by Nick Carter
He dropped deep into the shadow of the ravine.
The helicopter was moving slowly. A Russian helicopter. Obviously looking for someone… or something.
Carter stayed in the darkest part of the shadow, his muscles and bones aching. The observers in the helicopter might spot his ski trail, but they shouldn't be able to see him.
He watched.
The helicopter approached. A head was peering out over the side.
Without pausing, the helicopter slowly moved past.
Carter breathed deeply, waiting.
The helicopter moved on, doing thoroughly once what the Soviet jet had done quickly three times.
Carter allowed himself a small smile of triumph, then he tested his body for bruises and broken bones. He was intact, but very tired. He would make camp as soon as he could find a good sheltered spot.
Once more he slogged up the slope, his remarkable stamina and strength surging new power back into his exhausted body.
At the top again where the mountains spread around him in a rocky panorama, he skied on, dipping in and out of canyons, following the skimobile's trail.
Time passed, the Antarctic sun making little progress. Carter watched for a good campsite.
At last he rounded a bend in layered shadows where boulders and snowslides covered a fiat apron of land.
The snow gave a good level spot, not large, but large enough. The boulders offered good shelter. Some as large as rooms, they'd spilled one on top of the other until a roof formed over part of the flat area.
Carter dropped his backpack beneath the roof.
He'd pitch the tent here, a shelter against another storm. He'd be protected from helicopter surveillance by the boulders above.
Then he saw the shadow move.
Amid the sounds of dropping snow and distant avalanches, he heard the slick noise of a ski sliding.
It was across from him, someone entering the flat area from the other side.
Quickly he pulled on his backpack, took off his mitten, and flipped his stiletto into his hand. In Antarctica, only a madman shot a gun. The noise would cause avalanches and destruction for miles around.
He skied swiftly back out the way he'd come. He was careful to stay in the same tracks.
When he was out of sight of the flat area, he looked over his shoulder and saw his single ski trail. He heard the sounds of the other skier, heard the pause as the skier discovered Carter's trail, then the rapidity of strokes as he pursued Carter.
Carter swung his arms and leaped off the trail, landing on his back in the soft snow.
With his mitten and arm he brushed the snowbank smooth again as he backed off behind an enormous boulder.
With luck, the pursuer would see only the ski trail continuing on with the skimobile tracks.
Carter skied quietly around the boulder to where he could watch the newcomer's pursuit.
The slip-slide of the oncoming skis were muffled sounds in the Antarctic stillness, the noises absorbed by the vast snow.
First Carter saw the peaked blue fiber-fill hat that was fastened beneath the chin, then the thick blue parka and trousers. The skis were Russian.
The man was small, agile, his face bent low as he studied Carter's trail.
As he came in sight of the place where Carter had jumped off, he slowed. He raised his face to scan ahead.
Carter smiled.
It was Blenkochev's comrade, the man with the yellow Mazda.
The expression on the small-featured face was one of puzzlement. Something wasn't right, the expression said, but he wasn't sure exactly what. He skied ahead slowly.
Swiftly Carter returned around the boulder to follow.
The knife glinted in the sun.
The assistant's knife was waiting for Carter where he'd jumped off the trail. It was now Blenkochev's pal's turn to smile. He'd figured out Carter's trick in leaving the trail. He'd doubled back to meet him.
"You shouldn't be here," the Russian agent said softly, the knife pointed at Carter's chin. He spoke in English.
"Why not?" Carter answered in Russian, showing his stiletto.
The stiletto was a diversion.
He threw the other hand up and knocked the Russian's knife flying.
The Russian's toe clips were already released. His boots free, he kicked.
"Because this is none of your business!" he said.
Carter ducked.
The Russian changed targets. His foot unerringly caught the stiletto in Carter's hand, sending Hugo living overhead.
Quickly Carter unsnapped his skis from his feet.
The knife and stiletto were nowhere in sight.
The two agents thrashed through the snow. Circled. Their boots sank six inches into the soft powder.
