A thousand feet up it began to snow, lightly, but in large flakes. If this kept up, Carter suspected they would close the lift. Too much snow made operating the cable car dangerous.
It was very cold at this altitude. Carter could see his breath.
A large tower suddenly loomed up, and they passed beside it, the pullies bumping on the tower’s tracks, then it was gone.
Carter lit a cigarette, then pulled out Wilhelmina and checked to make sure a round was in the firing chamber. He clicked the safety off as they passed another tower, and suddenly the mountain top came into view, a lone man standing on the broad veranda of the closed restaurant.
It was Ganin!
Carter looked for the latch that would open the cable car’s window, noting Ganin’s hand coming up. The Killmaster fell back into the corner of the car as the window glass was shattered. Two other shots whined off the side of the car before it slid into the upper terminal building.
For a few moments Ganin was out of sight. Carter leaped up on the inside handrails, flipped open the car’s rooftop access hatch, and quickly pulled himself up, closing the hatch behind him.
He lay on his stomach as the car bumped to a halt. A second later Ganin came across the broad lobby from the veranda, and Carter snapped off two shots just as the car jerked beneath him. Both shots went wide and Ganin spun to the left, diving out of sight around the corner.
Carter rolled off the edge of the car, jumped down to the concrete platform, and leaped behind a steel support column, a single shot ricocheting off the steel inches from his head.
It was quiet in the building. Carter could hear the rising wind beginning to hum through the cables outside.
“You’re not going to leave this mountain alive, Nick Carter!” Ganin called from around the corner.
“In that case you won’t mind telling me where Lydia Borasova is being kept,” Carter shouted.
Ganin laughed. “Are you in love... again, Carter? Haven’t you learned your lesson?”
Carter said nothing.
“She is with Kobelev, in Innsbruck,” Ganin said.
“Where in Innsbruck?”
“It does not matter, Carter.”
“It matters to me, because after I kill you, I’m going to kill Kobelev,” Carter said. He peered around the edge of the steel beam. There was a door at the rear of the cable car terminal that probably led back into the restaurant, or perhaps a storeroom.
There was silence in the lobby.
“Ganin?” Carter shouted. “It cannot hurt to tell me.”
“They are staying in a chalet.”
“Where?” Carter asked. He edged around the beam.
“At Axamer Lizum.”
“Where the winter Olympics were held?”
“Yes, that is the place,” Ganin said.
“Who else is with them?” Carter shouted, almost smiling; Ganin was so sure he would get Carter, he didn’t think twice about giving him the information. He stepped around the beam and, keeping on the balls of his feet, raced to the rear door. It was unlocked.
“They are alone...” Ganin was saying as Carter slipped into a storeroom for the kitchen.
He raced down a narrow aisle, then through a set of swinging doors into the kitchen itself. From there he went out into the dining room, then hurried around to the front, and to the lobby.
Ganin was not there.
It took just a split second for Carter to realize that the Russian had probably come right behind him. He spun around the corner, bringing his Luger up, as Ganin came from the kitchen, the Russian’s gun aimed at Carter’s chest.
Carter fired first, catching Ganin in the shoulder, shoving him backward into the kitchen.
Ganin fired twice as he fell, a hot stitch lacing into Carter’s side, causing him to drop back.
The shot had been impossible, yet Ganin had missed killing Carter by less than two inches.
Carter watched the kitchen doors swing on their hinges for several moments before he slipped around the corner, and keeping low, he zigzagged to the wall beside the doorway.
There were no sounds from within the kitchen. Carter eased around the edge and looked through the window. The kitchen was empty. A trail of blood led across the white tile floor to a door on the opposite side of the room.
That was the sucker’s route. Ganin most likely would be waiting just beyond the far door, covering the entire kitchen, waiting for Carter to barge through.
Carter turned on his heel, and more cautiously now than before, he hurried back to the lobby, which wrapped around the front and two sides of the restaurant complex perched on the peak. Outside was the veranda, which afforded a magnificent view on clear days. Now it was snowing in earnest, and the wind was beginning to rise.
Hugging the inner wall, Carter hurried around to the left. Just around the corner he pulled up short. A tall husky man lay on his side, his eyes open. He was dead. A small puddle of blood had formed on the floor just below the back of his head.
Carter guessed the dead man had been in charge of that end of the cable car run. Ganin had killed him.
A gust of cold wind suddenly blasted down the lobby and then was cut off.
Ganin was outside. Evidently he had made his way from the kitchen to the lobby, and then out onto the veranda.
Carter turned back and ran to the cable car terminal, where he opened the outside door and eased out onto the veranda.
A bullet whined off the concrete, and Carter snapped off a shot at Ganin’s fleeing figure as it darted around the far corner.
Keeping low, Carter raced to the corner, then flattened against the wall before he peered around the edge.
The veranda was empty. Carter stepped around and walked to the far side, which ended abruptly at a stone wall, the drop further protected by a tall wire mesh fence.
Carter spotted the ladder that led up to the roof of the restaurant at the same moment he heard the distinctive snap of a pistol’s hammer dropping on either an empty chamber or a defective shell.
He looked up, bringing Wilhelmina around as Ganin disappeared over the peak of the roof. Carter scrambled up the ladder, and at the edge he cautiously looked up. Ganin was nowhere in sight, but a trail of blood went from the edge to the peak above.
“Ganin!” Carter shouted.
There was no reply, only the wind.
“Ganin, give up! I won’t kill you if you give up.”
Ganin appeared at the roof’s peak twenty feet to the left, and he pulled the trigger of his gun, but nothing happened.
Carter held back from firing. Ganin’s gun had jammed. He holstered Wilhelmina and withdrew his stiletto, then climbed up onto the roof, making his way to the peak.
Just over the edge he looked down in time to see Ganin on the far side of the building, very near the edge, below which was a sheer drop of more than a thousand feet.
“No!” Carter shouted.
Ganin looked back and grinned.
Carter suddenly realized that the Russian knew what he was doing. Evidently below the roof was another part of the veranda.
Ganin scrambled for the eaves, intending to swing over the edge and drop down.
Carter brought his knife arm back and threw his stiletto with every ounce of his strength. The blade caught Ganin high in the shoulder just as he was heaving himself over the edge.
He let out a short, sharp cry and then was gone.
Carter slid down to the edge of the roof and looked over. Below and to the right was a ten-foot-square platform, evidently used as an access for several electrical cables coming up the side of the mountain.
Straight down was a sheer cliff, the distance lost in the snow and mist.
There was some blood on the edge of the platform’s rail, but not on the platform itself.