by Nick Carter
Annotation
AXE chief David Hawk has a brilliant plan to lure one of the agency's most dangerous enemies out of Russia, and into Nick Carter's hands. Nikolai Kobelev has been the diabolical foe in some of agent N3's most perilous cases and N3 has to stop him before he hatches another fiendish plot.
With a dead ringer for Kobelev's beautiful daughter as bait, it seems the KGB killer is as good as caught… until the tables are suddenly turned, and Nick finds himself locked in a deadly struggle to save two gorgeous American espionage agents-and himself — from certain death.
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Nick CarterPrologue
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Seventeen
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Nick Carter
The Istanbul Decision
Dedicated to the men of the Secret Services of the United States of America.
Prologue
Dr. Harry Beachamp made his way down the empty corridor toward the end door where two Marine sentries stood, their rifles in hand.
"Morning, boys."
"Morning, sir," returned one of the sentries.
"How's the patient?"
"The same," said the young man, motioning for Beachamp to raise his arms. The doctor complied with a sigh.
"You'd think some of us might be exempt from this constant frisking."
"You know the orders, sir. No one gets through this door without a thorough search. No one." He ran his hands over the doctor's clothes, finishing at the cuffs of his trousers. Then, taking out a small portable metal detector, he repeated the process all the way up.
"It's just that it's all getting a little bit tedious. How's Bernice holding up?"
"Lieutenant Green seems to be all right, sir," the young man said, folding the detector and slipping it back into his pocket. "Although it hasn't been easy with a spitfire like this one." He reached over and opened the door.
The room was sparsely furnished; a hospital bed, a night-stand, a dresser for clothes — all in white. White blanket on the bed, white curtains, the only dab of color anywhere seemed to be the blue-black hair of the young woman who sat in a wheelchair facing the window, her back to the door.
Beside her sat a Marine nurse, also in white, her face drawn, drained of emotion. When Beachamp entered, she stood up and came forward. "May I speak with you a moment, Doctor?" she asked. "Alone?" This last word was added with a note of urgency.
"Of course, Lieutenant, but I'd like to see my patient first, if you don't mind."
"Oh, yes," said the nurse, backing off. "Excuse me, Doctor." She stepped in the direction of the far wall, working her hands anxiously in front of her.
Beachamp came around to the front of the wheelchair and placed himself on the window ledge so that he could look directly at the young woman. He felt his breath catch slightly in his throat. Her amazing beauty always took him by surprise. "How are you feeling today?" he asked gently.
Her dark eyes glared at him.
"Pain?"
She didn't answer.
"I would imagine," he went on.
Again, silence. She glared at him, her eyes as vicious and alien as the stare of a snake.
He opened his clipboard as though printed there somewhere was the secret of how to make her talk to him. The words TATIANA KOBELEV appeared at the top of the sheet. Nationality: RUSSIAN; Referred from: CLASSIFIED; Duration of stay: CLASSIFIED; Personal history: CLASSIFIED; Medical history: Good health except for the spinal injury.
He closed the cover and tapped it absently with his pencil, still staring at her. Scuttlebutt had it this was the girl who had taken a potshot at the President and killed a Secret Service agent, then had been wounded herself in the scuffle. The press had been thrown off the track. They were told she had been killed. Another girl had been buried in her place; a diary had been «discovered» that showed a mental history of instability. Then, once the public had been satisfied, Kobelev was rushed here to the military hospital at Camp Peary under the strictest security.
But all this was speculation, grist for the rumor mill. No self-respecting officer would be caught dead repeating such tripe. Still, he couldn't help but wonder if maybe the girl's hard attitude didn't stem from fear of being shot by a firing squad at any moment.
"I'm not here to judge," he said to her, softly touching her arm. "I'm a doctor. You're my patient. It doesn't matter to me what you've done."
She turned and stared sullenly out the window.
He leaned closer to her. He had taken several years of Russian in college, thinking someday to be able to read Tolstoy in the original, but he'd given it up when it drew too much time from his premedical studies. He could remember only a little of it now. "I want to be your friend," he said haltingly in her native tongue.
Her eyes flashed back to his, hate radiating from behind dark pupils.
He bent still closer, close enough now to feel her breath. "Believe me, Tatiana, I don't care what you've done," he said in English. "I'm a Christian man. I believe we are all equal in the sight of God."
Her lips puckered and she spat.
Immediately the nurse, who had been standing on the other side of the room, dashed forward. "Oh. Dr. Beachamp! I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, pulling a crumpled tissue from the pocket of her uniform and dabbing the saliva from his face. "She is a wicked girl. Absolutely wicked."
"It's all right," the doctor mumbled absently. "Please." He took the tissue and wiped his eyes and the sides of his nose. "It's my own fault. They told me what to expect. I just refused to believe them, that's all. I won't make that mistake again, I can assure you," he added, straightening himself.
The nurse drew him into the comer by the bathroom. "Is it possible," she whispered, "that this girl's faking not being able to walk?"
