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wan .
Pilar was now standing before the dirty mirror
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NICK CARTER
above my sink, combing those long blond tresses.
She turned her head toward me, waiting for an an-
swer. But when I ignored her sarcasm and re-
mained silent, she turned her eyes back to her own
reflection and continued.
"Well, you'll be disappointed to know that there
is no dirt. Despite their political disagreements,
Juan and my husband continued seeing one anoth-
er over the years. They had their childhood ties,
and the Spanish aristocracy is really a very small
world. After I married Carlos, I naturally oc-
casionally saw Juan too—because of my position
as Carlos's wife, of course, but also because Juan
and I had much in common—music, art—and I
found him sympathetic.
"Then, after Carlos died Juan was very kind and
very attentive. It took me a while to realize that
Juan's interest in me was becoming more than just
friendly. One day, to my enormous surprise, Juan
actually proposed to me. He said he'd been in love
with me for years. I don't know whether he meant
he'd been in love with me while Carlos was alive or
only afterwards. I didn't want to know. Of course,
a marriage between Juan and me was out of the
question. I'd certainly never been attracted to him,
and I told him so. I also told him that if he per-
sisted I wouldn't see him at all any more.
"Juan, unlike some people I can mention, has
always been a perfect gentleman. He agreed to nev-
er bring up the subject of marriage again. For
about six months he didn't call; perhaps he was
more hurt than I'd realized. Then one day I ran
into him at a concert and we talked. Everything
between us was just like it had been before my hus-
band died, and we became friendly again—not in-



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timate, but friendly. I now go to his parties, he
comes to mines and we see each other at concerts
and shows and that sort of thing. And that's the
extent of our 'relationship.' '
Pilar came to the bed, picked up the list of names
she was to visit that afternoon, and looking down
at me asked, "Anymore questions?"
It was a very pretty story she'd told, complete
with hero and heroine, and it may even have been
a true story, but it didn't explain the silver match
and Pilar's activities of the last few days.
"Yes, a few more questions," I answered her.
"They can wait, I'm sure," Pilar said icily as she
headed toward the door.
I leaped out of bed and blocked the doorway.
"I'd like to know more about your activities as a
student," I said. "For example, is it possible that
you knew any members of El Grupo while you
were in college? That perhaps you were a member
of El Grupo yourself?" There it was, I had to ask it,
but it was one of the toughest questions I'd ever
had to ask. Pilar's eyes widened and she stared into
my face for what seemed an eternity. She raised
one arm, and I thought she was going to slap me
again. But then she let her arm drop, and turning
her back on me, she walked back into the center of
the room. I followed her and picked up the silver
match from the ashtray. "And I'd like some more
I said, holding out the
information about this,"
match. Pilar turned to face me. Her eyes were
glistening with tears, her expression was pained
and puzzled.
"How can you .. s" Her voice faltered, and then
she recovered. She angrily brushed the tears from
her eyes. "Of course I don't know any members of
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NICK CARTER
El Grupo, and no, I was never a member of El
Grupo. But it's obvious that you no longer trust
me. Why I don't know, but you'd better call Lorca.
Ask him to assign another Spanish agent to work
with you. I quit. As for that damned match, like I
said, I picked it up at Juan's." Pilar's tears and
then her anger were genuine. I was beginning to
believe that she had been telling me the truth.
"I'm sorry," I said, taking her hand, "but I had
to put you through this, just to make certain you
really are on my side."
"But why, Nick?"
"This," I said, looking down at the match. "It's
exactly like the match I found in the pocket of the
man who tried to kill Maria."
"Oh God!" The surprise on Pilar's face was real.
"But what does it mean?"
"l don't know," I said, taking Pilar in my arms.
I'd been hard on her, for the sake of the case. I'd
had to be absolutely certain I was getting the truth
from her. But now I just wanted to comfort her. I
explained my doubts to her and the reasons for
them. After Pilar had heard the explanation for my
questions, she didn't resent the harshness I'd used.
She was a real pro all right. She clarified the events
of yesterday. Her more detailed account of her
chase of the men at the cabana and at the beach
made clear that she'd really had no alternative but
to shoot them.
The question about why one of the men from El
Grupo had one of El Conde Ruiz's matches was as
much a puzzlement to Pilar as it was to me. How
had he got it?
Suddenly two facts occurred to me, One, Ruiz
had been at Pilar's party when someone tried to kill



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me; it could very well have been him. Two, last
night I'd called Pilar at Ruiz's mansion; it was then
that I'd told her I was going to Dona Pretiosa's. If
someone, Ruiz for example, had been listening in
on our conversation over an extension, that would
explain how the men who'd kidnapped me knew
where I'd be.
The match, the shooting at Pilar's, the kidnap-
ping last night—all seemed to link El Conde Ruiz
to El Grupo. But the connection was only circum-
stantial and it seemed almost beyond belief. Ruiz
was, and according to Pilar always had been, a
member of the far right; El Grupo, on the other
hand, was as far to the left as you could go. The old
bromide about politics making strange bedfellows
is often true enough, but I'd never encountered any
political bedfellows who were this strange. It was
almost inconceivable that a man of Ruiz's back-
ground and professed politics could be a secret
member of a revolutionary terrorist organization.
Yet how else could we explain the evidence that we
had?
It occurred to me that if Ruiz was somehow con-
nected with El Grupo, it wasn't the safest thing in
the world to have Pilar staying in his house. Ruiz
had known Pilar was in Barcelona. If he also knew
that she was an agent, it could possibly have been
him who'd ransacked our rooms: to lure Pilar into
his house. I wanted Pilar out of that house. Pilar,
however, disagreed.
"Look," she argued, "if Juan is, in fact, con-
nected with El Grupo, the best thing for me to do
now is to pretend that I suspect nothing. If I leave
his place abruptly, he'll know that something's up.
Besides, there's a good possibility—if Juan is in-






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volved—that I can find out why, can pick up some
clues, by checking out the house and observing
him."
I had to hand it to Pilar for courage, and she was
right about staying in the house, despite the danger
involved.
just wish I could observe El Conde Ruiz too,"
I said ruefully, "and be around to help you."
"But you can Nick!" Pilar explained that tonight
Ruiz had invited a number of people to his estate
for a buffet dinner followed by a chamber music
concert. Pilar would tell him that she'd run into me
in a gallery today and ask if she might invite me to
the party. She'd explain what a music buff I was,
and besides I'd want to get a chance to see his mane
sion, one of the famous showplaces of Europe. I'd
be invited, of course, as David Bryan, New York
architect. Even if Ruiz knew my real identity, he
could hardly refuse Pilar's request for an invitation
for me without raising unwelcome questions about
his motives. Pilar would call him this afternoon. In
the meantime, we agreed to set off on our in-
vestigative journeys and to meet later in the after-
noon to compare notes on Dona Pretiosa's men.
That afternoon, as I visited the houses and
apartments of the men Dona Pretiosa had given
me, and talked to the men's landlords, neighbors,
and relatives, some curious new facts came to light.
Patterns began to emerge about El Grupo, but they
were baffling patterns.
First, of the four men on my list, not one of them
was to be found. Two of the men had lived alone in
apartments. From their neighbors and the build-
ings' managers, I learned that both men had disap-
peared suddenly without giving notice; without
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saying so much as a word. Neither man had both-
ered to have his phone or electricity shut off, and
each had left all of his possessions behind. The
evidence indicated that both men had left abruptly
and unexpectedly.
"Place was a mess,"
said one of the apartment
managers, "why Juan even left behind dirty dishes
in the sink, and at least a week's worth of garbage
in the bin. Not like him to go off half-cocked like
that." Except for cleaning up, the manager had left
Juan's apartment untouched, hoping that Juan, a
favorite tenant of his, would return. When I told
him I was from the police, the man allowed me to
inspect the apartment. Juan was a lawyer, and I
found nothing unusual in his modern, rather messy
bachelor flat. Law books and legal briefs were ev-
erywhere, but there was nothing—not even a so-
cialist magazine—to indicate that he was a member
of any kind of revolutionary group. The only items
I found in the apartment that might be of use to us
were a couple of snapshots that the manager identi-
fied as being of Juan. I pocketed them.
The manager of the second man's apartment
building, an older and obviously less expensive
place, said that when his tenant Carlos, hadn't re-
turned after a month, he'd auctioned off the man's
belongings. He didn't have an address of any of
Carlos's relatives and felt that the sale of Carlos's
belongings would make up for the month's rent
that he'd lost. Yet aside from the lurch the man-
ager obviously felt Carlos had left him in, he had
only good things to say about his former tenant,
who was a school teacher.
I, more fortunate than his landlord, did have the
address of Carlos's mother. But about all. I got out
of her was a photograph of her son, and I think




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a ress of Car os's mother. But about all. I got out
of her was a photograph of her son, and I think
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NICK CARTER
she gave that to me so that I'd stop asking ques-
tions about him. She was transparently nervous
throughout our talk, and she claimed that Carlos
was in the south, taking a vacation because of "his
health." When I pressed her for further details
about just where in the south Carlos was and exact-
ly what was wrong with his health, she became first
vague and then indignant. It was pretty obvious the
whole story was a lie. Whether she was lying out of
fear or because she'd been told to, I couldn't tell.
All I knew was that she was damned worried about
her son, and not just because of my questions.
The third man on my list, Esteban, had lived
with his family. His mother and father told me that
Esteban was "traveling in America," but they
couldn't be specific about his itineary, said they
didn't know. They spoke in the same fearful, ten-
tative tones of Carlos's mother, and they claimed
they didn't even have a photograph of their son!
They were scared all right. They did volunteer the
information that Esteban was also a schoolteacher,
and even gave me the name of the school where
he'd taught.
When I checked with the school, I found out that
Esteban had disappeared on exactly the same day
as Juan and Carlos. That day Esteban simply
hadn't showed up for his classes. He'd given no no-
tice, no warning. When the principal had called on
Esteban's parents they'd told him that Esteban had
gone to Sevilla to care for his sick grandfather and
would be away indefinitely. They'd given the
school a different story from the one they'd given
me: both stories were clearly false. The school sup-
plied me with a photograph of Esteban, taken from
their employee files.




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the fourth man on my list, Miguel. The couple's
two small children, a smiling little boy of three, and
a pale beautiful girl-child of four, played with a top
at our feet as their mother and I discussed their
father. We sat in the living room of their small,
sunny house. The woman, Juanita, was young and
pretty, but she seemed tired and harried, like some-
one unused to raising two small children on her
own. She readily admitted her husband's puzzling
disappearance, and she spoke bitterly of his leaving
her alone with the children. The three of them had
been surviving for the last couple of months on
food and clothing provided by Juanita's in-laws.
When I asked, she forthrightly admitted that her
husband had been a member of El Grupo when he
was a student at the University of Barcelona.
Juanita recounted her husband's disappearance,
with hardly any prompting from me. One night
Miguel hadn't come home from the pharma-
ceutical house where he worked as a chemist. At
first, Juanita simply thought he had been delayed,
but as the hours passed, and she got no answer
when she phoned his company, she began to worry.
By midnight she was frantic and had decided to
phone the police. Then she received a telephone
call. A man, whose voice she didn't recognize, told
Juanita that her husband was now working for a
revolutionary organization, El Grupo Febrero,
and that he would be away for awhile. The man
told her that if she didn't want her husband to die,
she wouldn't call the police or mention this call to
anyone. Juanita immediately went to her in-laws
and told them what had happened. She still wanted
to call the police, but Miguel's parents persuaded
her to wait. The next morning, Juanita heard, over
the radio, about El Grupo's first bloody kidnap-
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NICK CARTER
ping. Again, she thought she should go to the po-
lice, and over the next weeks as the chronicle of El
Grupo's terrorist activities took over the headlines,
she became more and more convinced that she had
to go to the police with her story. For one thing,
she didn't really believe that her husband was tak-
ing part in such unimaginable horrors. And I got
the impression, although Juanita didn't come right
out and say this, that if her husband was part of
such murderous activities, then he deserved to be
turned in. Each time. however, Juanita spoke of
going to the police, his parents dissuaded her. They
threatened to cut off all support to Juanita and her
children if she talked to anyone about their son's
disappearance.
"So you see, I really had no choice," Juanita
said. "My children had to eat." Yet, I got the im-
pression that Juanita was immensely relieved to be
unburdening herself to me after having this gut-
wrenching secret bottled up for so long. She gave
me a photograph of Miguel and begged me to
please find her husband; her children needed their
father back. I promised Juanita I'd do the best I
could. I didn't tell her that if Miguel ever came
back to her, it would probably be in a coffin.
I met Pilar at 3:30 in the vestibule of the church
of La Sacra Familia. La Sacra Familia is an
enormous gothic structure, designed by the great
Barcelonian architect Gaudi over fifty years ago. As
Pilar and I walked through the cathedral's winding
corridors with their bizarrely curved walls and
their outlandish stone carvings, I felt as though we
were in a physical paradigm of this case: twisted
walls stretching out in all directions, with un-



