Шкловский Лев Переводчик. Сканы 3

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Школа кожевенного мастерства: сумки, ремни своими руками

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shot him. The side of his head was swollen with a bruise, and there were welts all across his naked back. I recognized the dead man. I'd seen a picture of him. The large brown eyes, the full lips, the pale skin—like Maria's. I vowed to myself that I'd have my revenge, that I'd find the men responsible for killing Pedro and Maria. The flames were growning larger now, threaten-ing to engulf the whole corner of the cottage. I picked up a heavy woolen blanket that was on the foot of the cot and threw it on top of the roaring flames. Then I threw my body on top of the blanket. I felt the flame rise up around my face, and tasted the acrid smoke. I rolled across the blanket, then jumping up, I saw that I had man-aged to put out most of the fire. The flames that still flickered around the edges of the blanket, I stamped out with my feet. It was then that I heard a volley of gunfire com-ing from outside. There had been a third Russian in the cabin, who must have escaped through the back and tried to make a getaway in the car. I lis-tened intently. No more shots followed. Then my heart sank when I heard an engine start up. That meant that Pilar hadn't headed the man off, that she hadn't hit him. He'd hit her. I rushed out the front door just in time to see the sedan pull out from behind the house and head toward the dirt road. I lifted Wilhelmina to fire, but as I sighted the driver's head, a shot rang out and struck the left front tire of the car. Pilar came run-ning to the front of the house, her gun still in her hand, all traces of her limp gone. Thank god. We stood t"gelher watching the car_ which was now

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out of control. It missed the turnoff to the dirt road and careened into the large rock formation with an ear-splitting crash. "He got past me," Pilar explained, "but then I aimed again." "And hit. Good work." We went to the totalled car, and what we saw wasn't a pretty sight. The driver's head had gone through the windshield, and was now a bloody pulp with glass shards sticking out from the skin. From the way his body was twisted against the steering wheel, it was clear that the man's back was broken and that he was dead. "His name is Mihail Brodsky," Pilar said. "I rec-ognized him immediately. He's one of Moscow's top agents in Spain, and is particularly noted for his work as an assassin. And he also, although you couldn't tell it by looking at him now, fits the de-scription Dona Pretiosa gave of one of the men who came into her cafe." "The other two fit her descriptions, also," I said. I lifted Brodsky's body out of the car and went through his pockets. I found nothing. "Nick," Pilar said, as we walked back toward the house, "they were talking about the nuclear plans, weren't they?" "It sounded like it all right. And Nozdrev's sup-posed to get hold of them tomorrow. It looks like El Grupo and the Russians are playing nuclear footsie." "Yes," Pilar said, "it's a grim business." She seemed terribly depressed. "You sure you're all right Pilar? Your foot?" "I'll be fine."

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"We'd better check out the other two." Pilar went to the man outside, while I headed back to the cabin to check out the man I'd gunned down there. This was a grim business, as Pilar said. We'd had all of our worst fears confirmed tonight. One: El Grupo did know that what they had in their hands were diagrams and instructions for nu-clear weapons. Two: El Grupo and the Russians were playing ball. And three: the Russians were getting the nuclear plans tomorrow and unless we stopped them, the two groups would, "take control of this country," as Brodsky had so succinctly put it. The first time I searched the man in the cottage I didn't find anything on him. The second time, however, I discovered a folded slip of paper in the bottom of his back trouser pocket. Written on the paper was a phone number, with the initial "N" written beneath it. "I found nothing," Pilar said as she entered the cottage. "What about you?" I showed her the slip of paper. "It's a Barcelona number," she said. "I recog-nize the prefix. Do you think N stands for Nozdrev?" "I certainly hope so." Then I motioned Pilar to-ward the cot in the corner. Pilar stood looking down at the figure on the cot. "Pedro?" I nodded. Why had the Russians wanted to beat and then murder him? What information did he have that they wanted? And if the Russians were connected with El Grupo, what did that mean about Pedro's connections with El Grupo? Were

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there one or two branches of El Grupo? Still there were no answers.

I was silent during most of the drive back to Bar-celona, thinking about Maria and Pedro. I couldn't get the images of their large dark eyes out of my mind. Their murders seemed to be totally senseless in this wretched game between terrorist power bro-kers. Sadly, the lives of lots of "little people" like Maria and Pedro get caught up and demolished in these big international struggles. Pilar must have sensed my mood, because she was pretty silent herself for most of the trip. Maybe she was thinking some of the same thoughts I was. Eventually she spoke. "Nick, Lorca told me about you and Maria. Are you thinking of her?" I nodded. "I'm so sorry," she said, placing her hand on my shoulder. "Thanks. I'll bear up. It's all part of the game." "One always does, bear up, doesn't one?" she said sadly. Then there was nothing more to say. But she left her hand on my shoulder, and it felt good there.

Back in my hotel room in Barcelona, I got out a scrambling device, just in case anyone should be listening in, and we placed a call to Lorca. I gave him a brief outline of the night's events, and he said he'd sent an ambulance to pick up the bodies, and a tow car for the sedan. Then I gave him the bombshell about the nuclear plans that Nozdrev was to pick up tomorrow. He whistled into the re-ceiver.

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there one or two branches of El Grupo? Still there were no answers.

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"Christ, Nick, this is bad. As bad as it can get.

We've got to head Nozdrev off. I'll put my men on

the phone number and get back to you as soon as

possible. Don't either of you leave the hotel. Stay

put. I want you there and ready to leave as soon as

we locate an address for that number. Let's just

hope it is Nozdrev's number. If we don't intercept

those plans before the Russians we're going to have

a major international crisis on our hands. I'll also

send out sketches of Nozdrev to every police sta-

tion in the country. Now, I'll talk to you later."

"We'll be here," I said and hung up. "Well," I

said, turning to Pilar, "looks like we're staying in

for the rest of the night."

"Waiting for Nozdrev?"

"Waiting for Nozdrev. Could be a long wait."

' 'Well Nick, what shall we do while we wait?"

She had that teasing note in her voice I'd noticed

the first night at her party. Also, I couldn't help but

notice that she had kicked off her shoes and had

stretched out on my bed while I talked to Lorca on

the phone. My eyes moved from the golden helmet

of her hair against the pillow to the nipples thrust-

ing out of the light clinging tanktop. Then I looked

into her pale, beautiful face. She returned my gaze.

"I'm much too excited to go back to my

bedroom to sleep," she said. Her low, sexy voice

was again teasing.

"Good," I said. "I'm excited too."

Then Pilar stretched out her arms, beckoning me

to join her on the bed, and I moved into her arms.

I thrust my body on top of hers, clothes and all,

and I felt her arms greedily encircling my back.

"I've wanted you ever since that first night at my

party," Pilar said.

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ve wante you ever since that first night at my

party," Pilar said.

NICK CARTER

"And I've wanted you."

Our lips and our tongues met in a long, long kiss.

Then I raised myself up. As I straddled Pilar, I re-

moved her tank top and her skirt and panties. I

threw off my own clothes and bent back down to

her. Supporting myself on my elbows, I kissed and

licked her full, smooth breasts. Her rosy nipples

became erect under the probing of my tongue. As

her hand caressed my hair and the back of my

neck, I slid my own hand down and touched the

rich moistness below.

"Oh, please Nick," Pilar whispered.

I moved my body into hers very slowly, and she

let out a long, low sigh of pleasure. Her hands

played on my back, her long fingernails tapping

out a musical rhythmn to accompany my own

thrusts. I gradually increased my speed and felt

Pilar change her own rhythm in response. Her

hands now caressed my shoulders, my back, my

buttocks. Her legs parted wider and she thrust

them over my back, as though she wanted me as

deeply inside of her as possible. I pressed further

and harder. Pilar began moaning, softly at first,

and then louder and wilder, until finally we cli-

maxed together, perfectly, and she was still.

We both lay motionless for many seconds. Then

Pilar reached out and touched my cheek.

"You were even more wonderful than I ex-

pected," she said. The feeling was certainly mutual.

More than satisfied, we both drifted off into sleep.

I awakened with a start to the loud ringing of the

telephone. As I reached for the receiver, I noted the

clock beside the bed. It read 4:30 a.m.

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"Nick, Lorca here. My research department has

located the address that corresponds to that phone

number you found. It's in a residential district in

the northern part of the city. I've already sent some

men to keep watch on the house while you and

Pilar get there-—just in case Nozdrev's there and

decides to go out."

Lorca told me his men would be in a gray coupe

and gave me their license number so I could identi-

fy them. I asked him if he had any new information

about the case.