The doctor drew himself up. "Absolutely absurd! Of course not. You've seen her charts, Lieutenant. You know the extent of the nerve damage she sustained. How can you possibly entertain…"
"The other day she indicated she wanted to urinate. I went to get a clean bedpan when I was called down the hall by an orderly who had an emergency on another ward. Ensign Poulsen. I believe you know who I mean."
"The accidental grenade detonation. Blind, isn't he? I understand he's taking it rather hard."
"He was hysterical, sir. He'd gotten hold of a scalpel from somewhere and had one of the nurses by the throat. It took all of us the better part of an hour to calm him down. At any rate, I completely forgot about this one. When I remembered, I figured she'd either be in agony or wet the bed by the time I got back. But she wasn't, sir! She never said anything about it. The bedpan was dry and the toilet had been recently flushed!"
"Lieutenant, I'm sure you're imagining…"
"No! I know that toilet had been flushed because I'd left cigarette ashes in it and they were gone when I came back."
"Smoking in these rooms is strictly against regulations!"
"I'm willing to take whatever punishment you think is proper. But I'm telling you that girl is lying. She can walk. I'd bet my pension on it."
Beachamp smiled. "Before you end up poverty-stricken in your old age, Lieutenant, I think I should tell you that medically speaking, there is no way that girl could walk. It's absolutely impossible."
"Absolutely, sir?"
The doctor hedged. "There might be a very remote chance that the nerve endings were not severed. We may have missed it in our tests. But the possibil
ity is so small it's not even worth discussing. And as for your toilet, I 'm sure one of the men outside came in and flushed it and didn't tell you. Did you ask?"
"No."
"There you are. I'm sure if we went outside right now and…"
The woman clutched at his arm. This girl is playing possum! I can feel it!"
Beachamp scrutinized her closely. "Is this duty beginning to wear on you, Lieutenant? Perhaps you could use some relief for a day or two. I'll speak to Colonel Forbes about a temporary replacement."
"Maybe you're right," she said, self-consciously withdrawing her hand from the doctor's arm. "Maybe I am imagining things. But I'll tell you one thing," she went on, turning in the direction of the girl who sat with her back to them gazing out the window, "there's something about her as cold as ice, and it goes all the way through."
"Yes, well…"the doctor muttered uncertainly, his eyes following the nurse's to the angular, unyielding back of the girl who seemed oblivious to their presence. "I'm afraid none of us is too fond of her. I'll speak to the Colonel."
* * *
Tatiana heard the stupid American doctor leaving, but she did not turn around. He and his asinine attempt at Russian! As though his vile tongue could do justice to the expressiveness of that language!
But she had to contain her anger. She had to keep her silence, build a wall around herself. And wait until the time was right.
And when that lime finally arrived, she'd have to depend on instinct. Instinct her father had taught her to depend upon and use. Attack, he said. Attack and keep on attacking until the enemy can no longer raise his head. And then keep on — keep on until you've utterly crushed him!
She thought about her enemy — his face a pulpy mass of blood — and it made her smile. It was the face of Nick Carter, the man who had put the bullet in her back, the man she hated more than anyone in the world. Revenge upon him would be sweet when it came. And it would come. In time. In time.
She twitched her toes inside the cloth hospital slippers. Her secret. She had to keep it from these stupid doctors at all costs. No one could know, no matter how they tried to take her unawares, no matter how many pins they stuck in her legs. Nothing could spoil the surprise she had in store for them, all of them. She would exercise at night. She would do isometrics in bed to work off the weakness that had crept into her body from the weeks of lying and sitting in this disgusting room. Then, when the time came, she would show them how well she walked. And ran.
The first to die would be that sniveling nurse. She'd find out whom she'd been dealing with all this time. What a pleasure it would be to watch the light of life fade from those dull eyes, to let death swell that sharp tongue of hers and silence it forever! But in time, not now. For now she must wait.
One
Nick Carter, the man uppermost in Tatiana Kobelev's thoughts, was oblivious to the hatred being directed toward him from the hospital at Camp Peary more than three hundred miles away. He lit another cigarette and dropped the match between the seats of the small rehearsal hall located on West 49th Street in New York City, then focused his attention again on what was happening onstage.
The director had stopped the show to make a minor adjustment, but now they were underway again, working on a scene from the second act of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire.
Most of the actors were bad, some even terrible — stiff, uncertain of themselves, or so overconfident that their performances lacked balance and subtlety. But the young woman in the role of Blanche radiated power. She was Blanche Dubois. When she spoke, Carter could hear the harbor sounds, and smell the sweat and stench of the New Orleans slum. She was the epicenter of the entire production, and the director seemed to know it, checking with her time and time again as to how she wanted a scene done or if such and such a change met with her approval. Finally they broke for lunch, giving Carter the opportunity he'd been waiting for. He slipped backstage and knocked on her dressing room door.
"Who is it?" she asked impatiently.
"It's me."
"Who the hell is 'me'?" she asked, flinging the door open. She looked into his face, and her mouth dropped open in surprise. "Nick!" she exclaimed happily, throwing her arms around him.
"Hello, Cynthia."
