He found the door and locked it. Bolted it and slipped on the safety chain. He found the light switch and flipped it. It wasn't really much of a risk. Not after a gun battle had gone unnoticed.
The ceiling chandelier came on with a golden glow. Nick stood with his back against the door and surveyed the scene. Battle was right! A dozen or more shots must have been fired. A wall mirror had been shattered, a vase lay in shards near a mantel, there were ugly pockmarks on the light blue walls. Good thick walls or the bullets would have gone through and alerted the people next door.
There were two bodies. One, the one he had touched, was that of a small Chinese. Something went boingggg in Nick's brain even as he bent over the corpse. So they were in it, too! That would surely make the stew more binding, if not more palatable. He shook his head a little sadly as he examined the dead man. It was something that he and i Hawk had foreseen, of course — the ChiComs had good pipelines into the Kremlin — but they had been hoping that the Chinese wouldn't tumble until it was too late. After Bennett was dead.
The Chinese had been shot once through the chest, near the heart He had bled a lot on his expensive white-on-white shirt. Near his outflung hand was a Luger very like Nick's own, but a later model and not stripped down. Nick picked it up and examined the long cylindrical silencer fitted over the muzzle. A good one, made right here in Germany. With it in place there would be no more noise than a cork would make, shot from a child's popgun.
He dropped the Luger to the floor beside the dead man and moved to the other corpse. He was wearing the paper thin, nearly transparent gloves given him by old Poindexter long ago. They were made of human flesh — Poindexter only laughed and shook his head when asked about them — and they would leave prints. Whose prints Nick had no idea. Only Poindexter knew that — he and the man who had done the actual flaying.
He stood gazing down at the- second corpse. It was near the large double bed. A bed that had been lain on, but not slept in. The coverlet or red velvet was still in place. The material was heavy and thick and had retained the indentations of two bodies. Nick left the body for a moment and went to the bed. He bent over it, not touching it, and sniffed at the indentations in the velvet. Scent! Expensive perfume in one of them. Still lingering. Bennett had had a woman with him.
Killmaster went back to the body nearest the bed. The twain had met, all right. East and West. The latest dichotomy Politik. This one had been a Russian, or at least a Slav, and one glance was all that Killmaster needed. The muscles, the closely cropped hair, the swart concavity of features, the cheap suit that fitted even worse in death than it had in life. A Russian muscle man. Probably an MGB underling killed in the line of duty. Nick bent closer. Killed plenty, too. Four slugs in the gut. He had bled hardly at all. The Chinese agent had been the better shot — if the Chinese had killed him. If they had killed each other. Nick glanced at the bed again, conscious now of the sick disappointment growing in him. Maybe Bennett had killed the two men. Or the woman, whoever she was. It didn't much matter. Bennett was gone again, off and running, and here he stood with a room full of corpses. And egg on his face, as they said in show business. Empty handed.
He began to move around the room, searching it rapidly and expertly. He glanced at the dead men again and frowned. One Chinese and one Russian. A fight. So who had the button? Who had Bennett? For once he found himself pulling for the Chinese. If they had Bennett then he, AXE, still had a chance. It was a long way to China. If the Ivans had him it was probably all over — they would take him over the line in some remote, desolate country spot. They would guard him with an entire division if they thought it necessary — until they had sucked him dry, had squeezed every ounce of that thirty years of total recall from his freak brain.
The closets were empty. Clothing, bags, all gone. Nick found an ashtray with a few butts in it. Two were stained with lipstick. The woman was beginning to interest him more and more. What was she— Chinese or Russian? It was going to make all the difference.
He went into the bathroom for a fast look. Nothing left in the cabinet, nothing concealed in the flush box of the toilet; a few tissues in a wastebasket bore traces of makeup. Nobody hiding in the stall shower. Nick went back into the bedroom and went through the small desk. Nothing but the usual — hotel stationery, pens, pencils, etc. He glanced into the wastebasket beneath the desk. A medium-sized paper bag. He tilted the wastebasket with his foot and the bag slid out onto the floor. There was a! rattling, tinkling sound. Like broken crockery. Nick picked it up and shook out the contents onto the carpet.
It was a smashed jigsaw puzzle in broken ceramic. Two dozen or more shards, large and small, with a yellow ocherous glaze. Nick fingered the bits and pieces. Some sort of desk ornament, mantel bric-a-brac, kitsch furnished by the hotel? Then why bother to gather the pieces, to put them in a bag? There had been no attempt to clean up the rest of the room.
Killmaster rolled the largest piece between his fingers. It was the head of a snarling tiger. Small, about an inch across from ear to ear, and very skillfully done. The tiny eyes were a savage yellow with a glint of scarlet, the fangs a feral white scream. You almost expected the thing to bite you. Nick stared at it a moment, then he gathered the pieces and put them back in the bag. He thrust the bag into the pocket of his porter's jacket. Probably didn't mean a thing — yet on a screwy case like this you never knew.
He went to the open window and examined the heavy monk's cloth drape. The breeze had ceased now and the hanging lay, two or three folds of it, on a narrow radiator that it should have cleared. The folds were crumpled and dirty. Nick glanced up. The drape had been torn away from the rod up there. Someone had stepped on it going out the window. He pulled back the drape.
They had gone this way, of course. Bennett and the woman, with all their gear. Nick started to put his head out, then scowled at his carelessness. He went back and turned out the light, then waited another minute before he craned out the window and searched up and down. Downward the fire escape led to a busy main street. He doubted they would go that way. Up, then. Up to the roof and over the adjacent buildings.
He checked his weapons, from force of habit, then went lithely through the window and began to climb. Only three floors to go. He went up the steep ladder that hooked over the parapet, hesitated just under the ledge, then went up and over in a rush. Silhouetting yourself against the sky was bad tradecraft and could sometimes be fatal.
The roof was flat. Gravel and tar. There was a housing for elevator machinery and a water tank. Killmaster moved into the deepest shadow beneath the tank and waited. For five minutes he waited. Nothing moved on the roof. If Bennett and the woman had come this way — he was sure of it — then they had found a way off the roof. If they could, he could. Even as Killmaster moved from beneath the tank a plan began to form in his mind. It wasn't much of a plan — and he didn't particularly like it — but it was, as the compulsive gambler said, the only game in town. It might not even come off, this cripple of a plan, and even if it did he was going to be in lots of trouble, but it seemed the only way. Killmaster was going to have to stir up a hornet's nest, make an offering of himself — in short, bait a trap with his own neck. And hope he got caught. Otherwise it was hopeless. He would just keep fumbling around in the dark. No time for that. He had to have action and he had to have it fast. He must play the clown.
After a minute of scouting the roof he knew how they had left it, Bennett and the woman. Must have. To the east, toward the Rhine, there was a ten-foot drop to the roof of the adjoining building. There was also a six-foot gap between buildings. Nick studied the dark pit below. He whistled softly. To him it was nothing. But for Bennett? For a woman? Then, somehow, with great clarity, he knew the truth. Bennett, the little traitor, might have been the problem — but not the woman! Whoever she was, and on whatever side, she would be in charge. She'd probably pushed Bennett!