"He is dead now."
"I suspected as much." Corelli shrugged. "I heard about your exit from the discothèque with your Malaga contact."
I smiled. "Not much escapes you."
"Enough," sighed Corelli. 'Well, Elena Morales did keep a close watch on Parson, after letting him pick her up in a bar in Torremolinos. And it was she who warned me that he had come to Sol y Nieve here to find me and kill me. For that reason I did not meet you at the Veleta."
"I had reasoned that out."
Corelli nodded. He had finished with his skis. "I hoped that perhaps Tina might be killed on the yacht Lysistrata if anything happened there, but she escaped serious injury, as you know. Even though the Capos had planned the execution nicely. That meant that I must keep a weather eye out for not only the Capo's assassin, but for Tina's hired killer as well! The Mosquito. And Parson. So I simply became Herr Hauptli, having hired several out-of-work actors in Valencia to play the part of my supposed sycophants."
I laughed. "You re a most resourceful man, Mr. Corelli."
"I have lived a long life because of my resourcefulness, in a very dangerous profession." He frowned. "Not profession. That desecrates the very meaning of profession. In a very dangerous racket. A good word. Harsh. Flat. Unromantic. Racket."
I nodded.
"I have watched you at some length with admiration." Corelli smiled. "I knew instantly that you had killed The Mosquito. And I predicted that you would kill Parson as well. The death of Tina is a surprise to me. I do not think she committed suicide, as they are saying around the Prado Llano. But I think she must have lost control of that car after quite possibly finding that Parson was dead and figuring that I knew all about her and would kill her."
I said, "In which case she decided to run away before you found out she was here."
"Exactly."
"She's dead. That's all there is to it."
Corelli nodded. He tightened the cable bindings on his skis, fitted his boots to them, then slipped the clamps on. He stood and flexed his knees.
I began to put my own on.
"Care to do the slope with me?"
"Beautiful."
He grinned. "Before that, Nick, I'd like you to take possession of this."
I looked down. He was holding out an envelope. It had a bulge in it. I opened the envelope and saw a familiar-looking roll — microfilm.
"It's just what you think it is. Names. Places. Dates. Everything. All the way from Turkey through Sicily and the Riviera and on to Mexico. You can't miss a thing or a person if you follow the facts. I want that chain destroyed so it can never be put back together again. For Beatrice's sake."
Beatrice. His daughter. And wasn't that Dante's dream image of womanhood?
"Okay, Corelli," I said.
He slapped me on the back. "Let's go!"
He began a slow traverse against the fall line, and then cut across the slope and schussed down toward a curve in the run. Then he turned back in a nicely executed christie, and went around a pile of rocks.
I tucked the microfilm into an inside pocket of my ski jacket and began my run behind him. The snow was packed just right. I could feel my skis biting into the powder with a good springy bounce.
There was Corelli below me as I came around the curve of rocks. He executed a few turns, went into a wedeln, and then turned into a very wide traverse across a flat angle of the run.
I came down behind him, making a few turns and shaking the kinks out of my body. It was at the end of my run and just into the traverse that I saw the third skier on the alternate route.
The slopes were such that the alternate runs kept rejoining at intervals, somewhat like two wires that had been twisted loosely together at certain points.
It was a young man in brown togs. He seemed to be a teenager; at least he had that wiry, slender build. Whatever his age, he was an excellent skier. His skis bit into the snow and he was expert in turning and in drifting down the run.
At the portion of the slope where the two runs came together, the young skier cut back into his side, and went down slowly in a series of flat traverses. He was out of sight behind the backbone of rock that separated the two runs as I came up to Corelli.
"Beautiful pack," I said.
He nodded.
"When you come to the States, I'll take you up to Alta and Aspen. You'll love them!"
He laughed. "I may take you up on that!"
"Good deal," I said. "Go on. I'll follow you down to the next stop."
He grinned and started off.
I came a few moments after him. My right ski had been lagging a bit, and I tried to adjust my stance for better bite.
I moved along the steeper drop, slowing down with a snowplow because the neck between the two rock outcrops was too narrow for graceful maneuvering, and then came to a wide glade of snow and ice that looked like a picnic ground for any skier. I saw Corelli at the far end.
I started down, following Corelli to the left, and it was at that moment that I saw the young boy again.
He had gone down faster than the two of us in the alternate run, and was now approaching the cross-lanes of the two runs at the bottom of the wide, sloping field.
For a moment I drew up, cutting into the snow in an ice-hockey stop and just stood there. The powder was good. The snow beneath seemed solid. But I did not like the angle of the field. I mean, it was steep and it was almost flat, but there was a concave slope to it at the top that I did not quite like the looks of.
Yet Corelli was moving along it halfway down without any trouble. He was skiing from my left to right, and as I watched, he went into a lack turn and came back from right to left. Beyond him I saw the young man in the other run nearing the rock spine that separated our run from his.
I was just about to move out when I caught a warning flicker out of the corner of my eye. I lifted my head again, squinting against the glare of the sun. Had my eyes played tricks on me? No!
The kid held something in his right hand, and was clutching both ski poles under his left arm. He held a weapon of some kind — Yes! It was a hand gun!
Now the kid stopped and crouched in the snow. He was behind the rocks now, and I could not see what he was doing, but I knew instinctively that he was aiming the piece at Corelli who was skiing away from him, unaware that he was targeted in the gunsights.
"Hauptli!" I screamed, using his cover name just in case I was being tricked by some kind of optical illusion.
He turned his head quickly, looking up the slope at me. I waved my arm toward the young man. Corelli turned and could see nothing from his angle. I waved frantically, warningly. Corelli understood something was wrong, and reacted. He tried to change his line of run, but lost his balance and went down in a bad front fall. But he controlled himself and hit on his hip, then started to slide.
I jumped on the skis and slammed down on my poles, schussing straight down toward the rocks behind which the youth was crouched. I tucked both ski poles under my left arm and got out the Luger.
The mogul came up out of nowhere. I was watching the rocks for the kid's head, but I could see nothing of him. The mogul took me midway between knee and ski clamp and threw me flat on my face in the snow, ripping one ski completely off as the safety grips loosened, and sending it sliding down the powdery field. I slid and finally came to a wrenching stop. The other ski lay next to me. I do not even remember its coming off.
Corelli pushed himself up out of the snow, turning now to look at the rocks.
The first shot came. It missed. Now I could see the youth coming up out of the rocks, moving forward. I aimed the Luger at his head and squeezed the trigger. Too far to the right.