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a IS one carungs,l as thoug we
1
were in a physical paradigm of this case: twisted
walls stretching out in all directions, with un-
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fathomable icons everywhere, and with no exit in
sight.
Pilar's investigations had revealed the same pat-
terns as mine. All the men she'd checked on had
disappeared abruptly shortly before the first at-
tacks of El Grupo; all the men had been students
several years ago at the university here; all had re-
cently been (seemingly) successful young profes-
sionals; the families of all the men had been silent
or had made up unconvincing stories to cover their
sons' going underground. After talking to Juanita,
I was pretty certain that the men's families had all
gotten the same threatening phone call that she
had. If you mention your husband's (or son's, or
brother's) disappearance, he'll die. That explained
the fear I'd seen on the relatives's faces and the
conspiracy of silence. What it didn't explain was
how these men could emotionally blackmail their
own families. In a way the psychological terrorism
the members of El Grupo were practicing on their
families was even more appalling than their public
terrorism. They were an unspeakably evil lot.
Pilar added the set of photographs she'd gath-
ered to my own, and we both agreed that none of
the men in these seven pictures resembled any of
the members of El Grupo we'd so far encountered.
Perhaps these were the masterminds behind the op-
eration and didn't venture out in public. In any
case, I'd take all of the photographs to Barcelona
Intelligence Headquarters so that they could be
copied and relayed on to Lorca.
While I did that Pilar would return to El Conde
Ruiz's. She'd called him this afternoon, and he had
said he'd be "delighted" to see me this evening.
Yeah, I'd be delighted too, especially if we could




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aj see me uns evenl
Yeah, I'd be delighted too, especially if we could
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NICK CARTER
find some further clue to link him to El Grupo.
At Barcelona Intelligence Headquarters, I gave
the men In tne lab the photographs, and placed a
call to Lorca while I waited for them to be copied.
I described the latest developments, and Lorca
once again vouched for Pilar's absolute reliability
and trustworthiness. He didn't know much about
El Conde Ruiz, but he said he'd soon find out all
there was to know. He would open a file on him
immediately, and send his men around to interview
Ruiz's former government associates this after-
noon. The only political link Lorca could see be-
tween El Grupo was that they both hated the gov-
ernment: El Grupo because they were anarchistic
hooligans; Ruiz because he disagreed with the poli-
Cies of and had been dismissed from the present
government.
Lorca liked the idea of Pilar and I being at
Ruiz's together tonight, although he emphasized
that it could be an extremely dangerous situation—
if Ruiz knew that we were both agents,
"Well, most situations in this job are extremely
dangerous," I said.
"That they are," Lorca laughed. "But I'd hate to
lose my top agent. And Hawk would never forgive
me if I lost you. Seriously, Nick, give me a call after
you leave the party. If I don't hear from either you
or Pilar by morning, I'll send a search team to
Ruiz's estate. And remember, this is Thursday, El
Grupo promised to strike as 'high as they can go'
by Saturday. If this doesn't break tonight or
tomorrow, it may be too late."



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Chapter Ten
"Did you see the Picasso?" the tall, shapely
brunette asked me.
"It's from his Blue Period," said her companion,
a tall, thin man wearing glasses.
I was standing with them and with Pilar in the
drawing room of El Conde Ruiz's mansion. I had
arrived about twenty minutes before and had been
greeted graciously by a smiling El Conde Ruiz and
by Pilar. She was serving as his hostess for the eve-
ning, and she looked stunningly beautiful in a long
white tube of a dress that set off her fine shoulders
and breasts. El Conde Ruiz had told me he was
glad I could make it, and he hoped he could get my
opinion of his house, which he described as a blend
of the traditional and the contemporary. The place
was certainly the "showplace" Pilar had described.
Situated on a many-acred estate, the main house
must have been at least five or six hundred years
old. The Moorish influence was predominant, with
red tiles and stucco and elaborately curled gar-
goyles gracing the mansion's front exterior. Inside,
however, Ruiz had completely transformed the
building's centuries-old ambiance. The decor was
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NICK CARTER
glaringly modern with marble floors and chrome
and glass furniture and bright modern paintings
against the austere white walls. The entire back of
the original structure had been knocked out and
replaced by a wall of glass.
Pilar had suggested that she take me on a tour of
the entire house. El Conde had smilingly agreed,
and had then excused himself to check with the
musicians who were now setting up their instru-
ments in the music room for his concert. El Conde
Ruiz was certainly a connoisseur—of music and art
and beautiful women. And of revolutionary
groups?
Pilar had shown me through a spectacular black
leather and chrome library and most of the rooms
on the ground floor. We had been constantly
greeted by the other guests, all of whom seemed to
know Pilar well.
"They're mainly art and music people," she had
whispered to me, "with just the right number of
ssociety' people thrown in for good measure." The
problem was that Pilar was so popular she and I
hadn't had a chance to talk alone since I'd arrived.
The tall couple we were with now, who apparently
fell into the "art" category, were nattering happily
along about El Conde Ruiz's art collection, "the
best modern one in Spain." They seemed reluctant
to let me go until they had recounted the history
and price tag of every painting in the room.
"If you'll excuse us," Pilar said to them, "I want
Mr. Bryan to have a chance to see the upstairs
rooms before the concert begins." And she took
me firmly by the arm and led me out of the drawing
room. She stared straight ahead, avoiding looking
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at the people we passed so we wouldn't have to
Stop and chit-chat with them.
In the main entrance hall we approached a grand
staircase, which was itself a minor work of art—
chrome and marble. At the bottom of the staircase
stood a liveried butler, an enormous man with a
bulging forehead and extremely deep-set eyes. He
asked if he could help us, and Pilar explained that
I was an architect and that she was giving me a tour
Of the house. The man didn't look too pleased; per-
haps he wanted the pleasure of showing off the
house himself. At the top of the stairs Pilar led me
down a glistening marble corridor full of mod-
ernistic sculptures. We went into an upstairs sitting
room, closing the door behind us.
"What gives?" I asked immediately.
"Nice expressions you Americans have," Pilar
laughed. "Actually I can't find anything concrete
here. When I returned home this afternoon, Juan
was, fortunately, out. So I had a chance to search
all the rooms. The servants were around, of course,
but I'm a good sneak and I managed to avoid
them. At least I don't think anyone saw me scurry-
ing in and out of rooms. Anyway, I knew the
downstairs rooms pretty well already and, as I ex-
pected, I didn't find anything unusual there. Ditto
the upstairs guest rooms. My hopes were pinned on
Ruiz's private suite—his bedroom and office."
"Anything there?"
"Not much. did manage to open the safe in his
office, but all I found there were some routine real
estate documents and bonds. I also checked his
locked desk and again everything was routine. I
photographed the pages of his address book," she
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NICK CARTER
said, handing me a roll of film, ' 'but I don't think



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NICK CARTER
said, handing me a roll of film, ' 'but I don't think
that will be very helpful. I recognized most of the
names, including my own. But you might as well
have Lorca develop it and see if anything new
checks out."
' 'A complete washout," I said glumly.
"No, not entirely. As you probably would imag-
ine, the grounds here are extensive, and I went
exploring there too. Come here." Pilar took my
hand and we moved to the glass wall of the room.
It looked down onto a gorgeous vista of sloping
lawns at the bottom of which was a brightly-lighted
swimming pool. In the distance you could see the
ocean and a full moon.
"Now look, Nick, to the left of the pool is the
pool house." It was a large glass and chrome build-
ing. ' 'ICs a very elaborate place," Pilar continued.
'SJuan often entertains there and it has extra guest
quarters. This afternoon I checked it out, when I
was ostensibly showering and changing out of my
swimsuit. Nothing there. Now, look to the right of
the pool, in that clump of trees. There's another
building." I looked and could barely make out a
smaller, stone structure, which somewhat resem-
bled the Moorish front of the main house.
"What is it?" 1 asked.
"An old carriage-house. supposedly. This after-
noon, after I'd checked out the pool house, I wan-
dered over there. It's an old building. I tried the
door, which was locked. Then something strange
happened. One of the gardeners, or anyway some-
one who said he was a gardener, came rushing over
to me. I don't know where he suddenly appeared
from, but he was very alarmed. He told me the
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building wasn't used anymore and not to bother
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building wasn't used anymore and not to bother
trying to get in. What was so peculiar was the
alarm in his face and voice, alarm amounting
almost to terror. I mean, why did he come running
up to me in such a hurry to prevent me from get-
ting in? Especially since the building was locked
anyway? What was he afraid I'd find? Why was he
so upset?
"Then, I went back up to the house, I looked
back down that way—my bedroom also faces in
this. direction. There Juan was coming up the slope,
although I'd been told he wasn't home. I went
downstairs to the terrace and greeted him when he
reached the house. Casually I asked him where he
was coming from. Juan said he'd been swimming,
except I knew he hadn't been at the pool, because
I'd been there. So I suspect that if there's anything
here that's going to help us, it's in that carriage
house. Where else could Juan have been?"
"When can we check out the carriage house?" I
asked.
"I could do it tonight, after Juan goes to bed."
"No, that may be too late. We'd better do it
while I'm here."
"Okay," Pilar said, "but you'll have to do it
alone. I'm supposed to be Juan's hostess, and I
have to sit with him at the concert and again at
dinner. If you're not at dinner, you'll be missed
too. So the only thing that could work is if you slip
out during the concert and go down there then."
"I'll try," I said, "how long is the concert sup-
posed to last?"
"It's scheduled to be about an hour."
"Doesn't give me much time." At this moment
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NICK CARTER
we were interrupted by a knock on the door. Pilar
glanced at me and whispered, "You can get to the
lawn by the door in the library." Then she raised



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ow ongts tneconcert su -
ry, sat ,
posed to last?"
"It's scheduled to be about an hour."
"Doesn't give me much time." At this moment
160
NICK CARTER
we were interrupted by a knock on the door. Pilar
glanced at me and whispered, "You can get to the
lawn by the door in the library." Then she raised
her voice and said, "Come in."
El Conde Ruiz opened the door and entered the
room. "Ah, there you are," he said, "The butler
told me you two had come up here. I just wanted to
let you know that the musicians are going to begin
in about five mintues."
"We'd better come down then," said Pilar,
was just showing Mr. Bryan the Mondrian." She
indicated a small black and white geometric ab-
stract painting hanging above a sofa near us.
"Very fine," I said.
"Thank you," said Ruiz. I then asked him about
the engineering involved in fitting the back glass
wall into the existing structure of his house. Ap-
parently I'd touched a point of Ruiz's vanity for he
responded enthusiastically and went into a dis-
course about the difficulty and the ultimate satis-
faction of having the glass wall installed.
As we turned to leave the room, Ruiz said to me,
"By the way, Mr. Bryan," (did I detect a faint,
ironic inflection of my name?) "how did you hap-
pen to come to Spain in the midst of our present
troubles?"
"You mean El Grupo?" I looked into his eyes.
They were cold.
"Yes, El Grupo. I've heard that tourism since
they began their campaign has fallen by almost one
hundred percent, but here you are. You must be a
very brave man."
"Well," I said, "perhaps not so brave. I'd
planned my trip here for several months, and I do



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"Well," I said, "perhaps not so brave. I'd
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have work to do. I didn't want to delay because of
a group of hooligans. Besides, I have faith that
your country will very soon be out of these people's
clutches."
"Indeed?" Ruiz said. This time the note of irony
in his voice was faint but unmistakable. "You're
very optimistic, Mr. Bryan."
"That's the thing about us Americans," I re
plied. "Haven't you heard about how optimistic we
Ruiz laughed. "That I have heard," he said, "al-
though—and you must not take this personally
Mr. Bryan—sometimes I feel that you Americans
overstep yourselves. That you are, perhaps, too op-
timistic for your own good." There was now the
slightest hint of a threat in Ruiz's tone. "Perhaps,"
he continued, "you should not be so certain that
things will work out as you would like them to
work out."
I said, "but for the good of your
"Perhaps,"
country I hope I'm right."
"Yes. For the good of the country," Ruiz said
dryly. Then he walked out of the room. "Shall we
go listen to some Vivaldi, then," he said in the cor-
ridor, his smile returning.
As the three of us reached the bottom of the
marble and chrome staircase, Ruiz announced to
his guests that the music was ready to begin, and,
with Pilar on his arm, he led them into yet another
stunning room. This one had mirrored walls •and
ceiling and a pink marble floor. The five man
chamber ensemble was sitting at the back of the
room, near the glass wall, and chrome and leather
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guests. I lingered at the entrance until most of the
people were seated, then took a place at the back of
the room, near the door.
Ruiz gave an elegant little speech, introducing
the muscians, and then the sharp, almost cold
strains of the seventeenth century music began. As
I listened, I plotted my evening's itinerary. I recog-
nized the Vivaldi piece, a piano and violin con-
certo, and I knew that it lasted about twelve min-
utes. At the end of this first piece, I would slip out
of the room, hopefully unnoticed, and head down
to the carriage house. That would give me about
forty mintues to check things out there and make it
back to the music room before the concert ended
and dinner began. If I found anything of interest in
the carriage house, I could return this evening after
the guests had left and Ruiz and household had
gone to sleep.
As the Vivaldi concerto ended, the guests broke
into enthusiastic applause. I rose and headed for
the door. I made it into the hallway unobserved,
but there I ran into the bulging-forehead butler
who had greeted Pilar and me earlier.
"May help you sir?" he asked, eyeing me with
icy disdain.
"The men's room," I said.
"It's on the second floor, sir, follow me." The
library was only a few doors down from the music
room, and that's where I needed to go. But if I
didn't want to raise suspicions and perhaps abort
my sortey into the night completely, I now had to
follow the butler. He led me to the stairs.
"At the top of the stairs and to your right, Sir,"
he said. I began the ascent. Halfway up the stairs,




