The Liquidator

by Nick Carter

  "But they'd be looking for you, wouldn't they? Even down a mountainside?"

  "Ah yes. My driver and I, we picked up an old man on our last journey. A big old man, nearly as big as me. I had promised him a ride down to the coastal area; I make many friends among the people of Albania in my travels, you know? I put my uniform jacket over his shoulders to keep him warm in the cold mountains. Didn't bother to take my papers from the pocket, it is not such a long journey. And then my driver makes the wrong turn and I somehow manage to jump clear before the car goes over the mountain. Much fire far down below. The old man will never be cold again, eh?"

  * * *

  I was at the helm again, fighting the heavy seas, when Christina came up on deck. Her face was swollen, and it wasn't from sleep. She didn't speak to me, but took her mug of coffee and leaned against the cabin top looking forward.

  "Hey," I called softly.

  It took a long time for her to respond, but in the silence she finally turned around to face me.

  "Get a good night's sleep?"

  "I suppose so," she said indifferently. "How long before we reach Taranto?"

  "Probably some time tomorrow morning. We haven't had much luck with our weather on this cruise."

  "No. We haven't." She went below without another word, and I was alone for a long stretch of hours until the sun came out again.

  Alex surprised me by coming on deck in broad daylight, but his explanation made sense. "Look, my friend, we are halfway to Italy, eh? If they think I am aboard this boat… poof!" He made a dive-bomber motion with his hand. "I do not like to be down there when the sun is shining. Not if I don't have to be."

  Christina joined us a short while later, bringing steaming cups of coffee and a neatly arranged plate of sliced Spam and feta cheese. Alex applauded when he saw it.

  "Now that is my good Greek sister!" he roared, grabbing a handful and stuffing the meat and cheese into his mouth. Christina smiled wanly. I made her take the wheel while I went below to shave and change my clothes.

  I was just scraping the last of the lather from under my nose when I heard the distant roar of powerful engines. There was the scramble of feet on the cockpit deck, and I looked out the door of the head in time to see Alex dive into the main cabin.

  "What is it?"

  "Big power boat. Coming right up on us." He took his revolver from a shelf above the galley sink, checked the load and went back to the companionway.

  I dropped my razor, wiped the last of the shaving cream from my upper lip and got the .45. A lousy weapon at more than twenty feet, but it was all I had. I pushed past Alex and went up into the cockpit, where Christina was letting the helm come up into the wind as she stared at the boat overtaking us.

  "Keep her moving," I ordered, and tucked the pistol under my shirt.

  It was a big, black-hulled cruiser, slicing through the swells as though they didn't exist. From our angle all I could see was the bow and a little bit of the cabin, with a big spot-light mounted on top of it. It bore down on us like a halfback in pursuit of a tackle who had lucked into a fumble and couldn't get his feet unstuck from the grass. Once more I cursed Hawk and his whole sailboat plan.

  I pulled the gun free, held it down by my leg, out of sight. The boat sped closer, moving too close to our stern before it slowed a little and veered off to one side. I was ready to raise the automatic and fire when I saw the man at the wheel.

  "Allo, beautiful baby!" he called through the spray his hull kicked up. "Next time you in Paxos, leave that dumb American behind, okay?"

  The Frenchman with the mop of hair and the shy-confident smile waved, blew a kiss at Christina, and kicked a lot of water our way as he gunned his engines, headed off at right angles to our course.

  "Son of a bitch," I breathed, tucking the pistol back in my belt. "Bet he's heading for Bari."

  "What?" Christina asked. She was pale and shaking, and I didn't blame her.

  "Never mind. I'll take the wheel."

  * * *

  By dark we still hadn't made a landfall, but I knew we were on course for the heel of Italy's boot. With no sign of pursuit so far, I decided I could relax; I went into the forward cabin to see if I could get a solid four or five hours' sleep. For a little while I heard Christina in the main cabin, making coffee and rattling plastic dishes, doing the cleaning up that all women seem born knowing how to do. Then I heard her go up to the cockpit, and there was total silence except the lap of the waves against the hull an inch or so away from my head…

  It was a nightmare, and my first thought was that it was about due. There was cold breath on my face, the chill of steel against my throat. I tried to struggle up out of sleep, but in the pitch darkness the nightmare wouldn't go away. I felt the edge of the blade slice the flesh, and I knew I was awake.

