She threw back more of the cover. It was coming back to her now. All of it. This was a type of water pump that regulated the amount of coolant to a reactor's core. A nuclear reactor. What on earth would anyone want with a nuclear reactor in Iceland?
Tires crunched on the cinders outside, the sound coming in through a ventilation shaft. A car door slammed.
Quickly she tried to cover the pump, but she could not get the plastic sheet completely over the valves. She gave up and ran for the door.
She dashed through the control room, then ran down the stairway from the catwalk to the lower floor of the maze of pipes. Maybe here among the multicolored metal she would be able to conceal herself until it was safe to leave. She hadn't done anything illegal, yet she had a very odd feeling about this place. To begin with, who would run off leaving the door to a nuclear reactor building site open?
It was dark, the only illumination coming from a pair of lighted dials on a large control panel at the room's center. She threaded her way through the maze of plumbing until she reached a wall. She followed it for several feet until she found an elbow joint in a large pipe. She crawled behind it.
The door opening onto the catwalk flew open with a bang, and the light went on. To her horror, she saw a line of footprints in the dust leading from the bottom of the stairs to where she hid. She bit her tongue to keep from crying out.
He came down the stairs like a hunter stalking his prey, stopping every few feet to cock his head as if he were listening for something. She caught a glimpse of him through the tangle of pipes. He wore mechanic's overalls, and a huge black revolver rode in his right hand.
Now she'd done it, she chided herself. The scientist with the international reputation, with the right to look around if she saw something suspicious, was in a jam.
He'd found the footprints and was looking in her direction. Instinctively she cowered lower into her tiny refuge and felt her foot wedge between two pipes.
He came slowly toward where she was hiding, and their eyes met. He brought the pistol up, then came the rest of the way around the pipe.
"I guess you found me," she said, raising her hands over her head and trying to stand. But her foot was wedged solidly, and she fell forward.
He fired.
A vicious clang resounded through the room. Then a hissing sound quickly rose to a scream as white-hot steam blasted somewhere behind her. She screamed in pain as she pulled frantically at her foot, but it refused to move. The steam increased, billowing around her now, and the pain became suddenly more than she could bear, and she knew that she was going to die here, watched by the man in the mechanic's overalls.
Her back was searing… she was being scalded alive.
"Help me…"she tried to scream, but the words died in her throat. Darkness was overtaking her. It welled up from somewhere below, finally swallowing her.
One
As the wheels of Nick Carter's plane bumped down on the runway at Keflavik International Airport outside Reykjavik, he looked out the window at the barren, seemingly moonlike landscape and shook his head. It was nearly impossible to believe that Lydia was dead. And here, of all places.
As he made his way in line with the other passengers across the tarmac to the terminal, he got a good look at the low, featureless hills that seemed to meld into the horizon, into the low-slung, featureless sky. She had probably been happy here, with the fumaroles and lava beds and glaciers. At least she'd died working.
He collected his bag, had it checked by a perfunctory customs officer, then carried it the block or so to the airport bus terminal. The bus came promptly, a modern affair with tall, bus-tour type windows, and as he settled into his seat, the blank sky and the rocky barrenness of Iceland seemed to bear down on him. If it weren't a fit place to die, it certainly was a suitable place to mourn. The entire landscape seemed to be in mourning.
He and Lydia had been friends for several years, though it hadn't begun that way. It had started as just another conquest. A quick, easy seduction to see what came up, like a roll of the dice. It had been after a particularly difficult assignment, and he had not been himself. He had been short-tempered, cooly arrogant, and definitely, to use her words, a bastard.
She'd Iain awake that night long after they'd finished, while he slept fitfully. About dawn he felt her smooth, warm body nestle against his, and he responded to her, but she held him off.
"Don't." she said.
"What's the matter?"
"Just hold me."
"I don't know you well enough for that," he had said, or something equally as lousy, and she had begun to cry. He studied her face in the early-morning light, and a rising pity for her was mixed with anger at himself for the cruelty of what he had just said and thoughts about AXE, the highly secret intelligence agency for which he worked. He was an agent. Killmaster, N3… licensed to kill, just like in the James Bond novels, but for real. He also thought about the many roles he had to play, including, occasionally, that of assassin. It was the pressure, he told himself. Nothing more.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"You're a bastard."
That was that, he had thought. He had fully expected her to get up, get dressed, and leave then and there. But to his surprise her fingertips trailed softly across his shoulder blades.
"We… we can make love again… if you'd like, Nick."
When they had first met, he had seen a bored scientist who had given to him the holier-than-thou routine. She was above him, but she might consent to perhaps make love. She was slumming. But now he knew he had been mistaken. As he looked into her eyes, he saw something else, something much more honest and infinitely more dangerous.
"I love your body," she murmured softly, running her hand down his collarbone and across the stiff, hard shell of the scar from an old bullet wound.
He kissed her then, long and full, and for the first time something buried deep inside her came to life, and she clung to him as if she never wanted to let him go.
"Oh…God, "she moaned, her fingernails digging into his back.
"It's all right, Lydia," Carter whispered, and after a long time she began to relax, and she laid back, her eyes moist.
He kissed her breasts, then, the nipples erect, and worked his way slowly down to her flat stomach, and the small tuft of pubic hair as she spread her legs for him.
"Nick," she whimpered, holding his head between her hands, her hips gyrating.
He rose up, kissing her breasts as he entered her, and soon they were making slow, gentle love, her body coming up to meet his thrusts. And it was good. Much better than it had been for Carter for a very long time.
After that night and morning together they had gone their separate ways: he to Peru to take care of a Communist guerrilla defection the CIA was on the verge of mishandling; and she to the mountains of Montana to study igneous rock formations. But she had written from time to time. Timidly at first, a line or two, just to let him know she was alive and well, then longer letters, more of herself, but always careful never to infringe on him… never to ask questions.
They met again in Washington. He was on leave between assignments, and she had returned to write a grant for George Washington University. They dined in Georgetown, attended a concert at the Kennedy Center, then checked into the Watergate for a night of champagne and lovemaking that culminated at the rooftop pool at about five that morning.