Carter's alarm watch shrilled his appointed hour to call his superior, David Hawk, for further instructions.
Keeping his quarry in view, Carter made for a phone booth with push-button dialing, where he encoded a number that connected him half a world away to Washington. DC.
A brisk, businesslike voice answered on the first ring. "Good timing, N3. Let me have your report." Hawk had been expecting him.
Carter could envision his superior, David Hawk, the director of AXE, thumbing an ancient lighter with a huge striking wheel, and applying the flame to one of those mummified-appearing cigars that looked awful and smelled worse.
AXE, a small, highly specialized intelligence-gathering and special action agency, was located on Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. A cover organization, Amalgamated Press and Wire Services, made an effective front. AXE was entirely separate from the NSC, the CIA, and even the Justice Department. Thanks to David Hawk's background of service, his uncompromising integrity, and his absolute disinterest in playing political games, AXE was able to go where the bureaucracies feared to tread. It was also able to accomplish what the bureaucracies only dreamed about.
Hawk was AXE's founder, rarely left Washington these days, and even more rarely left his glass-walled penthouse office atop the Amalgamated building. Carter was his top man in the field, designated N3 and licensed to kill in the service of his government.
"The subject is about three hundred yards from me," Carter reported. "He's drinking coffee and reading a copy of Le Figaro."
Hawk grunted. "I'd have thought him for a Le Monde man, myself. What else?"
In the background, Carter could hear the steady drone of professional voices. In his office. Hawk frequently watched an elaborate monitoring screen bringing him TV news feeds from the Amalgamated Press dish antennas not far from his penthouse. Hawk was always close to major news sources as vital stories broke in the world. But he was even closer to sources of information many a top reporter would kill for.
"The subject has two tails in addition to me," Carter said. "One is possibly the PLO operative, Abdul Samadhi — I'm not certain yet — and the other is definitely Mossad, an operative named Lev Abrams. The PLO guy definitely doesn't know about Abrams, and Abrams doesn't know about the PLO man."
"What's your judgment, Nick? Are either of them killers?"
"Both," Carter said. "If I anticipate your next question, I'd say to put your money on Abrams as the tougher of the two. The Palestinian seems desperate. In a contest, that would blow his edge."
"I'm tempted to give you a few more days to see how this develops." Hawk said, and Carter could almost feel his superior relent on a decision he'd already made. "But something vital is breaking, and I need you here to deal with it. If our suspicions are correct, this could become one of the most unholy alliances in recent times. I've booked you on the SST from Orly to Toronto at six-thirty your time. A private jet will take you from Toronto to Phoenix. If you can neutralize your quarry without making a scene, and do a thorough body search, you are authorized to do so. We prefer him dead, but it is not acceptable for you to miss the SST flight. Clear?"
"Perfectly," Carter said, noting that the Arab who was also on Sichi's tail crossed the busy multiple intersection and positioned himself not more than a hundred yards from Sichi.
Lev Abrams, the other professional tracking Sichi, now stood in a small coffee bar sipping an espresso. Carter still believed Abrams was unaware of the PLO man.
"I'll have some details in the private jet for you to read on the way to Phoenix," Hawk continued. "Meanwhile, here's some information to begin thinking about."
Carter clicked his mind into the right gear, using a technique given him by Ira Wein, a psychologist friend. The technique was a clever mixture of hypnosis and visualization, allowing Carter to see his mind as the modem attachment of a computer. "Ready and waiting," Carter said.
Hawk's voice, gruff and hardbitten, set forth the facts. Carter, with a near photographic memory tuned to openness and receptivity, took it all in. "We start with Guy Prentiss, a twenty-year man with the CIA. Good operative, but no stomach for the bureaucracy and paperwork. He set up as a freelance double, passing information both ways and having the satisfaction of injecting subtle sabotages into both sides. He made a good deal on the side and actually donated most of it to worthwhile causes. Mother Teresa. Greenpeace. Amnesty. As you've probably learned by now, things in our profession don't work that way. You can't buy out of betrayals with conscience money."
"Prentiss got caught up in ideologies?" Carter asked.
"Worse. He was pulled into a massive cocaine sting where he unwittingly betrayed friends on both sides." Hawk continued to relate how Prentiss, determined to redeem his conscience, had begun tracking something he considered to be of major consequence. He'd died trying to give it over to someone he trusted completely.
While he was being killed, Guy Prentiss had drawn a circle with the letters LT in it.
Hawk fired up his cold cigar and brought in a new piece of the puzzle. "We have some reports that promise to be most embarrassing to our friends in the Agency. Guillermo Arriosto, an auto dealer in Phoenix, Arizona, who called himself the Grinning Gaucho, died in Covington, Kentucky, of an apparent heart attack. Our information indicates that Arriosto was working on something rather large, global, and explosive."
Listening intently, Carter picked up more of the vital details: Arriosto had been relocated to Phoenix five years earlier with a laundered identity. His real name was Hector Cardenas. He'd been a colonel in the Argentine army. All official records showed Cardenas was dead, killed by leftist guerrillas before he could be brought to trial by the current Argentine administration.
"My theory," Hawk said, "is that the CIA was behind the theft of the body. I've been nudging them about it the past few hours."
"How did they respond to your probing, sir?"
"They were sensitive. I'll say this for them, they admitted it looked bad for them, but they denied any complicity."
"All the same, sir, it looks as though they couldn't stand the possibility that the results of the autopsy would be made public, showing their boy hadn't really been dead when he was supposed to be," Carter suggested.
"Exactly." Hawk paused to apply more flame to his cigar. "I also believe that Arriosto-Cardenas, now convincingly dead, was about to pull a fast one on his former benefactors, and they may have begun to get wind of it."
"And you think it has something to do with those initials?"
"Part of your assignment, Nick, is to make that connection for us or rule it out."
"And the rest of my assignment?"
Hawk filled Carter in on Miss Crystal. "No doubt about it, the Grinning Gaucho preferred them young. We even have information that his tastes brought him considerable trouble in Ciudad Juarez. The point is, Miss Crystal disappeared — gone from Covington without a trace. But get this — an older, champagne-blond version of Miss Crystal, possibly an older sister, has been in Phoenix the past two nights, working the bars Arriosto was known to frequent."
Carter's concentration was broken by a series of low-key hand signals from the Arab. The movements struck Carter as a combination of the hand language used by the deaf and the signs used by the independent bet takers at English racetracks.
"Something's just been cued. There's a scenario in progress," Carter said. "The PLO type just called the signals to set it in motion."