“You have a round-trip ticket,” he said solemnly, his eyes twinkling.
She reached over and hugged his arm. “I may never want to go back, Nick,” she said.
Customs was simple, and within a few minutes after landing, they took a cab down to the quay and found the boat that would ferry them across to tiny St. Anne’s Island. The weather was absolutely lovely: temperature in the low eighties, a soft trade wind from the east, and puffy white clouds sailing overhead at their own leisurely pace.
St. Anne’s was seventeen miles away, down toward Salt Cay, and the run in the forty-two-foot luxury cruiser operated by the resort took less than two hours. The island was almost perfectly round, with a fifty-foot hill in the center of its ten acres. The beaches were stunningly white, the cottages quaint and spotlessly clean, and the main house was just large enough to be comfortable without losing its Caribbean ambience.
In addition to two groundsmen, the staff included two maids, a houseman, two cooks, and a maintenance man-cum-scuba instructor.
They introduced themselves, helped Carter and Sigourney unpack, and then left.
“If there is anything... anything you need, just call, we’ll be there,” Arthur, the houseman, said in his lilting Caribbean accent.
It was very late afternoon, and the sun was sinking into the western sea. Sigourney stepped out onto the patio, which was barely fifty feet from the pure white beach, and shuddered with pleasure. She turned.
“This island is ours? Exclusively?”
“Except for the staff.”
“Who are discreet.”
“Who are discreet,” Carter agreed.
“Pour the champagne,” she said, undoing her skirt and letting it fall. “I want to make up for last night.”
Carter opened the champagne chilling on the sideboard as Sigourney took off her blouse and bra, then stepped out of her bikini panties. She was a beautiful woman, her breasts proud and firm, her nipples pink. Her belly was only slightly rounded, and her legs were long, straight, and beautifully formed, beginning at a soft swatch of dark hair.
She turned suddenly and ran down to the beach, plunging into the surf as Carter got undressed, then brought the champagne down to the sand.
“Nick... oh, Nick!” she cried from the water, a wave crashing over her.
He went back up to the house, got a large beach towel, and brought it back, spreading it out on the white sand.
“Come on in!” Sigourney called, splashing. “My God, it’s great!”
Carter marched down into the surf as another wave broke over Sigourney, knocking her flat. He helped her up, and she started to say something, when she suddenly stopped.
“Nick...?” she breathed.
Carter pulled her to him, her breasts crushed against his chest, her legs against his, and kissed her hard, her tongue suddenly darting into his mouth.
When they parted, her skin was flushed. She was smiling, her nostrils flared, her eyes wide, her lips moist. “I love you,” she said.
Carter picked her up, carried her back to the beach, and set her down gently on the large towel. She was limp in his arms, her eyes moist.
“I love you...” she murmured weakly as Carter kissed her left breast, and then her right, his tongue lingering on her nipples, around the areola, then encircling the entire breast.
She moaned. Her knees came up.
Carter kissed the area between her breasts, then ran his tongue down to her belly button, where he again lingered, her hips rising to meet his touch.
She was shivering now, not from the wind, because it was warm, but because of her passion. Her entire body thrummed like the plucked string of a violin.
Her thighs were wonderfully smooth as Carter worked his way up from behind her knees.
She reached down and took his head in her hands. “Nick!” she cried. “I want you now!”
He came into her deeply, slowly at first, her pelvis rising sharply to meet his, her body shuddering, her eyes closed but her mouth half open, a golden glow radiating from her skin.
Slowly, gently, purposefully he pulled away, and then thrust deeper so that it seemed as if her entire body would envelop his, so that they were one vibration together, one instrument being played in unison, singing out their passion.
Forgotten were past hurts and injuries; forgotten were Hawk’s warnings, and the previous night’s tiredness; forgotten was everything but the ecstatic moment.
“Nick... oh, Nick, I love you,” Sigourney cried softly as their lovemaking seemed to go on and on forever, and they both seemed to balance on the very peak of a tall, wonderful mountain before plunging together into sensual oblivion.
Just as Carter opened his eyes and looked down at her, she opened hers.
“I do love you,” she said.
“And I think I love you,” he replied.
Two
Arkadi Ganin stepped out of the diplomatic exit of the United Nations Building, nodded to the security guard as he passed, then walked the few blocks up 42nd Street to the Grand Hyatt Hotel.
It was raining and blustery, but heedless of the weather, Ganin reviewed in his mind the preparations he had completed here in New York, and elsewhere. The plan that Kobelev had worked out in painstaking detail was as bold and dangerous as it was faultlessly brilliant.
Ganin had been on a lot of assignments in his distinguished career, but none could ever compare to this one. It was the sort of thing he liked most. This time there would be no flabby, unaware politician for him to kill, no military leader, no general, no diplomat. This time he was going after a much more interesting target. A target that certainly could and most assuredly would fight back. It would come to a one-on-one fight.
At the luxury hotel next to Grand Central Station, he took the elevator up to his twelfth-floor room and finished packing the rest of his things in his black leather Gucci suitcase and carry-on bag.
The Western world, he felt, for all its supposed openness and freedom, was like a fast-running horse with blinders on. People saw what they wanted to see. A man such as Arkadi, traveling under the name Bruno Hildebrandt, a wealthy West German businessman who dressed well and carried expensive luggage, could not be a Soviet operative. Soviet operatives were shambling, ugly monsters who wore baggy suits.
He glanced at his gold Rolex, and grinned. “Stupid bastards,” he mumbled. He went to the window that looked down on 42nd Street, noting its traffic and its clogged sidewalks. There was no order here. No organization. Everything seemed to be in chaos. This was nothing, however, to the chaos he was going to wreak on a certain member of the American intelligence community.
After checking to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, Ganin left a tip for the maid, then took his bags downstairs, where he checked out, paying for his stay with his American Express card. Outside, he got a cab and ordered the driver to take him out to Kennedy, then he settled back with his thoughts for the long ride.
Nikolai Kobelev was a man of great power and intelligence who nevertheless had one fault: his all-consuming hatred for the AXE Killmaster, Nick Carter. Ganin wasn’t sure of all the details, but he knew it had something to do with Kobelev’s daughter, now dead, and some series of operations in which Kobelev himself had very nearly been killed.
There was an obsessive, almost blind rage in the new master of Komodel that would not go away until Carter was killed. It was dangerous, but Ganin, who had languished in a lot of petty little assignments recently, was glad for the challenge.
“I want him dead, Arkadi,” Kobelev had said, pacing in his office in Moscow. “But first I want him to suffer, as I have. I want him to feel the same losses I have felt. I want him to understand that nothing he can do will alter the outcome. I want him to know real fear.”