It had started to drizzle again. Carter pulled up his coat collar and walked over to the station, where he got a cab that took him across town to within a block of the Köngishof Hotel. He went the rest of the way on foot.
The desk cleric looked up in surprise as Carter walked into the lobby, but then he smiled and nodded.
Something was up. But it was something that the desk cleric knew about. Carter doubted that Kobelev would be so open about stalking him, so it meant something else was in store.
He took the elevator to the eighth floor and walked down the corridor to their room. He opened the door and stepped inside, directly into two husky men with drawn pistols.
He stopped short and slowly raised his hands. These were not Russians. They were definitely not Russians.
A third man, dressed in a plain dark suit, came around the corner and frisked Carter, coming up only with Wilhelmina. He looked at the Luger, shook his head, and pocketed it.
“Where is she?” he said in English.
“Who?” Carter replied. The man was German. Obviously a cop.
“The woman you checked in with.”
“Her.”
“Yes, Mr. Scott. Your wife. Elizabeth Scott... also known as Lydia Borasova.”
“Never heard of her,” Carter said. Kobelev had done his work well.
“She is wanted for the murder of a Soviet diplomat in New York City. Petr Lashkin. They were lovers. Were you aware of that?”
Carter said nothing.
The German patted Carter’s Luger in his coat pocket. “Have you any idea of the penalty in West Germany for carrying a concealed weapon? An unregistered concealed weapon?”
“I am sorry, Hen...” Carter said.
“My name is of no importance. Only your name is. And I am sure it is not Scott. Would you care to enlighten me?”
“If I gave you a telephone number, Officer — a number that would clear up any questions you might have — would you call it?”
The German cop stared at Carter, a very hard expression in his eyes. Finally he shook his head and stepped a little closer. “I think not. You know, I believe you are a spy. Perhaps for the Russians, since you are traveling with a Russian murderess... whom we will find, by the way.” He shook his head again. “No, I think I would rather have the chance to talk with you. Just you and me, you know, for a day or two. Perhaps longer. However long it takes.”
The other two cops heard none of that.
The German cop pulled Carter’s Luger out of his pocket and examined it closely this time. He looked up. “An interesting weapon,” he said. “No serial numbers.”
“How much has the KGB paid you to help out, comrade?” Carter asked quietly.
A flinty expression came into the German’s eyes the moment before he stepped forward and swung.
Carter feinted back, blocked the punch, and hit the cop with every ounce of his strength in the solar plexus.
The man grunted once and went to his knees.
The other two leaped forward as Carter grabbed Wilhelmina, then the Killmaster jumped back and slammed the door in their faces.
He spun around and raced down the corridor toward the stairs. Kobelev was good. Damned good. But now, at last, Carter felt he was beginning to have the man’s measure.
Twelve
The elevator was still on the eighth floor. Carter reached inside, punched the button for the lobby, then continued down the corridor to the stairwell.
Just inside the door he waited for a moment as the two German cops skidded around the corner. They looked up at the elevator indicator, then one of them pulled out a walkie-talkie. They had someone in the lobby, just as Carter had thought they might.
He turned and hurried down the stairs, taking them recklessly two and three at a time.
At the bottom he holstered Wilhelmina, straightened his jacket, and stepped out into the main corridor where he headed across to the lobby.
The desk clerk spotted him halfway to the front doors, but he was so stunned for several crucial seconds that he said and did nothing.
Two cops waited by the elevator, which was just opening as Carter made it to the front doors. The clerk came alive at that moment, shouting and gesturing toward the door.
The doorman suddenly stepped up. Carter stiff-armed the big man, stumbling and nearly falling in the process, then raced across the street, down the block, and into the university grounds, the sounds of whistles and distant sirens beginning to fill the night.
Because of the hour — it was a few minutes after ten — and the weather, the university was deserted. Carter followed the sidewalks through the trees and gardens, passing ornate baroque buildings and statues, finally emerging on the other side of the complex.
The huge cathedral on Miinsterplatz rose up tall in the misty night sky, as did the town hall building just beyond it.
He managed to make it across the broad street and down a narrow avenue that led over to another main thoroughfare just as a police car, its blue lights flashing, its siren blaring, screamed around from Adenauerallee.
Carter ducked into the shadows of a shop doorway as the police car passed, then he hurried across the main avenue and down another side street.
It took him nearly forty minutes to make it to the hotel near the railroad station where he had left Lydia.
There were no suspicious-looking characters outside, and no police were there — yet. Nevertheless, Carter went around to the back of the hotel, pulled down the fire-escape ladder, and scrambled up to their third-floor room.
The curtains were half open, the room in darkness. But Carter could see that no one was inside. Lydia was gone.
The window was unlocked. He shoved it open and climbed inside. Closing the curtains, he flipped on the lights.
The room was empty. A chair by the writing desk was turned over, as was the wastepaper basket.
Lydia was gone. The German police had been nothing more than a diversion to keep Carter busy. It meant that they had been spotted by Kobelev’s people, had been followed here to this hotel, and once Carter left they had grabbed the woman.
It was the same business that was used on St. Anne’s. Sigourney had been killed during a similar scenario. Christ! The same damned pattern, Carter thought. First, Kobelev created a signal that caused Carter to come running. Next, he engineered a diversion. And in the end — in the Caribbean, in New York, in Paris, and now in Bonn — Kobelev had his way.
In frustration, Carter took the small room apart piece by piece, looking for something — anything — that Lydia might have left behind. Any kind of a sign or clue as to what had happened there. But he found nothing.
He stood, finally, by the window looking out. Kobelev’s tactics were as simple as they were sophisticated.
First the unmistakable flag, and then the diversion.
It was the puppet master’s game. It was time now, Carter decided, to play the man at his own pace. He had invented the rules; Carter would now use them. And with a vengeance.
He made sure the room was neat and tidy, then he slipped out the window, down the fire escape, and around the corner to the train station.
The last train out for the evening would be departing in a few minutes, at midnight, for Munich, which was exactly where Carter wanted to go.
Kobelev would not want him stopped in Bonn, so he was certain the police had not been tipped off about the run-down hotel. The police had been nothing more than a means of prying Lydia loose from Carter’s grasp.
He only hoped that Kobelev had not yet had her killed. He suspected the Russian would ultimately use her as the bait for the final confrontation.
Carter bought a one-way ticket, first-class, boarded the train, and exactly at midnight it pulled out of the now nearly deserted station and headed east back through the city, before turning south for the eight-hour run to the capital city of Bavaria.