"You will fly by Air Force jet to Santiago. We still have good relations with the Chilean military and you'll get all the cooperation from them you need, within their constitutional limits."
"I still don't understand why you have to send me as a delivery boy, sir."
Hawk looked out the window at the Delaware countryside. The dark earth was emerging from winter and there were scattered patches of pale grass over the fields.
That part of it doesn't seem important, I know," he said softly. "There's a lot more involved than Belkev's vest. Even with that contraption, the man will be vulnerable. He's going to be followed and who knows what will be tried on him? Certainly the MIRistas will try anything to put him away, in which case Soviet-American relations could really go into a nosedive." He shrugged. "That's about all I can tell you. If everything goes well, you'll be back home in two days. If not, you'll get the rest of your orders in Santiago."
There was one more if he wasn't mentioning but we both understood it. This way, if I were captured by the Russians and tortured, I wouldn't be able to tell them any more about the Santiago mission even if I wanted to.
"Incidentally, I can add this much," Hawk went on. "If the Russians do break their promise, Kasoff won't five to the next day. If you remember, he let me use his lighter to fight my cigar with. He's got a new fighter now. It looks exactly like his own but it contains a radio-triggered pack of plastique explosive and the casing is of anti-personnel darts. It will kill him if he's in the same room with it.
It's that kind of cold comfort that a Killmaster calls happiness.
Because I was flying in a supersonic military jet to Santiago, I still had a few hours left before takeoff. Hawk had to attend a meeting with Naval Intelligence and so I was alone in my AXE office when a soft knock came at the door. Doctor Elizabeth Adams opened it and walked in.
"I've thought about your proposition," she said airily.
So much had happened since the session at the reaction chamber that I scarcely remembered what she was talking about. I didn't have to.
She locked the door behind her and took off the white jacket and a second later she was naked and letting down her long, blonde hair.
We made love there on my desk, the pile of memos and reports crackling under our bodies.
Somewhere along the line someone had put a white jacket on this female and told her she was nothing but an unfeeling brain. Now that the white jacket was off, so were all her inhibitions. Memory of Kasoff and the vest faded like a bad dream, a nightmare washed away by the silky skin of her passion.
I'd heard you were good but not anything like this," she whispered.
"You're not so bad yourself, Doctor."
"Elizabeth, please."
"Liz."
Her fingertips trailed down across my back. "I mean… well, this has been fantastic." She kissed my ear.
Then, as she began to disengage herself, Kasoff came back to mind, along with the realization that I was late for a briefing on Chile's top-dog Reds. I sighed and got to my feet.
Elizabeth watched me with wide eyes. Even naked I still wore the ugly Luger on my left side, the stiletto in its sheath on my left forearm and the gas bomb taped to the hollow of my right ankle. Symbols of active duty.
"Then it's true," she said. "There was a rumor that you had a new assignment. That's why I decided to come when I did."
"Well," I said, looking at her beautiful body sprawled over the mess of papers on my desk, "you certainly did that."
Chapter Three
Santiago is like most of the large capitals of South America. It is a spread-out city of modern, unfinished buildings next to timeless ghettos, of wide avenues basking in the sun and narrow byways where the dark faces of Indians glower with the repression of centuries. Santiago was once the showcase of democracy in South America, where even a Communist could win a fair election.
There are only ten million people in Chile but a million of them five in Santiago. The whole country is no deeper than the western edge of the Andes Mountains, just 250 miles across at its widest point; but Chile stretches out for 2,650 miles and makes up half of the entire continent's western coast. You couldn't find a better base for subversion if you could draw the map yourself.
The people are sick of the Reds. Wait until the next election, then you'll see," explained the Chilean Army colonel who met me at the airport.
"If there is a next election," I volunteered.
The colonel delivered me to a new, bone-white hotel that soared above Santiago's busiest avenue. It had been taken over by the government from its American owner just the week before, the colonel told me. The Belkev delegation was going to have the top two floors all to itself.
A maid showed me into my room. It looked as if I were the first guest to ever use it, a suspicion that was confirmed later when I learned that the hotel had been nationalized on the day it was finished. I locked the door and opened the windows. Twenty floors below cars crawled up and down the avenue, policemen motioned frantically and pedestrians jaywalked. The only sign of the change in Chile that I could see from where I stood was the large red banner that hung on the wall of a building across the street. It proclaimed: The Heroic Chilean People Will Not Rest Until Every Yankee Is Dead Or Driven From Our Country. It was a big banner.
I checked my watch. I had two hours until Belkev's triumphal entry into the capital and I was dead tired from the flight. I put the lights on low and slipped into a second-level Zen trance.
"Señor."
I came out of the semiconscious state and looked at my watch again. Only twenty minutes had gone by.
"Señor, an important message for you," the voice outside my room told me.
"Put it under the door."
Hesitation. The sound of feet shifting. More than one of them. I was wide awake now, slipping off the bed and moving to the side of the door as I drew out the Luger.
So far the conversation had been in Spanish. Now my caller tried Russian.
"I can change money for you. Rubles or dollars. Many more escudos than the official rate."
"No comprendo."
More shuffling of feet outside.