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I turned and looked back. The butler was still
standing at the bottom of the stairs staring up at
me. I smiled at him and continued up the stairs. At
the top of the stairs I turned left and then moving
quickly to the far wall of the corridor (where the
butler couldn't see me from below) I doubled back
and ducked into the sitting room where?ilar and I
had been earlier. I let myself out of the room's slid-
ing glass doors onto a narrow terrace. I looked
down. It was about a hundred foot jump to the
lawn below, but I figured it was my only chance to
get out of the house. I'd lost too much time already
to try to sneak back down to the library, and be-
sides, I figured the butler was probably still waiting
for me at the bottom of the stairs.
The only real problem I could anticipate con-
cerned the location of my landing. From what I
could calculate of the house's layout, this room
was one flight above, and horizontally somewhere
between the music room and the library. That
meant it was directly above either the dining room
or the drawing room. Chances were that the ser-
vants were now preparing supper in the dining
room and they might also be picking up drinks and
ashtrays in the drawing room. In other words,
someone might see me as I jumped past the glass
windows of the rooms below. It was a chance I had
to take. I climbed over a chrome railing and
leaped.
I landed easily on the grass and let myself roll
down the grassy knoll away from the house. Look-
ing back, I saw that I'd jumped past the glass win-
dows of the large, formal dining room. Two liver-
ied servants were there, but luckily for me, their
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backs were toward the windows. They were fussing
over something in silver platters on sideboards at
the back of the room.
I picked myself up and headed down the slope,
making sure to steer left to avoid the lights coming
from the swimming pool area. The coast looked
clear as I headed toward the grove of trees that sur-
rounded the carriage house. The place had only
one door and no windows. The large arches, where
formerly carriages and horses entered, had been
bricked up. The massive, old-fashioned oak door
to the carriage house fortunately had a cylindrical
modern lock, its shininess indicating that it had
been installed fairly recently. I took out a lock-
breaking device and fitted its parts against the
cylinder. It was then that I heard a voice at my
elbow.
"What the hell are you up to?"
I turned, making sure that my back was to the
door and hiding the lock-breaking device from
view. I faced a man who must have been the "gar-
dener" Pilar had encountered earlier that after-
noon. He wore chinos and a wide-brimmed straw
hat. I noticed a bulge in the pocket of his frayed
cotton jacket that indicated he had a weapon that
most gardeners don't need.
"Sorry, old man," I said, "didn't mean to startle
you. I just came down here to take a leak. I'm at
the party at El Conde Ruiz's, and the one upstairs
was occupied." The man looked me up and down
suspiciously. He could hardly fail to notice that I
wore a tuxedo, and I guess he was afraid of making
a wrong move and offending one of El Conde's
guests.
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Finally he said, begrudgingly, "There's plenty of
places in the pool house."
' 'Would you show me where?" I asked.
He sighed and said, "Come on." The subtext
was: these crazy rich people. As we moved away
from the carriage house, I noted that he didn't lead
the way, he slyly kept to my side. And I also noted
that his hand stayed near the bulge in his jacket. I
knew that the pool area was visible from all the
windows at the back of El Conde's house, and any-
one looking this way would be able to see both of
us as we moved into the light. I didn't want that.
I stumbled and then muttered a curse. Then I
stumbled again, feigning drunkenness. Finally, just
on the edge of the light, I lurched and bent over.
"What's wrong mister?" the man said, bending
over my doubled up body. I came up hard, my fist
against his right jaw. He crumpled to the wet grass,
out cold. I took his gun out of his jacket pocket,
and then pulled the jacket off him. I ripped the
jacket into several long strips. One I rolled up and
stuffed into his mouth. With another I bound his
wrists and with a third I bound his hands. Then I
lifted him and carried him to one of the trees in
back of the carriage house. I didn't want him com-
ing to and yelling or trying to stop my search.
Back at the carriage house, I quickly got the lock
undone and pushed against the big wooden door.
The door made little noise as it swung inward,
which meant that it was used regularly. If it hadn't
been opened for awhile, the door would have
groaned and creaked as it opened. I stepped into
the carriage house, pulling the door behind me. I
was surrounded by total darkness, the air was si-
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then I




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lent. I stood still for several seconds, then I
switched on my small, powerful flashlight. What I
saw was exactly what the place purported to be: a
deserted carriage house. Shining the light into all
the corners of the room, I saw that the floor was
covered with dirt, the walls and stall partitions
were crumbling, and cobwebs hung from the raft-
ers. My disappointment was immense.
Just as I was ready to turn off my flashlight and
head back to the party, I looked down and changed
my mind. Although the floor all around was cov-
ered with dirt, a narrow path had been made across
the room, so heavily trod the stone floor was
almost shiny. I followed the path of exposed floor,
which lead to the far end of the carriage house.
Here, to the side of, and slightly camouflaged by, a
wooden stall, was another door. I knew. from my
survey of the outside of the building, that this door
didn't lead out, that it had to lead into another
room. Slowly, I opened it. What I saw startled me.
I was looking down a broad stairwell. It was
fluorescently lit, had freshly painted white walls,
and boasted a shiny steel staircase, It appeared that
the carriage house was, like Ruiz's mansion, a
blend of the "traditional" and the "contem-
porary." Silently I crept down the wide staircase,
unpocketing Wilhelmina as I reached the bottom. I
found myself in a sort of reception area. Through
glass panels I could see into a room that looked
like some sort of laboratory. A white-coated man,
who was either a scientist or technician of some
sort, sat at a desk at the far end of the room. An-
other man sat just inside the laboratory, reading a
comic book. He wore a blue work shirt, El Grupo's
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uniform, and there was a high-caliber rifle sitting
beside him. Neither man had seen or heard me
come into the hall.
I made my way along the glass-paneled wall until
I was a few steps from the door to the laboratory—
and from the blue-shirted guard.
"Don't move,"
I yelled, stepping into the
doorway. The man in white rose and looked in my
direction. The guard whipped around, grabbing his
rifle and aiming it at my chest. I fired and hit him
right between the eyes. His rifle went off with a
loud bang as he hit the floor, then it clattered to the
side of the room. The scientist remained motionless
as he looked down at his dead companion, whose
blood was now running onto the white tile floor of
the laboratory.
"Okay," I said, "hands above your head, and
don't try anything funny or you'll get what your
buddy got." The white-coated man placed his
hands where I wanted them, and he glanced in-
voluntarily toward a lighted control panel a few
feet to his left. I crossed the room, covering the
man with Wilhelmina. I studied the panel. It
looked like some sort of two-way warning system,
designed to alert someone elsewhere in the building
or perhaps in Ruiz's house, if anything went
wrong. I wanted to remove the temptation of
touching the panel from the scientist.
"Where's the off switch?" I said, pointing at the
panel.
"l don't know what you're talking about," the
man said.
I cocked Wilhelmina, and he suddenly knew
what I was talking about. "To the left," he said,
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"there's a black lever. Pull it down. That deac-
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man said.
I cocked Wilhelmina, and he suddenly knew
what I was talking about. "To the left," he said,
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"there's a black lever. Pull it down. That deac-
tivates the system."
"Okay," I said, "if the system doesn't go off
when I pull this lever, you're a dead duck." I
placed my hand on the black lever.
"No," the man yelled. "There's a switch under-
neath the console. Turn that." I reached under the
console and did just that. The lights on the panel
went out.
"Now," I said, looking around at the elab-
orately-equipped laboratory, "you want to tell me
what gives here? What kind of work are you
"Just engineering research for Mr. Ruiz's con-
struction firm," the man said hastily. "Mr. Ruiz is
going to be very upset when he finds out that
you're here."
"Yeah," I said, "I'm sure he will be. But I don't
get you. I thought that engineers worked on con-
struction, but it looks to me like you're working on
destruction here." The blood drained from the
man's face. I'd noticed a large blow-up of a dia-
gram on the counter before me. "What, for exam-
ple," I said, lifting up the gray and white diagram,
"It's a .. the man stuttered, "it's a plan, the
internal plan, for a new bridge."
The blown-up diagram had "TOP SECRET"
stenciled across its side, and "Spanish Department
of Defense" written on its bottom. I was pretty cer-
tain that it was a blow-up of the nuclear plans that
had been stolen from General Rodriguez. I guessed
that the man beside me was either working on
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and was now building a bomb from the plan.
' 'So the Spanish government's now in the busi-
ness of building bridges, huh?" I taunted him. He
didn't reply but he didn't need to.
"Where's the original for this plan?" I asked.
Again he was silent, but his involuntary glance to-
ward a corridor leading off the laboratory betrayed
him. I was tired of the man's evasive answers,
didn't have time for them. His glance had given me
what I needed, and I decided I'd deal with him lat-
er, when I had more time. I tied and gagged him,
then locked him in a small coat closet at the side of
the laboratory. I set a match to the copy of the
atomic diagram, then set off down the corridor to
look for the original and check out the rest of
Ruiz's operation.
The first room I entered gave me all the evidence
I needed to convince me that El Conde Ruiz was
indeed the head of, or was at least sheltering, El
Grupo Febrero. The room contained a set of
alphabetically-ordered file cabinets. As I went
rapidly through them, I discovered detailed plots
and itineraries of all the kidnappings that El Grupo
had so far attempted. They contained lists of the
personnel, automobiles, weapons and other equip-
ment used in each operation. Precise logs indicated
the everyday activities of all of the kidnapping and
shooting victims, showing that El Grupo had
monitored each man's habits for months before
striking. The painstaking and detailed planning of
each operation explained the amazing success Of El
Grupo's plots.
I also found floor plans and detailed notes on the
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operation of each building El Grupo had bombed,
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along with lists of the kinds and numbers of bombs
they'd used at each sight. There was information
about which personnel had completed each mis-
sion, and each file contained a report explaining
and evaluating the success of each completed
strike.
Also, filed under "KGB" I found a log detailing
El Grupo's conversations with Nozdrev. From
what I could gather, they'd always planned on
tricking him, but their motivation for doing so was
obscure. Indeed, a peculiarity of all of the files was
that the motivations for all their activities were no
where discussed in the reports before me. Only the
physical details of each operation were recorded.
Also missing from the files was an äccount of El
Grupo's future activities. I supposed these must be
kept somewhere else. As were, apparently, the orig-
inal nuclear plans. I stepped back into the corridor.
The next room I entered was obviously El
Grupo's communication center. The place was
dark now, indicating that no operations were going
on this evening. The room was equipped with an
elaborate switchboard, with many microphones. A
computerized map of Spain above the switchboard
was apparently used for monitoring the locations
of El Grupo's various operatives. It was here, no
doubt, that headquarters communicated with their
men in the field. I thought back to the radio in the
truck of the men at Maria's. Also, to one side of
the room, was a glass-enclosed, soundproof record-
ing studio; it was here that El Grupo made their
revolutionary "communiques." I marveled at the
sophistication of the whole operation.
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amazement. Here I found an enormous atomic
stockpile. In an adjoining room was the equipment
necessary to build the collection of bombs. In a
safe here, which I cracked fairly easily, I at last lo-
cated the original atomic diagrams that General
Rodriguez had been carrying and also the plans
concerning the movements of the Spanish army
and airforce that had been stolen from him. Even
more ominous, however, were the other contents of
the safe. It contained many atomic formulas, and
from the stockpiles it was obvious that these had
already been used. El Conde Ruiz and El Grupo
would have had to have worked several years to
build up the weapons in this room, and these plans
indicated that someone, possibly the man I'd just
been with, had already found the secret of nuclear
fission on his own. El Grupo had no doubt been
working to put into effect the plan they'd stolen
from Rodriguez, but they didn't really need it. The
group already had all the weapons they needed to
blow up half the people on the face of the earth.
They certainly could wreak havoc in any country
or countries they chose to attack. This thing was
bigger, much bigger than we'd ever imagined.
Pocketing Rodriguez's and the other nuclear
plans, I stepped back into the corridor. Glancing at
my watch, I saw that I had fifteen minutes to make
it out of here and get back to the mansion. I went
to the final room at the end of the corridor and
opened the door. The room I entered looked like
an extension Of Ruiz's house: white carpet, a white
sofa, elegant chrome and glass tables, even an ex-
pensive abstract painting on the wall. A stereo
played one of Beethoven's quartets, and a man was
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sitting on the white sofa.
He was General Rodriguez, the latest kidnap
victim of El Grupo, the man who had set in motion
my mission to Spain. Rodriguez looked up at me as
I entered, obviously startled. He rose, and momen-
tarily cowered against the wall, apparently fright-
ened of me. Looking down, I realized that I still
had Wilhelmina in my hand, and that the gun
pointed at him. I aimed toward the floor.
The tall, gray-haired man before me was ob-
viously edgy, but he retained his military bearing
and he looked to be in pretty good health, for a
man who'd been locked up for the last week. He
was still wearing the uniform he'd been kidnapped in.
"General Rodriguez," I said.
"Yes. Who are you?"
"I've come to help you, from Spanish In-
telligence."
"l never expected you to make it," he said, in a
low voice. "How did you find me?"
"That's too long a story to go into now," I said.
"The important thing is that I'm here. What we've
got to do now is get you out." Rodriguez nodded.
"Are you all right?" I said, "Physically?"
' 'I'm okay," he said, in a nervous voice. "They
haven't treated me too badly."
"No," I said, glancing around the fancy room.
didn't expect them to keep you in such luxurious
quarters."
"They haven't treated me badly," he repeated.
"They didn't torture you to make that tape?" I
asked, remembering the broken voice I'd heard on
the communique at the beginning of Rodriguez's
"trial."
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He lowered his head. 'SAh, yes, they did torture
me for that," he said tonelessly. "But afterward
they brought me here. I got the feeling that they
were saving me for some spectacular kind of end-
ing, and I shudder to think what that may be."
"Well," I said, "it won't be anything now. Let's
get out of here."
"What about the guards?" Rodriguez asked.
"How did you get in?"
"l shot one guard."
'SAh."
"Are there others?"
"Yes," Rodriguez said, nervously glancing at a
clock on the wall. "A second guard comes on duty
at nine-thirty." The clock read 9:35. "We'll have to
get by him." I cursed.
"What about that door?" I said, indicating a
door at the side of the room. "Is it another exit?"
' 'Yes, but I don't know where it leads. One of the
men sometimes enters there."
"El Conde Ruiz?"
"Yes," Rodriguez said flatly, "El Conde Ruiz."
"He's the head of El Grupo Febrero?"
s€As far as I can figure out, yes. The others take
their orders from him. Why don't you try the door,
Mr. ..
I moved to the door, which was locked. General
Rodriguez was behind me.
'€1 think Ruiz sometimes pushes this button
before he goes out," Rodriguez said, moving his
hand to a lighted knob to the left of the door.
"No, dammit," I yelled, "that's probably a sig-
naling device!" But it was too late. Rodriguez had
already pressed the button.
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"I'm sorry," he said, jumping back, i'l thought it
might be used to unlock the door."
I silently cursed, but said aloud, "Well, it can't
be helped now." I jiggled the door. "And it didn't
unlock the door. But I've got a lock breaker, which
should open it up." I pulled the device out of my
pocket and fitted it to the cylindrical lock, which
was just like the lock on the carriage house door. I
swirled the lock.
"Okay, that's enough Mr. Carter," Rodriguez
said. His voice was suddenly strong and author-
itative, and he had a gun jammed into my back. He
took Wilhelmina out of my hand. "Now put your
hands against the wall," he said, "and don't
move."
I should have guessed before: the elegantly
furnished sitting room, the music, the lack of any
evidence of torture and Rodriguez's general fitness
despite his captivity. All pointed to the obvious:
General Rodriguez had engineered his own kid-
napping, no doubt in collaboration with Ruiz.
Now I understood one of the puzzles of the case,
why Rodriguez had notified no one the day he was
kidnapped that he would be transporting top-se-
cret documents. Of course he hadn't, because a su-
perior might have stopped him and foiled his and
El Grupo's clever "kidnap" plan.
"So you kidnapped yourself, huh?" I said.
"You might put it that way."
"Quite a hoax."
"Thank you."
"And I suppose that the button you pressed real-
ly is a signaling device?"
"That's correct, Mr. Carter. El Conde Ruiz will
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be joining us as soon as he can leave his guests. In
the meantime, some of his boys will be coming
down to help me with you. You've already caused
us too much trouble."
"Can't blame me for trying."
"Ah, but we do blame you, Mr. Carter. You've
interrupted our plans on a number of occasions,
and I'm sure El Conde and I will think of some
appropriate way of dealing with you. Which may
not be very pleasant." Rodriguez laughed, a short
sadistic laugh. I could just imagine what his and
Ruiz's way of dealing withv me would be. Slow
torture and death no doubt. I had to act before
Ruiz's boys arrived, but what was I to do with
Rodriguez's gun jammed into my back? I only
hoped that Pilar could manage to do something
hen I failed to appear at dinner.
The Beethoven quartet ended. I felt the pressure
of the gun in my back let up, and I heard
Rodriguez moving away from me.
"Just going to change the tape," he said. "I
wouldn't want to deprive you of music, would I? El
Conde tells me you're quite fond of culture. But
reinember that my gun is aimed at your spinal
cord. If you make one move you'll be dead. Or per-
haps—and this might even be more amusing than
your actual death—I could paralyze you." Again
he laughed. The man really was a sadistic bastard.
I could well imagine who had thought up the mad
schemes of torture El Grupo had practiced.
I heard the click of a cartridge being removed
from a tape deck. I knew that Rodriguez's eyes, if
only for a couple of seconds, would be on selecting
and putting in a new tape. I hoped that those sec-
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onds were now. I threw myself away from the wall,
and I heard a bullet whiz past me. But Rodriguez's
timing was, as I'd hoped, a fraction of a second



