Ganin was seated across the desk from Kobelev, the wound in his thigh throbbing. There was a metal plate, silver and shiny, covering much of the back of Kobelev’s head.
“In the end he will beg us to kill him, Arkadi. He will beg us, this you must understand.”
Ganin nodded.
Kobelev stopped his pacing and leaned over his desk, his dark eyes boring into Ganin’s.
“There will be no mistakes. Your own life will depend upon it. Do you understand that as well?”
Again Ganin nodded. “It will be as you ask, Comrade General. There will be no escape for Carter. In the end he will be glad of his death.”
Kobelev straightened up and rubbed his hands together. “Oh, yes,” he said, smiling, his eyes bright. “Oh, yes, I am going to enjoy this very much.”
Preparations in Moscow had taken only forty-eight hours. A further five days in Western Europe completed the arrangements there, and Ganin had flown the day before to New York City to complete the last of the business.
The opening move, according to Kobelev’s plan, would come as suddenly as lightning. “A bolt from out of the heavens!”
Ganin was in time for his flight down to Washington, D.C., where he connected with the 12:45 p.m. Cubana Airlines flight direct to Havana, Cuba. The plane was a Tupolev TU-154, filled to capacity mostly with wild-looking Cuban characters on their way home from some sort of a function in Washington. All the way down they drank and argued and screamed their notions of the people’s revolution.
Ganin thought his fellow passengers ridiculous and annoying. He kept to himself as much as he could, but by the time they landed in Havana and went through the customs check, he was in a foul mood.
A staff car from the Soviet embassy was waiting for him outside the airport terminal. He threw his bags in the front seat and climbed in the back. The KGB’s Havana rezident, Viktor Chaikin, sat in the comer, a worried expression on his face.
“Arkadi Konstantinovich,” he said softly.
They shook hands. “You’re looking well, Viktor,” Ganin said.
The driver got in, and they headed into the city, the glass partition between the front and back seats giving them soundproof privacy.
“You had a pleasant flight down, I trust,” the KGB man said. He and Ganin had worked together out of Lisbon some years back. Ganin had respect for the man, but he had heard that Chaikin had been hitting the bottle pretty heavily. There had been talk about his recall from Havana, a move that would sound the death knell for his career.
“Absolutely rotten. Goddamned revolutionaries and their prattle.”
Chaikin laughed. “You ought to be living down here with them. It’s a wonder they ever could have mounted a revolution, let alone win it.”
They rode in silence for a few minutes, until Ganin glanced over at his old comrade.
“I didn’t come this way for small talk about the Cuban mentality.”
“No,” Chaikin said. “I understand that, Arkadi.”
“The preparations have been made?”
Chaikin nodded heavily. “In fact two of the rabble who came down on the plane with you will be assigned to the team.” He shook his head. He looked like a trapped man. “Arkadi, this will create a lot of trouble just when things were beginning to settle down.”
“You don’t know the trouble,” Ganin said. “But it will be done. You can’t imagine the trouble if we fail.”
“I know. They say he’s... crazy.”
“Don’t ever say that!” Ganin shouted. “Unless you want to be put up against a wall and shot! He’d do it himself!”
Chaikin seemed to gather himself up. “Right,” he said. “Tonight or tomorrow night, your choice, Arkadi.”
Ganin looked out at the landscape they were passing. Palm trees waved in the gentle tropical breezes. Peace, of a sort, had come to this island. It wouldn’t last long, though. Nothing ever lasted long. He turned back to Chaikin.
“Tonight,” he said.
Chaikin nodded. “The helicopter is ready. We’ll have you and your team over the drop zone no later than one in the morning. From there you should make it ashore by two, do your business, and get the hell out of there within an hour. The chopper will be back over the pickup point at three A.M. But it won’t stay for more than five minutes, so your timing will have to be tight. All that without practice.”
“It’ll work out,” Ganin said. “The men all understand the target?”
“Yes, they do, Arkadi.”
The night was almost unbelievably beautiful. Ten billion stars seemed to have been flung on a velvet backdrop from horizon to horizon, lending a fairy-tale atmosphere to an already enchanted scene.
Nick Carter could not remember the last time he had felt so good, so relaxed, so at ease. The ten days he and Sigourney had been on St. Anne’s had gone by in a flash. But they had twenty more glorious days left. He had been sure that after this long, he would have begun to get bored. But it hadn’t happened that way. Not with her.
He was seated alone on the broad veranda of the main house. They had finished dinner a little while ago, and Sigourney had gone inside to fetch them some brandy and coffee while he smoked a cigarette.
His leg was much better, the headaches had gone, and Carter was rested; he was fit. Not Hawk’s 110 percent, perhaps, but getting there.
He sighed deeply and sat back.
“Oh, my, that sounded positively lazy,” Sigourney called from the door. She came out onto the veranda with a tray that she set down on the wicker table. She came to him, snuggling into his lap, and kissed his ear.
“Bored yet?” she asked at length.
“No. You?”
“I never want to go back,” she answered. “I have everything I want or need right here.”
They both wore shorts, she wore one of his T-shirts, and he was bare-chested. She intertwined her fingers in the hair on his chest, then bent down and kissed his nipples.
Carter laughed. “The coffee will get cold,” he said.
“Screw the coffee,” Sigourney replied breathlessly. She got up, took his hands in hers, and started to pull him up when the marine telephone in the back beeped twice.
They both looked toward the door. The phone, which was hooked via single-sideband radio to the main island, beeped again.
“Damn,” Sigourney swore.
“Is Arthur inside?” Carter asked.
“He’s with Maria,” Sigourney said. “I told all of them to take the rest of the night off.”
The phone beeped a third time, and Carter got to his feet and went inside. He flipped the switch on the console and picked up the handset. There was only one person who would be calling him here.
“Yes?” he said, his heartbeat quickening.
“Nick, I’m sorry to bother you like this,” David Hawk, his voice distorted by the SSB transmission, said over the line.
“It’s all right, sir,” Carter said. “Is there a problem?”
“There might be, Nick. We’re just not sure. But I figured I’d better let you know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Remember our conversation about a certain friend from the other side. An expert?”
Hawk meant Ganin, of course. “Yes, sir, I remember. Is there more news?”
“Perhaps. Our people in Havana seem to think he’s there. In Cuba. Right at this moment.”
On assignment? Carter asked himself. To do what?
“He is very close to you, Nick. A couple of hundred miles. I thought you’d better know. Just be a little careful.”
“Yes, sir,” Carter said, his mind racing. “Thanks for calling me.”
“Are you... all right? How do you feel?”
“Never felt better, sir,” Carter said. “Never felt better.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Nick. When you get back we’ll have to do something about our mutual friend. He makes me nervous being this close.”