"This room has been reserved for someone else. You must leave immediately," the voice announced.
I tried the phone. It was dead but that didn't necessarily mean a thing, not in a South American hotel. At the same time someone was twisting the doorknob without success. His effort gave me an idea. There was a door to the adjoining room. It was locked but I shivved it open with a plastic credit card. One more benefit of capitalism. I entered a suite that was identical to mine. Then, gently, I opened the door to the hall.
There were two of them, big boys wearing open-collared white shirts and carrying iron bars that they'd probably brought in under their belts.
"What's the message, muchachos?"
They saw the Luger first and then me. They didn't drop the iron bars, I give them credit for that.
"He's a Yanqui," one said venomously. "He won't shoot."
"You don't rule us anymore, pig. Touch us and the people in the street will tear you apart."
They advanced through the hall toward me. This is one of the problems in dealing with amateurs. They never know when you're serious. Any rational Russian would have been meekly humming the "Volga Boatman" by this time.
"Anybody on the floor downstairs?" I asked as they neared me.
"Nobody. Nobody who will save you," the first one snarled.
"That's fine."
The left front of the first one's shoe blew apart. He looked down in shock at the place where two of his toes had been. Now there was just a hole in the carpet.
"Positive there's nobody?" I asked again and aimed at his right foot.
"Wait!"
The iron bar fell from his hand to the floor. The second brute let go of his weapon also. I put the gun back in its holster and shook my left arm. The stiletto dropped into my hand. The boy in the rear took one look at that and turned to r
un.
"Please don't do that," I asked.
This time they seemed to believe me. At least they spread-eagled very agreeably against the wall when I touched their bodies lightly with the knife's tip.
"You see, you've done all sorts of bad things, boys," I explained patiently as I frisked them. "You don't even know me and you insult me. For all you know, I'm a great guy. You offer to exchange money and the two of you don't have a hundred escudos between you. And, worst of all, you wake me up when I'm asleep. Insults, lies and rudeness, and I haven't even been in this city for an hour. Now I certainly hope you can make this up to me. I said, I hope you can make this up to me."
One of them got the hint.
"H… how?"
"Tell me why you did all this."
"We're just workers. We don't know anything about politics. Now look at me, madre mia, no toes. What am I going to tell my wife? We don't know anything, we were just paid some money. I'm bleeding to death, señor. You're a madman."
"No, just a professional, which is what you're not."
I was relieved to know it. One little skin cut and they babbled, not that they knew much. I felt so sorry for them that I gave them back their iron bars and watched them slink off muttering about the loco Norteamericano.
The Garcia brothers were two small-time punks who often worked for the Movimiento Izquierdo Revolutionario (MIR). Today their bosses were at the airport waiting for Belkev and so when an unexpected lone guest checked into the Belkev floors, the brothers thought they would do some investigating. What was most interesting was that they had hoped to learn Belkev's itinerary around the country, a schedule that the Chilean government had been keeping a close secret. In all, I found the incident mildly refreshing and informative. Better than a nap, even.
If only I'd known how cute the Garcia boys were when compared to Alexander Belkev.
Comrade Belkev came down the avenue in a limousine with President Allende and his Minister of the Economy. By this time the government's Communist wing had brought out just enough civil servants to line the streets and wave back at the grinning Russian visitor. Maybe it was the lack of good red meat in the nation's stores that accounted for the people's dreary cheering.
Then Belkev was getting out of his car, surrounded by bodyguards, and entering the hotel. When the presidential limousine drove off, more cars pulled up, carrying Belkev's entourage. Instantly my mind went back to the briefing notes I had received at AXE headquarters:
Alexander Alexandrovitch Belkev, age 45, height 5' 7", weight 210. Born Volgograd. Educated Volgograd Gymnasium, Moscow School of Mines. War service, Assistant Political Commissar 1944-45, relieved of duty for participation in atrocities in Berlin sector. Rehabilitation and installation in Soviet Party Congress, 1954, as young apparitchnik in Krushchev clique. Switched to Brezhnev after coup. Cunning, violent bureaucrat who has lost appointment to Permanent Politburo due to shocking sexual appetites.
It was a damned ironic biography. During the capture of Berlin, Russian soldiers had run amok, murdering and raping throughout the city. What on earth could Belkev have done that singled him out? Another odd point was more understandable. The leaders of the Kremlin might plot the death of millions, but they were invariably sexual prudes. How often those two characteristics — murder and sex — went hand in hand!
I grabbed the attaché case containing Belkev's vest and went upstairs to his suite. The first thing I saw proved that Alexander Belkev, at least, was no prude.
He was sitting on a sofa stripped to the waist, rolls of fat hanging over his belt. He had a surly, badly shaven face. His skin was as white as the belly of a frog and it glistened with oil, oil being rubbed into it by the hands of a beautiful girl. And there was more than one girl. The one with the oil was East German, judging by her accent. Two Cuban girls were pouring Johnny Walker into glasses at a bar, and a Russian brunette lolled over an easy chair, her eyes glazed with either drink or drug.
"The man they call Killmaster," Belkev roared. "Come in."
"I have the vest for you."
He smiled and slid his hand along the German girl's thigh.
