It was foolish, he thought, but something deep inside him made him want to handle it this way.
He sloshed vodka into a glass, unholstered the Makarov, and sat down to wait.
It wasn't long. She glided into the room, still brushing her hair, and came up short with a gasp six feet from where he sat.
She was even more beautiful and arresting from the front than she had been from the rear. And, up close, the tight-fitting clothes left little to the imagination.
"You! How…?"
"Good evening, Anna," Carter said, saluting her with the glass and the long snout of the Makarov's silencer.
It hit her hard, but it took only seconds for her to regain composure.
She was a cool cookie, he thought, like ice, as she tossed her hair from her face and took in the pistol and wet suit at a glance. The hard, dark eyes finally settled on his. They spoke challenge, and he answered it.
"Submarine?" she growled.
"In the Black Sea? Of course not. This is your turf. That would be far too dangerous. But I did emerge from the sea like a nymph."
She started to turn toward the bedroom, her strong thighs moving steadily, lushly visible under the skirt. They stopped moving when Carter put a slug into the doorjamb two inches from her shoulder.
If she was unnerved when she turned back to face him, she didn't show it. But her mind was obviously working, and her eyes were darting from Carter to the glass doors.
"Go ahead," he said. "But I wouldn't advise it. Your guards aren't there. Mine are."
She shrugged, then moved to the bar. "I should have made sure you were dead in Berlin."
"Yes, you should have."
"You are a clever, dangerous, and resourceful man."
"Yes, I am."
She poured a drink and walked past him to the opposite sofa. She rolled her long legs under her like a cat. When she spoke again, she also purred like one.
"You've come for Boris."
Carter nodded. "Why go through all this to get what he knows? Why not just use a needle?"
"Two reasons," she replied in a bored voice, "and you should know both of them. We routinely, daily, take antidotes to combat truth chemicals… yours. Unfortunately, they also contradict our own drugs. There wasn't time to hospitalize Boris until the chemicals would work."
"And the second reason?"
"We were not positive that he had turned." She sipped her drink and smiled. The smile was far from warm and friendly, but it did fantastic things to the fine bones of her face. "We are now."
"Touché," Carter replied, smiling himself.
"Boris is a spineless jackass, but he works well in the West. He also has a genius for organization."
"An organization that you are now completely aware of."
"Perhaps." Her eyes came up, mirroring the vacant coldness of his own. "You managed somehow to get in here, but you'll never get out, not two of you. And, besides, I'm not so sure Boris will go with you… now."
"I think he will. You're very beautiful, Anna, but not beautiful enough to die for."
The door opened, slammed, and Boris Simonov emerged from the alcove and walked into the room behind Anna. He was tall and spare, with a weak chin. His dishwater-gray eyes grew wide with shock when he saw the tableau before him.
"Who…"
"Hello, Boris. Or I imagine I should call you Peter, since I've come to get you out."
"How did you…"
Anna slid off the sofa and slithered to his side. Possessively, she curled her arms around one of his.
"His name is Nicholas Carter," she said. "He's a one-man American assassination team, and he's probably come to kill you."
Simonov went even paler and shifted his eyes from Carter to the woman and back again.
"Let me give it to you straight, Boris," Carter growled, getting to his feet and making sure the barrel of the Makarov was trained solely on the woman. "They found out that we turned you. That's why you were called back. This 'wife' you were supposed to acquire was only meant to get what's in your head so that another deep-cover agent could go in and take up where you left off."
"Preposterous!" Anna said, and tugged harder, trying to keep him against her.
It didn't work. Simonov was already backing away from her, his face a chalky white and his body shaking in fright.
"It's true, Boris. Anna was supposed to get everything out of you she could, and then you were on your way back to Moscow. Where were you headed when you left here tonight, Boris?"
"Moscow," he stammered.
"And from there it was a gulag, at best. At the worst…"Carter shrugged, leaving Simonov to fill in the inevitable.
"It's true, isn't it?" the frightened man said, staring at the woman he had probably been making love to the past two nights. "Isn't it?"
Anna knew she'd been unmasked. The Killmaster could see it in her eyes.
Carter thought, wrongly, that she would go for him. Anna was too much the trained agent. Instead of Carter, she went for Simonov. If the Russians couldn't retain what he had accomplished in the West, then the Americans wouldn't have it either.
She was like a panther, fast and sharp. In a split second she had the narrow chain belt from her waist around Simonov's throat. Her hands were trained, skilled in killing.
Simonov was no match for her, and Carter couldn't get in a shot without hitting him. The belt became a garrote, and her knee in the small of his back was doing the rest of the work.
Carter had only seconds, and he used them.
It was useless to try and flank her. Everywhere the Killmaster approached, she turned Simonov's body to head him off.
Finally he gave up and plowed into both of them. His shoulder hit Simonov in the gut, driving the wind from him and slamming Anna into the wall.
The long barrel of the Makarov cracking across one of her wrists brought enough slack in the belt to allow Carter's fingers to get between it and the man's neck.
When Carter pulled it away, Simonov fell to the floor gagging. Anna recovered instantly, even though it was obvious that her right wrist was broken. With the fingers of her left hand curled, she went for Carter's throat.
He barely avoided a death blow to his windpipe by spinning and taking the blow on his ear. Bells rang and he was staggered, but he managed to continue the spin and drive his knee into her belly.
As she doubled over, he brought the long-barreled silencer down across the back of her neck.
She had scarcely crumpled to the floor before Carter was on her, the tip of the Makarov nuzzled just behind her left ear.
He was just squeezing, when Simonov lurched and dragged Carter's arm to the side. The powerful gun popped, but the slug dug harmlessly into the carpet.
"Damn you!" Carter hissed, backing the man across the room with a shoulder to Simonov's belly.
"No!" Simonov gasped, holding his aching gut with both hands and looking as though all he wanted to do in the world was vomit. "No, don't kill her!"
"Why not!" Carter moved the Makarov back to the woman's skull.
"No!" Boris shouted in the loudest voice he could muster, and staggered again toward the Killmaster.
"You damned fool! She almost killed me once, and she would have had you killed within the next three or four days!"
"No… please. I'll go with you, do anything your people want me to, but don't kill her…"
Carter looked at the pain in the man's contorted face, then down at the beautiful woman on the floor.
Obviously Boris Simonov was a normal man, subject to the emotions and passions of a normal man.
"How much have you told her?"
"Nothing of consequence, I swear it!" Simonov replied, jabbering wildly. "I swear it! I guessed what they were doing. I told her that I put everything in a report and that it was in my Moscow apartment. That was why we were leaving tonight. It was my insurance."