It was Herr Hauptli, and — for once — he was alone.
I waved. "Good morning, Herr Hauptli."
He smiled. "Good morning, Herr Peabody."
"I missed you yesterday, or whenever it was we were going to ski together."
"Pressure of business, no doubt," he said pleasantly.
"Yes," I said, glancing quickly at him. But he had turned away to gaze down the slope.
"And where is your lovely wife?"
"Packing."
"Then you are leaving?"
I nodded.
"Pity. It's been such a good run of weather."
"Indeed it has."
He smiled and sat on a rock outcrop near the top of the run. I joined him while he laced his boots tightly and started to wax his skis with blue wax.
"Where are your friends?" I asked him as I sat down next to him. What the hell, I had nothing else to do at the moment.
"They are at the hotel," he smiled. "They did not seem too eager to join me today. A late night at the Bar Esqui with lumumbas running out of their ears."
"You usually are inseparable."
"That is the way with money. It attracts like a magnet." He smiled again, the crows' feet at the corners of his eyes deep and shadowed.
"You are a cynic, Herr Hauptli."
"I am a realist, Herr Peabody."
He picked up the first ski and began to apply wax to the bottom carefully. He was a meticulous, methodic worker, exactly what you would expect of a good German.
"Fraulein Peabody reminds me of someone close to me," he said after a moment.
"Indeed?"
"I had a daughter, you know." He glanced up. "Of course, you did not know. Sorry." He continued with his waxing. "She was a most beautiful girl."
"Was, Herr Hauptli?"
He ignored my interruption. "She was nineteen and away at the University," he went on. "My wife — her mother — died when she was a small girl of five. I am afraid I was never able to give her the proper guidance in growing up. You understand?" His eyes rose and met mine.
"I have never been a father, so I cannot truly know, Herr Hauptli."
"An honest answer." He sighed. "Whatever it was — parental neglect, or misguided lavishment of material possessions on her — when she went away to the University we lost contact."
"It happens these days."
"In her case, the very worst things happened. Her companions were very much into the drug scene." He glanced at me again. "And she became involved with this group to an extent that I could not cope." He continued waxing. "She became addicted to heroin."
I stared at Hauptli.
"One year after her addiction she died of an overdose." He gazed out into the distance over the Vega of Granada. "Self-administered."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"There is no use to waste your sorrow at this late date," said Hauptli with a harsh sound to his normally pleasant voice.
"It's the waste of human life I deplore," I said, thinking of what Juana had said at breakfast.
He shrugged. "In a way, I blame myself. I had evaded the responsibility of a father. I had taken up with other women — not one, but many — and had neglected my daughter." He thought a moment. "And she suffered my neglect, reacting in the only way she could. By rejecting herself in exactly the same way I had rejected her."
"A shrink might tell you differently," I said warningly. "Self-analysis is a dangerous game."
"It wasn't only the women I took up with. It was the business I was in."
"Every man must have a profession," I said.
"But not the one I had."
I watched him, knowing what he was going to say.
"The drug business," he said with a bitter smile. "Yes. I had quite probably supplied the heroin with which my only child had killed herself. How does that sit with your morality, Herr Peabody?"
I shook my head.
"It sat badly with mine. I began to analyze the business I had always been in. I began to think of its effects on the human race. I did not like what I saw."
He selected another ski and began waxing it.
"I decided that it was time to get out of the business and begin making amends for my years of evil-doing."
There was nothing I could say. I waited.
"They told me what would happen if I left the organization. I would be searched out to the ends of the world. And killed." He smiled mirthlessly. "You understand that?"
"Yes, Signor Corelli."
"Enrico Corelli," he said with a half-smile. "Rico Corelli, And you're Carter. They tell me Nick Carter is the best."
I nodded. "Usually. Not always. But usually."
"I tell you, this has been an administrative problem from the beginning. A simple meeting, no? A meeting in the snow — to deal with snow!" He laughed, his strong teeth showing. "A joke, Mr. Carter! A joke."
"Yes," I acknowledged.
"It seemed simple enough. I leave Corsica on the Lysistrata and I meet you in the Sierra Nevada."
"Of course."
"From the beginning there was trouble. The Capos got wind of my scheme. Someone close to me had guessed the truth. Or had eavesdropped. The Mafiosi put out a contract on me."
"The Mosquito."
"Yes. To forestall such a hit, I persuaded my old colleague, Basillio Di Vanessi, to pose as me on my yacht. And the very lovely girl I was sleeping with went with him to make the characterization real."
"You set your own man up?" I said softly.
"Without knowing there would be a successful hit," Corelli said. "Essentially, I did what you say I did. But I did not really think The Mosquito would secceed. I had hopes that the meeting between Basillio and you would go off without a hitch and a real meet between you and me could be arranged."
I sighed.
"But there is more. Just before I left the yacht at Valencia, I discovered that my beautiful Swedish nightingale was scheming to rid herself of me!"
"Tina Bergson?"
"Yes. She wanted me dead. She had put out a contract herself on me." Corelli smiled sardonically.
"Was there any reason?"
"I was as curious as you, Mr. Carter. You must understand Tina a little more clearly."
I understood her quite clearly, but I did not say anything.
"She is a nymphomaniac, Mr. Carter. I think that is no surprise to you. But perhaps her reason for developing into such a Freudian symbol is as interesting as the fact of her obsession."
I looked at him curiously.
"She was raped at the age of fifteen by a Swedish farmhand. She became pregnant. The abortion was successful, but developed sepsis. She underwent a hysterectomy at the age of fifteen. This sterile, beautiful, intelligent creature then became obsessed with her destroyed womanhood, with her inability to be a mother. Since she was neither woman nor man, she became what she must become — a super-human! With that beauty, and that intelligence — I assure you that her intellect is boundless, Mr. Carter! — she decided that she would take over the little empire of which I was master."
"The drug chain," I said.
"Exactly. I am now speaking of her ambitions after I had decided to destroy the chain and reveal its innermost secrets to the United States Narcotics Department."
I nodded. "And that was the reason she hired Parson to kill you!"
"That is correct. Luckily I interpreted her first shocked reactions to my decision to dismantle the chain as suspicious, and kept my eyes open. Although she promised me she would remain faithful to me and accompany me to America, I guessed that she might be lying. So I put a tap on her phone — our villa in Corsica is a large one and each of us has a great deal of freedom — and finally heard her making a deal with Barry Parson in Malaga. Interesting?"
"Most interesting."
"My next move was to put my own spy on Parson. I believe, incidentally, that you'll find Parson listed in Interpol files as Daniel Tussaud, late of the French Underground. He was a child of ten at the time of World War Two, and grew up to a life of espionage and murder."