He shot Sultana a burning look that left no doubt as to his intentions.
"Perhaps you shall," she said. "You may indeed be mad, stranger, but your looks are not at all unpleasant. I had begun to fear that all my admirers had been frightened off. But I warn you, you have made a powerful and dangerous enemy."
Carter shrugged. "What does it matter, as long as I have you for my friend?"
"That you have, stranger." Sultana rose. "Follow me, O rash one. I know a private place where our newfound friendship can blossom."
Missab was out cold. Abdullah remained where Carter had left him, crouched on the floor, clutching his crotch, hunched so far forward that his forehead brushed the carpet.
Sultana raised a delicate foot, pressed the sole of her bejeweled slipper against Abdullah's shoulder, and pushed. He toppled over on his side, but otherwise remained motionless. It was all he could do to gasp for breath.
Sultana's laughter was scornful. Carter took her by the arm, escorting her out. At the threshold of the box, he paused to deliver his final message to Abdullah.
"Tell your boss that I'm taking his woman."
Twelve
Sultana's status in the palace of sin was ambiguous. She was no slave, although Hodler apparently thought otherwise. She had free run of the place, and answered to no one. As Carter followed her through the labyrinthine windings of marble halls and shadowy arcades, they occasionally encountered guards. None of them stopped or even challenged her, but respectfully deferred to her instead. Carter guessed they were household guards, not Hodler's crew. He didn't know what they made of him. Maybe they thought he was one of Hodler's crew too. Or maybe they wanted no part of a fight that wasn't theirs. It was clear that his leveling of Abdullah, Missab, and Kizar hadn't provoked any ground swell of opposition.
Carter had a difficult time keeping his internal compass oriented among the maze of corridors and turnings, in obscure upper levels far removed from the rowdy revelry of the club. Adding to his distraction was Sultana herself, the nearness of her. She gave off an intoxicating scent compounded of perfumes, spices, and her own musk.
The folds of her dark chador covered but did not conceal her womanly body. Sultana was blessed with the rounded, hour-glass figure that leaves fashion designers cold but puts men on fire.
They passed under a tower's arched portal, Sultana leading the way up a stone spiral staircase, through a second archway, down an L-shaped short hall. Halting before a door, she reached into the folds of her garment, pulled out a long tarnished brass key, unlocked a door, and beckoned Carter inside.
They were in an antechamber. Sleeping curled up on a floor mat, swatched and swaddled in black garments, was an incredibly ancient female.
Perhaps she was not sleeping, merely resting, for she sat up as soon as the chamber was entered. She was so old and wrinkled, she seemed a living mummy. Her chattering was animated and then some, her toothless mouth pouring out a torrent of what sounded like abuse when she saw Carter. Her dialect was obscure, and so fast, that Carter couldn't make heads nor tails of what she was saying. It seemed to be about him, and he doubted it was complimentary.
Sultana silenced her with a few short sentences, also spoken in that oddly accented dialect. Her words caused the crone to look at Carter with new eyes — no easy task, since her orbs were sunken in fleshy pouches and filmed with age. But there was disconcerting intelligence in her keen gaze.
"She is Faranyah, my slave," Sultana said. "She's a nuisance, but she's been with me for so long, I wouldn't know what to do without her."
She looked archly at the Killmaster. "I told her you have come to rescue me from my evil captor."
"She doesn't seem too impressed," Carter said.
"Faranyah said it would be a great and good thing if both you infidels killed each other. She is very devout."
Sultana shooed her slave away. Wailing piteously, the crone shuffled out the door, shaking her head and wringing her hands.
Sultana closed and bolted the outer door. She conducted Carter into her private quarters, beyond a beaded curtain covering an archway.
The inner lounge was sumptuous, in the Arabian manner. An intricate Persian carpet stretched from wall to wall. Long low divans were covered with cushions and brocaded pillows. Elaborately carved sandalwood screens and panels pleased the eyes and perfumed the air. Rich tapestried wall hangings adorned the walls in a riot of colored arabesques.
"What is your name?" Sultana asked.
