Carter almost killed him then and there, but he held back. "You can find that out for yourself."
"Pull over, Karl," the guard said.
"Son of a bitch," the driver snapped. "There's no place here." He glanced over at Roberta's exposed breasts. "About a mile. Near the hairpin turn. I'll stop there."
Of all the weapons in his arsenal, Carter liked the gas bomb the least. The first whiff knocked one unconscious, and a few seconds after exposure, respiration ceased altogether. A few seconds was precious little time to prevent the wrong people from dying.
Another mile of twists and turns, and they came upon a large patch of ice in the shadow of the mountain. It extended a quarter mile to where the road curved in front of a scenic overlook. It would have been a perilous stretch of highway in any event, but the ice made it a certain deathtrap for the unwary.
The driver slowed almost to a crawl, and they still slid slowly to the bottom of the hill, the bumper of the car just nudging the low stone fence at the precipice.
Far below, a mountain stream punished itself against the rocks, looking like little more than a thin, silver ribbon tangled at the bottom of a canyon. A car could lie down there for days without being discovered.
"Here?" the guard in the back seat panted. He was pawing Roberta's breasts.
The driver seemed frightened. He wrenched the gear lever in reverse, turned around, and headed back up the hill.
"You gotta stop, Karl! Gott in Himmel! the guard slobbered. He was getting worked up.
Carter slipped his thumbnail into the gas bomb's trigger. Cyatelene gas — a cyanide derivative — began pouring through the tiny jets in the bomb's perimeter, filling the car with billows of smoke. The guard next to Carter started to turn around to reach for his gun, but he promptly dropped it and fell unconscious against the far window.
The driver started to roll down his window, but then he too slumped forward, and the car slowed, then stopped, and finally rolled backward at an angle across the road and down into a shallow ditch.
Roberta was out almost immediately, and the race began to get her outside before she took in too much.
Carter sprang forward, still holding his breath, unlatched her door, shoved it open, and pushed her outside as the car bumped to a halt.
He opened the rear door, his own perceptions beginning to become distorted, and fell outside, his legs rubbery. He'd held his breath, but the gas was affecting him anyway. Burnt almonds… it was all he could smell. For a split second he could not remember what it was he was supposed to be doing.
Then, summoning every ounce of strength and concentration he had, he pulled himself up toward where Roberta lay half in and half out of the car.
All he wanted to do was lie there and sleep. His muscles felt like lead. But he began to remember there was no time, and he managed to get up and stumble to Roberta's inert form.
He dragged her clear, then tried to pick her up, but it was hopeless. His muscles were too weak. He stumbled, dropped her, and ended up dragging her to the shoulder of the road, where he crouched over her prostrate body, panting. After several seconds the sharp, cold mountain air cleared his head, and his presence of mind returned. He took her pulse. It was dangerously weak.
Quickly he tilted her head back, pinched her nose, and started blowing air into her lungs. He kept it up for almost five minutes, but nothing seemed to be happening. God, he didn't want to lose her. Not like this.
He checked her pulse again. He felt nothing.
Frantically he put the heels of his hands together and began a rhythmic heart massage, her chest very small and delicate, her breasts tiny, the nipples rigid with the cold.
Her chest heaved after a few minutes, and her entire body shuddered as if an electrical current had run through it.
He continued to work feverishly, heedless of his own problems because of the gas. After a while the color began to come back to her cheeks, then her eyelids fluttered and opened.
"Nick," she breathed.
"Don't talk." He pulled off his thick workshirt, bundled it up, and placed it under her head. Then he got up and walked unsteadily back to the car.
After thirty seconds cyatelene gas combines with the oxygen in the air to form dicyateloxide, a harmless compound. But before its thirty seconds of potent life expired. Carter's bomb had taken its toll. The side of the driver's face lay against the steering wheel, his eyes bulging, his blackened tongue swelling out of his mouth. The guard in the back had fared no better.
He pulled the bodies out one at a time and dragged them off the road behind a jumble of rocks. Then he scuffed his tracks in the snow and went back to where Roberta lay on the gravel.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"Woozy."
He helped her to her feet, and with an arm around her waist he helped her to the car. He climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine.
"Are you going back?" Roberta asked.
Carter nodded, put the car in gear, made a careful U-turn, and headed back up the mountain.
Rivulets of melting snow were cutting channels in the gravel when they pulled into the parking lot below the mountain house. One of the cars that had been parked here earlier — the tan Mercedes — was missing.
"He's gone," Roberta said.
"Maybe not. But I'm going to check one way or the other."
"You don't even have a weapon," she said.
Beside them on the seat was the driver's weapon. An American military.45 automatic. "This'll do," he said. "You wait here. If you hear shooting, listen for the last shot, then count to ten. If you don't hear another, take off. Understand?"
She nodded.
His strategy was simple. The chalet was a modernistic affair with large plate glass windows in the front that looked down on the valley. In back, smaller windows opened onto a solid rock face. These were the bedroom windows, he figured. They'd be empty now, providing him easy access.
He climbed up the back way, working his way around the side of the house to the rear windows, which were set a few feet off the rock base and only a few feet away from the face of the cliff on which the house was perched.
Curtains were drawn over three of the windows, but the fourth was open, and he could see that the room inside was a bedroom.
The window was unlocked, and within a few seconds Carter stood in the middle of the bedroom, holding his bream as he listened to the sounds of the house. But there was nothing. In fact, he thought, the house was too quiet, as if everything had been shut down.
He stepped out of the bedroom, hugging the hallway wall, the.45's safety off, its hammer cocked.
Within a few minutes he had checked the bedrooms, the living room and kitchen and bathrooms, but there was no one here. They had left.
He pocketed the heavy automatic, then left by the front door and went back down to the parking lot.
"Find anything?" Roberta asked. She was nervous.
"He's gone," Carter said, climbing in behind the wheel. He looked up at the house.
"Back to Argentina?" she asked.
Carter looked at her and shook his head. "I'd guess Iceland. But you and I have to talk."
"About…?"
"You and the BND, If we're going to work together, I'm going to have to know everything you have on Ziegler."
"And you're going to have to let me know what you have," she said. "A deal?"
Carter smiled. "A deal."
They shook hands. "Then what?" she asked as Carter started the car and they headed down the mountain.
"We're going to Iceland, that's what."
Nine
The drizzling rain was doing little to dispel the August heat as Nick and Roberta's plane touched down at National Airport in Washington late that evening. Perkins, one of Hawk's aides, was waiting for them outside customs. Carter had telephoned from the airport at Munich.