  I must have yelled as I flung myself away from the knife. For my violent effort I got a bang on the head from the ribs bracing the hull of the boat next to the narrow bunk. I was stunned, felt my hair yanked and my head pulled back. The knife started to draw deep across my Adam's apple, and then it was gone with an explosive grunt from somewhere behind me.

  There was a dim light, my pencil flash I realized, and in the ghostly glow I saw two contorted faces bending over me. They were like nothing I'd ever seen before, eyes wide, mouths straining, and no sounds emerging but labored wheezes that sounded like an old engine about to give its last gasp.

  I jerked upright, grabbed for the .45 and found it still tucked securely in my belt.

  "Don't worry, Nick," Alex growled. "She didn't get it."

  He was holding his sister with an oak-stump forearm across her throat, and as I watched he coldly twisted her fingers until she dropped a knife, Hugo, from her hand.

  "What the hell?" I said.

  "Wake up, Nick." He shoved the girl across the narrow cabin to the other bunk, "Do you want to kill her, or shall I?"

  I looked at her in the faint light, her face covered by the thick curtain of hair. "Kill her?"

  "Sure."

  "Your sister?" I was still half-asleep.

  "Sister?" He snorted and grabbed her chin, making her look up into the light. "She is no sister of mine, Nick Carter. And now she is about to be dead."

  Seventeen

  "Yes," she said. "Kill me." Her head drooped against Alex's bear-paw as though there was no way she could hold it up any longer, or didn't want to.

  I pushed her brother's hand away and retrieved my knife from the slanted deck between us. "No sister, Alex?"

  "Of course not."

  "How do you know?"

  "I know the first minute I see her walking toward my taxi. My sister only a baby last time I see her, but she was like me. Pretty, yes, but with fat legs, a body like mine. Not so big, maybe, but could not grow to be so perfect at this." He ran the weak beam of the pencil flash down the length of the girl's huddled body for emphasis, and I had to agree that there wasn't much resemblance. Anywhere.

  I reached over and made her look at me. "Were you trying to kill me?"

  "Yes." She said it without hesitating.

  "Why?"

  "Because I had to."

  "And Alex too?"

  "Of course." She didn't have anything to hold back.

  "How?"

  "After you were dead I would call to him." She pointed to my belt, where the .45 was snagged.

  "And then what?"

  "Oh, kill me! Please!"

  "Come on, Christina. Then what?"

  She took a deep, shuddering breath. "And then… I was to throw the body of my bro… of Alex overboard and bring yours to the coast of Italy. Taranto if possible, but anywhere."

  "What was the purpose?" I hated to dig at her like this, but now was the time to get some truth.

  "I… I was to say that Alex was false. That you two fought, killed each other, and… oh well. Isn't it obvious?"

  "You're working for the other side?"

  "Not by choice!" She lifted her head, looked wildly from me to Al
ex, then into the depths of the open chain locker. "What else could I do?" she sobbed.

  It was Alex who showed his sympathy. "What do they have on you?" he asked.

  "My son," she murmured.

  "Son?"

  "Yes. I was… I am from Bulgaria. My parents were Greek, but they emigrated during the Civil War. I was born in that foul country, but I grew up as a Greek."

  "And your son?"

  "I have one. He would be four years old now. The State owns him. And me."

  I stuck Hugo back in the sheath, checked the .45 and laid it on the bunk beside me. "Christina? Is that your name?"

  "Oh yes. That was the trouble!"

  "It was?"

  She raised her head, looked straight at me, then up at Alex. "I am Christina Calixos. I am twenty-four years old. When I was nineteen I had a child, no husband. The State took it away from me. I could not even see him. When my mother and father died I had nothing left, so I got across the border to Greece where I hoped I would be more free and somehow recover my son. For nearly a year I lived in terror because I had no papers; then I was at Preveza." She looked at me. "At Preveza I was on the beach when a young girl drowned. There was a great crowd, and nearby there were her possessions. I looked, saw that her first name was Christina. I took them, and I became Christina Zenopolis. I had to leave nursing school, even take a lover and move to another part of Athens so no one would be likely to question my identity. And it worked, until they found me."

