“Eight,” Carter said. “I’ll wake you in plenty of time.”
Across the room, he poured himself a drink, lit a cigarette, then took out Wilhelmina and sat down, prepared for the long vigil.
London’s Heathrow Airport was a madhouse; nevertheless, Carter and Lydia managed to clear customs and find the sleek Jaguar sedan by five-thirty. Carter had gotten a few hours sleep on the supersonic flight and he felt pretty good, although the wound in his leg was still giving him some trouble.
They made it down to Dover, driving very fast, in time for the last Hovercraft passage across the Channel to Calais. From there they took the E5 to Boulogne, then south through Abbeville and Beauvais on the long haul to Paris.
Lydia had been talkative during the trip, but as they neared Paris she quieted down, a wan note in her expression. Carter suspected she was frightened of being so close to Kobelev’s operation. Frightened of her part in the plan.
“His name is Lev Ivanovich Borodin,” she said when they were a few miles outside of Paris. They had been driving in silence for a long while.
Carter glanced over at her. “Kobelev’s man?”
She nodded. “He works out of the Tass office as a journalist. Gives him the reason to travel around the country.”
The night was overcast and very dark. There was not much traffic at that hour.
“How do you know this?” Carter asked.
“He was there... outside Moscow, at the dacha. I met him before he was posted to France. Kobelev thought highly of him. Called him his up-and-coming Red star. He has cold eyes. He is just as bad as Kobelev.”
“In what way?”
“He is ruthless,” she flared, looking over. “In order to be Kobelev’s handmaiden you must first kill.”
“Not so unusual—” Carter began, but Lydia savagely cut him off.
“A child! You must kill a child to prove you are above compassion. Even the state comes second to your loyalty to Nikolai Fedor.”
Carter’s trial assignment with Kobelev had been to kill the child of a CIA operative in France. “Borodin killed a child?”
“I saw it with my own eyes. She was a young girl, perhaps eight or nine, from one of the collectives outside Moscow. Kobelev just sent for her, and somehow she appeared. Borodin strangled her, slowly. He crushed her neck. He enjoyed it!”
Carter’s hands were cramping up, and he realized that he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly he was losing feeling in his fingers. He loosened his grip.
Lydia’s eyes were glistening. “You don’t know how it was... how it still is.”
“Will he still be in Paris? Might he have been reassigned?”
“He is still there. Kobelev doesn’t move his people around until they’re kicked out.”
If Carter had had any qualms about simply killing a Soviet operative, they were dispelled by Lydia’s story. Knowing Kobelev as he did, he did not doubt the truth of her tale.
“But listen to me, Nick. This Borodin is very good. He is intelligent, he is quick, and he is very strong.”
“I’m not an eight-year-old girl he can so easily strangle.”
“No, but you are tired, you have some injury to your right leg, and you have revenge in your soul because of the death of your lover. All distractions.”
“What are Borodin’s weaknesses?” Carter asked after a few moments of silence.
“He has none. Not even conceit.”
It was four in the morning when they woke the sleepy concierge at the Hotel Lancaster, got their key, and went up to their room.
Carter unpacked his weapons in the tiny bathroom, out of Lydia’s sight, and when he emerged she was lying on the bed fully clothed except for her shoes. She was nearly asleep.
“Mmmm?” she said, half rising.
“Go back to sleep,” Carter said gently. “I’m going to check outside to make sure we weren’t spotted coming in.”
“Don’t go,” she said.
“I’ll be right back. In the morning you can tell me more about Borodin.”
He slipped out the door before she could protest further, but he did not immediately go downstairs. Instead he waited by the door, listening. He could hear Lydia stirring, then she went into the bathroom. Moments later the toilet flushed, and he heard the bed springs creak, then nothing.
Five minutes later he turned and quietly went down the back stairs and out into the predawn darkness.
He figured he had only a couple of hours to find Borodin, do what was necessary, and then get clear. Once the dawn came, it would be impossible for him to make any overt moves against Kobelev.
Ganin was somewhere in the city. Although Carter did not know the man, had never met him, he had an empathy for him. He could feel Ganin’s presence. Somewhere, watching, waiting. Somewhere in the city to lure Carter another step closer to Kobelev’s killing ground.
Half a block from the hotel Carter found what he was looking for: a telephone kiosk. He managed to get a sleepy operator to respond, and he placed a credit card call to Smitty’s special information number in Washington.
It took almost five minutes for the connection to be made and the proper identifications to be verified.
“Yes?” Smitty said.
“Lev Ivanovich Borodin. Works for Tass in Paris. I need his residence address.”
There was a silence on the line, as if Smitty had not heard. Carter knew better.
A police car passed slowly along the avenue, the two officers eying Carter, but they did not stop. A few minutes later Smitty was back with an address Carter recognized off Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré, very near the British embassy, and only a dozen blocks from where he stood.
He hung up before Smitty could ask the inevitable question, pulled up his coat collar against the chill morning air, and headed down to the Rond Point and from there up past the ornate Palais de l’Elysée to St.-Honoré.
Already the early-morning delivery vans were beginning to make their rounds, and the air smelled of fresh bread and croissants.
The apartment building was a tall glass and steel affair, the sort that most Parisians hated in the center of their city, complete with a security guard in the lobby beyond locked glass doors.
Carter went around back to the service entrance, where soon — within the next hour or less — the tradesmen would begin showing up, and he rang the bell. He took out his Luger.
“Qui,” a voice came from the speaker.
“It is me, you fool, let me in,” Carter growled in very bad French, putting as much of a Russian accent into it as he could.
“Who is this? I will call the police. Go away!”
“You idiot, it is I, Borodin, of 1107! Let me in or I will have your job!”
“The front door—” the Frenchman sputtered.
“If I wanted to use the front door, I would have come in that way? Now be quick!”
If anyone showed up in the next few minutes, or if the Frenchman inside had his wits about him and telephoned security at the front door, the game would be up.
The latch clicked and the door started to open. Carter shoved his way inside, bringing Wilhelmina up into the face of a startled old Frenchman.
“Mon Dieu!” the man squeaked.
Inside, Carter let the door shut and lock, and backed the Frenchman up against the wall of the small office. To the right, swinging doors led to a loading dock, and straight back was a service elevator.
“Make a sound, monsieur, and you will die here tonight,” Carter hissed in perfect French. The old janitor’s eyes were wide, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He nodded.
“You have the master key for the apartments?”
The man was too frightened to lie. He nodded again.
“And the key for the elevator?” Carter snapped. “Be quick!”