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from a tape deck. I knew that Rodriguez's eyes, if
only for a couple of seconds, would be on selecting
and putting in a new tape. I hoped that those sec-
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onds were now. I threw myself away from the wall,
and I heard a bullet whiz past me. But Rodriguez's
timing was, as I'd hoped, a fraction of a second
late. His bullet sunk into the wall I'd been standing
against. I made my way toward him, deliberately
zig-zagging to throw his aim off balance. His sec-
ond bullet burned a hole in the sleeve of my' tux-
edo, but it just missed my flesh.
I was upon him now, and I threw myself against
his tall, stocky body. With my left hand I grasped
his gun arm. His right arm came down, moving the
gun close to my face. But just as he fired, I man-
aged to jerk both our arms up, and the bullet
blasted into the ceiling above us. Then I jabbed
hard into the side of his ribs with my free hand.
The impact of the blow apparently weakened him
for a second, and I took the opportunity to dig my
fingers as hard into the flesh of Rodriguez's wrist
as I could. The gun flew out of his hand into a
corner of the room.
We loosened our grips on one another and stood
there for a second looking into each others' eyes.
Rodriguez's were dark and small and hard, like
those of a vicious animal unexpectedly crossed. He
came at me, aiming a punch at my mouth. But I
blocked with my left and sunk my right fist into his
exposed gut. He staggered backwards, bellowing.
From a stand at the side of the room, he pulled out
an old-fashioned, military saber.
"I'll kill you, Carter," Rodriguez roared as he
approached me. He swung the saber from left to
right, aiming at my neck. I ducked just in time to
miss the sharp blade by a fraction Of an inch.
Rodriguez swiftly aimed again, this time bringing



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miss the sharp blade by a fraction of an inch.
Rodriguez swiftly aimed again, this time bringing
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the saber up vertically between my legs. I jumped
backwards just in time. Had he hit, he would have
sliced me in two, beginning at my crotch.
Before he had a chance to aim again, I flexed my
right forearm and Hugo slipped into my hand.
Rodriguez swung the saber, going again for my
head. I ducked and could feel the rush of air the
swing created against the back of my neck.
Rodriguez may even have sliced off a hair or two
that time. Still crouched, I sent the stiletto sailing
toward Rodriguez, and it landed where I wanted it:
in the arm that held the saber. Blood jetted from
Rodriguez's forearm as the stiletto hit, and the
saber fell at his feet. I rushed to him and yanked
Hugo out of his arm before he had a chance to grab
the stiletto himself. He howled with pain, then he
stood still, holding his wounded arm with his other
hand. I guess he didn't want another blow from
Hugo. I stood before the General, bringing the
stiletto close to his face.
"All right, Rodriguez," I said, "enough fun and
games. If you don't want your face carved up, tell
me which way Ruiz's boys will be coming from." I
wanted to try to get out the other exit. But
Rodriguez hesitated. Blood had drained from his
face and his eyes were frightened holes, but he re-
mained silent.
I said, inching the stiletto closer to his
"Tell,"
face. Then I felt a blow like that ofa sledgehammer
against the back of my head. The impact of the
blow sent me lurching forward and sent the tip of
the stiletto into Rodriguez's face, from just below
his eye to his jaw. The trail of cut flesh and blood
was the last thing I saw before I passed out.



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was the last thing I saw before I passed out.
Chapter Eleven
I felt something cold and hard beneath my body.
My head ached. In the distance I could hear muf-
fled voices, but I couldn't make out their words.
Slowly, I opened my eyes. I was staring up at an
enormous domed ceiling, maybe five hundred feet
above me. Fluorescent tubing hung down from
steel grids near its top. I lifted my head. Several feet
in front of me I saw a group of men in blue work-
shirts talking. To my left there was another group.
I lowered my head and closed my eyes.
"He's awake," I heard one of the men say.
"I saw him move," said another. Footsteps
moved toward me.
"Hey, Mister," a voice said. "Wake up." I de-
cided it wasn't going to do me any good to play
possum, Might as well face the music now as later.
I felt for Wilhelmina and Hugo, but of course, they
were both gone. I opened my eyes. I was looking
up into the dark faces of a group Of maybe a dozen
or so Spanish men. They stood in a circle now, sur-
rounding me. Other men stood behind them. So
this was how it was going to end.
"You all right?" said one of the men.
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"As well as can be expected, considering the
blow you guys gave me."
"No, no you've got it all wrong, Mister."
1
looked at the speaker. I recognized him as Esteban,
one of the men whose photographs I'd picked up
this afternoon. Looking around at the faces
glowering above me, I also picked out the three
other men whose families I'd talked to earlier that
day.
"Yeah, I've got it all wrong, Esteban," I said
cynically.
"How'd you know my name," Esteban asked
suspiciously.
"That's a long story," I said. SSHow long have
you had me here?" Was it hours, days, a week?
"You've been here about two hours," said a tall
man with long hair and a mustache. "What are you
doing here?"
"You tell me."
"Look," he said, 'Swe didn't have anything to do
with knocking you out. You had that blow on your
head when they sent you down here."
"Who is they?" I asked.
"Ruiz's men."
"And who the hell are you?" The men all
laughed at this question. "And what's so funny?" I
asked irritably.
"We don't have anything to do with Ruiz," said
the man in the mustache, "except that we're his
prisoners."
"What?" I sat up straight. Were they putting me
"Here, let me help you," said one man as I rose
to my feet, weaving a bit. "I'm a doctor." The head
NICK CARTER