"'Hello, Cynthia'? This is all you can say after two years? I pine for you half my young girlhood and ail you can say is. 'Hello. Cynthia'?"
"May I come in?"
"Yes, of course."
The room was packed with crates of costumes, wigs, and other paraphernalia. He lifted a copy of the script from a chair and sat down. "Hawk sent me," he said simply. "We've a job for you."
"Business, is it?" she said, disappointed. "I should have known. You wouldn't come all the way up here just to pay a social call."
That's not true. Cynthia. When they told me you'd been selected for this assignment, I couldn't wait to get here."
"Really, Nick? If you weren't such a Don Juan, I could almost believe that. David Hawk. I haven't heard that name in a long time. How is the old bastard?"
"He survives. He's tough. He has to be. But this time he needs your help."
"I've heard that song and dance before. It seems to me I remember you and me hotfooting it across the deserts of Iran one step ahead of the Ayatollah."
"We appreciated what you did."
"Swell. I get a letter of commendation from the President, and I can't even show it to anybody. That, and a broken heart. Now you want me to do it all over again?"
"I didn't break your heart, did I?" asked Carter with a smile.
She had been leaning against the dressing table. She came to where he was sitting and ran a hand through his hair. "You 're an asshole, Nick. You know you did. You made me love you, then you ran off to Algeria or some damned place and that was the end of it. Tell me, this job Hawk has in mind — will you be working with me?"
Carter stood up and took her into his arms. "Yes."
"Closely?"
He kissed her neck. "Very."
She made a sound low in her throat that was half groan and half sigh, and pulled away from him. "It's no use. We open in Philadelphia in seven days for a month's run, then we return here. I can't just walk out on them now."
"I saw the rehearsal. You're the best thing in the show."
"It's a big chance for me, Nick. I'm no longer just an understudy. I've been learning."
"It's important, Cynthia."
Her eyes never left his face. "How important, Nick? Tell me the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Make it easy for me."
"Your Russian is still passable?"
"I was raised over there, remember? Until my father defected."
"Who's the most important individual in the Soviet hierarchy?"
"You mean officially, or who has the most power?"
"The most power."
"I'd have to say the head of the KGB. Everyone's afraid of him, even the Premier."
"What if I told you there was a man standing in line to seize that power, a man so totally evil, so obsessed with destroying both his country and ours, that he makes Hitler look like a Boy Scout?"
The hate in his voice made her suddenly cold, and she tried to laugh. "You're not serious, are you?"
"Deadly. I tried to kill him once, but I failed to make certain the job was done. I won't make the same mistake again."
"Who is this maniac? What's his name?"
"Nikolai Fedor Kobelev."
The girl's face turned white. "Oh. Nicky!" she exclaimed.
"You know of him?"
She sat down heavily in the chair behind her. "I know him all right. His name has been a curse in my family for years. He was a cipher clerk in State Security. An opportunity for a promotion came up, and it was between him and another clerk. The competition didn't last long. The other clerk was found at home, stabbed through the neck. That other clerk was my mother. I was a year old at the time."
"I didn't know."
She shook her head, the memory h
ard. "He pulled strings, managed to shunt the blame onto my mother's alcoholic brother. Uncle Piotr is still in Siberia doing life."
Carter's hands fell to his sides. "I'm sorry," he said. "I wasn't told. If I had known, I would have requested they assign somebody else."
"No, Nick! I want to do it. I have to. Don't you see? I owe it to my mother and my family. If you're going to run an operation on Kobelev, I must be there."
Carter shook his head. "There isn't room on this assignment for personal vendettas. The man has to be taken out cleanly, professionally, completely. There can't be any slip-ups."
"I can do it, Nick. I swear I'll do exactly what you say. But I have to be there when you put the knife in him."
Carter sighed. There wasn't much time. Finding another actress might take months. Besides, Cynthia's resemblance to Kobelev's daughter was almost uncanny.
"All right," he said at last, pulling a card from his pocket. "Show this to the receptionist at the base hospital at Camp Peary at fourteen hundred hours tomorrow. I'm afraid we're going to have to do a little surgery on your face."
"I don't care. Do whatever you must."
He took her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes. "Good girl," he said.
* * *
The next afternoon Carter placed a call to an unlisted number in Washington, D.C., and was told the «subject» had been accepted and the «experiment» would begin as planned. Thus he knew that Cynthia Barnes, nee Katerina Burjeski, had made her appointment at Camp Peary and that the CIA-selected doctors had found her suitable for surgery. That night he packed a bag and caught a plane for Phoenix.
His eventual destination was a small dude ranch on the outskirts of Tempe. Ostensibly it was a run-down tourist attraction that had seen better days, but in reality it was a rest haven for the agents of AXE, the super-secret information gathering and political action organization of which Carter was a charter member. AXE was doubly secret, secret even from the Central Intelligence Agency, its funding hidden in a maze of budget referrals and footnotes, and finally tucked safely into the President's own Special Expense Account so as to be utterly untraceable. Carter had worked his way through the ranks to the designation N3, Killmaster, a name that spoke more eloquently than any job description as to his purpose and capabilities.
