“Yes, you have. Just a few days ago, here in New York. He told you why he was here?”
“He was just passing through.”
“To do what?”
“I don’t know. I swear to you! I think he was merely establishing a trail. A track.”
“Why would he do that, unless he wanted someone to follow him? Why, comrade?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did he stay?”
“The Grand Hyatt, I think.”
“How long was he here?”
“A couple of days, that’s all.”
“And then?” Carter asked.
“He took a plane to Cuba, and that’s all I know!”
Carter stepped around the couch and went to the windows that looked down on the street. Lashkin and the woman turned and watched him. He edged the curtain aside and glanced down. There was no one there. The bodyguard was gone.
Lashkin had started to rise when Carter turned back. He stopped, Lydia’s hand on his arm. There wasn’t much time. If the front guard discovered his partner had been compromised, they’d both be on their way up.
Carter flipped the Luger’s safety to the off position and stepped aside so that he had a clear shot both at the door and at Lashkin.
“Who did this Hildebrandt say he worked for?”
“He didn’t say,” Lashkin replied. He was obviously lying.
“There isn’t much time, comrade. If your people start coming through that door, someone is bound to get hurt. Them, you, perhaps your lady friend here?”
“Tell him,” Lydia prompted.
“Shut up!” Lashkin said.
The front door burst open. Carter swiveled as the two Russian bodyguards barged in, their weapons raised.
Carter fired twice, catching the lead man in the chest, the two shots driving him backward into the corridor against the second man, who snapped off a shot that went wild, bringing down some plaster from the living room ceiling.
The girl screamed, and Lashkin leaped over the couch.
Carter stepped aside, fired one shot to his right, catching Lashkin high on his chest, just below his throat, then pulled around once again and fired another shot, this one blowing the second bodyguard’s forehead completely off, blood spurting out of the man’s eyes, bone and bits of brain and hair splattering the corridor wall as he was flung backward.
Both guards were dead; there was little doubt of it. Carter spun back to Lashkin, whose body was draped backward over the couch. He was clawing at the terrible wound below the base of his neck as he tried to breathe, blood bubbling from the wide, dark hole.
Lydia was sobbing in terror, trying to help him, but it was clear he was going to die.
“It was Kobelev!” she rasped. “He engineered this! He sent Ganin after you!”
Impossible. Kobelev was dead. Carter had seen him die with his own eyes. She was lying. “He’s dead!”
“No,” she said. “He is alive. He has started Komodel with Ganin. They are waiting for you.”
“Where?”
“Europe, somewhere in Europe.”
A siren sounded outside in the distance. Someone had reported the shooting. Carter raced to the door. No one moved in the corridor. He turned back, hesitating a moment longer. Was the woman the key to this thing? There was no time. He could not take her with him.
“How do you know this? Who told you Ganin was working for Kobelev?”
“He did, you bloody fool!” Lydia shouted in English. “Hildebrandt was Ganin. He was here. He talked to me, told me that he was going to kill your girl friend, and that you would be coming.”
Lashkin gasped his last breath, and his body went slack, sliding off the couch to the floor. Lydia looked down at him. “It’s too late for us now,” she murmured.
Carter did not want to get trapped there. He did not want a forced shoot-out with the police, nor did he want to be held.
He slammed the door, locking it, and slipped the security chain in place. Lydia was watching him wide-eyed.
“Take me with you!” she cried, stepping over Lashkin’s body.
Carter brushed past her and raced into the back bedroom, where he threw open the casement window. The fire escape led down into the courtyard. No one was down there, yet, but the sirens were close now, and there were a lot of them.
“He’ll kill me!” Lydia cried. “Take me with you! Please! Don’t leave me here!”
Carter turned back to her. Was she the key? Was she the bait Ganin had set for him? Europe, she had said. Kobelev and Ganin. Was it possible? It made his head swim. He was there when Kobelev died! He had seen it with his own eyes!
Lydia had tom off her negligee and was pulling on a pair of slacks that had been lying on the floor. Her breasts were large and well formed, with dark pink nipples erect now that she was frightened.
He had been maneuvered! Kobelev had once been called “the puppet master.” This was his doing. It stank of the man’s perverse genius.
Carter holstered his Luger and ducked out the window onto the fire escape. Lydia leaped around the bed to the open window.
“Don’t leave me!” she cried, reaching for him.
Carter eluded her grasp, looked into her eyes for a long moment, then without a word turned and scrambled down the fire escape.
At the bottom, he leaped down to the courtyard and looked up, but the blond head was gone. Europe, she had said. She was the bait. The Cuban with his dying breath had named Lashkin, leading Carter to New York. But it was the woman who had Ganin’s information.
The sirens were out front as Carter hurried across the courtyard, through the gate, and down to the corner.
Police cars were coming up the street as he ducked into the shadows of a recessed doorway. When they passed, he continued around in a wide circle to where he had parked his car, then headed back out of the city, this time going north, toward the Adirondacks and a refuge.
Arkadi Ganin stepped back away from the second-floor window in the apartment building across from Lashkin’s just as two police cars joined the four already there. He let the curtains slowly drop back into place.
A jumble of voices came from the speaker of a portable monitor set up on the table beside the bed. Ganin listened to the police conversations picked up from the telephone in Lashkin’s apartment, and from the bodyguards’ walkie-talkies.
He smiled to himself, shut off the receiver, and packed it in his suitcase.
Carter had indeed been set up. The guards had unwittingly done their parts, Lashkin, the complete fool, had done his, and the girl... Ganin hesitated a moment. He was pleased with her. She had reacted exactly as he thought she would. She had said and done what he thought she would, even to the point of throwing herself at Carter.
But best of all, Ganin stood in awe of Kobelev. The man had predicted every single maneuver in a delicate ballet. Even the finer nuances, such as Carter not killing Mosolov in the garden. Instead he had simply knocked the man over the head, tied him up, and had gone in. It was — Ganin, thinking now in English, groped for the word — it was quaint, definitely naive. But it was exactly as Kobelev had predicted it would be.
Finished, Ganin pulled on his jacket, checked the tiny efficiency appartment a second time to make sure he had left nothing incriminating, and then, his single suitcase in hand, left the back way.
It was still early. There was plenty of time for his overseas call, plenty of time for a good night’s sleep on his flight to Paris.
More sirens were converging on the apartment building. Soon — but not soon enough — the police would expand their search for the killer. Carter was well away, though. Ganin had to chuckle to himself. If the American had not been successful in his efforts to escape, Ganin had planned on stepping in and somehow lending a hand.