"Nick."
"Neek."
"Close enough," said Carter with a smile. "Tell me, how did you come to be called Sultana?"
"That you shall soon discover for yourself."
Her hands busied themselves with the fastenings of her chador. It came undone, sliding off her curves to fall at her feet. Carter was dazzled by the splendor of her garments, and still more dazzled by the splendor of her body.
She was magnificent. Her wickedly ripe body was bedecked with jewelry. Jeweled rings glittered on her fingers, multiple strands of gold necklaces studded with precious stones and pearls fell across her heavy breasts. She wore a red-sequined halter top and a crystal-sequinned G-string. After a moment, Carter realized that what he had taken for red sequins were really rubies, while the G-string was set with diamonds.
"Are you as mighty on the field of love as you are on the field of battle?" Sultana teased.
Carter embraced her. She made quite an armful. Perfumed heat rose from her flesh, smoother than the gauziest silken veil.
He wanted her urgently, but he would take her slowly. Slowly… slowly… very slowly. That was best.
"Time to lift the veil," he said huskily.
He took off her face covering. She was perfection, her pouting lips an invitation. As her desire mounted from his caresses, she smelted sweeter still.
He found the catch to her halter, a maddeningly tricky clasp. It came undone and her heavy breasts tumbled free, her nipples like carnelian. He polished them with his tongue. Moaning, she stroked his hair, neck, shoulders.
She slipped free from his embrace, shedding her silks and beads and baubles in a dance that was old when Salome was young.
She moved away from him while he undressed, but not too far away. Naked and sleek, tawny flesh glowing in the lamplight, she sprawled on a chaise longue, a leg dangling over each side, her arms folded behind her head. It was as erotic an image as Carter had ever seen.
Looking up at his powerful, aroused body standing at the end of the chaise, she smiled and murmured, "Take me."
He plunged between her spread thighs and it took his breath away.
She was right. It didn't take Carter very long at all to learn how she had earned her name. She was a one-woman harem who made a man feel like a king. Or, in this case, a sultan.
* * *
Faranyah pounded on the outer door. Carter stood on the open-air balcony, looking down into the courtyard. It was still dark, but dawn was not too far distant, that hour when a good Moslem can distinguish the difference between a white thread and a black thread, and so knows that it is time for the morning call to prayer.
There was some kind of commotion at the main gate.
Carter was almost dressed. He adjusted the slings on his shoulder harness and holstered Wilhelmina. Now he was fully dressed.
Sultana threw on a robe and opened the door. Faranyah chattered at her. Sultana closed her eyes, then took a deep breath to steady herself. "He is here," she said.
"I know," Carter said.
He had Wilhelmina at his left side, Pierre in his crotch, and Hugo on his right arm. He was ready to raise merry hell. "Let's go," he told Sultana.
She was coming with him. He wasn't going to leave behind a ready-made victim for Reguiba's revenge.
Sultana picked up a leather pouch filled with her jewelry, the only item she was taking with her. A slight problem arose. She wanted to take Faranyah with her too.
"I can't leave her behind," she said.
But F
aranyah didn't want to go. She shook her head while beating it with her palms, wailing her strong negative.
Sultana was worried and exasperated. "She does not want to go. She has not gone outside the compound walls for over ten years."
"You two work it out," Carter said. "I'll go down and greet our guest." He started for the door.
She halted him with a soft hand on his arm. "Neek."
"Yes?"
She kissed his cheek. "Allah be with you."
"Thanks. Be ready to go, once the shooting stops."
Carter left the suite. Faranyah and Sultana were still arguing over whether or not the slave would accompany them. A dark hush held the echoing halls of the palace. Its occupants would wait this clash out behind locked doors. Sultana had told him that the household guards would not get involved. Their only allegiance was to the palace of sin.
He went to meet Hodler.
* * *
Karl Kurt Hodler was an East German athletic prodigy. The state was his mother and father and it had shaped him into a scientifically engineered tool, first for athletic competition, later for destruction.
