by Nick Carter
"I'm not proud of it." Blenkochev said, raising his head to gaze around the room with his steely eyes. "I did what I had to do. My duty. My country had to survive."
"One wonders whether when the cost is so high the country deserves to survive," Carter said.
"It snot my job to decide that," Blenkochev said. "I only do what s necessary."
Skobelev laughed heartily. He hooked his thumbs inside the waist of his pants and laughed at the joke.
"I'll remember that when I talk to Chernenko!" Skobelev said.
Confidence had flooded back into the creator of the Silver Doves. Skobelev had remembered what it was to be a Soviet general. To be Chernenko's right hand. To be able to outwit most of those who would succeed Chernenko. He knew once again what it was to be so powerful that the lives of those around him were in constant jeopardy to his whim.
Hawk and Blenkochev exchanged a long look. Each knew that Skobelev accurately understood the situation. If Blenkochev's past came out. Blenkochev would have to be killed or exiled, and — more important — Skobelev would have time to build a new base of power from which he could destroy the world.
Hawk had had enough of that. He raised his air rifle and shot.
It was a good clean shot through Skobelev's heart. The dead man stared surprised at Hawk. He put a hand up to uselessly press against the gaping hole from which blood poured. Treachery was his, his stricken eyes seemed to say, and no one else had the intelligence for it.
Blenkochev watched thoughtfully, then nodded at Hawk. Hawk nodded soberly in return. They didn't like one another, but they understood their jobs.
* * *
In the Silver Dove valley, Carter stood outside the enormous double doors and smoked a cigarette. Around him, people shouted orders and engines roared into life.
The international antiterrorist troops were piling the defeated Doves into open trucks on the first leg of their return journey to Moscow and trial. The Doves were silent, their faces angry and fearful as they faced their new futures.
Into enclosed, heated trucks, the troops helped the women who'd been locked into the bowels of the mountain. They were women recruited around the world by Doves on their travels. Promised high wages and Interesting work, they instead found themselves kidnapped and then deprived of all hope. Some held their heads high, proud to have triumphed by surviving. Others clutched one another, cowed by fears that would stain their futures.
Carter smoked his cigarette and walked along the mountain. His steps crunched on the hard snow.
Into a helicopter, protected in sealed lead containers, special mop-up troops loaded the vials of bacteria. They would go to a special laboratory in Geneva where the bacteria would be studied to learn its secrets and then, if there were no beneficial possibilities to it, it would be destroyed.
The Antarctic air was crisp and clear. Carter inhaled it in deep breaths and put out his cigarette. He strode down the valley, feeling his muscles strain. It made him know he was alive.
He rounded a bend in the valley to an area where it widened. He stopped and stared.
Ahead, standing in front of a helicopter, stood David Hawk and Leon Blenkochev, the two powerful heads of adversary secret agencies. They were completely alone. The old enemies stood at arm's distance, talking in a field of white. They were dressed in their snowsuits, Blenkochev's stout figure in blue, and Hawk in khaki, a cigar jutting from his mouth. The smoke blew into the air and quickly disappeared.
Carter smiled at the momentous, well-hidden occasion.
"Nick!"
Carter turned, and Mike ran to him.
"Here you are," she said. "I've been looking for you."
Carter nodded at Hawk and Blenkochev.
"The mountain has come to Mohammed," Carter said. "But who's to say which of the two is the mountain?"
Astonished, Mike stared ahead.
The old foes maintained their distance. First one talked, then the other. It was a polite conversation, dignified.
"What's it all about?" Mike wondered.
"I don't know," Carter said, "and I doubt that we'll ever find out."
"Leslee Warner?" Mike said. "Anna Blenkochev? Precautions against future Silver Doves?"
"Maybe. Or maybe it's simply shop talk. The irritations of running a secret agency."
"How hard it is to find good spies these days, "Mike said and smiled.
"The high cost of informers," he suggested. "Dealing with superiors who don't appreciate the problems of being an agency head."
Mike laughed quietly and slipped her arm through his.
"Come on," she said, pulling him back toward the activity in the valley. "They'll never tell us a thing."
"Where to?" Carter asked.
"I have a helicopter waiting for you, too," she said. "Hawk's orders."
He looked at her suspiciously. She tugged on his beard.
"Vacation!" She laughed. "Trout! And no other women. You're very unreliable that way. No more falling in love! I'll give you your vacation," she promised, her eyes dancing, "the best damned vacation you've ever had!"
Carter laughed.
"I'll bet you will," he said.