Again the Russian's foot lashed out.
Carter caught it.
The Russian twisted.
Carter yanked.
Caught by the snow, the two fell forward.
Wrestled.
Suddenly Carter veered back, his eyes wide.
Breasts. The Russian had breasts. A woman. Why the walk was different. Why the tam-o'-shanter was pulled low to the ears.
The woman swung a fist.
Carter spun to the side.
He reached back, unsnapped the chin strap, and whipped up the woman's blue peaked cap.
Long flaxen hair cascaded to the shoulders of the blue parka. The hair was like strands of silk, flying free in the icy Antarctic air. The small-featured face came into perspective. A too-small man turned into a beautifully proportioned woman with full lips, straight nose, and wide eyes bright under the cold sun. She was the blonde in the airport photograph Mike had showed him. The beautiful blonde.
"I'll be damned," Carter murmured.
"Took you long enough," she said, slugging him in the chin. "It works every time."
Taken by surprise, reeling from the blow, Carter slugged back.
She went limp.
He caught her before she hit the ground. He hadn't intended to knock her out.
She was light. Her head fell back, the pale blond hair drifting long to the snow.
He laid her down, then found the knife and the stiletto buried in nearby snowbanks. He put on his skis and picked her up. She moaned, still unconscious. He threw her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, grabbed her skis with his other hand, and skied back to the flat place to make camp.
* * *
He was heating soup when she awoke. Four handfuls of snow and a package of dehydrated meat, beans, and vegetable soup mix in a lightweight pot.
"How much longer?" she inquired as she nibbed her chin. "I could eat an elephant."
"Don't you want to fight first?"
"Later. When I have my strength back."
She was gutsy as well as beautiful.
The soup smelled delicious cooking over the solid-fuel pellet. Carter had pitched the one-man tent, scraped and rewaxed both their skis, thrown their sleeping mats and bags into the tent, and searched her backpack. He'd found her Walther in a side pocket and a radio in the other. He'd put both with her knife into his backpack. The rest of her gear was standard for snow camping.
"It's nice to see you don't hold a grudge," he said.
She smiled radiantly and took the cup of hot soup he handed her.
"In Russia we have a saying. Never bite the hand that feeds you."
"Interesting how proverbs cross all lines."
The universality of human nature," she said and shrugged.
They ate.
"Leaving Novolazarevskaya?" he said.
"Maybe."
"Your direction wasn't toward it. But maybe it was toward something else?"
"If you have something to say, speak plainly."
"All right," he said slowly. "What kind of secret work is going on down here that's killing people with diseases your scientists can't control and our scientists don't recognize?"
"Perhaps you're asking the wrong person," the deep, cultured Ru
ssian voice said.
Carter looked up.
Leon Blenkochev, the ruthless head of the KGB's powerful K-GOL agency, stood at the edge of the overhanging boulders. He was pointing a Luger at Carter's heart.
Fourteen
Nick Carter hadn't heard a sound, not a sliding ski, not a cough. He looked with respect at Leon Blenkochev.
"The helicopter and jet spotted me?" he said.
The KGB czar waved the question off.
"Throw your gun and knife over here," he said imperiously.
He waited until Carter had tossed the weapons ten feet to his boots, then the K-GOL director skied forward.
His lumpy Slavic face glowed in the sunshine. He wore a blue fiberfill suit like the woman's, a pointed cap, reflecting sunglasses, a backpack, and perfume. The perfume was fragrant. Not too much. The affectation of a man who was powerful enough to not give a damn.
Blenkochev was stout and strong, in his late sixties. Much more than merely active, he exuded a sense of vigorous self-possession and destiny that would attract attention wherever he went.
Here, in Antarctica, with a gun pointed unwaveringly at Carter as he skied easily toward the AXE agent, he certainly had Carter's attention. Blenkochev didn't bluff. He didn't have to.
"At last I meet the great Blenkochev," Carter said and smiled.
"Don't be cute, N3," Blenkochev said. "It doesn't become you."