Hodler had gone to Munich in 1972 to compete for Olympic gold. He brought home a bronze medal, won in the grueling pentathlon. Today he would win neither gold nor bronze, but lead, the kind that comes out of the barrel of a 9mm Luger. He would, if the Killmaster had any luck in the matter. And Carter would need that luck, since Hodler was ranked as a world-class marksman with a pistol.
Hodler had brought back more than the bronze in 72. He had seen the work of the Palestinian Black September squad that massacred eleven Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village. That was for Hodler. He had finally discovered a team he wanted to join, namely, the league of world-class international terrorism. Since then, he'd won his varsity letter in sabotage and murder a hundred times over.
Technically he was still attached to the East German spy squad specializing in wet work, but in reality he was more or less a free agent, able to move around as he pleased, so long as his work coincided with Soviet-bloc goals. He hadn't been back home for over ten years.
Operation Ifrit wasn't a Soviet action. Militant Islam didn't need any direction from the Soviets, though they were glad to take all the Russian weapons and assistance they could get, as long as there were no strings attached. Since Ifrit's goals were the same as the Soviets — destabilization of hostile regimes in the Islamic world — the Russian bear was more than happy to lend a hand.
Hodler was an organizer and an expeditor par excellence. It's easy to motivate people when you're a killer. Two months ago he'd arrived in Al Khobaiq at Reguiba's behest to take charge of the moving and shaking.
Hodler worked hard and played hard. On his first night in the emirate he had been taken to the Crescent Club by hosts determined to show their guest a good time.
Something unique in his experience happened to Hodler that night. He took one good look at the magnificent Sultana and fell for her hook, line, and sinker.
The icy East German death machine fell madly, obsessively in love with the Khobaiqi courtesan. He was addicted. He had to possess her utterly. No other man could have her, touch her, even look at her.
Initially, some of Sultana's admirers were inclined to dispute the point. One was found shot dead, the other had the larynx torn out of his throat by a killer who had broken the backs of two bodyguards to get to him. After that, the general attitude was that if Hodler wanted her that badly, he was welcome to her.
Sultana's wishes were of no importance in the matter. Hodler did not mistreat her, never so much as laid a finger on her in anger. And he was often angry at her coolness. She submitted in body but not in mind. His lavish gifts failed to impress her; his lovemaking left her cold.
No matter. Hodler was convinced that in time she would learn to love him. Especially since he saw to it that no other male got near her.
When he was away from her on frequent trips, he left three of his men behind to guard her. But last night, late, when he returned from fetching Reguiba and company in the desert, Hodler was confronted by three ruined wrecks named Abdullah, Kizar, and Missab. Learning that an unknown Yankee had leveled the three guards and moved in on Sultana, Karl Kurt Hodler went out of his mind with jealousy.
Searing him like vinegar on an open wound was the image of Sultana, his woman, writhing in the ecstasy she had never shown him, offering all the charms of her perfect body to a stranger.
His pounding footfalls disturbed the birds nesting under the palace eaves. They made interrogative cooing chirps.
Hodler bounded up the front steps, under the portico.
A voice called his name: "Hodler!"
A man stepped out from behind a sheltering column. Hodler couldn't believe his eyes when he saw who it was.
"Solano?"
He'd met Solano, briefly, in Turin at one of Gianni Girotti's organizational meetings. The Italian struck him as brash, cocky, but absolutely capable.
Then last night Reguiba told him that Solano was in reality an AXE Killmaster named Nick Carter. Hodler had heard rumors about this American agent for years. And when he learned that it was Carter who had wrecked the Israeli action, he was enraged.
But he never in his wildest dreams suspected that the Yankee stranger who had taken his woman was Nick Carter himself. Until now. Now, he grasped the full dimensions of the big picture, and Karl Kurt Hodler just about went out of his mind. His fury knew no bounds.
All these thoughts spun in his reeling mind when he saw Carter. And that was too much thinking. For, while he was trying to sort things out to make sense of them, the Killmaster acted.
And shot the gun right out of Hodler's hand.
