“I should hope so,” said Nick. “I’d sooner try to disguise the Statue of Liberty than the incomparable Valentina. Who all knows about this trip of hers?”
The corners of Hawk’s mouth turned downward. “Too many people for my liking. Not the press, so far, and I intend to keep it that way. But the story’s gone the rounds of governmental and scientific circles, so it isn’t much of a secret. However. There’s nothing we can do about it. I can only urge you to exercise the utmost care. You’ll have two back-up cover men behind you all the way, Fass and Castellano, but you know as well as I do that their function is tail-spotting and not trouble-shooting. So you’ll be pretty much on your own. Your lady friend flatly refused all our standard security precautions. Still, we have no reason to anticipate trouble. She’s not well known outside of Russia — not on anybody’s wanted list so far as we can tell, and we have checked her thoroughly. So I’m fairly certain that you’ll have no difficulty.”
“Don’t see why I should,” Nick agreed. “I look forward to seeing her again. Now there is one dame I really love!”
“One?” said Hawk, and favored Nick with a smile that was almost fatherly. “One of at least a dozen that I know of. Now suppose you reach for that bottle of Courvoisier and pour us both a healthy tot. I know it’s a little early in the day, but I need something to take away the taste of breakfast. My God, look at the haze over this benighted city…”
Nick pulled the Peugeot into the airport parking lot and sniffed the clean, cool air. Valentina had chosen a lovely day for her arrival. No doubt she had ordered the elements to behave. The sky was blue and smog-free, as if doing its utmost to offer her a welcome.
His pass took him to the official greeting area on the border of the tarmac, and there he waited with one eye on his watch and the other roaming around to spot specks in the sky and cover-men behind him.
Like Hakim, he thought suddenly, whose eyes really did go in opposite directions and could drink in two totally different scenes at once.
He had sent off his cable to Hakim the Hideous, as Hakim liked to call himself, within an hour after leaving Hawk the day before. D5, by now, would be on his way to Egypt. And Valentina the fabulous would be landing in New York within the next ten minutes. Too bad Carter couldn’t be in two places at once. Still, Valentina was worth waiting for.
Nick’s eyes went on roving. A Constellation landed, then a 707. Two giant jets took off, screaming. Cover-man Fass was standing by near Immigration. Castellano was on the observation deck. Another jet took off. And then a speck grew larger in the sky until it became a streamlined metal giant, landing on the strip before him.
Valentina’s plane.
She still knew him as Tom Slade, the name he had had to use during that affair in Moscow. But even though she did not know his right name she knew a lot about him — that he was AXE’s highest-ranking operative, that he loved women, good food, strong drink; that he could use his mind as well as his fists and his killing weapons; that despite his rank of Killmaster there was warmth and love and laughter in him. And he, in his turn, knew that she had never in her life used a name other than her own; that she was one of the most devastating and spectactular and honest and wonderful women he was ever likely to meet; and that, in spite of her looks, she had a quick, sharp mind that had earned for her the position of Chief Assistant Commissar of Russian Intelligence, second only in rank to top Commissar Dmitri Borisovich Smirnov.
The stairs were in place; the great doors of the craft were open. The first of the new arrivals began to straggle off the plane. Then they came out in two steady streams — people laden with coats, cameras, handbaggage; people with smiles for the stewardesses and glad looks on their faces and people who gazed out uncertainly at an unfamiliar world and searched hopefully for welcomers.
So far, no sign of Valentina.
Nick walked toward the plane.
The two steady streams slowed to a trickle and then stopped. Still no Valentina.
He halted near the forward airstair and looked up. The first-class stewardess was still waiting at her post. So there was still someone to come.
Then the face of the pretty airline hostess broke into a smile, and her hand reached out to take the huge hand extended to her.
The magnificent Valentina stood in the doorway, making a brief little farewell speech of thanks. Nick gazed upward, feeling a rush of affection for this most wonderful of women.
Stood in the doorway? No, she commanded it — filled it, dwarfed it, shrank it down to the size of a hatchway in a model plane. Even the giant aircraft seemed to dwindle, so that it’s very vastness seemed to become a mere backdrop for this one woman alone.
When Valentina Sichikova finally began her slow, majestic descent, her eyes swept over the great airfield, taking it in with the casualness of someone glancing over a small suburban back yard.
Nick spread out his arms involuntarily, long before she reached him, and his smile of welcome almost split his face in two.
Her own face blazed with pleasure.
“Tomaska!” she bellowed, halting on the stair. “Greetings! No do not come up to meet me — I think these stairs will support me only, yes? Ho, ho, ho, ho!” Her body shook with massive merriment. “You know why I make Alexei wait and we come out last, my friend? Because I did not want to block the aisles. Ho, ho, ho!” She turned briefly and rumbled over her shoulder. “Alexei, do you have everything, my friend. No, you let me take that heavy bag, Aloysha…
Nick gazed upon her lovingly as she conducted a brisk discussion with Alec Greenberg of AXE’s London office. He was barely visible in the background, but he was there, a gnat guarding an elephant.
For Valentina was indeed one of Russia’s biggest women. She was immense: more than six feet tall and quite incredibly broad; wide, fearsome, bulging shoulders and breasts so huge and shapeless it was impossible to tell where her waistline might be or even if she had one. Her ensemble of sacklike blue serge suiting and boat-sized walking shoes suited her to a T — or rather to an O, which she most resembled in repose. But in action she was less like the placid O than a blimp in Russian dress, a tank with heart, a bulldozer with the warmth of a dozen human beings.
She continued her slow descent, and the sturdy stairway shook.
Agent A7 stood behind her, watching her majestic progress and sweeping the field with his keen gaze. Her baggage stood at the top of the stairway beside him. The cautious Alec, Nick noted, was deliberately keeping his hands free until Valentina had navigated her way to solid ground and her new escort.
Nick planted himself foursquare at the foot of the stairs and watched her coming toward him.
He heard the piercing bird whistle and the first whining zing of sound at the same time, and a split second later the sudden sharp clink of metal against metal.
With one bound he was up the stairway to the mid-point and shielding Valentina’s gargantuan bulk with his own tall muscular leanness — just in time to sec her rear back like a startled horse and clap a vast hand to her pudding of a neck.
Whip-crack sounds split through the air somewhere behind Nick as Valentina tottered toward him like a punctured barrage balloon.
CHAPTER THREE
The Vanishing Nine
Al! Get the girl inside!” Nick roared, and even as he shouted he was twisting his body around and grabbing at two enormous arms so that they were wrapped around his neck. Mosquito sounds zoomed past him and ended in metallic thumps. One of them skimmed past his outer thigh.