"You recognize me."
"Notoriety always gets my attention."
"I'm impressed, considering that the KGB's filing system is a hall full of cardboard boxes."
Blenkochev scowled, and his blond comrade quickly hid smile behind her cup of soup. She was good-natured, too.
"I'm hollow, Anna." Blenkochev announced.
He stared pointedly at the soup pot. He'd deal with Carter later. He handed his gun to the agent Anna, and she leveled it at Carter.
"Did you bring food?" Carter asked. "This not the Antarctic Salvation Army."
Blenkochev took off his backpack and dropped it into the snow. He untied an insulated sitting mat.
"No?" he said. "Perhaps it's a version of the 1980 Olympics. You don't want to play? You go home. Hurray U.S.A."
Carter laughed.
"You want a medal for that?" Blenkochev asked and chuckled. "You didn't get any in 1980."
Blenkochev sat on the mat on the snow, and perfume wafted into the air. He extended his legs stiffly in front of him. For a moment a look of pleasure came onto his face, pleasure in where he was, in what he was doing. Then he quickly erased it. He was in control.
"First we eat. Then we talk," the KGB czar said. "Anna, There are supplies in my pack. I'll take my weapon now."
She handed the gun to him, then unzipped his pack. Her flaxen hair flowed over the deep blue of her padded suit. She had a sultry face made even more attractive by intelligence. A dangerous combination for an enemy. A valuable one for a friend. Once more the gun was aimed at Carter.
"Now I know why you weren't concerned when you woke up," Carter told her as she prepared more soup. "You expected Blenkochev."
"It was a possibility," she said.
"Are there more of you?"
"How many do you want?" Blenkochev said. "All this concern for quantity. A pity. It's made quality a thing of the past."
"I suspect the past wasn't all that different from today," Carter said mildly. "Hindsight isn't twenty-twenty."
"And the present isn't all that pretty," Blenkochev said. He crossed his arms, resting the gun on the left, still pointing it at Carter. "When the present is unpleasant and the future worrisome, we tend to retreat into the familiarity of the past."
"And what are you worried about?" Carter asked.
"Quality, obviously," Blenkochev said. A small smile curved at the corners of his mouth as he played with Carter's words. "I'd prefer a fine paella or a hearty bouillabaisse. Instead I get freeze-dried predigested soup that's been rejected by the gourmet palates of our Siberian miners and your television addicts. That makes it good enough for the KGB. But I'm not complaining."
Anna handed a full cup of soup to Blenkochev, and he sipped. His hand shook slightly. Being in the field wasn't as easy for him as it once was, but his ruddy face and eagerness showed that he was enjoying it thoroughly.
"I hear you're a killer," Carter said.
"It's been said," Blenkochev replied over the steaming soup. It would take more than accusations to shock him out of his equilibrium. "That makes two of us, Killmaster."
Within three minutes in the Antarctic air the soup would be cold. Now the old agent drank rapidly.
"Why are you here?" Anna asked Carter while her superior finished his meal.
"It started as a vacation," Carter said, "but no one would believe me."
"Michelle Strange, otherwise known as Mike," Anna said. "I believe you had a sexual interlude with her at a remote mountain jail. Don't you consider that kinky? It is the right word… kinky?"
"It's what you had in mind," Carter said. "Were you there too?"
"I'm not Silver Dove, if that's what you mean." A note of indignation slipped into her voice.
"Killmaster," Blenkochev interrupted, "I require a tent. I have an adequate one strapped to the bottom of my pack. If you would be so kind…"
Blenkochev undid the straps and kicked it across the snow to Carter. It was an order, not a request. He casually rubbed the side of his gun against his check, then handed his empty cup to Anna. She refilled it.
"Shall I get out your toothbrush too?" Carter smiled.
"Thank you, no. I have it in my pocket."
"Clean socks? Undershorts? A battery-run shaver?"
"Unfortunately, there wasn't room to pack them. The next time I decide to go into the field I'll choose my assignment more carefully."