The impact broke Hodler's hand, even as the gun went flying. Hodler hardly noticed. He had gone totally berserk. Unarmed, he charged Carter's gun.
Carter had no intention of mixing it up with the six-foot-six-inch former boxing champion and power weightlifter. He shot Hodler in the left leg.
Hodler pitched forward, almost immediately scrambling up, lurching forward on one good leg, his huge hands outstretched to rend and tear. White foam bubbled from his mouth.
Carter shot him again, in the right kneecap.
Hodler went down again.
"That comes courtesy of Howard Sale," Carter spat.
Hodler was still in there pitching, fighting to drag his dead-legged body across the stones to get at Carter. Progress was turtle-slow, but he was game.
Carter shook his head, impressed despite himself. The East German giant's physical prowess was awesome. Hodler was like one of those indestructible characters in a bad stalk-and-slash movie. A bullet right between the eyes would stop him, but that was the last thing Carter wanted. Hodler had to be taken alive.
Hodler froze. Glancing over his shoulder, Carter saw the reason why. Sultana had emerged from within the palace, with Faranyah in tow.
For the first time, Hodler showed pain, anguish.
"Sultana — why?" he cried.
"Sultana is no man's slave," she said.
She started down the steps. "Stay clear of him," Carter warned, but she ignored him.
She stood over him, out of his reach.
"But I love you!" Hodler groaned.
"I hate you." From somewhere within the folds of her robe she drew a dagger, raising it high for the killing stroke. Hodler looked as if he would welcome it. But that was not to be.
The knife's downward arc aimed at the East German's broad, heaving back, but it never reached its target. There was a slapping sound as Sultana's wrist hit Carter's open hand, thwarting the blow.
"What are you doing?" she shrieked. "Let me kill him!"
"No." As gently as possible, Carter pried the dagger loose from her fingers. At the same time, what felt like a bear trap closed on his leg.
Hodler grabbed Carter's ankle, trying to heave him off balance. Carter's free foot slammed Hodler's forehead with a stunning back-heel kick. Hodler let go, but he was still conscio
us.
Distraction was provided from a new quarter, courtesy of a throaty rumbling coming from the direction of the main gate.
A man, not one of the guards, pushed the heavy wooden door open, allowing an incredible auto to roll into the courtyard, around the fountain, and up to the front entrance.
Here was the «spaceship» car that Gus Ferguson had seen when Prince Hasan came to Petro Town to confer with Howard Sale. It was a Rotwang Plus-X, an exotic mid-engine, four-wheel-drive concept car, turbo-charged and fuel-injected. The four-passenger, aerodynamically streamlined red auto's name translated as "Red Wing," but with its long snout and aggressive rear spoiler, it reminded Carter of nothing so much as a scarlet shark.
At a price of a cool quarter-million dollars, there were perhaps a dozen Red Wings extant in the world today. Here was one of them.
Prince Hasan hopped out. Pleasure smoothed the lines of fatigue in his face when he saw Hodler. "Nice work, Nick!"
"Thanks," Carter said. "You're right on time."
Hasan's face expressed even more pleasure when he caught sight of Sultana. "And who is your lovely and charming companion of this morning?"
"Sultana, meet Prince Hasan," Carter said.
"Delighted to meet you. Delighted!" the prince beamed.
Carter leaned over the semiconscious Hodler and clipped him behind the ear with the Luger barrel, putting him out cold. Kneeling beside him, Carter pried open Hodler's lantern jaws.
Wedging two fingers in Hodler's mouth, Carter probed his back teeth. Sure enough, one of his back molars popped loose. Carter pulled it out.
"What on earth are you doing?" Prince Hasan said.
Carter held up the tooth. "It's a poison pill. All he had to do was bite down hard on it to get a nice mouthful of cyanide."
"We wouldn't want that! My uncle's staff of, er, interrogators, is looking forward to many a long and productive session with Comrade Hodler!"
"I'll bet." Carter knew that by "interrogators," the prince meant the emir's torturers. A Khobaiqi question-and-answer session usually began with hot branding irons and then got nasty.
Blood Of The Falcon Page 12