot away in less than five seconds. At the far end of the room windows and pictures were smashing and falling. I pulled out my Luger as I dove behind the bed.
  
  A second spray of machine-gun bullets blew apart the lock and a heavy foot kicked the door open. I started to move in the direction of the adjoining room but a pattern of bullets etched along the floor and discouraged that notion.
  
  Who the hell can this be, I wondered. Lilya? She might be an angry woman but she was a professional. She killed only on KGB orders. A remaining MIRista? If there were any of those left, they would be much too busy going into hiding to think about me.
  
  "Get up, Killmaster!"
  
  Belkev!
  
  "Get up. I am at last going to kill you, what I've wanted to do ever since I first saw you. Humiliating me whenever you got the chance, making fun of me, making love to my women. Stand up!"
  
  A waist-high spray of bullets around the room told me he meant it.
  
  "You're crazy, Belkev."
  
  "I'm crazy? I'm going to get a hundred thousand dollars for killing you, and you say I'm crazy? This is the moment I've waited for, the moment to show who is the better man."
  
  "Get out of here while you're still alive."
  
  The words seemed to amuse him. I heard him chuckle nastily and step inside the room. He approached the bed.
  
  "No tricks will save you now, Carter. Throw out your gun and your knife. And don't forget that little bomb taped to your foot. I know all about those things."
  
  I took the Luger out of its holster and threw it on the floor where he could see it.
  
  "Good. Now the others."
  
  I shook the stiletto into my hand and tossed it beside the gun. Finally I undid the gas bomb from inside my shoe and flipped that out too.
  
  "Excellent. Now you will stand up."
  
  I did as he said, even stepping away from the bed so that he could have a clear range.
  
  "You know when you are beaten," his toad face gloated.
  
  "I know when I finally have the opportunity and the excuse to do what I've wanted to do ever since I met you, Belkev."
  
  "What's that?" he asked confidently.
  
  "Take you apart with my bare hands."
  
  I kicked the barrel of the machine gun up and pulled the magazine out. Then I handed the empty weapon back to him. He stood there like a statue, in shock.
  
  "It's called reaction time, comrade. Anyway, you have a good club now. Use it."
  
  The confidence dripped from him like wax from a melting candle. In a daze, he took my advice and cocked the machine gun back like a butcher's ax.
  
  "I think you'll like this, Belkev, since you like traveling so much. It's called an around-the-world. An instructor at Parris Island showed it to me once. We start off with aikido."
  
  He swung the club down with all his might. I ducked under his gut. We'd hardly touched but he was spread out over the floor.
  
  "You see, the whole point of aikido is to avoid contact and yet turn your enemy's strength against him. As opposed to jujitsu."
  
  He got up and swung again. I seized his lapels and fell backward. Belkev ended up against the wall upside down. He got up a little groggily — until he noticed my Luger within his reach.
  
  "Thai foot boxing, on the other hand, uses one's own strength," I explained.
  
  My shoe deflected his gun hand and shot into his chest. He dropped as if he'd been shot. I replaced the gun in its holster. Belkev reached for my knife.
  
  "While karate employs the hands along with the feet."
  
  I chopped the point of his shoulder and heard a gratifying crack. I picked up the stiletto and put it back in its sheath. Just in case Belkev planned to sleep through the rest of the lecture, I propped him into a standing position against the bureau. Then I slipped the gas bomb into a pocket.
  
  "As the sun sets on the Orient, we come to the United States of America. Perhaps you've heard of the place. Any number of arts have been developed there, including modern boxing."
  
  I accentuated the point with a hook in the gut. As Belkev crumpled over, I smashed into the side of his face with a right cross.
  
  "That's called a 'one-two.' And of course there's always that good old American stand-by, free-for-all fighting."
  
  I took him by both arms and sailed him over the bed and into the room's full-length mirror. The falling glass made a lacy pattern around him.
  
  "And," I added, pulling him back to the center of the room, "U.S. Marine hand-to-hand combat."
  
  I snapped his sternum in half with an elbow that went on up to his chin and chipped a tooth. My other elbow left his squat nose squatting over his right cheek. He gagged for air as a knee drove through his lard almost to his backbone and I finished the job by heaving him into the bureau mirror. He rolled off the top of the bureau and hit the floor like a sack of water-logged potatoes.
  
  "You've probably guessed by now that hand-to-hand stems from the free-for-all, no? Any questions? I could do it again if you liked."
  
  A mournful grunt served as his answer. He was flat on his face. His clothes were torn apart. He had — by an educated guess — half a dozen broken bones. But he'd five. And that's more than he would have done for me.
  
  "Pardon me," I said politely. "I did forget one thing. A KGB trick, of all things."
  
  I leaned over him. He didn't resist.
  
  When I was through, I added some bills to the tip and then climbed the stairs to the top floor of the hotel. Rosa and Bonita were waiting for me in their room, packed and ready to go.
  
  I went over to the bar and poured three drinks.
  
  "We heard a terrible racket going on downstairs. What happened?" Rosa asked. "See, you cut a knuckle." She took my hand.
  
  "It's nothing much."
  
  "Was Belkev there?"
  
  "Yes, but he's not going to bother us."
  
  The KGB pressure point — that simple little trick that cuts off blood to the brain — would keep Belkev unconscious for hours.
  
  "How do you know he won't?" Bonita asked as she picked up her drink.
  
  "I very simply explained to him that you two wanted to go to the States with me and that a citizenship exam was required. I said that the exam had to be held in complete privacy. No one else would be allowed in."
  
  "And he agreed to that?" they exclaimed.
  
  "Girls, if there's one thing I've learned in this business, it's not what you do but the way you do it."
  
  Half an hour later, our private exam concluded, they agreed that I was right.
  
  As we were going out the door, the phone rang. Oh no, I thought, what now? It was my AXE contact. "I just thought you might like to know," he said airily, "the Russians have returned the captured satellite information tube. Your mission has been accomplished and…"
  
  "That's very interesting," I said. "You know I'm partial to missions that get accomplished. It's the ones that don't…"
  
  "…and peace and goodwill reign among all men."
  
  I smiled, broke off the connection, put an arm around each girl and went out the door.
  
  
  
  
  
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