'SNO new communiques from El Grupo," he

said. "But I did get some news on those men you

shot down two days ago at Maria's. All of them

had been in the Spanish army. Strangely, though,

they all have very distinguished records, all of them

performed extremely well. There was not a single

dishonorable discharge among them. Anyway, my

men are now trying to locate their relatives and see

if we can come up with anything from that angle.

"Listen, Nick," Lorca continued, "the impor-

tant thing now is to stop Nozdrev, if he is at that

house. But also want you to try to take him alive

if at all possible. He'd be more useful to us that

way. We might be able to get some information out

of him about El Grupo. But do what you have to

do. Good luck."

I hung up. Pilar was looking at me, her green

eyes clouded over with sleep. I told her to rise and

shine and relayed what information Lorca had giv-

en me. Pilar rose, and as the sheets fell from her, I

had to check my impulse to reach out and encircle

that gorgeous statuesque body. There was no time

for all that now.

NICK CARTER

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It was still dark outside when we arrived at the

address Lorca had given us. We parked the car

around the corner and then headed toward the

small wooden house. The place was bordered by a

small, stone garden wall, but the front door was in

clear sight of the street. I spotted the small, gray

coupe across the street and went over to look at its

license plates. They checked out, and as I moved to

the car's front door, the driver rolled down the

window.

"Mr. Bryan?" he said.

"Yes. Anything happening here?"

"Not since we arrived. No one's entered or left

the house since four-fifteen."

"Is there a back entrance?"

"Yeah, we've got a couple of men round back

watching it." The driver checked with the men in

back via his two-way radio just to make sure

nothing new had developed in the last few minutes.

Nothing had.

"Okay," I said. "Stay here and signal us if any•

one approaches the house."

I decided our best bet was to enter the house

through the back door. Pilar and I stepped over the p

low fence into the garden and circled around to the

back. The house was dark and silent. I looked

through a back window into a small, modern kitch-

en. An adjustable key inserted easily into the back

door. After I jiggled the key for a few seconds, the

tumbler clicked and the door opened inward.

I unpocketed Wilhelmina and stepped inside.

Pilar, gun in hand, followed me. The kitchen led

into a small hall, off of which we found a dining

room and living room. Both were dark and empty.

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From the living room another hall led to what were

apparently two bedrooms. The door of one of these

rooms was open and we checked it out: also empty.

The door to the second bedroom, however, was

closed.

If Nozdrev was asleep in the house, that was the

room he was in. I asked Pilar for her high-powered

flashlight. If Nozdrev was asleep, I planned to sur-

prise him with the light in his eyes before he had a

chance to respond. I slowly turned the knob of the

bedroom door. The door creaked slightly as it

opened inward. I suddenly shined the light into

Nozdrev's face. Or what should have been his face.

What the beams illuminated was a pillow and an

empty bed. A spread covered the bed, and it looked

as though no one had been sleeping here tonight.

We returned to the living room and started

searching the place to see if we could come up with

any information that might tell us whether or not

this house was indeed Nozdrev's headquarters. If

he was staying here, there might be some informa-

tion in the house about his meeting with El Grupo

today. The living room was decorated with stan-

dard modern furniture and was entirely non-

descript. Even the abstract paintings on the wall

looked like they had been sold by lot, and the

whole place was devoid of any traces of personal

tastes or eccentricities. A typical safehouse set-up.

While Pilar checked out the walls for bugging, I

went through the drawers of cabinets and tables

here and in the dining room. They were as empty

and spotless as in a newly-cleaned hotel room.

Pilar concluded that the place wasn't bugged.

The kitchen seemed as empty of personal traces

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NICK CARTER

and as nondescript as the living and dining rooms.

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NICK CARTER

and as nondescript as the living and dining rooms.

In one of the cabinets, however, Pilar found a half-

filled bottle of extremely expensive Russian vodka.

The first indication that whoever was living here

had to be Russian was that the vodka wasn't a

brand that was imported to Spain.

The second bedroom offered us no further clues.

In the master bedroom all the drawers and bureaus

were empty, as were the cabinets in the bathroom.

In the closet in the hall, though, I found two newly-

cleaned suits, still in their cellophane protectors.

Ripping off the cellophane I discovered that the

suits were made by an English tailor on Bond

Street. He was a tailor whom I knew many high

Russian officials favored. And the dimensions of

the suits confirmed for me that this was indeed

Nozdrev's hideaway. Nozdrev was exactly six feet,

five and a half inches tall, with an extremely broad

barrel chest, and an exceptionally small waist.

There weren't many men besides Nozdrev who

could fit into these jackets and pants.

So this was where Nozdrev stayed. But where

was he now?

At this point we could only wait here and hope

that Nozdrev returned. In the meantime, we de-

cided to go over the entire house again in the hope

that we might find some further clues to the

Russian's activities. We searched the living room

and dining room and kitchen even more thorough-

ly than before. We checked the molding and the

window frames, looked behind the paintings for a

safe, took all the cushions off the sofas and chairs.

We found nothing.

We went over the bedrooms again with a fine-

toothed comb and again turned up nothing. It was

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discouraging. I had almost given up when I picked

up a message pad from beside the telephone in the

master bedroom. I had flipped through it before

and all of its pages were blank. Touching it now I

felt a slight indentation beneath my fingers. I

picked up a pencil and began lightly running it

across the top sheet of paper. Sure enough, letters

and numbers began to appear on the pad. The in-

dentation came from a message written on the

sheet of paper above this one. When I had covered

the entire sheet in gray, a message stood out in

white. It read: ' SEI Sol O2-A, 12th, noon."

Excited, I showed the message to Pilar. Today

was the twelfth, so it was clear that Nozdrev was

meeting someone at noon, quite possibly the men

from El Grupo. But where? What was "EI Sol?"

"Sol" was the Spanish word for sun, but what did

it mean here? A restaurant, perhaps? A club? A

gymnasium?

"We've got to find out what 'Sol' is," I said to

Pilar. We got out Nozdrev's telephone books and

combed through them. Not a single listing for any-

thing in Barcelona called "EI Sol."

I took a

miniature, computerized telephone from my

pocket that Lorca had given me. I dialed him.

I explained to him that Nozdrev wasn't here, but

that I was certain this was his hideaway. I gave

Lorca the message I'd found by the phone, and he

promised to put his research department on it and

see if they could come up with the meaning of "EI

Sol." He advised Pilar and me to sit tight in the

meantime—in case Nozdrev came back to his

house between now and noon. There wasn't much

else we could do.

As I put the computer phone back in my pocket,

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house between now and noon. There wasn't much

else we could do.

As I put the computer phone back in my pocket,

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NICK CARTER

I realized that the sun had risen. I checked my

watch: 8 a.m. Only four hours before the meeting

of the Russians and El Grupo and possibly the be-

ginning of Doomsday. It made me shudder.

By 11:15, I was convinced that Nozdrev wasn't

coming back here before his noon meeting. I was

just taking out the computer phone to ring up

Lorca and tell him that Pilar and I might as well

leave when Lorca buzzed me. He said that the only

thing his men had been able to come up with was

that there was a beach to the south of Barcelona

that was sometimes called "EI Sol." It was a long

shot, just a guess that the "Sol" on the slip of paper

I'd found was this beach, but at the moment it was

the only guess we had. The #32-A could refer to a

cabana number. Lorca explained that El Sol was

the third public beach after we hit the coastal high-

way south of the city.

"Can you make it there by noon?"

"We'll do the best we can."

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Chapter Seven

Barcelona pedestrians are notorious for crossing

in front of cars, and it seemed as though every few

yards or so I had to slam on my brakes and come

to a screeching halt to avoid running down women

loaded with shopping bags and smartassed teen-

agers strolling nonchalantly across the streets.

As we neared the center of the city the noonday

traffic became more and more dense. The air was

filled with the smell of gasoline exhaust and the

sounds of irate drivers honking and shouting at

one another. By the time we reached the Federal

Plaza at the end of the Ramblas, we were in the

middle of a real traffic jam. A car had stalled and

was creating a gigantic traffic snarl ahead of us;

cars moved only at a snail's pace.

I checked my watch. It was 11:30 already. We

were in the far right-hand lane of the crowded six-

lane intersection. Honking the horn, I steered the

Mercedes onto the wide sidewalk to my right. Pe-

destrians fled before me in panic, shouting curses,

and two traffic cops in the middle of the street blew

their shrill whistles and gestured angrily at me. But

stepped on the gas and kept making my way

down the sidewalk. Glancing in the rearview mir-

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NICK CARTER

ror I saw that I'd started something. Other cars

were now pulling onto the sidewalk behind me, and

soon this would be just another lane of traffic, as

slow-moving as the rest. But fortunately I was well

ahead of the cars behind me, and had already made

it around the intersection and pulled back into the

street. A few blocks more, and we reached the en-

trance to the coastal highway and headed south.

