"All right," he said slowly. "What kind of secret work is going on down here that's killing people with diseases your scientists can't control and our scientists don't recognize?"
"Perhaps you're asking the wrong person," the deep, cultured Russian voice said.
Carter looked up.
Leon Blenkochev, the ruthless head of the KGB's powerful K-GOL agency, stood at the edge of the overhanging boulders. He was pointing a Luger at Carter's heart.
Fourteen
Nick Carter hadn't heard a sound, not a sliding ski, not a cough. He looked with respect at Leon Blenkochev.
"The helicopter and jet spotted me?" he said.
The KGB czar waved the question off.
"Throw your gun and knife over here," he said imperiously.
He waited until Carter had tossed the weapons ten feet to his boots, then the K-GOL director skied forward.
His lumpy Slavic face glowed in the sunshine. He wore a blue fiberfill suit like the woman's, a pointed cap, reflecting sunglasses, a backpack, and perfume. The perfume was fragrant. Not too much. The affectation of a man who was powerful enough to not give a damn.
Blenkochev was stout and strong, in his late sixties. Much more than merely active, he exuded a sense of vigorous self-possession and destiny that would attract attention wherever he went.
Here, in Antarctica, with a gun pointed unwaveringly at Carter as he skied easily toward the AXE agent, he certainly had Carter's attention. Blenkochev didn't bluff. He didn't have to.
"At last I meet the great Blenkochev," Carter said and smiled.
"Don't be cute, N3," Blenkochev said. "It doesn't become you."
"You recognize me."
"Notoriety always gets my attention."
"I'm impressed, considering that the KGB's filing system is a hall full of cardboard boxes."
Blenkochev scowled, and his blond comrade quickly hid smile behind her cup of soup. She was good-natured, too.
"I'm hollow, Anna." Blenkochev announced.
He stared pointedly at the soup pot. He'd deal with Carter later. He handed his gun to the agent Anna, and she leveled it at Carter.
"Did you bring food?" Carter asked. "This not the Antarctic Salvation Army."
Blenkochev took off his backpack and dropped it into the snow. He untied an insulated sitting mat.
"No?" he said. "Perhaps it's a version of the 1980 Olympics. You don't want to play? You go home. Hurray U.S.A."
Carter laughed.
"You want a medal for that?" Blenkochev asked and chuckled. "You didn't get any in 1980."
Blenkochev sat on the mat on the snow, and perfume wafted into the air. He extended his legs stiffly in front of him. For a moment a look of pleasure came onto his face, pleasure in where he was, in what he was doing. Then he quickly erased it. He was in control.
"First we eat. Then we talk," the KGB czar said. "Anna, There are supplies in my pack. I'll take my weapon now."
She handed the gun to him, then unzipped his pack. Her flaxen hair flowed over the deep blue of her padded suit. She had a sultry face made even more attractive by intelligence. A dangerous combination for an enemy. A valuable one for a friend. Once more the gun was aimed at Carter.
"Now I know why you weren't concerned when you woke up," Carter told her as she prepared more soup. "You expected Blenkochev."
"It was a possibility," she said.
"Are there more of you?"
"How many do you want?" Blenkochev said. "All this concern for quantity. A pity. It's made quality a thing of the past."
"I suspect the past wasn't all that different from today," Carter said mildly. "Hindsight isn't twenty-twenty."
"And the present isn't all that pretty," Blenkochev said. He crossed his arms, resting the gun on the left, still pointing it at Carter. "When the present is unpleasant and the future worrisome, we tend to retreat into the familiarity of the past."
"And what are you worried about?" Carter asked.
"Quality, obviously," Blenkochev said. A small smile curved at the corners of his mouth as he played with Carter's words. "I'd prefer a fine paella or a hearty bouillabaisse. Instead I get freeze-dried predigested soup that's been rejected by the gourmet palates of our Siberian miners and your television addicts. That makes it good enough for the KGB. But I'm not complaining."
Anna handed a full cup of soup to Blenkochev, and he sipped. His hand shook slightly. Being in the field wasn't as easy for him as it once was, but his ruddy face and eagerness showed that he was enjoying it thoroughly.
"I hear you're a killer," Carter said.
"It's been said," Blenkochev replied over the steaming soup. It would take more than accusations to shock him out of his equilibrium. "That makes two of us, Killmaster."
Within three minutes in the Antarctic air the soup would be cold. Now the old agent drank rapidly.
"Why are you here?" Anna asked Carter while her superior finished his meal.
"It started as a vacation," Carter said, "but no one would believe me."
"Michelle Strange, otherwise known as Mike," Anna said. "I believe you had a sexual interlude with her at a remote mountain jail. Don't you consider that kinky? It is the right word… kinky?"
"It's what you had in mind," Carter said. "Were you there too?"
"I'm not Silver Dove, if that's what you mean." A note of indignation slipped into her voice.
"Killmaster," Blenkochev interrupted, "I require a tent. I have an adequate one strapped to the bottom of my pack. If you would be so kind…"
Blenkochev undid the straps and kicked it across the snow to Carter. It was an order, not a request. He casually rubbed the side of his gun against his check, then handed his empty cup to Anna. She refilled it.
"Shall I get out your toothbrush too?" Carter smiled.
"Thank you, no. I have it in my pocket."
"Clean socks? Undershorts? A battery-run shaver?"
"Unfortunately, there wasn't room to pack them. The next time I decide to go into the field I'll choose my assignment more carefully."
Blenkochev pushed his pack behind his back and leaned back comfortably while Carter went to work.
"Perhaps you'd like to hear an AXE bedtime story?" Carter asked as he unrolled Blenkochev's light one-man tent.
"I have no objection," Blenkochev said. There was just a hint of suspicion in his voice, Again he drank soup.
"The helicopter and jet weren't looking for me," Carter said. "They were looking for you. And you're here alone. No support."
He spread the tent at the other end of the roofed-over flat area and got out stakes. He looked at Blenkochev.
As if unconcerned, the K-GOL chief shrugged.
"At one time Silver Dove must have been one of your most trusted assassination arms," Carter went on. "You recruit from athletes for their physical vigor, from university students for their intellects, and from embassy staffs for their contacts, why not from bigots for the power of their hatreds? A man who hates enough will do anything to keep his haired intact. It's what he lives for. But then something happened. Silver Dove got out of hand. Little by little. Hardly noticeable. Until now you have a full-fledged crisis on your hands. And it is your crisis. The Politburo won't just take your dacha away if Silver Dove accomplishes what it threatens."
"And what does it threaten, my fine young Turk?"
Blenkochev tossed his empty cup to Anna. She caught it with one mittened hand, then pushed it in and out of the snow to wash it. Blenkochev knew that Carter didn't know the threat, and his smile mocked the other deductions Carter had made.
"Whatever it was, it was big and important enough to force the biggest target in Russia out of the safety of the motherland. Burnout or midlife crisis or even longing for the past didn't bring you into the field. Although I think you're glad to be here," Carter added. He pounded tent stakes. "It's fear. Plain, old-fashioned fear."