Five minutes later they were walking arm in arm from the club.
"This way." she said, turning right. "Who are they?"
Dobruck shrugged. "They are my associates."
"Do they follow you everywhere?"
"Almost everywhere."
"Not into the bedroom, I trust," she said coyly.
"No, my little angel, not into the bedroom."
But almost. One of the bodyguards stayed in the hotel lobby. The other followed them up to her floor and found a chair in the hall.
"Will he just sit there?" Sophie asked, opening the door.
"Unless I need him," Dobruck replied with a leer.
"Let's hope you don't," she laughed, shrugging her jacket off and exiting to the bath. On her way by, she snapped on a radio. "There is brandy on the dresser."
Dobruck poured two glasses of the amber liquid into a glass with quivering fingers.
My night, he thought, already imagining the next hour with this young beauty. This will be my night!
And then she was back, dressed in a filmy gown that left nothing to the imagination. She took one of the glasses and moved into his arms.
"You are very beautiful, my dear… a young, sensual animal."
"I have Latin blood," she crooned into his ear.
She was light in his arms, and her hair was soft against his cheek. He held her close as he maneuvered her to the bed, and she didn't resist.
She smells of lemons, he thought as the back of her knees hit the bed.
Beneath the filmy sheerness of her gown, he could feel her breasts moving against his chest. Her hips met his, and he shivered at the liquid movement of her body.
"I want you," he growled.
"Are you very rich, Monsieur Dobruck?"
"Very. Rich enough to give you anything you want."
She bent the upper half of her body back in the circle of his arms. As she drained the glass and dropped it to the carpet, she gyrated her pelvis and hips against him.
"Then undress me… here," she said, pointing to the sash at her waist.
He drained his own glass, dropped it, and reached with the same hand for the sash. He tugged it, and gasped.
Suddenly the filmy gown was in a heap at her feet, and what was beneath it was a study in olive and pink tones.
A black, lacy bra only just contained the determined thrust of her high-riding breasts, and a black gaiter belt inadequately straddled the rounded curve of her hips.
She wore no panties, and long, tapering legs supported the breathtaking torso above. Completing the erotic fantasy, and driving everything else from Dobruck's mind, were the sheer black hose attached to the garter belt.
"You are a vision."
"Now," she said, dropping to her back on the bed and spreading her thighs, "undress yourself… and take me."
His fingers flew. His eyes were misty, devouring only her body, so that he didn't see the wide smile that stretched her lips when he dropped the Walther and holster from his shoulder out of reach on the floor.
When he too was naked, he leaned one knee on the bed and began crawling upward over the luxurious softness of her willing body. So filled were his senses with the sight, the smell, and the touch of her, that he failed to hear the bathroom door open behind him.
He was about to enter her, when he saw her eyes open wide. They were suddenly glazed over, and the smile on her lips was like a sneer of defiance.
"Do not be afraid, my dear."
"I'm not," she murmured. "Believe me, I am not."
Émile Dobruck felt only a tiny pain at the base of his neck before Pocky drove the spike inward, severing his spine.
There was no sound, and hardly a drop of blood. Using only the embedded spike for leverage, Pocky lifted the lifeless body off Sophia and let it slither to the floor.
"Hurry!" he said, cleaning the spike on the bedspread. "Dress! We will use the roof. The car is waiting in an alley a block from here!"
Sophia didn't answer. When he looked up, her eyes still held that glazed quality and her body was quivering.
"Sophia, get dressed!"
"No, not yet."
"What?"
She turned to him. "Pocky, take your clothes off."
She lay back on the bed, assuming the pose that she had just assumed in front of Dobruck.
And then he understood.
"Sophia, are you mad…?"
"Yes. Undress, Pocky… hurry. We have time… hurry!"
It was insane, and yet it somehow fit. Her eyes drew him like a magnet as he fumbled with his clothes.
And then it was her body drawing him, engulfing him, swallowing him…
Carter moved his hand through the bars, twisted the key around, and seconds later silently slid the cell door open.
Everything was going like clockwork.
Pietro Amani had swallowed it all. Carter knew the whole story, right down to the very time the meeting would be convened.
The only thing Amani had held back was the place. But Carter knew that if Amani expected to be delivered there, he would soon know that as well.
Carlotta and her SID people had come through like champions. The gear that he needed had been delivered early that morning, secreted under the flooring of a van delivering new prisoners. Carter had already transferred it to an abandoned tool shed in the most unused section of the courtyard.
It was three a.m. sharp when he slid on his belly the few remaining feet to Amani's cell and tapped lightly on the bars.
Instantly the old man's face and gray mane appeared at the bars. "You are ready?"
"Yes. Do your people know what to do?"
"They will perform to the letter," the man replied in a whisper.
Carter was sure they would. If they didn't, and that was the cause of failure, the old terrorist would have them visited by an iceman.
"You've put the dummy in the bed?" Carter asked.
"Yes. I am ready."
"Then let's go!"
Using his own key, Amani opened the cell, slipped out, and relocked it behind him.
Together, the two men walked down the tier.
Getting off the cellblock and into the yard would be the trickiest part of the plan. It would have been easier if someone in the prison, either a guard or one of the administrative staff, could have been let in on the ruse. But both Carter and the SID people had vetoed such a gamble.
Graft, bribery, and corruption were too rife. It would have been impossible to be sure that whoever they let in on the plan wouldn't go right to Amani himself and offer to sell the information that he was being broken out by an agent of the United States government.
They reached the end of the cellblock without rousing anyone, and Carter halted. Mentally he thanked the energy shortage. The entire block between the cells was lit by only two low-watt yellow bulbs.
If one of the prisoners had seen them pass, he wouldn't have been able to distinguish between them and guards making rounds.
Where they now stood, there was complete darkness.
"There's a narrow corridor this way, between the wall and the last cell. Grab my belt and stay close!"
Carter moved into the corridor in a half crouch, the Italian on his heels. He made his way about twenty feet by feel alone and halted when his groping hand touched wood.
"Here."
"What is it?" Amani whispered.
"A book of matches. Light one and shield it with your body."
The scrape of the match was like a shot going off in the deathly stillness. The flickering light revealed a four-foot-high door with an ancient padlock.
"What is this?"
Carter spoke as he went to work on the lock. "A few years ago, the powers that be in the prison system decided this whole damned place was a firetrap."
"Which it is," the Italian said with a chuckle.