The traffic was less dense on the highway, and I

quickly managed to pick up speed and miles. We

drove alongside the glistening, aquamarine ocean.

Gradually the larger buildings on the edge of the

city gave way to smaller ones, and soon the land

was pure, sandy coastline, dotted only occasionally

by a house or inn. The first public beach came into

view, then several miles further down the coast a

second beach appeared.

"It will be the next beach," Pilar said excitedly.

After a stretch of several more miles of sand and

water, El Sol came into view. It nestled along the

white sand between the ocean and the highway. A

long line of cars was parked on the side of the high-

way, and looking down I could see that El Sol was

packed. I could also see that the place had a large

complex of cabanas.

Twelve noon exactly. No time to waste. We

parked and hurriedly descended the steep steps

leading down to the beach. At the foot of the stairs

was a big white bathhouse, whose large front win-

dow was open.

"Can I help you?" said a deeply tanned young

stud, who was leaning out of the bathhouse win-

dow.

"We'd like a cabana,"

I said. "Has anyone

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checked into number thirty-two-A?"

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"Let me check," he said, moving toward the

back wall of the building where the keys to the

cabanas were kept. "Not many people reqpest spe-

cific cabanas. You been here before?" he asked.

"Didn't think so. You from the city?" His ques-

tion was directed at Pilar, who he'd been eyeing

since we arrived. He wanted to strike up a con-

versation with her, but his slow, lazy speech and

movements were infuriating under the circum-

stances.

"My husband and I are supposed to meet a

friend who said he'd be in cabana thirty-two-A. We

just wanted to check and see whether or not he's

arrived yet."

The beachbum turned back to the rows of keys.

"Looks like you're in luck," he drawled. "Some-

one's already taken thirty-two-A."

"Which way is it?"

The man came back to the window and pointed

toward a wooden path through the cabanas. "You

takc that passageway, then take a left, and then an-

other left at the end of that passageway. Thirty-

two-A will be the third cabana from the end of that

section."

We took off in a run.

"Hey," the stud cried indignantly after us.

thought you wanted a cabana for yourself!"

The large complex of cabanas was a wooden

structure set a foot or so above the sand. Its layout

was like a maze so we followed the directions the

young stud had given us to the letter. The place was

crowded with men, women, and children parading

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in their bathing suits along the open air wooden

passageways. As we took the final turn, we passed

three men who looked strangely out of place

among the other half-naked people here. The three

were wearing jeans and work shirts. Glancing

down at my own suit, I laughed. I supposed Pilar

and I looked pretty out of place here too.

At thirty-A we slowed our pace. I unpocketed

Wilhelmina, although I kept my gun hand under

my jacket so I wouldn't alarm the bathers passing

by. Pilar took out her pistol also, keeping it behind

her purse. The white louvered shutters of thirty-

two-A were drawn tightly shut, and the cabana's

door was closed. I motioned to Pilar and she flat-

tened herself against the outside wall of the cabana,

beside the door. Then I kicked open the white

wooden door and brought Wilhelmina out from

under my jacket as I entered the room. The blind-

ing, white sunlight streamed into the cabana and

illuminated Nozdrev.

"If you want to live," I said, "don't move." I

waved my gun as he moved his hand toward his

chest. His hand retreated. Again he moved his

hand toward his chest, but he didn't complete the

gesture.

Then I noticed the spot of red near the shoulder

of his white terrycloth beach robe. I reached down

and jerked open the robe. Nozdrev's eyes looked

into mine, but he didn't move. His large, muscular

body was naked beneath the robe, except for a pair

of swimming briefs. The spot of red on his robe

had come from a knife wound on the left side of his

chest, just below the armpit. Another knife wound,

an enormous gash, was just below his rib cage.

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in their bathing suits along the open air wooden

passageways. As we took the final turn, we passed

three men who looked strangely out of place

among the other half-naked people here. The three

were wearing jeans and work shirts. Glancing

down at my own suit, I laughed. I supposed Pilar

and I looked pretty out of place here too.

At thirty-A we slowed our pace. I unpocketed

Wilhelmina, although I kept my gun hand under

my jacket so I wouldn't alarm the bathers passing

by. Pilar took out her pistol also, keeping it behind

her purse. The white louvered shutters of thirty-

two-A were drawn tightly shut, and the cabana's

door was closed. I motioned to Pilar and she flat-

tened herself against the outside wall of the cabana,

beside the door. Then I kicked open the white

wooden door and brought Wilhelmina out from

under my jacket as I entered the room. The blind-

ing, white sunlight streamed into the cabana and

illuminated Nozdrev.

"If you want to live," I said, "don't move." I

waved my gun as he moved his hand toward his

chest. His hand retreated. Again he moved his

hand toward his chest, but he didn't complete the

gesture.

Then I noticed the spot of red near the shoulder

of his white terrycloth beach robe. I reached down

and jerked open the robe. Nozdrev's eyes looked

into mine, but he didn't move. His large, muscular

body was naked beneath the robe, except for a pair

of swimming briefs. The spot of red on his robe

had come from a knife wound on the left side of his

chest, just below the armpit. Another knife wound,

an enormous gash, was just below his rib cage.

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an enormous gash, was just below his rib cage.

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Blood from this second wound ran down his stom-

ach, over his crotch, and was forming a pool of red

on the white tile floor of the cabana.

"Help me," he gasped. Then it hit me. The men

in the blue jeans and work shirts we'd passed! Of

course! El Grupo!

I called to Pilar and told her to run after the men

we'd seen and try to prevent them from leaving the

beach. I'd join her as soon as I was through with

Nozdrev. He didn't have long to live, and I wanted

to try to get as much information as I could out of

him before he drew his last breath.

"Help me," the big Russian said, as I turned

back to him. His voice was weak and there were

large beads of sweat on his forehead and chest.

"All right,"

I said. "I'll help you, but I want

some information in exchange."

s 'Get me to a doctor," he gasped.

"l will when you tell me what you're doing

here." Nozdrev was silent for a number of seconds.

He must have been struggling between his sense of

duty and his desire to live. Finally, he spoke.

"I was here to meet some of my men. Some luna-

tic broke in and attacked me."

"You can do better than that Nozdrev. The

truth. Now. Do you want me to get you to a doctor

or don't you?"

"SEI Grupo," Nozdrev said in a very faint voice.

' 'Why were you meeting them here?"

There was another period of silence. Nozdrev's

gaze moved down his torso to the pool of blood at

his feet. Then his eyes returned to mine.

' 'You'll get me to a hospital if I tell you?" he

asked. "And I must have asylum with the Ameri-

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cans. Can you offer me asylum if I confess, Nick

Carter?" So he knew who I was. Nozdrev was des-

perate now, and I assured him that I'd get him to a

hospital and that the American government would

do all it could to protect him from the KGB. But I

knew he wouldn't live long enough for either a hos-

pital or the U.S. government to do him any good.

"El Grupo has stolen nuclear plans from Spain."

His voice was almost a whisper now. I had to bend

down and place my ear next to his mouth. I felt his

panting breath against my face.

"Have the Russians been working with El

Grupo all along?"

"No. Only recently. They proposed to share the

plans with us as part of a favor."

"What was the favor?"

"To hunt down and kill an enemy of theirs."

Salas?"

"Yes. But El Grupo tricked me. We killed him,

like they wanted and then

they .

. came .

here ... today and

. tried tried to

murder

me." Nozdrev's words came slowly

now, with a great deal of difficulty. He had only a

few seconds left. I almost pitied him.

"Why did they want Pedro Salas dead?"

"He was

. enemy."

. an .

"What had he done to El Grupo?"

"He ... was

trying ... " Suddenly I felt no

more breath against my face. Nozdrev's eyes stared

straight ahead. I took his wrist between my fingers:

the pulse was gone.

I closed his eyes and drew the terrycloth robe

back across his body, then left the cabana, closing

the door behind me. On the boardwalk, the sun

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worshippers and pleasure seekers offered a sharp

contrast to the scene I'd just taken part in. Two

young boys chased a third down the passageway.

The boy being chased was wearing a dimestore In-

dian headband, and the other two were yelling,

"Bang, Bang, you're dead," as they went after him.

Pilar and the men from El Grupo were nowhere in

sight.

I headed down the passageway, toward the exit.

Then a gunshot rang out. It seemed to come from

another part of the cabana complex, closer to the

ocean than where I was.