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wound had made me dizzy.
"You're Ruiz's prisoners?" I asked incredulous-
ly.
"Yeah, man, just like you." It was the tall man
with the mustache. He seemed to be the group's
spokesman. I didn't understand what game was
going on.
"But you are El Grupo," I said.
"No!" It was a shout, with practically every man
in the room joining in, loud and angry. Yet I'd seen
the photographs of some of them and knew that
they were with El Grupo Febrero, or at least had
been at one point. I wondered, briefly, if my head
wound was making me hallucinate.
"We don't have any connection with that gang
of terrorists," said the men's leader.
"So what are you doing here?"
"Like I said, man, we're prisoners. Ruiz kid-
napped us. What are you doing here?"
' 'He kidnapped you?"
"Yeah."
"All of you?" It was hard to believe.
"Yeah, all of us. There are twenty-three of us all
together, not counting one guy Ruiz killed, and
one guy he apparently missed."
"Pedro Salas?" I asked.
"Yes. How did you know about Pedro?"
"Maybe the man's a spy of Ruiz's," came a
shout from the back of the group.
"That it?" asked the man in the mustache. "I
hope not, because if you are, we'll kill you. There
isn't anything Ruiz can do to us in return now, ex-
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cept kill us. And maybe some of us would rather
die than stay cooped up in here for much longer."
"l was a friend of Maria's, Pedro's sister," I said.
"She asked me to look for Pedro. He was in hid-
ing."
"Did you find him?"
"I found him all right. Dead."
"Christ," said Esteban, "he was a friend of mine.
I think somehow Pedro knew they were after us all.
I guess they were trying to hunt him down too, and
they couldn't capture him, like they had us, so they
killed him."
"You mean you boys didn't?" I asked. Esteban
came with his fist toward my face, calling me a
bastard, but the other men restrained him.
"We don't kill innocent people," said the man
with the mustache.
"Tell me about it," I said.
"Why should we trust you? How do we know
you're not on Ruiz's side?"
"Would he have clobbered me over the head and
put me in here with you, who claim to be his pris-
oners, if I was working with him?"
"You've got a point there. Okay, what do we
have to lose?" The man exchanged looks with sev-
eral of his friends and they all nodded for him to go
ahead. The story I then heard, told to me by the
man in the mustache, whose name was Garcia, was
one of the strangest tales I'd ever heard. Yet I be-
lieved it: it somehow seemed to match up with oth-
er stories I'd heard from these men's wives and
familes, from Dona Pretiosa, and above all from
Maria. As Garcia spoke, his friends often inter-
rupted him, adding their own clarifications and ex-
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planations to his words, but basically his story
boiled down to this:
All of the men in the room with me had been, at
one point in their lives, members of a study group
at the University in Barcelona. The university
group was, indeed, called "El Grupo Febrero."
The group had been opposed to the policies of the
former government of Spain, and for that reason
had been secret. Their politics, however, had been
more on a theoretical than on a practical level.
They had worked against the government mainly
by writing and printing pamphlets and leaflets
which criticized the repression and the economic
backwardness of the Franco regime. The group
hadn't even been able to hold public meetings for
fear of being imprisoned.
Several years ago, when democracy had sudden-
ly flowered in Spain, the group had disbanded.
There was no more reason to print El Grupo's
leaflets and pamphlets, and besides, most of the
men, by this time, had graduated from college and
were more concerned with their new careers and
families than with any further radical political ac-
tivities. They now numbered among themselves
three doctors, two lawyers, an actor, two busi-
nessmen, and men who practiced a variety of other
occupations. In short, the men surrounding me
could just about serve as a representative cross-sec-
tion of young, educated professionals.
A few of the men had maintained their friend-
ships over the last few years, but most Of the men
of E) Grupo Febrero had seen each other for the
first time in several years when they'd been brought
together here.
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Slightly less than two months ago, each of the
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Slightly less than two months ago, each of the
men here had been abducted by three men, "big,
rough-looking men in work shirts," Garcia said,
which corresponded to the men I'd encountered
from—well, the other "El Grupo." Some of the
men had been grabbed as they came home from
work, others had been taken from their apartments
(if they lived alone), one man had even been
stopped when he was out bicycling. They had all
been blindfolded, given some kind of drug, and
driven to an unknown destination. When they had
awakened, they had found themselves in the room
where we now were. No one had left the room since
that day.
When the men had first arrived here, they could
make no sense of their predicament. After they'd
talked and pieced together their identical kidnap-
pings and finally realized that what they all had in
common was that they had all once been members
of "El Grupo Febrero" in college, they were still
puzzled about why they had been brought here.
For several days they were in suspense and came
up with every conjecture in the world: that they
had been brought here by a homocidal maniac;
that they were being recruited by the government
secret service; that a fascistic regime had again re-
turned to power. One man, a science-fiction buff,
even argued that, because of the futuristic design of
the chamber we were in, they had been captured by
men from outer space.
I looked around the chamber. It certainly did
look like a space ship or something. I was con-
vinced, however, that it was in fact located deep in
the bowels of Ruiz's estate, probably below the un-
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NICK CARTER
derground rooms I'd been in earlier. It was a large
cylinder-shaped room with steel walls and very
high ceilings. Steel bunk beds, in orderly rows,


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look like a space ship or something. I was con-
vinced, however, that it was in fact located deep in
the bowels of Ruiz's estate, probably below the un-
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NICK CARTER
derground rooms I'd been in earlier. It was a large
cylinder-shaped room with steel walls and very
high ceilings. Steel bunk beds, in orderly rows,
lined one side of the chamber. On the other side
there were rows of sinks and showers and toilets—
like in a prison or a military barracks. In the center
of the room were a number of tables, and chairs,
and two television sets with extra large screens.
There were also a number of exercise machines.
Garcia pointed out to me two large openings in
the ceiling. He said that long cylinders descended
from these. One cylinder, like a modernized ver-
Sion of a dumb waiter, sent the men three hot meals
a day. The men had soon learned that if they
placed their leftovers and dirty dishes in the
cylinder, they would be whisked away as the
cylinder ascended back into the ceiling. The other
cylinder, smaller than the first, sent down clean
and took back soiled laundry: towels, the uniform
clothes the men were wearing (blue work shirts,
jeans, sweat socks). and bedclothes.
For the first few days after the men arrived here,
they saw no one else. They screamed and shouted
for someone to come to them, but no one had.
Then one evening a man appeared on the balcony.
They pointed out a steel balcony, high above our
heads, which was encased in what was no doubt
bullet-proof glass. The man told them that he was
El Conde Ruiz and announced that he had re-
assembled s 'El Grupo Febrero" and was pleased to
have them on his team. Not one of the men had
ever seen Ruiz before, although one man did re.
member that Ruiz had once been a high govern.
ment official. That night Ruiz read to the men an




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member that Ruiz had once been a high govern.
ment official. That night Ruiz read to the men an
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account of the first kidnapping performed by "EI
Grupo Febrero" and ironically congratulated them
on "the good job." The men, of course, had yelled
and cursed at Ruiz, but he hadn't responded to
them. After he left, the two television screens sud-
denly came on, broadcasting television accounts of
El Grupo Febrero's bloody activities.
This pattern continued. The men neither heard
nor saw any people except Ruiz. Every few days he
came in and read to them from newspaper ac-
counts of El Grupo Febrero's activities. At first
they yelled up at him—pleas, questions, threats,
curses—but when they realized that Ruiz was never
going to respond to them they quit trying. The tele-
vision sets were obviously remote-controlled and
came on only to broadcast program and newscasts
about El Grupo Febrero.
As the weeks passed, the men's rage and frustra-
tion grew daily. The worst was, as it was no doubt
intended to be, when they had to listen to the lists
of crimes committed in their names. Many men in
the chamber had periodically thought of commit-
ting suicide, either individually or collectively, but
they had worked out a pact among themselves to
protect one another—both physically and mentally
—and so far they had managed to keep bodies and
souls alive. When they'd arrived their first thoughts
had turned to escape, of course. But when they
checked out the room, they discovered that it was
virtually escape-proof. Once, one of the men had
tried to climb up the cylinder that brought their
food. But after he'd climbed up a certain distance
the cylinder was jerked up into its hole with such
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necynnaerwasjerxeaup Into nme wun s
force that the man fell and severely strained his
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NICK CARTER
back. This led them to believe that they were
monitored at virtually all times, and they were fair-
ly certain that the many perforations in the domed
ceiling contained microphones and video cameras.
The men, were, at least, well fed, and they spent
their days exercising, inventing all kinds of verbal
and physical games, and talking. The most popular
topics of conversation were their families, their
jobs, and speculations on El Conde Ruiz's motives.
Except for El Conde, I was the first person the
men had seen in almost two months. "And how did
I get down here?" I asked. "There doesn't seem to
be a staircase." Garcia pointed to another hole in
the ceiling, near the balcony. Apparently a chute
opened out of that. I'd come sliding down the
chute; then it had been immediately pulled back
up.
Garcia and the other men were full of specula-
tions about what Ruiz was planning to do with
them: kill them? free them? hold them here forever?
The men were certain of two things, however. One,
Ruiz and company were obviously using the name
of "El Grupo Febrero" as a cover for their own
bloody activities—activities which were not really
"revolutionary" at all. And two, Ruiz was a mad-
man. I had to agree with them on both accounts.
Ruiz was, clearly, in some sense, completely out of
his mind. Yet he was crazy like a fox. Leaving aside
value judgements for a moment, one couldn't help
but be impressed by the cleverness of Ruiz's cover,
and the brilliant organization of his campaign.
Ruiz was, unfortunately for us and for the people
of Spain, some kind of genius. The diabolical kind.
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and what his plans for me were. And I wondered
why he was doing what he was doing. Was Ruiz
just power mad or was there something more be-
hind his campaign of terror?
I didn't have to wait long for some answers to
my questions. About an hour after I awoke and
found myself surrounded by the captured men, a
light came on in the balcony. El Conde Ruiz ap-
peared above us. He'd changed out of his tuxedo
into a full-dress Spanish military uniform, heavily
decorated with ribbons and medals. He tapped on
a microphone to announce himself, and we all quit
talking and looked up at him. There was complete
silence in the chamber as he cleared his throat and
began speaking.
"Good evening, gentlemen," he said, flashing his
white teeth. "Tonight I want to thank you all for
working with me all these weeks. You've helped to
make my operation a splendid success merely by
your presence here." There was malicious and
taunting irony in Ruiz's tone and the amplification
of his voice by the microphone system made his
voice eerie—like some larger-than-life phantom.
"I should tell you gentlemen," Ruiz continued,
"that your new companion is Mr. Nick Carter, an
agent of the American government. Mr. Carter has
(and here
been trying—none too successfully—
Ruiz let out a short, dry laugh) "to foil my ac-
tivities. I wouldn't take to kindly to Mr. Carter if I
were you gentlemen. He's not to be trusted." I
turned my head and glanced about me. The men
were looking at me accusingly. I hoped only be-
cause I hadn't told them who I was.
CARTER



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"Now, gentlemen," Ruiz said, "after tonight I'm
afraid I will no longer require your services." The
men looked at one another questioningly. I was
afraid they had every reason to fear the worst.
"Before you gentlemen, uh, leave, I wish to tell you
what has been happening in Spain these last few
months that you've been confined, and why I
brought you here.
"l want to begin by telling you about my father,
the late El Conde Ruiz, whose title I've proudly
inherited. My father was a great man, a noble and
a patriotic man. He fought bravely and loyally with
Generalissimo Franco during the Spanish Civil
War that tore our country asunder. He fought
against the anarchistic and socialistic elements of
his day. These villains were men who, not unlike
yourselves gentlemen, believed that the old order
had to be torn down. that the old ideals of courage
and power and control should be spit upon. My
father fought for what he believed in, and he was
shot down, in cold blood, and in the back, by a
group of vicious, communistic swine. When my
father died, I said to myself that I would one day
wipe your kind from the earth forever." The men
exchanged nervous glances.
"All through my youth," Ruiz said, "I studied
the teachings of the church and of the Franco state
in order to be a man like my father. I joined the
youth group of Franco's regime and distinguished
myself there. But when I went to university, I was
suddenly confronted with trouble-making students
—and teachers. These people ridiculed men like my
father, who had died a heroic death. These people
felt that men like my father should be replaced in
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power by the poor, the worthless, the ne'er-do-
wells who always want something for nothing. The
students in my day, as in yours, had their sentimen-
tal ideas about 'justice' and 'liberty.' But why, I ask
you, should we have justice for men who contrib-
ute nothing to society and liberty for those who are
tearing down the pillars of society?
"After I left college, I worked my way up in the
government serving the regime I believed in with
all my heart, the regime my father had died for. I
worked hard because I knew that some day I would
have the chance to rule this country myself and
would be able to rid it of all the undesirable ele-
ments. I made my way steadily and rapidly to the
inner circles of the regime, and I gathered around
me a group of influential governmental and army
leaders.
"Then our great leader died, and immediately
the jackals rushed in to pick over his corpse, to
slander him and all he'd done for the country. And
the King entered, at first speaking softly, not quite
betraying his silly 'principles.' But then, publicly,
he turned against the man who had brought him
out of exile, the man who had restored him to his
throne. This King began desecrating the memory
of the leader that I still honored. The King turned
out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing after all. Or
rather, a sheep in wolfs clothing. Pretending to be
a strong leader, the King showed himself weak by
caving in to the demands of the bleeding-heart lib-
erals. He brought with him into government men
who were distinguished only by their weakness,
men who in the former regime would have been
spit upon, or imprisoned. They prattled on about
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'democracy.' But I ask you, gentlemen. what is de-
mocracy except the weak will of the lowest and
most stupid members of society?
"This mediocrity is what my father, and later l,
had fought against all our lives. But I decided to
stay within the government. I hoped that I could
push the ideals I believed in, and that the King
would some day be forced to come around. I was
confident I could overpower these weak new gov-
ernment men."
Ruiz's voice had reached a pitch of anger and
shrillness. I recalled a film I'd seen, Triumph of the
Will, about the Nazis, in which Hitler had given a
long speech. In Ruiz, I saw the same self-righteous-
ness, the same wounded fury, the same mad
rhetoric that I'd seen in Hitler. Fortunately for all
of us, Hitler hadn't had any nuclear weapons; un-
fortunately Ruiz did.
"Not only did the government not give me a
chance to put my ideas in action," Ruiz shouted,
"but the King and his weak cohorts ridiculed those
ideas. Then they decided to get rid of me—me, El
Conde Ruiz, whose lineage can be traced back to
the twelfth century and whose family had loyally
served this government during times of crisis for
years. And so they sacked me, the King and his
men, cast me off like an old dog whose time had
passed.
"That was their mistake, gentlemen. I left the
government politely, not giving them the satisfac-
tion of knowing my real feelings about them. I
hated them, and I vowed that I would revenge my-
self on these men. I vowed that I would use their
own methods against them. They wanted 'de-
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mocracy'? Very well. I would show them what hap-




