"Is she alive?"
"Barely."
"Too bad. The other two are in a wine cellar… dead. You'd better find out from her where, before they are found. Are you listening?"
"Yes."
"I only let this sort of thing happen once, Oakhurst. I have a long arm. If it happens again, you're out of business… permanently. Do you understand?"
"I do"
"Then I shall expect our rendezvous to take place with all the goods intact. That will happen, won't it, Oakhurst?"
"It will happen, Jasmine. You have my word on it."
"Your word to me is like your life… shit. Just remember that."
Carter hung up and trotted the two remaining blocks to the hotel. He went all the way around to the loading dock and entered there. Between the kitchen and his floor he ran into only one person, a drunk who looked worse than Carter, vainly trying to find a hole for his key.
Carter went on through his own room and into Carlotta's. It was empty, but the bathroom light was on.
She had one foot on the floor and the other raised, about to step into a nightgown.
"Beautiful," Carter whispered.
The foot dropped and the gown came up to cover her naked body.
When she realized who it was, she released her breath with a whooshing sound and carelessly dropped the gown back to the floor.
"My God, what happened to you?"
"You should see the other guys."
He moved around her and turned on the shower.
"Well?"
"It's a go," he said, adjusting the taps. "A Libyan freighter will be off the coast of Italy in five days' time. I'll rendezvous, and well set up an off-load point on shore."
"Then I should call Palmori tonight."
Carter nodded. "And I'll call the airport and get you a morning flight to Rome. But in the meantime…"
Effortlessly he lifted her and stepped into the tub.
"Nick… your suit…"
"It's ruined anyway," he said lightly. "Now, about tonight…"
Six
Carter flew to Nice via Paris after making sure, through a few well-placed bribes on the docks, that the crates of «pottery» had been loaded aboard the freighter Alamein. From Nice, he trained through Monaco and across the Italian frontier into San Remo.
Dressed unobtrusively as a camera-toting American tourist on a slim budget, he checked into a small pension in the hills high above the beach. He didn't unpack his small bag, since he would only be using the room for a few hours.
After a quick nap, he changed into a blue denim jacket, jeans, and a workman's shirt, and left the pension. The sky had darkened, and a light, drizzling rain had forced shoppers from the streets and bathers from the beaches.
At the post office, he slipped the Kashmir passport through the cage and got back two letters. Both had been mailed in Rome two days before.
The first was from Carlotta, with a key:
Rendezvous Torta, 5:00 set.
Eight: three lookouts, five handlers.
Funds set as per prearrangement.
Palmori not suspicious but will not attend.
Inside the second envelope, he found a note that was even more terse:
Guido's on Via Colonna. 3:00
Carter checked his watch. It was already a little past the hour. But it wouldn't matter, Santoni would wait.
He knew only the larger avenues of the small resort village, but a single inquiry of a passerby led him easily to Via Colonna.
Guido's was a good-size sidewalk cafe with about twenty tables outside and more of the same inside. There were a few drinkers and diners under the exterior awning, but none of them even glanced up at Carter.
He stepped through the door and squinted his eyes against the gloom. The tables and booths were covered with checkered cloths, and in the center of each, the ever present wine bottle with its hardened wax drippings and a cheap candle stuck in the neck.
Carter spotted his man in the darkness of a comer booth. The two men nodded, and Carter moved through the tables. You are late."
"I missed my first train out of Nice."
"Sit."
Tony Santoni was a small, compact man of about forty. He had wavy black hair, a pale face for a native of southern Italy, and intelligent eyes.
For years he had been registered as a master captain on anything that sailed from 165 feet on down.
Sailing was his passion.
So was antiterrorism.
Tony Santoni was a major in Italy's SID, and for the last ten years he had been one of the government agency's best undercover men.
Carter had already worked with the man on more man one rumble, and he trusted him completely.
Two glasses had already been filled from a large carafe of wine. Santoni pushed one toward Carter and smiled.
"You look fit," he said. "Don't you ever age?"
"In our business, Tony, one never ages. We just up and die one day."
""How true. Salute!"
The two men drank and men leaned forward, their eyes riveted over the wineglasses.
"You have the boat?"
The Italian nodded. "A forty-foot Corsair with enclosed cabin and twin Cummins. It will do over sixty knots in a calm sea, and it is already rigged for arms."
"Smuggling boat?"
"What else? We liberated it from a bunch of Turks in the Adriatic about two months ago."
"Is it ready to roll?"
"Absolutely, complete with spare tanks. How far do we have to go?"
Carter fished a piece of paper from the denim jacket and spread it between them.
"We rendezvous with the freighter here, just to the northwest of Corsica, at midnight."
Santoni scratched his stubbled chin with the rim of the wineglass. "We had best leave right after nightfall. Even then we will have to push it."
"But we can make it?"
"Yes. Where do we deliver?"
"A fishing village called Torta, here, between Cecina and Livorno."
"I know it."
"Figuring a half hour for the unloading, can we make it by five o'clock in the morning?"
"You can bet on it." Santoni said with a wide smile. "This little bambino will fairly fly."
"What if this storm gets worse?"
"It won't. It is already moving north. An hour out and we will probably have calm seas."
"Good. Do we need any crew?"
"Not if you are as good a sailor as you used to be."
Carter grinned. "I think I am." He folded the paper and tucked it into the other man's jacket. "I'll pick up our treasurer as soon as I leave here. Where do I meet you?"
"There is a cove just this side of the frontier. You know Ristorante Roma, on the coast highway?"
"I know it."
"It is just east of there. As close after dark as possible."
Carter squeezed the other man's wrist and slid from the boom. "I left Kashmir's things and the papers in the Pension Garibaldi, up on the hill."
"I'll inform the locals that it is our business."
And there will be eight of them, three probably on the perimeters and well armed.
"I'll tell our people down there to take them out first."
"Ciao," Carter said with a nod and strolled from the café.
Carter took the coast road and walked nearly a mile before turning up a narrow path into the hills. The rain had picked up. and a few thunderclouds had moved in.
He almost missed the smaller hut among the rocks and would have if he hadn't seen the smoke curling up into the sky.
The door was in two parts, with a tiny, glazed pane at eye level. The latch wouldn't give, so he tried the key.
It was one large, sparsely furnished room with an open kitchen in the rear and a small hallway to his right. He was halfway toward the hallway when a young woman stepped from it into the room.
She had a round, intense face, a deep olive complexion, and black hair that hung wetly down below her shoulders.