"Pilar," I yelled and headed in that direction.

"Here," she answered, and I tried to make my

way through the maze of passageways to reach her.

I heard another gunshot. People stared at me as I

ran past them, and all along the passageways heads

began bopping out of cabana windows. I suddenly

found myself in a dead-end passageway.

"Pilar,"

I yelled again.

"Nick!" Her voice was near. I could tell that she

was in a passageway parallel to the one I was in.

ran to the end of this passageway and whipped

around the corner. Pilar came running toward me.

"Quick, to the beach," she said. As we ran she

explained that she'd followed the three men we'd

seen back to a cabana they'd apparently rented.

When they'd tried to leave the cabana, she'd shot

at the door, hoping to keep them trapped inside

until I arrived. But they'd shot at her through the

window, and as she scurried to take cover, they'd

run out. She'd hit one man as he headed toward

the beach, but the other two had been too quick

for her.

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When we reached the beach, I could see the two

men in the distance. They were clever: they'd de-

liberately headed for the most crowded part of the

beach. Their blue work shirts weaved in and out of

the throng. If we shot at them now, we'd risk hit-

ting innocent bystanders.

Already the gunshots from the cabanas had

created pandemonium on the beach. Mothers were

screaming for their children. Swimmers had come

out of the water and were standing along the shore.

People who had been moving about the beach had

flattened themselves on the ground, while others

who had been spread out sunning themselves had

risen. No one seemed to know what position to

take in order to avoid the gunshots that they

thought might be fired at them.

One of the El Grupo men veered away from his

companion and ran toward the beach's entrance. I

told Pilar to bear left and head him off at the steps

while I continued after the man whose blue shirt

was still bobbing in and out of the crowd. Before

long, though, the man had passed beyond the

groups of people and was running along an empty

stretch of beach. He was in shooting range and a

fairly easy target, but I wanted to take him alive. I

had to give him credit: He was an Olympic caliber

runner. I kept pace with him, but I didn't gain on

him until he began nearing a cliff which jutted out

abruptly into the water, interrupting the shoreline.

The man slowed his pace and looked around, de-

ciding what to do. He had three choices. He could

turn around and head back toward me, he could go

into the ocean, or he could climb over the cliff to

the other side of the beach. He chose the latter.

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By the time I reached the cliff, he'd already scur-

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By the time I reached the cliff, he'd already scur-

ried halfway up it. I started climbing after him.

Looking up, I saw that he'd stopped on a ledge .of

rock and was taking a pistol out of his work shirt.

I raised my luger. He fired first, and narrowly

missed my head. I fired back, aiming at his gun.

His pistol jerked out of his hand and he himself

tottered backward, unbalanced by the impact of

my bullet. For a moment he hung precariously to

the side of the cliff. But then he regained his foot-

ing and continued up the sharp white rocks. The

cliff wasn't high and soon he disappeared over its

edge.

As I reached the top I peered cautiously over the

side. The man in the blue shirt was nowhere in

sight. I figured he must have already scurried

across the cliff's top and begun his descent to the

other side of the beach. I rushed to the opposite

side of the cliff.

I felt a crushing blow against the back of my

head. I staggered and went down, my face against

the rocks. The man must have hidden behind a

boulder and come up on me from behind. It felt

like he'd hit me with a heavy stone. I lay on my

stomach, dazed and motionless. He must have fig-

ured I was out cold, for I heard him approach and

bend down toward me. I felt his hand against my

own as he tried to extract the luger from my fin-

gers. I summoned all my strength and leaped to my

feet. He cried out in surprise.

Our hands, his left, my right, were gripping each

other and the luger. I saw this member of El Grupo

clearly for the first time. He was tanned and hand-

some and in his late twenties. A lock of his long

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hair hung over his forehead, and there was a small

black mustache above his thick, surly lips. He

snarled at me, revealing jagged, but very white

teeth. The pressure of his thick hand against my

own was like a vise. I drew back my free fist and

moved it toward his gut, just as he drew back his

free fist and aimed at my chin. We both hit on

target. He doubled over, and I staggered back*

wards from the force of his knuckles. The gun fell

to the ground. He leaped for it, but I managed to

kick the gun away just as his hand reached out for

it. It flew over the cliff and banged against the

rocks below. From the distance I could hear the

sound of more gunshots and in the far distance the

moan of a police siren.

I stood facing my antagonist. We were now on

the far edge of the cliff, overhanging the ocean. My

back was toward the ocean, and he made a run at

me. His hands were straight out in front of him; he

meant to push me over the cliff. It would have been

easy enough for me to dodge him and let his speed

send him over the edge. But I didn't want to get rid

of him that way. If he went off, he'd either drown

or swim away. In either case, I'd have lost my

chance to question him. So I braced myself for his

blow, rooting my strength as firmly to the ground

as I could. He rammed into me, and I grabbed him,

clinging as tightly as I could to his back. But I'd

miscalculated either the angle of his approach or

his speed. I lurched backward as he hit and we both

went flying over the side of the cliff.

Our grips on one another released as we sailed

through the air and plunged into the water. I felt

myself going deep down into the ocean's icy

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depths. Eventually the descent ended, and, holding

my breath, I sprang myself to the ocean's surface.

I looked around. The surface of the water was

empty. Then I saw the man's head bob up. When

he saw me, he swan toward me and immediately

grabbed at my throat. His grip around my neck

forced my head under water, but I was able to pull

him under water, too. We struggled in an under-

water stalemate for many minutes. There was no

question of bringing him in alive now. It was him

or me, all a question of who could hold out for air

the longest. Suddenly his face contorted, his eyes

bugged out like a fish's, and his hands slipped away

from my shoulders. He thrashed and his mouth

gulped frantically for air. But what he got was wa-

ter. I didn't loosen my grip on him. Finally he quit

thrashing.

My lungs felt like they were going to burst when

I finally took in some air, but I managed to swim

back to shore. Looking back, I saw that the blue-

shirted body had risen to the surface and was now

being battered against the cliff by the waves. I

walked back along the empty sand to the crowded

part of the beach. Police cars and an ambulance,

their lights flashing, had already arrived on the

scene. A crowd formed around two ambulance at-

tandents as they carried two men in blue work

shirts away on stretchers.

Pilar looked at me anxiously. ' 'Are you all right

"I'll be okay. What happened to you?"

' 'I'm afraid I had to shoot the second man to

keep him from getting away."

"Yeah, I had to kill my man too. It's tough."

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As we made our way through the staring crowd,

someone handed me a blanket, which I draped

around my shoulders. We stopped at the am-

bulance and I spoke to the driver:

"You'd better send your men to Cabana thirty-

two-A. You'll find another corpse there."

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Chapter Eight

I didn't know what to make of this new wrinkle

in the affair of El Grupo. I assumed that Nozdrev

hadn't been lying about his dealings with El

Grupo. I've been around lots of dying men, and I

can usually figure out their psychology pretty well.

From what I'd seen it looked like Nozdrev was too

desperate and too near death to make up the in-

credible story he'd told me. But why had El Grupo

tricked the Russians and then killed Nozdrev?

It had crossed my mind before that there might

be two branches of El Grupo, and in this context

the murder of Nozdrev made some sense. I

speculated that one of the branches of El Grupo,

the branch that had kidnapped Rodriguez and that

had the nuclear weapons plan, had gotten in touch

with Nozdrev. In exchange for sharing the nuclear

weapons plans, they'd convinced the Russians to

find and knock off Pedro, who was a member of

the rival branch of El Grupo. When Pedro's

branch found out about his death, they had killed

the Russian in retaliation.

This theory, though, had a lot of loopholes.

First, if Nozdrev had been playing ball with one

branch of El Grupo, why had he set up a meeting

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with the second group? It didn't make sense. An

even more serious objection to the two-group theo-

ry was that there was no concrete evidence that

Pedro had been working with anyone. From what

Dona Pretiosa had told us, it sounded like Pedro

had been pretty much in isolation, at least for the

last three weeks. He seemed to be hiding out,

alone, from El Grupo. This led to another ques-

tion. If Pedro was an "enemy" of his former com-

rades, why hadn't he come to the police with in-

formation about them? By the same token, if there

were two El Grupos, one "good," one "bad," why

hadn't the good group come forward?

The deeper one became immersed in the case, the

more confusing and complicated it became. The

only good thing about the newest twist was that the

Russians probably wouldn't be playing ball with El

Grupo anymore. Not after they'd been double-

crossed and had their man killed. It was even pos-

Sible now that the Russians might help us track

down the people behind Nozdrev's murder.

If El Grupo's betrayal of the Russians was re-

assuring in this sense, it was frightening in another.