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mocracy'? Very well. I would show them what hap-
pens when you let the weakest and most con-
temptible elements of the populace take part in pol-
ities. They wanted 'freedom' for even the lowliest
Of men. Very well. I would show them what hap-
pens when they let the anarchistic elements have
their freedom. I would show them that their de-
mocracy and the freedom they granted to men like
you would destroy the government and the founda-
tions of our society.
"That's where you come in, gentlemen." Ruiz
looked down on the heads of the men assembled
below him. "l used to work in the information de-
partment in the government. I kept tabs on, and
had under surveillance by government agents, men
like yourselves, organizations like 'El Grupo
Febrero.' The new government ordered my depart-
ment to destroy the records we'd been keeping for
years.
"Only I fooled them. I knew that a time would
come when you people would strike again. J
waited. I built up my own force of men, men who,
like myself, were disillusioned with the King and
his new government. I bided my time. I built up my
arsenal and my information network. And then I
struck. I struck to prove to the government and to
the people of Spain that this silly 'democracy' and
'freedom' could not preserve our country from
harm. I set out to prove that even a small, weak
group like yourselves, El Grupo Febrero, could set
the government into disarray and destroy the
country's morale. You see, gentlemen, I'd taken
your names with me when I left the information
service, knowing that some day I'd need you.
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"Now," Ruiz continued, "the seeds of my plan
are bearing fruit, thanks to you, El Grupo
h "All


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t e government intodisarray and destroy the
country's morale. You see, gentlemen, I'd taken
your names with me when I left the information
service, knowing that some day I'd need you.
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NICK CARTER
"Now," Ruiz continued, "the seeds of my plan
are bearing fruit, thanks to you, El Grupo
Febrero." Ruiz laughed a long, mad laugh. "All
over Spain people are growing disenchanted with
the ability of the present government to preserve
order. They realize, more and more, what this 'de-
mocracy' has led to: anarchy, attacks against their
families and loved ones, a reign of terror!"
Ruiz's logic and argument were impeccable ex-
cept for one point: He was himself creating the dis-
order he claimed to be working so fervently
against; the reign of terror was his own.
"And so, gentlemen," Ruiz concluded, "I want
to thank you again. Soon my men and I will rid this
country of its weak King. The people will follow
us, thanks to you. At this point our plan is bound
to succeed; no one can stop us." Ruiz looked down
at me to emphasize this last point. "I will require
your services no more after tonight, gentlemen. I
bid you a final farewell."
Ruiz gave a military salute, then stepped off the
balcony, out of sight. The lights in his glass booth
went out. I shook my head and exchanged looks
with the men whose faces betrayed their deep dis-
may. I think everyone there knew exactly what
Ruiz meant by bidding us a "final farewell." If they
didn't they found out almost immediately. As soon
as Ruiz disappeared, a hissing sound began. The
hissing came from the floor vents of the chamber.
"What's that noise?" asked a man in a fright-
ened voice. I was pretty sure that the hissing meant
that we were being gassed. The hissing increased in
volume as the gas was shot into the chamber under
force of a great deal of pressure.



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a we were Ing gassed.Theh1ss1ng Increase In
volume as the gas was shot into the chamber under
force of a great deal of pressure.
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"Quick," I yelled, "we're being gassed. Strip the
blankets and sheets off the beds and put them over
the air ducts on the floor." We all ran to the side of
the room and ferociously began stripping the beds.
We threw the heavy blankets and also the sheets
over the ducts, trying to impede the flow of the gas.
But it was no use. The pressure forcing the gas into
the room was too great to be stopped. Despite our
best efforts, gas continued seeping into the
chamber. It permeated the air around our heads.
Men were beginning to cough and choke. They
were running every which way in the room, trying
to escape the onslaught of the gas. We were going
to die like trapped rats.
"Cover your faces with wet cloths," yelled one of
the men, a doctor. I knew the gas was too strong
for that, that the wet cloths weren't going to stop
anything, but immediately there was a run on the
sinks and showers and even the toilets, and men
covered their faces with wet towels, washclothes,
shirts. As they wandered about the room, cloths on
heads, the place looked like some ghastly science
fiction set tilled with faceless men. It was a chilling
vision.
And the wet cloths didn't do any good. Men
were now gasping for breath and moaning from
pain. I threw myself to the cold steel floor, hoping
that the gas would rise rapidly to the ceiling of the
chamber. I held my breath for long periods of time,
and then took sharp, small gasps of air into my
lungs.
I saw that some of the men had already collapsed
onto the floor, and I wondered if they were dead.
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onto the floor, and I wondered if they were dead.
One of the men sprawled out, motionless, was
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Miguel, whose wife and children I'd talked to that
afternoon. I thought of them and remembered bit-
terly predicting that if Miguel ever came home to
his wife and kids it would be in a coffin. Only 1
hadn't guessed that the method would be the same
one used by Hitler against the Jews.
More and more men had fallen to the floor and
were writhing there in pain. They were like the fig-
ures of the damned out of Dante. Their cries
pierced the air. This was really Godderdamurung
time. Then I caught my first whiff of the gas and
felt my body go sick and queasy as it entered my
lungs. I held my breath again. I could tell from the
smell of the gas that it wasn't cyanide, as I'd ex-
pected. But to know it wasn't cyanide wasn't much
of a comfort. There are lots of gasses that can kill
men besides cyanide, and it was a pretty safe bet to
say that Ruiz and his men had used one of them. I
guessed ue all had maybe another ten minutes.
Already, most of the twenty-three men were
sprawled on the floor, motionless. I wasn't so
much concerned for my own life; that's the risk you
run if you're an agent. The odds are, sooner or lat-
er, that you're probably going to get it. Few agents
live to a ripe old age. But these men were different,
merely pamis in Ruiz's game. They were innocent
of any crime except the crime of idealism, which
had apparently become the most heinous crime of
all in Ruiz's twisted imagination. I thought of the
men's families and the pain Ruiz was causing them,
and I thought of all the men he'd killed in bomb-
ings and kidnappings and the people he might well
kill with his nuclear weapons. What made a man
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power so much that he would stop at nothing to get
it? I think I never wanted to kill a man as badly as
I wanted to kill Ruiz.
As I opened my eyes the gas burned them. The
silence of the chamber was total now. All of the
previously writhing and running and clawing bod-
ies were stilled. It was like a freeze frame in a mov-
ie. All motion had been arrested. Apparently I was
the last man in the room still conscious. I'd been
able to hold out against the gas longer than the
others because of my training for situations just
like this. But training can control the human or-
ganism only up to a certain point. I wouldn't be
abie to hold out much longer. It felt like I had dag-
gers stabbing into my lungs, urging me to take in
some air.
I took a breath. I felt the acrid gas enter my
nostrils, and then my lungs. The sensation was that
my body was dissolving. My last thought was of
Pilar: Where was she? Why hadn't she rescued me?
Could I have been right about her after all? Was
she a counter agent?
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Chapter Twelve
"Nick ... Nick?" I heard Pilar's low voice. Had
she rescued me after all? I opened my eyes and
looked up into her beautiful face, which was now
taut with worry. "Nick, I thought you'd never
wake up," she said. She bent her head down and
kissed my lips. I looked around. We were in an un-
familiar and very strange room. One of the room's
yellow stucco walls was oddly curved, and there
were no windows and only one door. The place was
bare except for a television set in an alcove on one
wall. I was lying on my side on a tile floor, and I
realized that my hands were tied, with thick ropes,
behind my back. Pilar's hands were also bound at
the wrist. A piece of music, which sounded vaguely
familiar, sounded from somewhere in the distance.
"Where are we?" I asked. "What happened?"
s 'l don't know. I woke up i" Pilar shrugged. 8'1
don't know how long ago. It seems like I've been
here for hours and hours, just sitting here."
"That music," I said, "sounds awfully familiar."
I could now make out the symphonic orchestration
and the voice of a soprano singing in German.
"They've been playing it since I woke up.
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They've been playing the same passage over and
over again," Pilar said. Suddenly it came to me.
The music was Isolde's final aria, her lament for
her dead lover, in Wagner's opera, Tristan and
Isolde. I told Pilar.
"Of course, you're right,"
she said, "I should
have recognized it myself. It's beautiful music, but
I wish they'd shut it off. I'm tired of hearing the
same thing again and again."
But the aria kept repeating itself as Pilar and I
exchanged stories. I told her about my exploration
of Ruiz's underground headquarters; about his
atomic stockpile; about General Rodriguez's
treachery; about the men the two were holding
prisoners; and about Ruiz's speech followed by the
nightmarish experience in his torture chamber.
"I guess I was wrong about the gas being
poisoned," I observed. "It was only strong enough
to knock me out for awhile. But there's no doubt
we were meant to think the gas was poisonous—
one of Ruiz's and Rodriguez's sadistic little
games."
guess I got off luckier," Pilar said, "they
drugged me with a needle." She showed me the
mark on her right forearm.
While I had been underground, Pilar had had
her own troubles. When Ruiz's Bach concert had
ended, she'd noticed, of course, that I hadn't re-
turned. She'd tried to decide what to do, whether
to go through dinner and hope that Ruiz didn't
note my absence, or whether to excuse herself from
dinner as convincingly as she could and try to find
me. It turned out, however, that the decision
hadn't been Pilar's to make. As she and Ruiz left
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the music room, the bulging-eyed butler had ap-
proached her and told her she was wanted on the
phone. Thinking the call might be from me, or pos-
sibly from Lorca, Pilar had gone upstairs to take it
in her bedroom. There, however, she'd been
greeted by a group of Ruiz's henchmen. They'd
tied her up and gagged her. They stood guard in
her bedroom. About an hour and a half later, ap-
parently after he'd finished dinner and bid his oth-
er guests goodnight, El Conde Ruiz had come to
Pilar. He'd sent the guards out of the room, and
had removed the gag from her mouth. Ruiz made
it clear to Pilar that he'd suspected she was an
agent for some time, and that he was aware she was
in his house to spy on him. Then Ruiz had treated
her to a political harangue very much like the one
I'd heard in the chamber.
In addition, Ruiz had taunted Pilar about her
"weak-willed, liberal" husband and about her "re-
lationship" with "that interfering swine, Nick
Carter." Ruiz had gone into a diatribe about
Pilar's refusal to marry him, and told her that from
now on she would be completely in his power. At
one point during their interview Pilar had feared
that Ruiz would rape her right then and there—out
of vengeance and because of his long-suppressed
desire for the woman he now held captive. But
Ruiz had spared her that.
"Ruiz always remains a gentleman," Pilar noted
sarcastically.
When Pilar had asked Ruiz what he'd done with
me, he'd merely replied that both of us would get
what was coming to us, and then he'd left the
room. About an hour later a man in a white coat
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had come into Pilar's bedroom (the same white-
coated man I'd locked up in the closet?), and he'd
given her the shot that had knocked her out. When
she woke up she was here beside me.
I wondered why Ruiz had brought Pilar and me
back together. And I wondered where we were. If
we were still on Ruiz's estate, why hadn't Lorca
sent in a team of men to search the place like he'd
promised? Surely, it must be morning already.
I noticed that the Wagner music in the distance
had stopped. Abruptly the television in the alcove
came on, This t.v., like the ones in the chamber,
was obviously triggered by some remote control
device. The face of General Rodriguez filled the
Lv. screen. Pilar gasped. The General was being in-
terviewed by an international panel of journalists
about his "escape" from El Grupo earlier this
morning. (This at least gave us some idea of the
amount of time we'd passed in captivity.) The dis-
tinguished journalists were obviously awed by the
General; one savant described him as "our latest
national" hero, and the others seemed to agree
with this assessment. Rodriguez described his
stoicism and his refusal to break down during his
"captivity." In answer to a question about what
tortures he'd undergone, Rodriguez pointed to the
long red cut down the side of his face, the cut I'd
given him last night, as an example of El Grupo
Febrero's "sadistic methods."
In the second segment of this "News Special" a
distinguished, gray-haired commentator an-
nounced that we'd now be looking at exclusive
footage, which the station had just received, of the
site of General Rodriguez's "captivity." We'd also
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hear about Rodriguez's "amazingly heroic" mis-
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Istlngujshed, gray-haired commentator an-
nounced that we'd now be looking at exclusive
footage, which the station had just received, of the
site of General Rodriguez's "captivity." We'd also
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hear about Rodriguez's "amazingly heroic" mis-
Sion of this afternoon. Pilar and I looked at one
another and raised our eyebrows. What could this
amazingly heroic mission possibly be?
The scene switched to a man in a trench coat
holding a microphone. He was standing in a field
near what looked to be a bombed-out hacienda. In
the background men in army uniforms were lifting
charred corpses out of the rubble and placing them
on stretchers. The commentator explained, in an
unctuous voice, that this was the hideaway, to the
south of Barcelona, where General Rodriguez had
spent his agonizing and terror-filled week as a pris-
oner of El Grupo Febrero.
"The bodies you see in the background here,"
the man announced gleefully, "are the remains of
the villains who kidnapped and tried to kill Gener-
al Rodriguez."
The commentator described, in melodramatic
detail, how General Rodriguez, after escaping
from his captors, had then returned to the hacien-
da, leading a battalion of army officers. The ar-
my men had laid siege to the building. When the
revolutionaries inside had refused to surrender,
Rodriguez had ordered his men to bomb the place.
El Grupo's "headquarters" had been destroyed.
Along with the men inside.
I knew who the men inside the hacienda had
been, and I also knew why they hadn't come out of
the building and why they had "refused" to sur.
render. They couldn't surrender because they were
still unconscious from the gas that Ruiz had
pumped into their lungs. I knew that those corpses
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still unconscious from the gas that Ruiz had
pumped into their lungs. I knew that those corpses
belonged to Garcia and Esteban and the other men
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I'd been with in Ruiz's chamber. Ruiz and
Rodriguez had transported the men they'd kid-
napped to this hacienda to make them sitting
ducks. This whole newscast was a total outrage. I
couldn't believe that Ruiz and Rodriguez were get-
ting away with their hypocritical and lying scheme,
but they apparently were. I glanced at Pilar. Tears
were rolling down her cheeks. I took her hand.
"l can't believe I knew Juan Ruiz all those
years," Pilar said softly, "and that I never even sus-
pected the depths of the man's madness."
The t.v. program switched back to the gray-
haired commentator in the studio. He concluded
the broadcast by saying that a major arm of
the terrorist organization had been felled today,
thanks to the heroism of General Rodriguez. But
the government believed that there were still mem-
bers of El Grupo Febrero at large. The government
feared that these anarchists would now strike again
in retaliation for their colleagues' deaths. With that
the television clicked off.
Ah, yes, "El Grupo Febrero" would strike again
all right! Before Pilar and I had a chance to discuss
these horrifying new events, these lies that Ruiz
and Rodriguez had created and that the media was
accepting, the door opened. El Conde Ruiz, wear-
ing white tie and tails, stepped into the room. Ruiz
smiled at us, the sickly-sweet smile of the victor.
Ruiz had come to boast and he was quick and to
the point. First he gloated over the success of pull-
ing off Rodriguez's "escape" and his "heroic re-
turn," as Ruiz mockingly put it. Then Ruiz out-
lined his future plans. The King, whom Ruiz so
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lined his future plans. The King, whom Ruiz so
hated, and the government's entire cabinet, would
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die tonight, Ruiz assured us. Naturally, a new com-
munique would come from El Grupo Febrero late
tonight, claiming responsibility for the deaths Of
these men.
With the government wiped out, and with the
country in total confusion and disarray, General
Rodriguez would step forward and offer to form a
new government. Ruiz had no doubt that since
General Rodriguez was now the number one na-
tional hero, the whole country would step into line
behind him. Rodriguez*s first act as the Head of
State would be to declare martial law, which would
give him unchecked control. Ruiz, of course,
would be the power behind the throne—or in this
case, the power behind the dictator.
If anyone objected to Rodriguez's and Ruiz's
seizure of power, Ruiz had his stockpiles of weap-
ons to back up their takeover. Ruiz hinted to us
darkly that he was in touch with fascistic leaders in
the other Western democracies, and that he would
do what he could to help them come to power.
Ruiz's fantasies extended far beyond ruling Spain.
He hoped to have all of Western Europe under his
control. It was a mad scheme and one doubted that
it would ever work out, and yet .
look how far
Ruiz had come already in achieving his objectives.
Before he left, Ruiz informed us, with his usual
sarcasm, that Ramon Lorca had been removed as
Head of the Spanish Secret Intelligence. General
Rodriguez had publicly accused Lorca of bungling
the El Grupo case, and Lorca's duties were being
suspended until after an investigation into the mat-
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Ruiz said it also saddened him to have to tell
Pilar and me that we would become, in about twen-
ty minutes, the latest victims of El Grupo Febrero.
He would particularly miss his old friend La Con-
desa Galdos, Ruiz said. On that cheery note he
turned and left the room.
I knew that Pilar and I had to figure out a way to
get out of here before we became Ruiz's latest
pawns—and corpses. But how? I no longer had my
luger or my stiletto: Ruiz's men had seen to that.
Pilar, however, said that there was a dagger under
her dress, held in place by the garter on her right
thigh. If I could somehow remove the dagger, we
could probably cut the rope that bound our hands.
That would be a start.
We stood up, Pilar in back of me, and I moved
my bound hands along her body until I felt the
metal beneath the silk of her dress. Through the
material, I gripped the handle of the dagger in my
fingers. I began edging the dagger out of the garter
that held it in place, going slowly so I wouldn't jar
loose the dagger's sheath and cut Pilar's leg. After
a minute or so of concentrated effort, I managed to
free the dagger from the garter. I pulled it out from
under Pilar's dress by kneeling down. Then I stood
up again, and Pilar's hands removed the dagger's
sheath.
"Now turn around," I said, "and move your
hands up to the dagger." Pilar did as I'd told her to
and I began sawing the ropes that bound her
hands. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, I felt
the rope around her hands giving, and with one last
stroke, I severed it. Pilar shook her hands free of
the ropes and took the dagger from me. In a few




