When she saw Carter, she stopped abruptly, the towel in her hands halfway to her hair. If possible, her youthful features hardened even more.
"Who are you?"
"Who the hell are you?"
She started edging back toward the hallway. The sash that held her lightweight housecoat together loosened slightly, revealing a lot of her shapely figure and heavy breasts that didn't fit her little-girl face.
"If you'll notice," Carter said. "I let myself in with a key."
He extended his left hand, palm up, with the key in its center. That stopped her movement, and some of the animal tenseness seemed to fade from her eyes and body.
She reached for the key, but just before her fingers touched it, Carter tilted his hand away. When she grabbed for it, he grabbed her. locking both of her wrists in a steely grip with his left hand. At the same time, he squeezed Hugo into his right hand and brought the tip of the stiletto up against her throat as he slammed her against the wall.
"Don't play twenty questions with me, little girl. I'm supposed to meet a man here. Where is he?"
"I… I'm the only one here."
"Then who are you?"
"Palmori. I am Sophia Palmori."
Carter dropped her and resheathed Hugo. "You should have said so. Nicolo's daughter?"
"Yes. I was frightened. You are Ali Kashmir?"
Carter nodded. "Why you?"
"There has been a great deal of internal strife within our organization. I was the only one my father could trust with such a great amount of money."
She tightened the housecoat around her and stepped back. Her eyes, as the panic and fear faded from them, were already hardening up again.
"How old are you?"
"Eighteen," she replied, jutting her chin forward defiantly. "But I am a seasoned soldier. I have been fighting our cause against the warmongers and imperialists since I was twelve."
Christ, Carter thought. Sick, sick, sick.
"Where is it?"
"The money?"
"What else? That's all I'm interested in." She hesitated, her full lower lip floating between her even, white teeth. "No money, no deal. I'm not moving from San Remo until I lay eyes on it."
She moved down the narrow hall. Carter right behind her. From behind two loose boards in the rear of a closet, she withdrew a learner briefcase. On the bed, she flipped the catches and lifted the lid.
"Swiss francs and dollars."
They were in neat stacks, large bills still bound in bank wrappers.
Carter selected two of them at random and ruffled them beside his ear.
"Don't you want to count it?"
"I already have," he replied. "Lock it back up. Do you have anything to eat in this place?"
Carter moved down the narrow, almost invisible steps that had been cut by hand into the side of the cliff. Far above them and to the side, the lights of Ristorante Roma blinked against the clear night sky.
True to Tony Santoni's weather report, the storm had about blown itself out and was now headed on north toward France.
The girl, dressed in a dark sweater, blue jeans, and sneakers, trailed right at his heels.
"Hold it."
He stopped so abruptly she nearly crashed into his backside. They were only a few feet from the water, with a pale moon glinting off its surface but revealing nothing of the shoreline except black, jutting rocks.
Carter flipped the switch on his penlight twice, then motioned the girl forward.
"What was that for?"
"To let my man know we're coming. He doesn't like to be surprised."
They dipped into a deep hollow, and there, completely hidden from the sea and the cliffs, was the long, sleek Corsair gently bobbing against a makeshift pier.
Lounging against its gleaming rails was Tony Santoni, a Uzi submachine gun cradled in his arms like a sleeping baby.
"This is Tony. Tony, Sophia Palmori."
"A girl?"
"A woman, bastard," she hissed.
Santoni smiled, his eyes sweeping her front where her breasts seemed ready to burst through the sweater.
"Not much doubt of that," he quipped. "Come aboard!"
Santoni cast off the bow and aft lines as Carter and Sophia moved into the wheelhouse.
"This is beautiful." she gasped. "Do you own this?"
"We lease… very short-term. Through that hatch is the main cabin. Somewhere down there is a bar. Fix yourself something and open a beer for me. I'll be down in a minute."
From the scowl on her face Carter knew she didn't like taking orders, but she went, banging the briefcase on the hatchway as she went through.
He cranked up the dual Cummins diesels and felt a ripple pass over his skin as the power plant's low. guttural roar vibrated through the boat. He adjusted the twin throttles to idle and snapped on a portable radar that had been mounted on the dash just beneath the windshield.
The set hummed, the screen flashed white, and then it settled down to its normal green color with the yellow circling wand.
Santoni crawled over the low bulkhead and dropped to the wheelhouse deck.
"All lines clear?" Carter asked.
"All clear."
The big boat responded like a finely turned race car as Carter pushed the throttles forward and the bow lifted. In no time they were beyond the bay doing a little over forty knots, and Carter was setting the course as Santoni called out the coordinates.
"Take it!" Carter said over the roaring engines.
He moved from the wheel, and the Italian look his place. They skimmed the water for about a mile before Santoni lit a cigarette and threw a sideways glance at Carter.
"Why did old man Palmori send her?"
Carter shrugged. "Didn't trust anybody else, I guess."
"Or didn't trust you… or Cariotta."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I know him," Santoni replied. "Sophia's file is as thick as her father's. She is the best he has."
"How so?"
"Five kills that we know about, two of them on the streets of Rome in broad daylight."
"That's sick."
"Sure it's sick, but they are all sick. It is part of the game…brainwash them right from the cradle. Watch yourself, Nick."
"I will."
Carter went below. An open beer was resting in a roll-cradle on the bar. The girl was behind it, a glass of wine in her hand, staring out the porthole.
The moon bathed her features in soft light and dark tones. It was the first time he had noticed that, in a hard way, she was quite beautiful.
"Where's the key?" Carter asked, taking a long swallow from the beer.
"What for?"
"So I can divide up the money… their price, and my commission."
Haughtily, Sophia slid the key across the bar. "You are a privateer."
"I sure am," Carter said, opening the briefcase and starting his count.
"We need people like you now." she said softly, "to supply the revolution. But one day…"
"One day, little girl, we'll all be dead and not one damned soul will remember who sold or who shot what we buy and sell."
"Death means nothing to me. I am a revolutionary."
"Good. Because if my supplier tries to cross me again, we'll probably have a fire fight on our hands before we pull away from that freighter. Can you use an Uzi?"
"I can handle any gun that has ever been made."
"I'll just bet you can."
And he meant it.
It was in her eyes: the joy of killing. Now he was glad he had surprised her in the cottage unarmed. If she then had had the little Beretta he knew now was in the waistband of her jeans, he might have been forced to kill her.
All guts for the cause and very little hard reasoning, he thought, that's how they're trained.