Carter was close now. Just around the corner, barely a few feet away. Ganin raised his silenced pistol. He did not want the final confrontation to come then and there, yet he was very wary of the American, very respectful of him.
Kobelev had been nearly insane with rage earlier on the telephone. He wanted his woman back. He wanted her in Moscow so that he could strangle her to death with his own hands. He would cut her into little pieces and mail them to her parents. Then he would kill them. Anyone who had ever known or loved Lydia Borasova would die.
But not Carter.
“Listen to me, Arkadi, listen very closely. I do not want him killed yet. He must come to me first. It has all been arranged. He must come to me. He must!”
Carter turned, going the other way down the corridor. Ganin could hear him moving away, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
Seconds later the stairwell door bumped closed, and Ganin eased around the corner. The corridor was empty.
He took his set of elevator keys out of his pocket, activated the service elevator, and took it downstairs. Going out the side door, he raced around to the front of the apartment building, stopping just before the corner.
Five minutes later Carter emerged from the opposite side of the building, paused a moment, then crossed the street and hurried back toward the Champs-Elysees.
Ganin, wearing a maintenance man’s coveralls, climbed into his van and headed slowly up the street behind Carter, a cigarette dangling languorously out of the corner of his mouth.
Carter rounded the corner at the Palais de l’Elysée, and Ganin sped up to catch up with him. He did not want to lose the American. Kobelev wanted another challenge thrown at him. For that they would need to know at what hotel he was staying, and whether or not he had the woman with him.
Ganin came around the corner down the Avenue Montaigne, but Carter was gone. Only a few cars were parked on the street, and there were absolutely no pedestrians.
“Damn,” Ganin swore aloud. Had he underestimated the American? Without slowing his pace, and without it being obvious that he was searching for someone, Ganin continued down to the corner, then sped back toward the Place de la Concorde.
He parked the van along the side, pulled off his coveralls, threw away the cigarette, donned a wide-brimmed borsalino, and hurried on foot back the way he had come.
Carter had apparently suspected he was being followed. He had ducked in somewhere to see who came up behind him. A van. Not an Italian on foot...
There was something about the maintenance man in the service van that had passed moments ago that bothered Carter. But the van had disappeared and had not come back around the block. Was he jumping at shadows?
He could feel Ganin’s presence now much more strongly than before. It gave him an itchy feeling between his shoulders. Borodin had been expecting him. Did that mean Ganin was close at hand?
Carter glanced back toward St. Honoré. Had Ganin in fact been in the apartment building? Had Ganin taken the old Frenchman out of the elevator?
He took a step back, but then stopped. He was being stupid. Had Ganin been there, he’d be long gone by now. The confrontation would come, but not just then.
Carter looked down toward the Rond Point, then turned on his heel and hurried around the corner to the Avenue Roosevelt, the back way to the hotel, stopping every now and then at random intervals to duck into doorways, to bend over to tie his shoes, and see what was behind him. But if Ganin was there, he was not able to detect him.
Hawk’s words kept coming back to him: Against Ganin... you’re going to have to be whole. No, more than that — you’ll need a hundred and ten percent.
Carter knew that he was nowhere near that. He was tired, he was battered from his encounter with Borodin, and the wound in his right leg was throbbing so badly he could hardly concentrate on anything else.
The dawn was just breaking when Carter circled his hotel twice before he slipped in the back way and hurried upstairs to his room.
He listened at the door for a moment but could hear nothing, so he let himself in.
Lydia was sitting up in bed. She was awake, a terrified look in her eyes. When she recognized who it was she sagged in relief.
“I didn’t know what happened to you,” she said. She made no move to get up.
Carter closed and locked the door, then went to the window and looked down at the street. Traffic was beginning to pick up with the morning, but there was no sign of the van or the maintenance man he had seen driving it.
“What is it?” Lydia asked. “What happened?”
Carter turned, and she realized that he was in pain. She shoved the covers back and jumped out of bed.
“What happened to you?” she cried.
“I’m all right,” Carter said.
She helped him to the bed, took off his shoes, and helped him take off his jacket. “You went to Borodin,” she said. “You killed him? You went up against him?”
Carter looked up. “He won’t kill little girls again.”
Lydia studied his face for a moment, then glanced at the window. “But you suspect you may have been followed. By whom?” She looked back. “Ganin?”
Carter shrugged. “He’s probably here in the city.” The last few days were finally starting to catch up with him. The room was beginning to go gray and soft.
He pulled out Wilhelmina from his holster and handed it up to Lydia.
“It’s time I trusted you,” he mumbled. “Can you use it?”
Lydia took the Luger in both hands almost as if it were some sort of an offering. She nodded.
Carter lay back on the pillow. Her figure was swimming above him.
“Sleep now,” she said. “There will be no more battles. I will be here...”
It was dark. Carter lay nude on his stomach. He awoke to someone massaging his shoulder muscles with strong, sure fingers. He was aware that the entire day had passed, although he had no idea of the time.
“How do you feel?” Lydia asked above him, her voice soft, husky.
“What time is it?”
“About ten. You slept all day,” Lydia said. She was straddling his hips. She got off, and he rolled over onto his back.
“No trouble?” he asked. He was stiff and still very sore, but he felt a lot better.
Lydia shook her head. Her long blond hair was down, and she was nude, the nipples of her large breasts erect. “It will come, though,” she said. “I can feel it.” She began gently massaging the muscles of his chest, her fingers lingering here and there around the various scars he had collected over the years.
Carter started to get up. He was hungry. After he had something to eat, he wanted to telephone Hawk, to see if Kobelev and Ganin had reacted to Borodin’s death, and if another lure had surfaced. But Lydia pushed him back.
“Not yet,” she said. She reached down and kissed his nipples, taking each between her lips and rolling her tongue around them.
The room was warm, but she was shivering. Carter could feel her entire body shaking. She was frightened.
He lifted her head, looked into her eyes for a long moment, then she came into his arms and they kissed deeply, her mouth hot and demanding. He felt a sense of betrayal to Sigourney, but this was different; this was not love. It was nothing more than two people alone, comforting each other.
When they parted, Carter gently eased her over onto her back, kissed her chin, lingered at her neck, and then kissed her breasts.
She arched her back and moaned with pleasure, her shivering intensifying.