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minutes she'd freed the ropes around my hands
also.
"Now," I said, "unless they're planning on bomb-
ing us in this room, which I doubt, some of Ruiz's
men are going to be coming for us soon. Ruiz said
twenty mintues and it's probably been about fif-
teen already. I have a way that I think will get us
I unzipped my pants and untaped
out of this."
Hugo, a tiny bomb, from my upper thigh. 'ST his,"
I said, holding up the weapon for Pilar to look at,
s 'is a gas bomb. Unlike the gas in Ruiz's chamber,
the gas in this little thing is lethal. One whiff and
you're gone. Once Ruiz's men come through that
door I'm going to toss the bomb. It will kill them
within seconds. We're going to have to hold our
breaths, and we'll have to run out of here like bats
out of hell."
We didn't have long to wait for Ruiz's men. I
heard footsteps heading toward the room. The
door's lock clicked. Three big bruisers in blue work
shirts came through the door.
"Now," I whispered to Pilar. I threw the bomb
and it exploded against the chest of the tallest of
Ruiz's men. He collapsed, and the other two im-
mediately followed him to the floor. Pilar and I
leaped over the bodies and ran out the door into a
large bedroom, then through a hall and down a
winding staircase,
"Okay," I said at the bottom of the staircase,
"you can breathe now." We both gulped greedily
for oxygen. We stood in an expensively furnished
living room, whose most distinctive features were
the bizarrely curved and ornamented walls. I re-
alized that we were in one of the famous Gaudi-
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designed apartments in downtown Barcelona. A
large window looked out across the city, and
through it I could see that night had already fallen.
On a table in the middle of the room was some
electronic equipment that interested me. It in-
terested me a lot. I recognized the tiny computer,
the metal parts and the wires as equipment used to
make bombs. Also on the table was a record player
and the recording of Tristan and Isolde that Pilar
and I had heard earlier.
"It looks like Ruiz and his men have been mak-
ing an audially-controlled bomb," I said to Pilar.
"It looks like they've made up something that can
be triggered by a certain note in that aria in Tristan
and Isolde, and most likely the highest note."
' 'My God, Nick," Pilar cried, "there's a gala
performance of Tristan and Isolde tonight at the
Madrid National Opera House. The King and
Queen will be attending. That must be what Ruiz
was talking about when he said he'd kill the King
tonight. The entire cabinet will be there, too. Ruiz
was wearing tails tonight because he was headed to
the opera to plant the bomb."
"What time does the opera begin?"
"Eight." I glanced at a clock on the wall. It read
8:30. That meant that it was too late to warn the
King and his ministers beforehand. They would
have long since left for the opera. I couldn't call
Lorca in Madrid and tell him to rush over to the
Opera House, because he'd been sacked today.
And I didn't want to risk talking to someone else in
security about the bomb; Ruiz may have already
moved some of his boys in there. The Lieberstod,
the aria that would trigger the bomb, didn't occur
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until the third act had almost ended. Pilar and I
might be able to make it to Madrid in time to stop
the bomb from going off.
"We've got to get there, Pilar. Do you know
anyone who can fly us there quick?" She said she
did know a man with a helicopter who would prob-
ably do it, and she went down the hall to use the
telephone. When she returned she nodded her head
yes: she'd got the copter.
We commandeered a taxi and arrived at a
nearby skyscraper within minutes. On the roof of
the building, Pilar's friend had the helicopter's en-
gines already running. We hopped aboard and the
plane lifted into the night. As we flew over the
peaceful Spanish countryside, Pilar's friend, a
large. gruff man in his late forties, handed us two
lugers he'd brought us.
"Thought you might need them," he said.
Pilar said simply, "Yes. We will."



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Chapter Thirteen
Three quarters of an hour later we stepped out of
a taxi and rushed up the broad marble stairs of the
National Opera House. In the lobby Pilar smiled at
the attendants, who gave us curious glances,
marveling I guess, that we would chose to arrive so
late for the opera. We may also have looked a little
the worse for wear, but at least we were ap-
propriately dressed for the gala, I still had on my
tuxedo and Pilar her white silk evening gown of the
night before.
"Where are they in the opera?" Pilar asked an
attendant as we made our way across the grand
promenade.
"Toward the end of the second act, Madame,
but you can't go in without tickets."
"I'm La Condesa Galdos," Pilar replied, "and I
keep a box here year round. I intend to use my box
tonight." We hurried up the stairs to the boxes as
the flustered attendant murmured apologies to our
backs. Inside Pilar's box we took out opera glasses
and tried to scan the gala audience, hoping that
we'd be able to spot either Rodriguez or Ruiz. But
we couldn't. The lights were turned off, and the
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glow the stage cast was not enough to pick out peo-
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glow the stage cast was not enough to pick out peo-
ple in the audience. I knew that Rodriguez and
Ruiz had to be here someplace, but we'd have to
wait until the intermission when the second act fin-
ished to find out where. I listened to the magisterial
throbbing of Wagner's music and tried to concen-
trate on the mythical figures, bathed in blue lights,
moving across the stage, but I couldn't.
"Does Ruiz keep a box here?" I asked Pilar.
' 'No, he's usually in Barcelona during the sea-
son."
"Damn. So we'll have to wait and pick him out
of the crowd when the house lights come on."
Finally Tristan and Isolde finished their duet
and the curtain fell. The audience broke into wild
applause, and the singers came out for a curtain
call. Men on the first row tossed up roses to the
woman who had sung Isolde, and when the singers
disappeared behind the curtain, the audience de-
manded another curtain call. The singers returned
to the front of the stage again.
"Oh, my God!" Pilar exclaimed, clutching at my
arm, "look up, Nick." A white spotlight had come
on and was shining into the gold and crimson
draped box of the Royal Family. There stood the
King and Queen of Spain, smiling and waving
down at the singers, who acknowledged the royal
accolade with extra low bows. With the King and
Queen in the large box were a number of dige
nitaries, including, J suppose the cabinet mem-
bers scheduled to attend the gala. And on the
Queen's left was the latest national hero, General
Rodriguez. He was in full-dress uniform, and when
the crowd looked up and saw him, they turned
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their attention from the singers and began applaud-
ing Rodriguez. As he saluted in acknowledgement,
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Queen's left was the latest national hero, General
Rodriguez. He was in full-dress uniform, and when
the crowd looked up and saw him, they turned
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their attention from the singers and began applaud-
ing Rodriguez. As he saluted in acknowledgement,
they gave Rodriguez a long sustained ovation, big-
ger even than the one they'd given to the singers.
My heart sank.
As the houselights came on, I noticed Rodriguez
talking to the Queen. His body was bent toward
her in an apologetic manner. He seemed to be ex-
cusing himself, no doubt pleading illness or fatigue
due to his recent captivity. The bomb would go off
in the next act and Rodriguez, and Ruiz, too, no
doubt, would be long gone from the Opera House
when the bomb exploded. I had to get at Rodriguez
before he left the building. I had to do whatever I
could to make him tell me where he and Ruiz had
planted the bomb.
The Royal Box was almost exactly opposite
Pilar's box in the houseshoe-shaped grand tier.
Pilar and I rushed out into the corridor to make
our way to the other side of the horseshoe. Un-
fortunately, we didn't beat the crowd. As soon as
the houselights came on, groups of elegantly-
dressed men and women had flowed out into the
corridor. There was a genteel stampede toward the
house bar, which was situated midway on the tier
between Pilar's box and that of the Royal Family.
We shouldered our way past men in tuxedos and
women in their finest silks and chiffons.
The reception that we got from these society
people, as we pushed our way past them, wasn't
particularly gracious. One man threatened to
knock me down when I accidentally jostled his
wife, and another man grabbed at Pilar after she'd
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wife, and another man grabbed at Pilar after she'd
knocked him out of her way. She gave him a quick
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NICK CARTER
clip to the neck and the man let go of her. A
shocked murmuring traveled through the crowd.
They obviously couldn't figure out why the beau-
tiful lady in the evening gown and the man in the
tuxedo were speeding through the opera as though
they were running a marathon race. Two ushers
tried to restrain us, but we shook them off and pro-
ceeded on our course.
When we reached the corridor off the Royal Box
I checked out the people milling about. For-
tunately I towered over the heads of most Of the
men, and I could see Rodriguez, who stood out in
his uniform, in the distance. He was going through
an exit door at the end of the corridor.
"Where does that door lead?" I asked Pilar. She
said it went to a staircase that led to the upper
levels of the Opera House. That probably meant
that General Rodriguez was going to rnake his es-
cape via the roof.
"You follow him," Pilar said, "and I'll try to
find the King and Queen and convince them to
leave the opera immediately." I elbowed my way
past another group of opera-goers and Pilar set off
to search for the Royal Family. As I opened the
exit door, I discovered that the staircase leading to
the building's upper levels was also swarming with
people. They were all walking down the stairs and it
was heavy-going making my way past them.
Then I saw Rodriguez above me on the stairs,
also wading through the mass of people. He'd been
slowed down by the crowds, and I'd gained on him.
He'd apparently made no effort to hurry, not
knowing that I was following him.
"Alto Rodriguez!" I called up to him. I pulled