If the Spaniards were crazy enough to risk the

wrath of one of the two most powerful defense and

espionage forces on earth, there was no telling

what they'd come up with next. It seemed likely

that El Grupo wasn't just playing an ordinary

game of power politics. Power politics can get pret-

ty vicious, but it's seldom irrational. El Grupo did

seem irrational, and it wasn't hard to imagine

something as mad as international nuclear black-

mail in their future.

Pilar and I discussed all this as we drove back

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from the beach to the center of Barcelona. We de-

cided our best bet at this point was for one of us to

return and question Dona Pretiosa some more. She

had seemed to care about Pedro, and she also

seemed to have been pretty tight at one point with

some other members of El Grupo. Perhaps when

she found out what his former comrades had done

to Pedro, she'd be willing to give us their names.

When we returned to our luxury hotel, I left

Pilar at the door of her room next to mine and

went to change out of my still wet clothes. When I

stepped into my room, I got a shock. The place had

been completely ransacked, turned upside down.

The mattress was on the floor, its fluffy white stuff-

ing spilling out. Someone had done a job on it

with a knife. All the room's drawers had beerr

turned upside down. The architectural drawings

I'd brought from Madrid were ripped, fragments

of them scattered about the floor. My suitcases

were open, their linings also slashed by a knife. My

jackets, pants, and shirts lay in a pile at the front of

the closet, their pockets turned out. A Nikon I'd

brought to make slides was smashed. There was

another mess in the bathroom. Bottles lay shat-

tered on the floor; after-shave lotion oozed out

across the tile. Even my razor had been taken apart

(to see if it had a hidden microphone in it?).

A knock came from the door to my suite. I un-

pocketed Wilhelmina for the umpteenth time today

and moved back into the bedroom.

"Who is it?" I yelled, making my way toward the

door.

I put Wilhelmina away and let Pilar in.

"Pilar."

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"Pilar."

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I put Wilhelmina away and let Pilar in.

NICK CARTER

She looked around at the chaos.

"You, too?" she said. She told me her room had

also been totally torn apart. "They even cut up the

cups of two of my brassieres, I guess to see if they

had hidden microphones in them or something."

I laughed. Naturally whoever had searched our

rooms hadn't found anything that could have done

them any good. We were both too careful to leave

anything around that suggested our connection

with the Ei Grupo case or our secret identities as

agents.

"I don't think it was the Russians," Pilar said.

"No, it's not their style. If they wanted to search

our rooms, they'd have been discreet."

"El Grupo?" Pilar suggested.

"Perhaps. It looks to me like someone's trying to

scare us. Whoever did this may or may not have

been looking for something in particular, but you

can be damned sure they wanted to let us know

that they were here."

"And that they want us to lay off."

"Precisely."

Pilar was thoughtful. "They went through both

our rooms, Nick. That means they know we're

working together." It did indeed mean just that. I

decided it would probably be a good idea if we split

up for awhile. We'd each find a separate place to

stay, places that would be less conspicuous than

the big hotel where we were now. I thought it

would be a good idea for me to camp out in some

cheap hotel, one of those obscure pensions on the

little streets off the old section of the Ramblas.

Pilar suggested that she stay with her friend Juan,

known to me as El Conde Ruiz.

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She explained: "He's in residence here in his

large estate on the outskirts of town. I told him at

my party that I was coming to Barcelona for a few

days to check out the new shows at the galleries,

and he invited me then to stay with him."

I looked at Pilar, her fine breasts, the golden

hair, the rosy face, those dazzling pale green eyes—

everything about her that turned me on. And I re-

membered El Conde Ruiz's handsome face from

her party and the intimate tones of their voices as

they'd spoken together and the knowing looks

they'd exchanged. I surprised myself by feeling a

sharp twinge of jealousy. Personally I didn't like

the idea of Pilar staying at Ruiz's, but profession-

ally I couldn't come up with any objection to it.

Pilar's "cover," after all, was her real identity as a

wealthy society lady and patron of the arts, so it

was a good idea that she slip back into that identity

and visit someone of her own set. Besides, El Con-

de Ruiz was one of the wealthiest men in Spain,

and his secluded estate was well guarded. Pilar

would be safe there.

While Pilar went back to her room to phone El

Conde Ruiz, I placed a call to Lorca.

"Good work, Nick," he greeted me. "I've al-

ready heard from the Barcelona police about what

happened at El Sol this afternoon. I can't help

wishing, though, that you'd been able to take either

Nozdrev or one of El Grupo's men alive. Do you

have the nuclear plans?"

"I wish I'd taken someone alive too, Lorca. And

no, I don't have the nuclear plans." I outlined for

him what had really happened at the beach. Lorca

was as puzzled by El Grupo's killing of Nozdrev as

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I was. He said he'd try to go through diplomatic

channels and set up an appointment with the Rus-

Sian ambassador. Now that El Grupo had ape

parently turned on their men, the Russians might

be willing to cooperate with us. Of course, the em-

bassy would never officially admit that they even

had secret agents in Spain. But if they could be

convinced that El Grupo was working against

everyone's best interests, they might give us some

"background information" (that is, whatever they

knew) about the Spaniards who had killed

Nozdrev.

Lorca also relayed the sad news that it looked

like El Grupo had struck again. A bomb in

Talavera de la Reina, near Toledo, had gone off

this afternoon in a post office, killing over a dozen

postal workers and citizens. The killings bore the

mark of El Grupo, and Lorca felt that there would

no doubt be a new communique about the incident

from El Grupo tonight. He'd ordered every local

police chief to place at least two men at every radio

and t.v. station and at every newspaper in the

country. That way, he hoped he could catch one of

El Grupo's delivery men when he brought the

latest tape. The group was becoming more and

more brazen, and Lorca was making an all out ef-

fort to capture at least one member of their team.

After Lorca had rung off, I started packing. Pilar

returned to the room.

"It's all set,"

she said. ' 'Juan is delighted I'm

coming. He's been trying to get me to visit him here

for ages. I told him I'd been here a couple of days

and was tired of staying at the hotel. He's sending

his chauffeur for me. I think he was a little miffed

that I hadn't come to him in the first place."

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be he was. Andl hated to see her go. I took

her in my arms and our mouths met in a long, re-

luctant goodbye.

I left the Mercedes and most of my luggage in a

large parking garage near our hotel. Then I hailed

a cab and had the driver drop me at the less af-

fluent section to the west of the Ramblas. With

only a small suitcase in hand, I wandered on foot

past the small shops, the bars, and apartment

dwellings. It didn't take me long to find what I was

after. From a second story window above a pastry

shop, I saw a sign that read, "Rooms for Rent, 2

pesatas per night." That was the equivalent of

about three and a half dollars in American money.

I rang a bell beside a door on the ground floor.

"Yes?" The head of an enormously fat woman

appeared in the window next to the sign.

"Any rooms available?" I called up to her. The

big head disappeared, and after a rather long wait

I was buzzed through the wrought-iron door. At

the top of a flight of narrow stairs, the woman

whose head I'd seen, greeted me. She must have

weighed three hundred pounds.

"How long will you be staying?" she asked me. I

told her a week. "We clean and change the sheets

only once a week, and you'll have to give me a

week's money in advance," she said. I gave her the

money, and after I'd signed the register in an alias,

she led me up another narrow flight of stairs. She

waddled in front of me, and it was slow going, be-

cause of her bulk. At the top, she paused, panting

for breath.

'L The shower is to the left there," she said, in-

dicating a door in the dimly-lit hallway. "You pay

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NICK CARTER

twenty-five pesetas if you want the hot water

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twenty-five pesetas if you want the hot water

turned on. Let me know an hour before you need

it. To the right there is the toilet."

The room she took me to was at the end of the

hall. She opened the door and handed me two keys.

"This other key is for the door downstairs. Be

sure and close it tightly behind you when you go

out and come in. I run a safe place here."

After she'd left, I surveyed the room. The walls

were dark green, the floor was of colorless

linoleum. It was a front room with a small, shut-

tered window looking down onto the streets I'd

just come up from. The only pieces of furniture

were a big, old-fashioned double bed, and a well-

worn lounge chair near the window. The "closet"

was a metal rack in a corner near the door. The

place certainly wasn't luxurious, but it was exactly

the kind of place I wanted at the moment. No one

would think of looking for me here.

I called Pilar a block from my new lodgings and

told her what I was up to for the evening. We

agreed to meet at my pension the next morning.

Then I hailed a cab. By the time I reached the Bar-

rio Chino the sun had set. The place was even more

garish and decadent at night than in the daytime.

