They could do nothing until Kobelev made his next move, which would not happen if they went deep.
After they cleaned up and changed they went down to the bar, where they had a couple of drinks, and then went into the dining room for an excellent dinner.
“When this is over I’d like to live in New York. Manhattan,” Lydia said over coffee.
“Why is that?” Carter asked, smiling.
“It is an exciting city. Like Moscow, only a lot brighter. There are many places there for me to work. I could be a translator.”
“Perhaps we will offer you a job.”
Lydia was startled. “You mean with the CIA or something?”
“Or something.”
She shook her head. “No. When this is over I think I will have had enough of that sort of business. You must remember I was raised on this sort of thing, living in the Soviet Union.”
“I understand,” Carter said, and he did. “Whatever it is you want, we’ll help you with it. I promise.”
She looked deeply into his eyes. For the first time in twenty-four hours, she didn’t seem to be in abject terror. “You are a good man, Nick Carter, even though you have a blind spot concerning Nikolai Fedor.”
Carter’s jaw tightened. “He’s a ruthless, dangerous man.”
She agreed. “And so are you, I think.”
Carter lit a cigarette and looked away. Sigourney seemed so terribly far away. It scared him to think how fast her memory was fading.
The waiter brought their check, Carter paid it, and he and Lydia went outside, across toward the university. The rain had let up for the moment, although it was bitterly cold. Traffic was light. Carter paid very strict attention to every car or truck or van that passed them. Something would come, perhaps early this evening. More likely in the middle of the night.
They took a turn through the university grounds, but then Lydia became cold, and she asked if they couldn’t return to the hotel.
“What happens if he makes no move between now and eight in the morning?” she asked on the way back.
“That’s not likely.”
“Tonight, then?”
Carter nodded. The same blue Ford Cortina that had passed them on their way up from the hotel drifted slowly by. There were two men in the car. Carter managed to get a fairly good look at both of them as the car passed beneath a streetlight. Neither of them was Ganin; of that he was absolutely certain. In fact neither of them had looked like Russian KGB.
The hotel doorman opened the double glass doors for them, and they crossed the lobby and took the elevator up. Something didn’t feel right to Carter, so he punched the button for the second floor, and they got off there.
Carter and Lydia watched from an alcove around the corner from the main ballroom as the elevator continued up to the eighth floor, then was recalled to the lobby.
The car stayed on the ground floor for half a minute, then started up. Carter reached inside his jacket for his Luger to make sure it was ready.
The elevator doors opened, and two husky men, guns drawn, stepped out. Another two inside the elevator continued up.
There was no doubt in the Killmaster’s mind who and what they were after, but they just didn’t look like Russians to Carter, and that bothered him. Who the hell were they?
Carter turned, and holding Lydia by the elbow, he hustled her silently down the corridor, into the ballroom, and across the dance floor to the rear exits, where they took the back stairs two at a time.
At the bottom they ducked through the kitchen, through the loading dock area, and out the back way, pulling up short as a pair of headlights turned the corner into the alley and came their way.
There would be someone out front, Carter supposed, as well as this car, and the four men upstairs.
They turned and hurried back through the loading dock and supply area, where at the rear they found a heavy steel door that opened onto a set of stairs that led down into the darkness.
Carter found the light switch and flipped it on, and they headed down into the bowels of the hotel where he supposed the heating plant was located, and which contained the plumbing and sewage lines.
This was a service entrance. At the bottom of the stairs they found themselves in a long tunnel lined with a maze of pipes, some of them wrapped in asbestos cloth, some equipped with huge valves.
Lights were strung at fifty-foot intervals down the long tunnel, which ran parallel with the street and apparently ran at least the length of the block beneath all the buildings above.
Carter and Lydia hurried along the tunnel, their heels echoing in the narrow confines, until they came to another stairwell up.
The stairwell door at the hotel, back the way they had just come, clattered. Careful not to grab hold of a live steam pipe, Carter quickly scrambled up the pipes along the wall, pulled out his stiletto, and at the top reached out and cut through the electrical wires connecting all the tunnel lights.
There were several large sparks, and the tunnel was suddenly plunged into darkness.
Carter jumped down, groped for and found Lydia, and the two of them made their way to the stairwell and softly went up.
At the top, Carter listened at the door. There were no sounds from the other side, although he could hear someone coming down the tunnel behind them.
Unlatching the steel door, Carter eased it open onto a plain corridor with cement walls. No one was there.
He and Lydia slipped out into the corridor, then rushed to the back door, which opened onto the same alley as the hotel, but up a hundred yards, and around a slight bend.
They slipped outside, and keeping an eye on the alley for any pursuers, they walked up to the street, then turned right toward the river.
“They were not Russians,” Lydia said breathlessly.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” she snapped. “What the hell is going on?”
Carter glanced back over his shoulder, but no one was coming after them. They had made a clean break. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
They walked up toward the Kennedy Bridge, and a couple of blocks later, Carter hailed a passing cab. He ordered the driver to take them to a small hotel near the railway station. Once, many years ago, he had stayed there. It was one of the lesser establishments in Bonn, and the clerks asked no questions.
The cabby smiled smugly, sure that he was bringing a couple to an illicit rendezvous.
He dropped them off in front of the seedy hotel, and Carter tipped him well.
Inside, the clerk grinned as Carter rented the room under the name Herr Schmidt, and upstairs Carter made sure Lydia understood where the fire escape was located so that if the need arose she had a bolt-hole.
“We’re leaving first thing in the morning, no matter what does or doesn’t happen,” Carter said.
Lydia’s eyes were wide. She looked up at him. “And if you don’t come for me...?”
“I will,” Carter said with more confidence than he actually felt. Kobelev had been ahead of them all the way. “Seven o’clock sharp, I’ll pick you up in front of the train station.”
“In the Mercedes?”
Carter nodded. “But listen to me, Lydia,” he said. “No matter what happens, no matter what, stay here. Don’t leave the room for anyone or anything until morning.”
She nodded.
For a moment a twinge of real fear and guilt crossed his mind. The instructions he was giving her were much the same as the fatal instructions he had given to Sigourney a thousand years ago.
“What is it?” Lydia asked, reading something of that in his eyes.
“Just stay here until morning. I’ll see you at seven.”
She nodded again, and Carter turned and left the room.