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"Alto Rodriguez!" I called up to him. I pulled
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the luger Pilar's friend had given me out of my
jacket. Rodriguez turned and searched the crowd
with his eyes.
"A qui Rodriguez!" I said, aiming my gun. When
he saw me, his jaw hardened, then he turned and
fled up the stairs, doubling his pace and frantically
pushing past the people in his way. I couldn't fire
on Rodriguez. I didn't want to risk hitting an inno-
cent bystander and it wouldn't do anyone any good
if I killed Rodriguez before I got the information j
needed out of him. I'd just wanted to halt him with
the gun. Unfortunately, the gun hadn't persuaded
him. The sight of my gun had, however, set up a
wave of shocked whispers and stricken-looking
faces around me. People, no doubt wanting to hu-
mor a crazy man—me—got out of my way. I sup-
pose I should have pulled out the luger before; I
could have got through the crowds easier.
By the time I reached the last turn of the stair-
case, and the crowd had thinned, I'd again lost
sight of Rodriguez. At the top of the stairs, there
was a door, which had to lead to the roof. I pushed
against it, but it didn't budge. It looked like
Rodriguez had locked it from the outside.
The top landing was fairly narrow, so I didn't
have much room to build up momentum, but I had
to do the best I could and try to break open that
door. I stood as far back from the door as the land-
ing allowed and then rushed forward and heaved
myself against its heavy wooden panels. J felt the
door give slightly outward as a result of my impact,
but it didn't open. I heaved myself against the door
again. Again it stood solid. The third time put
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the door, and this time, as my shoulders hit the
wood, I heard the panels splinter as the door
began to separate from its hinges. But it still didn't
open. The fourth assault did the trick. The door
pulled out from its hinges, and I stepped onto the
domed roof of the opera house. General Rodriguez
was nowhere in sight.
My feet crushed against gravel as I made my way
around the elaborate glass and steel dome that
stood in the center of the roof. I could hear no
voices and no other footsteps on the roof. But
when I'd made my way around the south side of
the dome, I saw General Rodriguez—and El Con-
de Ruiz—standing on the southern edge of the
roof. They were looking out toward the city, and
their backs were toward me. Ruiz had probably
been planting the bomb while Rodriguez was with
the King and Queen and basking in the glory of the
citizens.
Then I saw what the men were looking at in the
south. Approaching the roof, from that direction,
and already flying low, was a four-seater heli-
copter. Its lights had been turned out, so as not to
attract attention. So that was to be their method of
escape! They'd leave behind the bomb, fly off the
roof, and when the singer hit that high note and the
bomb blew up the Opera House and practically the
entire government of Spain, they'd be miles away.
Well, not if I could help it. What I had to do was
to shoot down the copter before it landed to whisk
them away. If Rodriguez and Ruiz saw that they
were going to be stuck at the Opera House, like the
rest Of us, when the bomb went off, they might
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planted. But getting down that copter wasn't going
to be easy. I knew that I'd have only one shot at it.
Once Ruiz and Rodriguez heard my shot, they'd
fire on me, and then I'd have my hands full just
dodging their bullets and trying to protect myself.
Also, because the pilot of the helicopter had
turned off his lights, it was going to be tough mak-
ing an accurate aim. I'd have to hit the fuel tank in
exactly the right place with one shot, or I might as
well forget it. I inched myself along the south side
of the dome, coming closer to where Rodriguez
and Ruiz stood and closer to the helicopter.
The trick was to wait until the helicopter was
close enough for me to sight along its fuel tank but
not too close to the opera house. If I waited too
long, the plane would crash into the building's roof
and maybe create as much damage as a bomb
itself. Timing was crucial. I moved still closer to the
edge of the roof as the helicopter neared the build-
ing. Now was the time. I sighted the luger, calcu-
lating the exact angle of flight and the speed of the
copter in relation to that angle.
I heard the bullet piercing metal and within sec-
onds the helicopter burst into a billowing cloud of
orange and yellow flames. Pieces of metal fell from
the air, some of them coming within a few feet of
the Opera House. I heard the bulk of the plane
crash to the ground somewhere nearby, but far
enough away to be of no danger to the Opera
House. Rodriguez and Ruiz's reaction was not
what I'd expected. Perhaps they hadn't realized at
first that the crash had been caused by a bullet.
They stood as still as statues, apparently
mesmerized by the sight of the destruction of their
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means of excape. Their backs were still toward me.
I yelled at them.
"Hands above your heads,"
"You're covered." Both men jumped at the sound
of my voice. I thought for a second that Rodriguez
was actually going to pitch off the roof. But they
put their hands where I wanted them to.
"Now turn around." The faces they turned to
me were glowering with rage and disappointment.
"You goddamned fool, Carter," Rodriguez
screamed hysterically at me, "now you'll kill us
all."
"Not if you tell me where the bomb is. The third
act of the opera has already begun, and there's not
much time left before it goes off, is there?"
"It's in an empty box on tier one," Rodriguez
began nervously.
"Shut up, you bastard," Ruiz screamed, trying
to stop Rodriguez.
But General Rodriguez was not a brave man.
"It's in box seventeen-right," he said.
Ruiz shouted a string of curses at Rodriguiz, his
voice rising in fury.
"You stupid bastard!" he yelled. "You swine!
You try to ruin the plan I've been working on
for years, you try to prevent me from ruling this
country!" He'd become completely irrational.
Rodriguez stood there dumbstruck by Ruiz's in-
vective, and before I realized what was happening,
Ruiz had pulled out a pistol and fired at Rodriguiz.
I shot the gun out of Ruiz's hand before he had
time to vent his rage anymore, but his first shot had
hit Rodriguez, whose body crumpled to the gravel.
Blood seeped through the front of his uniform and
his breath was coming in short gasps.
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Ruiz took off in a run across the roof. I fired at




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Ruiz took off in a run across the roof. I fired at
him, but he managed to dodge my first bullet. By
the time I fired a second time, he'd disappeared
around the glass dome. I started after him, and I
heard an exchange of gunshots ring out. Glass
shattered as a bullet hit one of the panes of the
dome. Ruiz must have had a second gun, but who
was he firing at?
"Nick!" It was Pilar's voice.
"Over here!" She came rushing around the
dome, gun in hand. She stopped when she saw
General Rodriguez lying there.
"Thank God, Nick. I thought you were dead
when I saw Ruiz running across the roof just as I
came up."
' 'Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Did you find out where the bomb is?"
"Yes."
"Then you better get down there quick. I
couldn't get past the security guards to the King
and Queen. Apparently Lorca wasn't the only one
that Rodriguez has been spreading tales about. No
one would listen to me."
"Rodriguez won't be spreading tales any more."
I said, looking down at the body that was now a
corpse. "Did you see which way Ruiz headed?"
"Yeah, there's another exit from the roof, which
leads backstage. It looked like that's where he was
going."
"Okay," I said to Pilar. "You try to find him
and I'll go after the bomb. Rodriguez said it was in
one of the boxes."
I rushed to the roof exit and made my way down
the stairs three at a time. As I reached the top tier,
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NICK CARTER
I could hear the dramatic crescendo of the
Lieberstod, the twenty-minute aria that Isolde sings





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I could hear the dramatic crescendo of the
Lieberstod, the twenty-minute aria that Isolde sings
about the death of Tristan. The music had already
begun to build towards its climax, which meant
that I only had a short time, maybe five minutes at
most. to find the bomb and get it out of the build-
ing. When Isolde hit her high note, which was the
peak of the aria, the musically-triggered bomb
would explode.
After what seemed like the largest number of
steps I'd ever descended, I reached the grand tier. I
ran along the corridor following the numbers Of
the boxes until I came to number seventeen-right.
A startled usher, a long-faced man, with thinning
hair and thick glasses, jumped out of the chair
where he was resting as I passed him.
"Hey," he yelled after me.
He was on my heels when I entered the box that
Rodriguez had specified.
"Sir," the usher' said, "this is a private box, you
can't just go in here." I'd already begun searching
the deserted box. I turned over one plush-covered
Louis XIV chair after another, checking under-
neath them for the bomb.
"Sir,"
said the usher, as he watched me hurl
around the furniture, "you can't do this. Do you
know the property you're handling is owned by the
State? Stop that. This is an outrage." Ignoring him,
I ripped back the heavy velvet drapes which
swathed the sides of the box. Nothing was behind
them except walls in need of a paint job.
"Sir .
" the usher began again, his voice get-
ting more and more indignant. He was beginning to
get on my nerves. I pulled out the luger and waved
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it in his direction. His face turned white, and he
muttered something about calling security as he
backed out of the room. I moved to the edge of the




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"Sir .
" the usher began again, his voice get-
ting more and more indignant. He was beginning to
get on my nerves. I pulled out the luger and waved
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it in his direction. His face turned white, and he
muttered something about calling security as he
backed out of the room. I moved to the edge of the
box and checked under the ornate gold railing.
Nothing was there except dust and some hardened
wads of chewing gum. I guess even society folks
have their bad habits. Leaning over the railing, I
saw that the box I was in was only two boxes down
from the King's. Ruiz certainly wasn't taking any
chances in killing the man he so hated. Even if, by
some miracle, the bomb didn't destroy everyone in
the opera house when it went off, if sure as hell was
going to get the King and his ministers.
Isolde's lament for Tristan was becoming louder
and more intense. It seemed very close to its
climax. Where the hell could a bomb be in an opera
box other than under the chairs or railing or be-
hind the drapes? It crossed my mind then to try to
stop the opera. I'd yell down to the singer to stop
her aria, and I'd even threaten her with my luger if
I had to. If she wouldn't stop, I'd have to shoot
her. I didn't like the idea, but politically, and even
statistically, it seemed the only action possible.
One innocent death in exchange for hundreds,
perhaps thousands of deaths, and the destruction
of the entire Spanish government and its head.
I pulled out my luger. Then I saw an ornate
marble column to the side of the box. Except it was
peculiar; it didn't go completely to the top of the
ceiling, it missed by several inches. Up close I could
see that it wasn't real marble at all, but wood
painted to look like marble. With one ferocious
karate kick I split the wood near the column's base.
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karate kick I split the wood near the columnis base.
Another kick made a large opening in the wood. I
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NiCK CARTER
reached my hand down into the column. My fin-
gers touched something solid, covered with paper.
I worked the package up to the opening I'd made
and pulled it out. I'd found the bomb all right: a
small cube wrapped in brown paper.
But I was afraid I might have found the package
too late. The music was now a pounding swell of
orchestration and the singer's notes were already
piercing: the human voice doesn't stretch many
notes higher.
Package in hand, I rushed out of the box. Right
into the arms of two opera Security Guards. The
long-faced usher stood beside them, a smug look
on his pasty features. "He's the one," the usher
said, and the guards grabbed my arms.
"I've got a bomb in this package!"
I shouted
above the now deafening music. "If you fellows
don't let me go immediately, we're all going to be
blown to hell! It's the work of El Grupo Febrero,
and it's meant to kill the King!" I guess the guards
heard me above the music and I guess they believed
me too. Maybe it was because I'd used the magic
code word: El Grupo Febrero. They took their
hands off my arms. The usher heard me too. He
cowered against the wall. His face was a mixture of
terror and sheepishness.
I rushed to the closest window in sight. It was an
elaborately mullioned affair, and I sent the bomb
crashing through its glass panes just seconds before
Isolde hit her death-signaling note. The package
sailed through the air and landed in the grass of a
small park next to the Opera House, safely out of
audial range. I'd made it. And the soprano had
made her high note.



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karate kick I split the wood near the columnis base.
Another kick made a large opening in the wood. I
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NiCK CARTER
reached my hand down into the column. My fin-
gers touched something solid, covered with paper.
I worked the package up to the opening I'd made
and pulled it out. I'd found the bomb all right: a
small cube wrapped in brown paper.
But I was afraid I might have found the package
too late. The music was now a pounding swell of
orchestration and the singer's notes were already
piercing: the human voice doesn't stretch many
notes higher.
Package in hand, I rushed out of the box. Right
into the arms of two opera Security Guards. The
long-faced usher stood beside them, a smug look
on his pasty features. "He's the one," the usher
said, and the guards grabbed my arms.
"I've got a bomb in this package!"
I shouted
above the now deafening music. "If you fellows
don't let me go immediately, we're all going to be
blown to hell! It's the work of El Grupo Febrero,
and it's meant to kill the King!" I guess the guards
heard me above the music and I guess they believed
me too. Maybe it was because I'd used the magic
code word: El Grupo Febrero. They took their
hands off my arms. The usher heard me too. He
cowered against the wall. His face was a mixture of
terror and sheepishness.
I rushed to the closest window in sight. It was an
elaborately mullioned affair, and I sent the bomb
crashing through its glass panes just seconds before
Isolde hit her death-signaling note. The package
sailed through the air and landed in the grass of a
small park next to the Opera House, safely out of
audial range. I'd made it. And the soprano had
made her high note.



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