  "They?" I prodded.

  "Yes." She glanced at Alex. "It was… what? Two months ago? Six weeks? Never mind. They found me, and they told me who I was and all about my son at the State home. And what would happen if I did not cooperate with them. Then I knew very little about Christina Zenopolis, but now I know her better than I do myself. They knew you were coming out, Alex. I don't believe they knew exactly how they were to use me, but as it turned out they were very lucky, weren't they?"

  Alex tugged at an end of his mustache. "Yes. They were very lucky. And if I hadn't insisted on contacting you?"

  "They knew every move you were making, I suppose. I cannot say. But I do know…" She turned to me. "Nick? That man who fell off the boat when they attacked us? You thought you had killed him several nights earlier."

  "Not me. His partner."

  "Oh. Yes. But they told me how it was to be done, with a wax bullet filled with blood, of the type used by some stage magicians? They knew you wouldn't be fooled by blanks."

  "It sounds damned complicated to me," I said. "Why didn't they just cut off Alex and be done with it?"

  "That I cannot say. I had only the small assignment to carry out…"

  "A couple of murders."

  "Yes! Two deaths of people I didn't know, for the life of my son! Would you choose otherwise?"

  "Okay, okay." It was hard not to respond to her passion, but as I sat there across the narrow space from them I saw Alex kneading his ex-sister's shoulder thoughtfully. Somehow it made it easier for me to go on. "Let me get this straight. You weren't followed by anybody when we were… together?"

  "No, no. They were made up, to make you think I was in danger. And those people who came aboard last night… well, you know."

  "So you'd have to come along on the trip with us."

  "Yes."

  "And kill us."

  For a long moment the only sound in the cramped space was Christina's harsh breathing. Then Alex cleared his throat like an alligator rumbling for its monthly dinner.

  "You are satisfied, Nick Carter?"

  "More or less."

  "Then why you don't go topside and see where the hell this boat is going?"

  We crossed the heel of Italy's boot just after dawn, and we were halfway to Taranto when the first helicopter flew over. During the night I'd laid out the three orange life preservers on the forward deck as we'd arranged, and when the chopper spotted us a hand flew out to let us know he was locked on to Scylla. Less than an hour later another chopper, or maybe the same one, dropped down in the wide bay close alongside to take aboard Alex and Christina. It left Hawk with me and the hobbyhorsing sloop; the weather had picked up nasty again, and before my boss had been in the cockpit for more than five minutes his face was starting to match the churning green of the water all around us.

  "How long will it be before you can bring this thing into port?" he asked.

  "Maybe a couple of hours."

  He paused before responding. "Oh. I see."

  "Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?"

  "Well, possibly. I gather that the girl turned out to be one of them?"

  "She was. I wouldn't bet on it now, though."

  "Oh?"

  "Young love." I'd seen the way Christina and Alex had looked at each other before they'd transferred to the helicopter.

  "But… they're brother and sister!"

  I filled in the details. Hawk nodded wisely. "Perhaps she can help us too."

  "If you can do something about her kid."

  "It's possible. I'll have to work on that."

  We sailed along in silence for a while before he spoke again. "And how are you, N3? No wounds? No bruises?"

  "Nothing to speak of. Much."

  "Good. When we get back to Washington tonight I must talk to you about…"

  "Wait a minute."

  "Yes?"

  I patted the wheel. "I have a boat to return."

  "That can be taken care of."

  "I'd rather do it myself. I may have to come back this way some time."

  "Well…"

  "Yes?"

  "Oh, I suppose you're right. How long will it take?"

  "A few days. Depending on the weather."

  "All right. But don't take any longer than necessary, Nick. You're needed."

  "I won't," I promised, and started mentally charting a course to Bari. For a little while I'd almost been hooked on Christina, but even Sue-Ellen had never held a knife to my throat. It was time for a little fun-and-games. My way.