Blinking tubes of neon, spelling out the names of

bars, cast a rainbow of color on the strolling

crowds. As I got out of the taxi a dark-skinned

woman, with bright red hair, and skin-tight gold

pants approached me.

s 'I have a nice treat for you honey," she said, as

she took my arm.

"I'm sure you do," I said, shaking off her arm,

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"but I don't have time now." She cursed me brief-

ly, but then moved away and took up her station

again by a lamp post.

Dona Pretiosa's coffeehouse was crowded this

time. The folksinger was male, with long hair and

pale skin. His audience was made up of boys who

looked pretty much like him and young girls in

peasant blouses and jeans. I saw Dona Pretiosa

standing at the expresso bar toward the back of the

room. She nodded and motioned me to come to

her. Her eyes were questioning and tiny lines of

anxiety formed around her mouth as she greeted

me.

hope you kept your promise," she said, "and

did not harm Pedro."

"l kept my promise. I didn't harm him. Others

did."

"The men who came to see you yesterday after-

noon reached Pedro before we did. I'm afraid he's

dead."

The cup Dona Pretiosa was holding clattered to

the floor, and she grabbed at the bar to support

herself. I stepped behind the bar and put my arm

around the distraught woman. I asked a waitress

standing nearby to take over for a while, and I

guided Dona Pretiosa to an empty table at the back

of the coffeehouse. As she cried softly, I waited. I

didn't want to press her too soon.

Finally she looked up at me. Her eyes were still

brimming with tears. She spoke a single word.

"How?"

"They shot him." The singer had ended his song

and the people in the front of the cafe cheered and

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applauded him enthusiastically. I grimaced at the

inadvertent irony of their enthusiasm.

"I need your help in finding Pedro's murderers,"

I told Dona Pretiosa.

"El Grupo?"

I nodded. "Men working for El Grupo." I didn't

"If you can

want to tell her they were Russians.

remember any of the other men who used to be

part of Pedro's set, I'd like for you to give me their

names." The singer had begun a new song, this one

a slow ballad about lost love.

Dona Pretiosa shook her head slowly. "Before I

would have refused to tell you," she said. "But

now, after this, I don't know. How could his

friends turn against Pedro?"

"They're a vicious group, Dona Pretiosa."

"They did not use to be. When I first knew them

they were all kind, caring people. To think that

those men who came here yesterday, hardened

killers, work with those boys now! They wanted to

overthrow the government then, and I thought they

were right. That is why I let their group meet here.

But why overthrow the government now? I do not

understand. Pedro and other members of El Grupo

used to meet here several years ago. There were

about two dozen of them. Most I have not seen in

years. A few continued coming here until a few

months ago. Not for meetings, just as regular cus-

tomers. They were good people."

"Not any more." I had to get her to break.

"I have been an idealist all my life, Mr. Bryan.

Now, in the last few months I have lost this ideal-

ism. People speak of being disillusioned in their

youth. l, who have always had hope in human na-

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ture and justice, am being disillusioned in my old

age. I loved these men, as I love the other students

and radicals who come to me." She glanced toward

the crowd in the front of the room. "But I can no

longer protect them. Not after I truly see what

they're doing, their idea of revolution."

Suddenly a look of anger passed over Dona

Pretiosa's face. She rose abruptly and went to the

counter. She returned with a pen and a sheet of

paper. She sat down and began writing. She wrote

rapidly, angrily, as though attacking the paper

itself. When she was finished, she handed the paper

to me. I glanced at it. It contained seven names.

"These are all I can remember," she explained.

"Two of the men on the list are among those who

came here recently, but I remember them as being

with Pedro in the old days. Others, I remember

their names from back then. Most of the people

who met with Pedro, I never knew their names, or

I knew only their first names."

I thanked Dona Pretiosa and, rising, kissed her

gently on the cheek. ' 'What's lost is lost," the man

sang in his high plaintive voice, "and will never

come again."

As I came out of Dona Pretiosa's I was again

accosted by a streetwalker. This one's skin-tight

pants were red, and her hair was dark and thick.

"Why don't you come with me, goodlooker,"

she said, grabbing my arm.

I tried to brush her off, but the

"No thanks."

babe clung tenaciously. The grip of her lacquered

fingers was strong.

"Come on, I'll give you what you want," she

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said in a low, would-be sexy voice. She heaved her

jutting breasts against my chest.

"Look, lady," I said, "I told you I'm not in-

terested. I don't want to make trouble, but I will if

you don't let go of me."

"I think you'd better go with the lady," a man's

voice said from behind me. I felt something hard

shoved into my backs

"You the pimp?" I asked without turning

around.

"Yeah, you can call me that," he answered

mockingly. "A pimp with a gun on you, fellow,

which is gonna blast right through you if you don't

do what the lady says. You believe me?" I believed

him.

"Whatever you say," I replied.

"Get in the car." the lady demanded. The seduc-

tiveness had disappeared from her voice. A cream-

colored sedan had pulled up beside us.

"I'd like to oblige you," I said. "But first tell me

where we're going. What's this all about? You

going to sell me into white slavery?"

"You've been wanting to meet with El Grupo

Febrero, Mr. Carter, well now you're going to

meet with them," the man said. He'd come from

behind and was on my left now. He was a large

heavily muscled young, man with curly black hair

and a mustache. He was wearing the inevitable

blue jeans and a work shirt. He opened the car

door with one hand, still keeping the gun on me

with the other. A jab in my right rib told me that

my "streetwalker" had a gun too.

"Nice of you to grant me all my wishes,

" I said.

I looked around the street. It was crowded, but

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there wasn't a cop in sight. No doubt abductions

and worse were a pretty common occurence in the

Barrio Chino, and yelling out to passerbys wasn't

going to get me anything. Except maybe a bullet

through my lungs.

"Search him before he gets in," the man said to

the woman. She reached inside my coat and pulled

out Wilhelmina. Then she patted me down. Her

hands lingered at my crotch and she twisted my

balls sadistically. But she missed Pierre, the

cyanide gas bomb, which keep taped to my left

thigh. She also missed Hugo, the stilleto on my

right forearm. And she missed the list of names

from Dona Pretiosa, which I'd put under the band

of my undershorts.

O'Okay," the dark-haired woman said, and she

and the man hustled me into the back seat of the

car. They sat one on each side of me. We pulled

away from the curb.

The third man in the car, the driver, was middle-

aged and had a head as bald as an eagle, and a beak

like an eagle too. He also wore a blue work shirt. I

noted that the voice of the man beside me was

coarse, with lower-class inflections, not at all like

the voice of an educated man. He had deep acne

pits on his face, and curly black hair grew up from

his chest onto his neck. His hands, too, were cov-

ered with thick, dark hair. As for the woman, she'd

dropped her hooker bit, but that didn't make her at

all classy. On the contrary, I liked her a lot better

as a common tart than as the gun-toting moll she'd

suddenly become. Her face was moon-shaped and

tco fleshy. Her movements and manners were

abrupt and crude, like those of a lady drill ser-

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geant. And she chewed a big wad of gum, popping

it against the inside of her mouth. Both the man

and woman beside me were in their early thirties,

but neither fit my idea of intellectual, former stu-

dent revolutionaries, which is what we'd been led

to believe the members of El Grupo were. But then,

to coin a cliche, I guess you can't always judge a

book by its cover. And I figured maybe the leaders

of El Grupo had recruited members of the mythical

"working class" for their dastardly schemes. In this

case, the "proletariat" consisted of common thugs

and criminals.

We were now well out of the Barrio Chino's

crowded streets and heading away from the popu-

lated center of the city. It looked to me like we were

going toward the amusement park at the top of

Barcelona. Already the road we were on was be-

coming steeper and I could see the hilly region on

the edge of town in the distance. I was surprised

that the man and woman hadn't blindfolded me so

that I wouldn't be able to see where they were tak-

ing me. But I figured this was a clue to their inten-

tions. They didn't plan on me tracing this route af-

ter they let me go, because they didn't plan on let-

ting me go: It was death they had in mind for me.

Probably after slow torture. I thought of those

photographs Lorca had showed me of El Grupo's

previous victims: the split fingernails, the electrical-

ly scorched genitals and flesh, the broken limbs. I

shuddered. I'd been trying to meet up with El

Grupo ever since I got to Spain, and I was ap-

parently finally being taken to them. The circum-

stances, to say the least, weren't exactly what I'd

had in mind; but I'm adaptable.