"I have no time for vests now."
I dropped the attaché case onto the coffee table in front of him and flipped it open.
"Come on, let's get this over with."
Belkev's hand stopped its stroking. His white skin turned red and he stood up shouting.
"We get nothing over with until I want to. Maybe yesterday you were the famous Nick Carter. Today you are nothing more than another hireling from the KGB under my orders! You are dirt for me to step on if I want to. When I am satisfied with the vest, then you can go back to your America. I do not intend to try it on now. I am busy."
My hand itched to reach out for that tire of blubber and heave it across the room.
"When do you intend to try it on?" I asked grimly.
"We will see about that. In the meantime, you are my private spy, Mister Carter. Alexander Belkev's private Killmaster."
Chapter Four
La Moneda, the Presidential Palace, was lit up like a Christmas tree for the reception. Crack soldiers in the Fuerza Mobil lined the gates and patrolled the palace grounds with enough American-issue submachine guns to put down a small revolution. A lieutenant stopped me for a frisking as I emerged from the car. Belkev slapped his hand away.
"Comrade Carter is with me," he boasted.
Entering, we passed an honor guard in plumed helmets. A doughty man with a mustache whom I recognized as Dr. Salvador Allende, President of the Republic of Chile, welcomed Belkev and showed him to his place in the reception line. I took myself and my attaché case off among the potted palms.
Dignitaries were arriving by the carload. Ambassadors, ministers, generals and the whole politburo of the Chilean Communist Party came by in tails and uniforms to greet the Russian. Star treatment was given to the Cuban ambassador and no wonder. Just six years earlier Dr. Allende had been the leader of OLAS, a Havana-based guerrilla front. He was the man who escorted the remnants of Che Guevara's guerrilla band over the Bolivian border.
I took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and leaned against a marble wall, feeling about as comfortable as a bug in a Venus fly trap.
"Señor Carter, do you think you could get me a glass too?"
It was one of the Cuban girls from Belkev's harem. Her long black hair was drawn back into a mane that reached her buttocks and somehow she had snuggled herself into a sequin dress so tight that it would have given a man the bends. She had olive skin and dark eyes, and if there were a sexier woman in the Presidential Palace, I didn't see her.
"How would a bottle do?"
She was every bit as bored as I was. Together we went into the ballroom and found a table where the magnums stood in ranks.
"I'm afraid Alejandro doesn't like you," she said.
"Alexander, you mean? I guess not, which makes us even. Do you like him?"
It didn't take much champagne to loosen her tongue. A sympathetic ear was all she really needed.
"My sister and I were in the Women's Militia in Havana when Alejandro saw us. We were ordered to make him comfortable."
"Did you?"
She made a wry face.
"Anyway, it's better than the Militia."
Rosa and her sister Bonita were daughters of a Cuban family that had owned one of Havana's hottest nightspots when Castro closed the city down. They were incredibly beautiful females, sporting all the necessary talents and tastes for the wide-open life of Las Vegas, and their attributes were ebing sorely wasted on the gross appetites, of Alexander Belkev.
"I am twenty years old and Bonita is twenty-two. From the age of five we have been trained as flamenco dancers and singers of the cante jondo."
"Things are tough all over."
"You don't believe me. You think I am just some slut of Belkev's, don't you? Come dance and I'll show you."
I gestured at the attaché in my hand.
"Sorry."
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The orchestra had been busily playing all this time, hacking out mostly sedate waltzes that even the most arthritic diplomat could follow. Rosa, fire in her eye, marched over to the bandleader and whispered in his ear. The man nodded and grinned and then spoke to his musicians.
When the band struck up, Strauss had been dropped for a fiery flamenco beat. Rosa raised one hand high over her head and snapped her fingers. Her tight dress strained over her full breasts and sinuous body. Immediately the Latin came out in the crowd, and they circled around her, clapping with enthusiasm.
Rosa's eyes stayed on mine as her heel clicked on the ballroom floor in staccato. Her sexuality filled the great room, making it pulse in time with the guitars. As she twisted her body around, her long black mane swirled through the air, lashing out like a whip. With hundreds of eyes focused on her, she danced only for me. I was her challenge. When she pulled her skirt up for the tempestuous climax, I saw her fine dancer's legs, slim and tapering like a young thoroughbred's. When she ended with her hands high in the air, the room exploded with applause, mine included.
Every man there must have dreamed of taking her physically on the spot, and eyes followed her when she came back to me. I had a cold magnum of champagne waiting for her.
"Do you believe me now, Señor Killmaster?"
"I believe you and I toast you. To Rosa, the bellisima of the ball."
"And to you," she raised her glass, "the first man I ever wanted to dance for desnuda."
Desnuda means naked, and I could just imagine what affect a nude and dancing Rosa would have on my senses.
The band had gone back to waltzes. It stopped abruptly and slipped into the national anthem of the republic. At this everyone turned toward the entrance of the ballroom where the president had just entered with Belkev. Allende accepted the honor patiently and with good humor. Belkev's small eyes scanned the ballroom until they found Rosa and they narrowed when they saw that she was with me.
The Inca Death Squad Page 2