Blenkochev pushed his pack behind his back and leaned back comfortably while Carter went to work.
"Perhaps you'd like to hear an AXE bedtime story?" Carter asked as he unrolled Blenkochev's light one-man tent.
"I have no objection," Blenkochev said. There was just a hint of suspicion in his voice, Again he drank soup.
"The helicopter and jet weren't looking for me," Carter said. "They were looking for you. And you're here alone. No support."
He spread the tent at the other end of the roofed-over flat area and got out stakes. He looked at Blenkochev.
As if unconcerned, the K-GOL chief shrugged.
"At one time Silver Dove must have been one of your most trusted assassination arms," Carter went on. "You recruit from athletes for their physical vigor, from university students for their intellects, and from embassy staffs for their contacts, why not from bigots for the power of their hatreds? A man who hates enough will do anything to keep his haired intact. It's what he lives for. But then something happened. Silver Dove got out of hand. Little by little. Hardly noticeable. Until now you have a full-fledged crisis on your hands. And it is your crisis. The Politburo won't just take your dacha away if Silver Dove accomplishes what it threatens."
"And what does it threaten, my fine young Turk?"
Blenkochev tossed his empty cup to Anna. She caught it with one mittened hand, then pushed it in and out of the snow to wash it. Blenkochev knew that Carter didn't know the threat, and his smile mocked the other deductions Carter had made.
"Whatever it was, it was big and important enough to force the biggest target in Russia out of the safety of the motherland. Burnout or midlife crisis or even longing for the past didn't bring you into the field. Although I think you're glad to be here," Carter added. He pounded tent stakes. "It's fear. Plain, old-fashioned fear."
He looked over his shoulder and saw Blenkochev bristle. The gun weaved ever so slightly. Still, if Carter were to accomplish his mission, he had to go on. Blenkochev had to be shocked into changing his attitude just enough to help him.
"Not only fear of losing your job and maybe your life," Carter continued, "but also fear for the safety of large numbers of p
eople. Maybe even for the world. Your world in particular, and mine by circumstance. So you came to New Zealand with Anna. Only one assistant. Your one concession to age. But a woman so you'd attract less attention. You investigated at the embassy, and she went into the field. Disguised. She heard about our missing flyer and was on her way to look up Mackenzie when by accident she drove past Mike and me after the crash. She recognized me and left the first aid supplies. Already she'd begun to help me. Why?"
Apparently disinterested, the dishes done and repacked, Anna lay back on her pack and lit a cigarette. A calm professional. She blew rings into the cold air.
"Because we weren't fighting," Carter said and popped up light aluminum poles, the tent's skeleton. "Because we were after the same thing, and if she kept tabs on me and I found it first, she could steal it. The only issue was what."
"And you don't know," Blenkochev said, satisfied.
"I can make a close guess. It has to do with biological warfare."
Blenkochev said nothing, pursing his lips. His silence told Carter he was right.
"A new strain of bacteria or virus that's being developed by Silver Dove somewhere down here. Maybe at Novolazarevskaya, although I doubt it because Antarctic nations have to remain open to everyone. But nearby, probably. Near enough so that Diamond — when he had to make an emergency landing — saw something he shouldn't have, and had to be carted away. It puts you in an awkward position. With biological warfare, you can't just rush a place. Someone could break one little vial, and the world is contaminated. If you're dealing with fanatics, an order they find disagreeable will be disobeyed. And people whose main motivation is hatred don't respond to reasoning. So if you can't use force, orders, or reasoning, you have to outmaneuver, outwit, and outflank them."
Carter slipped the skeleton poles inside the tent.
"Go on," Blenkochev said. "I'm listening."
"Which also explains why you didn't kill me" — Carter smiled — "and why you "re holding that ridiculous gun on me. You won't fire it out here. You'd bring the whole damned mountainside down on us. That'll never get you reinstated with Chernenko."
Now it was Blenkochev's turn to smile, and he held up the other hand. In it was a stiletto, the twin of Carter's own.