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The sedan was now climbing up the steep street

of a quiet, residential area. The houses to the left

and right were dark, indicating that the people who

lived here had long since gone to bed. Only an oc-

casional street lamp broke the darkness. I glanced

to my left. The babe had gotten careless. She'd put

her own gun back in her purse and had been hold-

ing Wilhelmina on me since we got in the car. Only

now she'd laid Wilhelmina on her tightly trousered

lap as she unwrapped another stick of gum. She

wasn't even looking at me. I looked to my left. The

man's gun was still pointing at my chest. His black

eyes met mine.

"Won't be long now, Mr. Carter," he said, bar-

ing dirty, yellowed teeth. "Your mission in Spain

will be accomplished," he continued and poked the

barrel of his gun into my ribs for emphasis. I ig-

nored his taunting. I had to keep calm and act

quickly. The driver had been picking up speed as

we climbed the hill, and the car must have been

hitting eighty by the time we got to the top. The

bald-headed man made no attempt to check the

sedan's speed as we started descending the hill.

There were no other cars on the long, narrow

street. Now was the time.

' 'Watch out, to your left," I yelled at the top of

my lungs. The driver gasped a startled "Wha..

and braked violently. He didn't bring the sedan to

a complete halt, but the three of us in the back were

thrown forward. I heard Wilhelmina and the

woman's purse fall from her lap to the car floor.

The man to my left looked out the window at his

side. It was the opening I needed. I chopped on his

gun arm, and the gun dropped to the floor. Then I

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brought my hand up and dealt him a sharp blow to

the side of his neck that left him temporarily

stunned. I turned to my other companion. She was

bending down toward the floor, trying to retrieve

the guns there. I rammed my fist into her lower

back. She gasped and doubled over.

Fortunately the driver had pretty much lost con-

trol of the car when he'd braked, and all of his

concentration now was devoted to keeping the

sedan from crashing into the houses that lined the

narrow street. The man in the back had recovered

from my blow to his neck and grabbed my arm. I

jerked free and slammed my fist into his face. As he

yelled, blood ran out of his mouth, and I saw that

I'd broken a couple of his yellow teeth. I reached

over him for the door handle at his side. He saw

what was coming for he immediately threw himself

against me. But managed to open the door. He

wedged his feet between the floor and front seat of

the car, trying to avoid being thrown out of the car.

"Stop it, you damn fool," the bald-headed guy

in front yelled at me. "You're going to kill us all."

"That's what I had in mind," I yelled back as I

pushed his buddy through the open door on his

left. The man flew into the air ass-backwards, but

one of his feet that he'd wedged against the front

seat temporarily stopped his fall. Then I heard the

ankle snap like a twig, and he cried out in pain.

He'd grasped onto the swinging open door, but the

pain from his broken ankle had sapped his power.

As we hit a bump in the road, he lost his grip and

his body was thrown, head first, into the side of a

building.

I bent down to pick up Wilhelmina, which had

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landed at my feet. It was then that I felt the woman

on my back. She grabbed my face and sunk her

sharp fingernails into my left cheek. With her other

hand she grabbed my right arm and pinioned it

against my back. With my free hand I reached be-

hind me and grabbed at her thick head of hair. She

let out a howl of pain, but she pressed up harder on

my arm. For a moment there I thought she was

going to break it. Her five fingernails aimed at my

eye. I shut my eyes and grabbed one of her tits,

twisting it with every ounce of strength I had. She

howled again, and this time loosened her grasp.

The driver looked around to see what was happen-

ing. This caused him to lose control of the car

again, and the woman was thrown away from me.

She bentonce again to retrieve her gun.

I looked up to see that we were approaching the

bottom of the hill. There was a stone wall there,

and the road veered sharply to the left. At the

speed we were going the driver would barely make

that turn—if he was lucky. I moved to the still open

door. I jumped just as the car turned the corner

and almost overturned. The abrupt angle caused

my body to be thrown back against the fender of

the car. An excruciating pain shot through my

right side, and for a second there I thought it was

all over, that I was going to fall beneath the car's

back wheels. But then I felt the car move away

from me, and I hit the cobblestone street with a

heavy thud. A knifelike pain went through my

body from the top of my head to my feet. I heard

bullets ricocheting around me, their impact against

the stone street echoing in the night's silence. The

woman was firing on me from the sedan. But her

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aim was bad. Looking up, I saw why. The car was

still lurching down the street from side to side. It

seemed to still be out of control. Soon it disap-

peared in the distance. I guess she and the bald

man had decided they didn't want to come after me

again. At least not tonight.

I must have passed out for a few seconds. The

next thing I saw were lights going on in the nearby

houses, and I heard excited voices. For a while I

just lay there on the cold stones. I heard doors

being opened and the excited voices coming closer

to me. My bones were probably broken, I thought,

but I forced myself to try to sit up. I managed to lift

myself to a sitting position. I was amazed. My

body felt like hell, but at least that meant no bro-

ken bones. A man wearing a pair of trousers over

his nightshirt and carrying a lantern approached

me.

"Where's a telephone?" I heard myself asking, in

a low, weak voice.

In the distance I heard a woman screaming. "A

dead man," she cried, "a dead man." She kept re-

peating this hysterical litany. Apparently the man

in the workshirt had been less lucky in his fall from

the car than L

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Chapter Nine

I was awakened by a knock on the door of my

pension. I looked at the clock: 10:30 a.m. The

painkiller I'd taken the night before had knocked

me out immediately, and kept me knocked out

longer than I'd planned. My shoulder felt like hell,

a burning mass of flesh and muscles. As I got out

of bed, a sharp pain shot through my right leg. I

walked, naked, to the door.

'SW ho is it?" I asked groggily.

"Pilar," came my friend's low, sexy voice. I

opened the door and let her in, not bothering to

cover myself. Hell, she'd seen my body before.

Pilar's eyes widened as she came into the room.

"My God, Nick, you look awful." Her eyes

moved from my face down my naked body. "I

mean," she laughingly corrected herself, "your face

is in pretty bad shape. Your body, as usual, looks

terrific."

"Thanks," I said, "but the body doesn't feel very

terrific." I glanced in the mirror over the sink. Pilar

was certainly right about my face. There was a

large bruise, blue and swollen, along the left side of

my face where I'd hit the cobblestones when I

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NICK CARTER

jumped out of the car. And there were long red

scratches along my left cheek and my neck where

the "hooker" had got her claws into me.

"Poor darling," Pilar said, gently touching my

swollen face. "El Grupo was pretty brutal to you

last night, weren't they?"

' 'How'd you guess?"

"Just women's intuition," she said. "And be-

sides, I talked to Lorca this morning. He told me

you'd called late last night." I asked Pilar if Lorca

had given her any more news on the case. The only

new information was that last night El Grupo had

indeed claimed responsibility for the bombing of

the post office in Talavera de la Reina yesterday.

And they'd completely avoided Lorca's sentries at

all the media centers. This time they'd left their

taped communique on the altar of a church in a

small town south of Madrid. A priest had found it

when he'd come in this morning to do matins. It

was as though the villains had anticipated Lorca's

orders. Or else they had an informant somewhere

within the government or the police.

Also, Lorca had already checked out the list of

names from Dona Pretiosa that I'd relayed to him

last night. His men had been at work all night, and

they'd come up with the last known addresses of all

seven of these members of El Grupo, and also the

addresses of the known relatives of five of them.

The best thing for Pilar and I to do today would be

to find the men or at least quiz the relatives.

But just for a moment I didn't want to have to

think about El Grupo. Not while I was standing

naked in front of a woman who was looking more

beautiful than ever this morning. Even in a dump

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like this pension Pilar retained that air of elegance

and slight mystery that I found so appealing. I

looked into those deep green eyes, and I guess she

knew what I wanted. For her hand moved from my

cheek to my shoulder, and then she began caress-

ing my back. Despite everything, despite the pain

and the grogginess in my head from the painkiller,

Pilar's touch aroused me tremendously.

I bent to kiss her, and her tongue played gently

against my lips. She ran her fingers across my chest

and succeeded in exciting me even further.

"I think I'd better go back to bed," I said teas-

ingly.

"l agree," Pilar said in her husky, sexy growl.

' 'You have to take care of yourself, build up your

strength." As I moved toward the bed, I felt a stab

of pain go through my body once again. But a

woman like Pilar can make you forget even the

most horrific aches. At least for a while. I lay back

on the bed.

"Join me," I said to Pilar, who was now stand-

ing, facing me at the end of the bed. Slowly she

undid the buttons of her light crepe blouse, looking

into my face all the while. It was as though she was

doing a strip tease in slow motion, with all the vul-

garity removed. She opened the front of her blouse.

God, were those breasts beautiful!

