Carter stroked her thighs, her legs opening, and he worked his way down between her breasts to her navel, and to her hard, flat belly with his tongue. Her hips rose and fell, and her breath came faster.
She reached down and took his head in her hands, guiding him lower, between her legs. “Oh, God, it is wonderful,” she murmured in Russian. “Please... please.”
She was moist and ready. When Carter touched her with his tongue she jerked violently as if she had received an electric shock.
He raised his body and looked at her face. Her eyes were half closed, her lips parted.
“Yes?” she breathed. “Yes... now?”
Carter moved up, and she took him in her hands, guiding him inside her, her hips thrusting up to receive him, her legs coming up, locking around his back, her hands on his buttocks urging him against her.
He lingered, deep inside her for a long time, her hands up and down his back, and he kissed her breasts, taking the nipples in his mouth.
She moaned loudly, her entire body in barely controlled motion as Carter withdrew, then thrust within her again.
Slowly he made love to her, for the moment the terrible vision of Sigourney’s body gone from his mind, lost in the comfort and pleasure of the here and now.
Lydia eased into the gentle motion with him, her pelvis rising deliberately to meet his, her mouth open, her tongue flicking out, her eyes glazed.
They seemed to hang in a state of suspended time, their pleasure building by slow degrees.
Gone, too, from Carter’s mind, for the moment, were thoughts about Kobelev and Ganin, and about the Russian he had killed that morning. Gone was his hunger and pain. All that was left was pleasure.
It went on for an eternity, higher and higher they went, until in the end they rose together in a blinding explosion, wave after wave of intense sensation that neither of them wanted ever to end.
When it was over, Carter lay back, and Lydia sat up to look down at his face. There was a sad expression in her eyes.
“It will never be like this again, will it,” she said after a long time.
Carter smiled gently. “Nothing stays the same,” he said.
“In the States...” she began.
“You will find someone.” Carter answered her unspoken question.
The bedside telephone rang, shattering the fragile mood, and Carter sat up with a jerk. Lydia reared back, her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide.
The phone rang a second time. Carter picked it up.
“Yes?” he said.
“Are you rested, Mr. Carter?” a man’s voice said in English, with a barely discernible Russian accent.
Carter got out of bed and took the phone with him to the window, the cord barely long enough to reach. There was a lot of traffic outside, but nothing suspicious.
“The maintenance van on the Avenue Montaigne,” Carter said softly.
“Very perceptive of you,” the Russian said.
“Arkadi Ganin.”
Ganin laughed, the sound dry. “We think it terribly unfair of you to have taken the girl. Nikolai is very angry.”
“The spoils of war,” Carter replied. He motioned for Lydia to get dressed. “But you know where we are, why not come up here and get her?”
“It’s not I who cares about the girl,” Ganin said. “In any event, how do you suppose I found you?”
“You followed me. But you made a mistake.”
“Yes?”
“You allowed me to rest. You should have come in for the kill directly after Borodin. Or was that poor old building employee too much for you?”
There was a very long silence on the line.
“What’s the matter, Arkadi Konstantinovich? Has Kobelev pulled your leash up tight?” Carter taunted. “Tell me, has he had you kill the obligatory child yet? Are you good at that sort of thing? I understand it’s Komodel’s initiation rite.”
Ganin did not rise to the bait. “I expected more from you than that, Carter. Much more. Perhaps Kobelev was exaggerating.”
Lydia was pulling on her clothes. She had grabbed her suitcase and was throwing the rest of her things into it.
“What do you want?” Carter said.
“You.”
“Not yet. Kobelev means to see me dead. I’m sure he wants to see me crawl on my hands and knees, but not here in Paris, not yet.”
“Do not be so sure...”
“No, Kobelev’s killing ground has already been set. Somewhere farther to the east. Finland, perhaps. Maybe Austria or Switzerland. Somewhere at risk to him, but a place I am sure to come. So, what do you want now?”
“As I said, Carter, you. But this time I’m going to give you a real chance at me. It is time, I think, that you and I meet.”
“If and when I see you, I’ll kill you, Ganin.”
Ganin laughed. “You will try, Mr. Carter. That is all you can say for certain.”
Carter grabbed his Luger from the nightstand, levered a round in the chamber while holding the telephone cradled on his shoulder, and slipped the weapon’s safety off. Back by the window he looked outside.
“Show yourself,” Carter snapped.
“Sure,” Ganin said. “Across the street, second floor.”
Carter looked across the street. A figure appeared in the window of a second-story apartment.
Ganin’s laugh came over the phone. “I think it’s time we meet, Mr. Carter. The Eiffel Tower, shall we say?”
“What time—” Carter began, but the connection was broken.
Carter threw the phone down and began pulling on his clothes. Ganin had found them at the hotel by following him that morning from Borodin’s apartment. It meant there was a very good possibility that Kobelev’s man did not know about the Jaguar sedan parked in the hotel’s lot.
A plan was beginning to form in Carter’s mind as he finished dressing and strapping on his weapons. Lydia was already by the door, so frightened she could barely keep still.
Hawk had also said that in order to beat Kobelev they’d have to play him at his own game.
It was foolish taking Ganin’s challenge and meeting him that night, but it was the one thing Carter knew he was going to have to do. If he couldn’t get a clear shot, at least the exercise would provide him, in some small measure, with an idea of just whom he was up against. Not some phantom figure on a computer printout, but a real flesh-and-blood person.
He grabbed his suitcase and opened the door a crack. The corridor was empty. He propelled Lydia out the door and down to the stairs as the elevator started up from the lobby.
Before they started down, Carter stood for a moment at the head of the stairs to listen. No one was there.
The elevator was just stopping at their floor when Carter and Lydia hit the stairs, taking them two at a time but making as little noise as possible.
At the bottom they turned right, going through a rear hallway, then out a side door to the small parking lot behind the hotel’s outdoor garden area.
From there, beyond a tall stone fence, they could see the top of the Arc de Triomphe, illuminated against the night sky.
An older couple were just climbing out of a maroon Mercedes, and they looked up, startled, as Carter and Lydia raced to the Jaguar, unlocked it, and tossed their bags inside.
“Down!” Carter snapped as he started the powerful engine and swung around to the exit.
Lydia ducked down below window level as the Jaguar burst out onto the Rue de Berri, the tires skidding on the pavement as Carter hauled the wheel around. They shot up across St.-Honoré, then left to Avenue des Ternes.
Three blocks later Carter slowed down and began taking random turns left, then right, and right again, then left. Sometimes speeding up, sometimes slowing down. On the far side of the Bois de Boulogne he pulled over to the curb, doused the lights, and waited to see if they had been followed. But there was nothing other than the normal flow of traffic behind them. No vans, no cars, or anything else pulled up behind or ahead of them. They had made their break.