His working room had a simple desk which he did not need, but it was a status symbol and he made use of it in a casual way. He was seated behind it, looking about the room he had carefully inspected thousands of times before, when the door was violently flung open and he found himself looking directly into the barrel of a gun.
Like a cat awakened from sleep, he was transformed into combat tension within the fraction of a second. Then he saw the face of the man who held the gun and he saw death. It was a face that belonged to someone as unyielding and trained as himself — the eyes told him that.
Carlo did not move; it was the first step of his counterattack. If he tried for his own weapon it would trigger the tense man in the doorway, but doing nothing might throw him a hair off-stride. His own eyes were fixed now, for a hair was all that he needed — he had seen the ends of guns before.
The man with the weapon motioned him to rise. Carefully Carlo did so. He knew every angle of the room, the exact position of every object that it contained; his opponent did not. He stood by his desk, deliberately looking helpless, as lethal as a poised cobra.
The man motioned him to come forward. He responded at exactly the right pace, and recalculated when the man with the gun retreated a step or two to keep him at a safe distance. He entered the hallway and turned right as he was silently directed. Then he walked slowly ahead, listening intently to the sounds behind him. There was a corner coming, and that would be his first point of defense.
When he reached it and turned, another man, and another gun confronted him. No one man armed with a single weapon could take him out of a building, but two, one in front and one behind, was another matter. But when they were in a single straight line, neither of the men opposing him could fire without the risk of hitting his partner. Like a computer he continuously remeasured the odds and every step that he took was a conscious decision.
The silent men who had taken possession of him were trained too — highly trained. Carlo obeyed them, second by second, and kept up the appearance of a bewildered, middle-aged man of no athletic capability whatsoever. In the past that deceptive demeanor had cost several other men their lives.
Then he became aware that there were more and he knew that they were a team. They were skilled and they had been sent, as he had been many times sent, and he knew that it was not all for him. His men were together in one room and there was no way that he could warn them — not without paying with his own life, and he had no intention whatever of doing that. His best hope now was that he was wanted for questioning, that they would try and detain him, keeping him alive in the meanwhile. That had been tried before, too, by people who had not known Carlo and by one or two who had, but the result had been the same in every case: they had not been able to hold him and he had left dead behind him when he had made his escape.
There was only one door to the room where his men were gathered, waiting as he had been himself for something to happen. Carlo could not see as it was burst open and two alert men charged in. He heard the shots that were fired and from their sound and number reconstructed what was taking place; his men were good and not enough challengers could get through the doorway to prevent some of his people from opening fire. That meant casualties on both sides, and possible confusion. He watched with concealed intensity for the first hint of diverted attention on the part of the two men who had him in possession, but their eyes did not move from him and their pace did not change.
In the rear yard of the building he and his men had been occupying Carlo felt thg texture of the soil underneath his feet and appraised the strength and exact angle of the sunlight. He hoped that there would be enough brilliance to cause the men who had captured him to react to it, but if they did, they did not show it. He was backed against the wall and then his opponents stood one on each side of him, well away and where they could watch him directly while he would have to view them at an angle.
Things were not looking too good.
Then others began to come out of the building, men of the opposing team and his own men, for the moment overpowered and two of them visibly bleeding. One of the attackers had been shot in the arm, but he appeared to be ignoring that. It was his left arm, which meant that the procedure had been correct, but the aim too hasty.
There were nine men in the attacking team; himself and twelve of those assigned to him opposed. The morale of his own men was bad; they were confused and not as alert as he was. But there were enough of them to provide confusing targets, and he still had three potent weapons concealed on his body.
The man with the wounded arm was the leader of the attackers. With a single gesture, he signaled that the seized men were to be lined up against the wall, on the opposite side of the doorway from Carlo himself. They were turned face inward, forced to spread their feet, and to lean forward until they depended for their balance on their hands resting against the brickwork. In that position they were expertly searched; Carlo turned his head and watched in the hope that his own captors would do the same, but the maneuver was not successful. He saw his men disarmed and sensed what was about to happen. He had no plan yet, but his racing brain was still weighing every possible factor, seeking, searching for the slightest opportunity.
When his men were all disarmed, they were turned and inspected, one at a time. One man from the capturing team looked into their faces and motioned three of them aside. Then Carlo knew: two of his men had been replaced since the day that he had disposed of the student underground cell; the three who had just been picked out had not been with him on that small operation. This was the revenge squad, not purely for that, of course, but to reply to Colonel Rostovitch. He, Carlo, was to be sacrificed to make good a simple power play. The futility of it hit him and for a bare instant his alertness was clouded.
He had himself back in hand almost instantly — that was the kind of mistake he was waiting for his captors to make. He could not afford to relax for the tiniest fraction of a second or he would pay with his life for a lost opportunity.
Then he heard the first words that had been spoken since he had been surprised in his office three minutes before. In his own language, or in one which he spoke fluently, he heard the death sentence pronounced. “This is for the students you killed. You will now die exactly as they did.”
He saw the fright on the faces of his men, the despair, and the dull acceptance of the inevitable. Then the guns began to speak. The first of his men screamed and hit the ground. The scream had been training, but it did not for a moment divert the attention of the men who held their guns trained on him. Time was growing short now and he would have to make his move within the next several seconds.
Six of his men died before he could think of a thing; he knew that no bluff, no fake would work with his captors — they were not amateurs.
The seventh man dropped, his face a sudden mask of blood. Damning sweat broke out on Carlo’s brow.
The eighth man died with his face twisted in agony and hate. The ninth was his best torturer, who preferred to vary the manner of his killings. As Carlo watched he was seized by the arms and held hard against the wall. Then the leader of the attacking team drew his own pistol, turned it around, and measured the butt end against the man’s skull. Carlo did not care how his men died, but that showed that these men had unexpectedly good intelligence, for that was exactly how his man had chosen to kill the student turned over to him. The gun rose, the arm that held it was cocked back, then it crashed down with concentrated power. The man’s head did not crack with the first blow and the movement had to be repeated. When the execution was over, only Carlo himself was left.