Still very slowly and sensuously, she reached be-

hind and undid the zipper of her linen skirt. The

skirt fell to the floor, revealing a pair of silk stock-

ings held up by a small garter belt, and white lace

panties that accentuated her bronzed curves. Her

hands lingered around her navel as she played with

the elastic at the top of the panties, then she inched

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them down her legs and stepped out of them.

Still at the foot of the bed, she turned, like a re-

volving statue, so that I'd have the chance to take

in her whole body: the breasts, the slim waist, the

delicate curves where the shoulder-blades met the

back, the rounded softness of the buttocks. She

moved to the side of the bed and stood looking

down at me. Then she bent toward me, so that I

could take first one and then the other of her

breasts into my mouth as I lay on my back. I

moved my hand between her thighs, and Pilar

moaned softly. When I had finished kissing and

licking her breasts, Pilar stood up straight again

and I let my tongue play along her torso and belly.

Then she kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the

bed.

I turned to meet Pilar's body and again I felt a

jab of pain in my right side. Involuntarily I

groaned.

"No, Nick," Pilar said. "Don't exert yourself.

This time I work to please you. Lay back." I did as

she wanted me to, and Pilar moved onto my body,

straddling me. I groaned with pleasure now as she

slowly eased my body into hers. She bent her head

toward mine, and her long golden hair fell across

my chest. Our lips met and our tongues probed

deeply into each other's mouths as she moved up

and down on my groin.

Then Pilar drew her mouth away from mine and

straightened her back. She rode me, like a little girl

on a stallion. I looked up and watched her face be-

come wilder and more ecstatic as the speed of our

rhythmn increased. I thrust my body upward,

higher and higher, into her. She threw back her

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head, tossing her hair in the air and groaning soft-

ly. The higher I thrust the more pleasure I got, and

the more loudly Pilar cried out. Finally, in one

electrifying moment, we both climaxed, and Pilar

collapsed into my arms.

We lay in bed, still naked, and glanced over the

list of men we'd gotten from Dona Pretiosa and

their addresses we'd gotten from Lorca. We split

up the names, I taking four, Pilar taking three.

We'd work separately, first visiting the last known

addresses of the men. It seemed unlikely that we'd

find any of El Grupo at these addresses, but we

hoped we might get some information from a

neighbor or landlord. Then we'd visit, again sepa-

rately, the relatives on Lorca's other list. Perhaps

we could persuade the men's families to tell us

what—if anything—they knew about El Grupo.

As we plotted our strategy, Pilar took out one of

the small, thin cigarettes she smoked. I reached for

a lighter from the bedside table, but Pilar had al-

ready taken a match out of her purse. As she struck

the match and brought the flame to the end of her

cigarette, I followed her hand, mesmerized. My

heart felt like it was going to stop for a second and

my stomach felt like it had turned upside down as

I watched the cigarette catch fire and Pilar exhale

the pale, bluish smoke. The still flaming match she

was holding between her fingers was long and nar-

row and silver. I'd seen a match like that exactly

once before in my life: when I'd gotten it out of the

pocket of the El Grupo brute who Maria killed.

Pilar flicked her wrist to put out the flame and

tossed the match into the bedside ashtray.

Goosebumps rose on my arms.

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"Anything wrong?" Pilar asked casually. She

put her hand to my face and began to caress me

again, only now her touch seemed leaden, cold, re-

pulsive.

"No," J lied, stalling for time. Was anything

wrong? Plenty. A whirl of images suddenly rushed

through my head, like pictures in a newsreel gone

out of control. I replayed the events of the last few

days, and suddenly everything was cast in a new,

sinister light. Some of the mystery of El Grupo's

affairs could be explained by that match lying in

the ashtray beside my bed, and if true, the explana-

tion wasn't pretty.

Where had someone first tried to kill me after I'd

arrived in Spain? At Pilar's party. Neither the po-

lice or Lorca's men could come up with any leads

that suggested either the guests or the servants

knew my identity and would want to do me in.

However, no one, including myself, had thought to

investigate the other person at that party, who did

know my real identity: my hostess.

At the beach yesterday, Pilar had shot down two

men from El Grupo, rather than capturing them.

Maybe she had to kill them, maybe she didn't. In

any case, her bullets had prevented us from quizz-

ing them about their organization.

When we'd returned from the beach our rooms

had been ransacked. Except no one was supposed

to know where we were staying. How had they

found out? Could the lady herself have alerted

someone?

Last night I'd been puzzled when the man and

woman had suddenly appeared at Dona Pretiosa's

to abduct me, especially since the only person I'd

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told I was going there was Pilar. If they'd been

alerted to grab me there, only one person could

have alerted them.

Throughout the case it had seemed highly proba-

ble that either the government or someone in

Lorca's network had been leaking information to

El Grupo, the latest example being their avoidance

of all the media centers at precisely the time Lorca

had placed guards there. What better person to

pass on privileged information than one of Lorca's

agents herself?

The answers to all of my questions pointed in

one direction. The direction led to the woman in

bed beside me. La Condesa, Double-Agent.

I remembered Pilar's past. She had freely con-

fessed, the first night I'd met her, that she had been

something of a student revolutionary. It now made

perfect sense that she could well have been a mem-

ber of a student activist group like ... El Grupo.

Of course, Pilar had obviously proved herself a top

agent, working for Lorca. But I've been in this pro-

fession long enough to know that that had a certain

logic too. If agents of one organization set out to

infiltrate another organization, they try to be the

best in the organization they're secretly working

against. Because the higher up in the structure they

go, the more damage they can do, the more impor-

tant is the information that they pass on. Also,

Pilar's seeming attachment to me, emotional and

physical, would all be part of the game too. From

Cleopatra down to Mata Hari there's been a long

tradition of female spies sleeping with and even

pretending to love men they can get information

from. Looking at this beautiful woman beside me,

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een enveloped In a small,pers

let 1 e

nightmare, inside the larger nightmare of El

Grupo. Except if my conjectures were right, the

two nightmares were one; they converged in the

person of Pilar. I was furious at her and at myself

for being taken in. I grabbed La Condesa by the

wrist.

"Wasn't once enough for you?" she laughed. As

I increased the pressure on her wrist, her laugher

faded. She discovered it wasn't sex I was after this

time.

"Where did you get that match?" I said. She

glanced at the long silver article in the ashtray.

"At Juan's. Why?"

"The truth," I said, increasing the pressure on

her wrist. Tears were beginning to appear in her

green eyes.

"I got that match at Juan's, Nick. You're hurt-

ing me. What's wrong with you?"

I let go of her wrist. I had to play this one cool.

What if she was telling the truth and had gotten the

match at Ruiz's mansion? Perhaps the two of them

were working together. I remembered their con-

spiratorial glances that night at Pilar's party. Also,

I remembered what a strange "coincidence" it was

that Ruiz had happened to arrive in Barcelona just

as we did. And that phony search through our ho-

tel rooms had made it very convenient indeed for

Pilar to stay with him.

I looked straight into Pilar's bright green eyes.

"And are you sleeping with Ruiz too?" I asked

levelly. Pilar's slap across my face was quick and

strong. The blow stung my already bruised cheek.

Pilar jumped out of bed, throwing the sheets back

against me. Her slow-motion striptease of an hour

before was reversed. She began dressing; her

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"Tell me about your relationship with El Con-

de," I said as she pulled on her stockings.

' 'I'd heard about your reputation as a ladykiller,

Mr. Carter," she said, "but I hadn't been warned

that you were also a jealous fool. My relationship

with El Conde Ruiz is none of your business."

"It's very much my business," I said, and I re-

peated, this time more forcefully. "Tell me about

your relationship, all of it. I want the truth."

Pilar must have sensed through my tone of voice,

that this time I really meant business.

'SAII right," she said, her voice seething with an-

ger and sarcasm, "you want to know about Juan,

I'll tell you."

"Go ahead."

Pilar continued dressing as she talked. "Juan

Ruiz was a close friend of Carlos, my late husband.

They were, in fact, childhood friends. They grew

up in the same milieu and later they attended the

same military boarding school. They remained

very close until they were in college, then they went

their separate ways and had many disagreements,

mainly over politics. Carlos, as you know, was a

democrat, while Juan leaned toward the right. Lat-

er, after college, Juan became a member of the

Franco government and he eventually worked up-

ward into a high position in the Department of De-

fense. Ironically, when we finally achieved de-

mocracy and my husband became a Minister, Juan

was dismissed from his post because his right-wing

ideas were unsympathetic to the new Prime

Minister. But I suppose you're not interested in the

politics, are you Mr. Carter? It's the dirt you

want."

Pilarwas now standing before the dirty mirror

753

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