Frank flipped onto his back, turned himself with astonishing speed, and aimed his feet toward his opponent. Then he too swung over backward, favoring his shoulder, and gained his own feet.
“A cabdriver,” Rostovitch spat out, almost under his breath. “A cabdriver! You expect me to believe that?”
“You wanna go somewhere?” Frank asked. He stood still, working the muscles of his left shoulder, loosening them and easing the strain of the hard kick he had taken.
Rostovitch attacked again; he seized Frank’s left wrist with both of his hands, lifted it up, and then almost whipped it out of its socket. As he snapped downward Frank dropped with the motion; bent over he spun halfway around to the left and grabbed one of Rostovitch’s own wrists with his free hand. Jerking upward he thrust his injured shoulder into Rostovitch’s armpit. Shooting both of his own arms out he forced the colonel to extend his own arm — the leverage was against Rostovitch then and despite his strength and all of his training, he could not help himself. He knew that he was trapped in the Judo throw Seoi-nage, but once the shouldri was in his armpit, all he could do defensively was to attempt to throw his whole weight backward and pull his opponent oil' balance.
He had only a fraction of a second in which to do that; before he could drop his body Frank straightened his legs, lifting him off the ground, then bent forward rapidly with all of the power his body could command. Despite his more than two hundred pounds of hard, muscular weight, Rostovitch was thrown over Frank’s head and slammed hard onto the floor flat on his back.
He had barely landed when Frank followed up with a driving stomp into the solar plexus, enough to force the wind from Rosto-vitch’s body and to render him momentarily helpless.
Despite the fact that there was almost no breath left in his body, Rostovitch attempted to fight back. With intense determination he managed to roll over, then attempted to thrust himself against Frank’s legs. He managed, and bit into the flesh until the blood flowed freely. Frank broke it, but only by literally tearing himself away. He was breathing heavily now, fighting dizziness as well as intense pain. But he retained his balance and when Rostovitch attempted to get up, he kicked once more and caught him with partial success in the groin.
That doubled Rostovitch up once more. Frank waited, grateful for the opportunity to gulp air and to gather his remaining resources. He was an extraordinarily powerful man, but in Rostovitch he had met an enemy of almost inhuman toughness. He looked, and saw the small, almost concealed hand gun that Rostovitch had had hidden. He leapt forward, hands outstretched, and locked them around the weapon. Then it became a test of strength and Rostovitch was like steel. They wrestled on the floor, without science or skill, until Frank felt the point of Rostovitch’s elbow thrusting into the base of his throat. That meant death and he knew it; in one supreme effort he rolled himself sideways, bending the hand backward against the gun until he felt the wrist snap. Then, his strength all but spent, he hammered his forearm across Rostovitch’s throat.
The colonel gasped and his eyes opened wide. “That’s for calling me a nigger,” Frank panted, not caring whether he was heard or not. Once more he raised his right arm, the edge of his hand hard with his fingers bent slightly backward at their base, slightly curved forward at the joints. In that rigid karate position he smashed it down, with the concentrated remnants of his strength, across the bridge of Rostovitch’s nose.
“And that,” he gasped, “is a present… from the Marines.”
He lay still after that for several seconds across the man he had felled. Gradually his wind came back and the wellsprings of his body recovered a little from the savage beating he had taken. When he had the strength to do so, he lifted himself up a little with his arms and battled to regain control of himself. His shoulder, his leg, and his chest were all racked with agony, and his vision was not entirely clear. When the focus began to come back he looked down at the man who lay underneath him. He studied the features and saw that the nose had almost disappeared from the face; the narrow bone that had given it shape had been driven back into the skull. When he saw that he knew that Rostovitch was dead.
It was a full half minute later before he managed to draw his legs up closer to the rest of his body and get unsteadily to his feet. He knew that he had only minutes more to live, if that, but he no longer cared. He saw the small hand gun lying on the carpet and considered picking it up. Then, realizing the futility of it all, he kicked it aside, fie had sold his life for a good price and he was satisfied.
When he was able to walk he made his way unsteadily to the door and knocked.
25
As Feodor Zalinsky lay in his hospital bed he could not decide whether he had more pain from the healing incision in his abdomen or from the thoughts pounding in his brain. At least physically he knew that he was on the mend, and perhaps some of the annoying problems that had plagued his body in the past would now be over. That much was good. Mentally things were getting progressively worse. He had been keeping very close watch over his television set, but the steady flow of dispatches from the White
House that he had been receiving had dwindled rapidly during the past twenty-four hours. In plain language that meant one thing: Gregor Rostovitch was taking over.
The constant parade of medical attendants in and out of his room he accepted as necessary; since he was in their hands he cooperated with their demands and endured their ministrations without complaint. In return for this they had given him what was obviously expert care from the beginning and had even gone so far as to prepare certain foods which he sensed were not part of the usual hospital routine. The guard that had been stationed in his room he had ordered removed as unnecessary and at times inconvenient, such as when he wished to use the bedpan. The man sat outside, across the hall in a chair that had been provided for him, and thereby allowed Zalinsky some partial feeling, at least, of privacy and quiet. He rested as best he could and thought, more often than he wanted to, of his home and family that were so distant in both time and kilometers.
When three more medical people came unannounced into his room he looked up to determine what new benevolent discomfort they were about to inflict on him. Then one of them pulled down a surgical mask and said to him in his own language. “Good afternoon, Mr. Zalinsky, how are you feeling?”
Zalinsky lifted himself on his elbows, looked into the face of the man who had spoken to him, and said, “You have just assassinated yourself.”
Hewlitt shook his head. “I hope not, because a lot more depends on my talking to you than just my own personal welfare. I asked, how are you feeling?”
Zalinsky fell back onto the pillows propped behind him. “I am progressing, or so I am informed. Perhaps in a week I shall be better. I now ask you a question: is it true that you had an interview with Colonel Rostovitch in my office from which you walked away a free man?”
Hewlitt nodded. “In part, yes. I did talk to Colonel Rostovitch; he accused me of being a spy.”
“He was right, of course. How, then, did you get away?”
“He accused me also of sleeping with Amy Thornbush. I remembered that you had mentioned that name to me and I guessed what it might mean. So I gave it back to him and walked out while he was checking up on it.”
“Your life expectancy is now shorter than the needles that they plunge into me here. Why have you come to see me?”