She rolled over. Her breasts ached from where the men had pawed at her, and the muscles in her thighs were shaking. She was sick to her stomach.
"Oh, Nick," she cried softly, the tears coming easily to her eyes. If they had caught and killed him, it could be some time before Schmidt followed this up. She could be here like this for days, perhaps weeks.
How in God's name had her mother endured it all those months? The pain, the misery, the humiliation?
Her thoughts kept going around in circles from Ziegler to her mother to Nick Carter and back to Ziegler.
And this was only the first day, she told herself as she drifted off to sleep.
Someone was at the door. She woke, her heart suddenly thumping in her chest, her stomach heaving. For a moment or two she was confused about what was happening. But it sounded like someone scuffling outside her door.
"Nick?" she called out softly.
There was a dull thump against the wall, and Roberta pushed herself up. Someone called out softly, then she heard the unmistakable popping sound of a silenced pistol shot. The lock splintered, and the door was shoved open.
God, she thought, it was about to happen again. She was still confused.
Two men, both wearing hard hats and both dressed in the gray coveralls everyone in the compound wore, leaped into the room.
"Roberta Redgrave?" one of them asked in German. His voice held a strange accent.
Roberta managed to nod.
Then he was beside her while the other man pulled a body into the room and shut the door. He proceeded to strip the man's coveralls and boots.
"Are you all right?" the man who came in first asked Roberta. She looked up into his eyes. They were hard, but they had the look of a friend.
She nodded. "Bruised. But I think I can walk."
"Good," the man said.
"Who are you?"
"Hold on." he said. He took the fallen guard's coveralls from the other man, and he quickly dressed her in them. In a couple of minutes he had put the too-large boots on her feet, laced them up, and pulled her off the bed.
She was dizzy, and she had to lean on him for support.
"Sure you're all right? We can carry you."
"I'm walking out of here on my own steam," she insisted. "Now just who the hell are you, and where's Nick Carter?"
The other one was at the door. He turned back. "You don't know us. But a man by the name of Roger Seidman sent us."
"Seidman?" The name was vaguely familiar.
"That's right. Israeli embassy. Buenos Aires."
"Oh, my God," Roberta breathed. "You're Mossad."
"I'm Ari," the one holding her said.
"I'm Paul," the one by the door added. "But we're all going to be dead unless we get out of here right now."
"How…" Roberta asked, but Ari held her off.
"Let's save the explanations for later. I'd like to get out of here first."
"Let's go," Paul said. He threw open the door and hurried out, with Ari and a not-too-steady Roberta right behind him.
There were two bodies in the corridor, and another one lay in the barracks day room. Just outside was a military jeep, its top up, its side curtains zippered.
There was a lot of traffic up and down the dirt road; the maintenance crews working on the burned-out barracks and the remains of the motor pool, which was still smoldering across the compound.
No one paid them any attention as they ducked out of the barracks and climbed into the jeep, Paul behind the wheel, Ari in the passenger seat, and Roberta seated low in the back.
Ari handed her back an Uzi submachine gun as Paul took off down the main road toward the front gate. She unfolded the wire stock and checked to make sure the big clip was seated properly, and that a round was in the firing chamber.
"I don't have to ask if you know how to use that," Ari said. "But just be ready if we have to shoot our way out of here."
"Where's Nick, and how the hell did you get from Buenos Aires to here?" Roberta demanded. Now that she was moving again, the strength was coming back lo her.
"Your Mr. Carter came to our embassy in Buenos Aires last week asking questions about General Ziegler. We had been watching him for several years."
"I worked for him," Roberta said.
"We know," Paul replied, glancing over his shoulder. They were almost to the main gate. "And we weren't overly surprised when Mr. Carter and you got together."
"Our boss told us to keep tabs on both of you," Ari said.
"Germany? Washington?"
"That's right. Then here, although we nearly lost you a couple of times." Ari turned forward as they approached the gate. He had an Uzi on his lap. "Heads up," he said.
They slowed down as they approached the guardhouse, and two men with automatic weapons stepped out on the road.
"They don't look too friendly," Paul said.
"Not at all," Ari replied. He shoved the side flap aside, slammed the bolt back on the submachine gun, and stuck it out the window as Paul gunned the jeep.
One of the guards went down; the other leaped to the left as the jeep hit the weakened gate and crashed through.
Roberta had turned around in her seat, and as the second guard jumped up and started to bring his weapon to bear, she tired out the back plastic window, the sound incredibly loud in the confines of the jeep. The guard never had a chance.
"Nice shot," Ari said as they hauled down the road, the jeep's engine winding out in each gear. At the main highway Paul barely slowed down as he turned toward Reykjavik, but the going became much easier on the pavement.
"You okay back there?" Paul said.
"Just fine," Roberta replied. She made sure the safety was on, and she folded up the Uzi's stock and put the weapon aside. "Now how did you know where to find me?"
"We followed you and Carter out here last night. After the explosions, he took off through the main gate in a big truck. In the confusion we walked in and have been working there all night." Ari hesitated a moment. "Everyone was talking about… you," he said delicately.
"Then you don't know what happened to Nick?"
"We assume he went back into town," Paul said.
Roberta looked back the way they had come. "And Ziegler?"
"He left an hour or so ago," Ari said. "I watched him drive out the main gate. It looked as if he was in a big hurry."
Roberta was still slightly dazed. She tried to think this out. "Nick has gone back to the hotel. I was supposed to return there last night as soon as he was through the fence."
"Instead you had to play tricks with the gate guards," Ari said.
"I want Ziegler," she flared.
Ari turned around. "Who does Carter work for?"
Roberta shook her head. "I don't know… for sure. One of the U.S. intelligence services. Probably the State Department."
"Does he know about your mother? What happened between her and Ziegler during the war?"
The color drained from Roberta's face. "My… mother…?"
"We know about it. Does Carter?"
She started to say no, a mist in her eyes and a thickness in her throat, but then she thought about the note she had left for him back at the hotel, and she nodded. "By now he does," she managed.
"I see," Ari said, and they drove the rest of the way into Reykjavik in silence.
They entered the hotel by the back way, and only one of the maids saw them. The woman raised her eyebrows at Roberta's too-large coveralls and boots, but she had seen a lot of things in her day, so she continued with her work.
The note was gone from beneath the pillow, but that was the only indication that Carter had been here.
"Where else could he have gone?" Ari asked.
Roberta stood in the middle of the room. "Back to the compound, or…"
"Or?" Ari asked.
"Where does Ziegler stay when he's in Iceland? Do you know?"
"Here in Reykjavik — or just outside the city. He's a house guest of Thorstein Josepsson."