Earthfire North

by Nick Carter

  Ziegler chuckled and nodded. The driver delicately touched the tip of the red-hot poker to the back of Roberta's neck, just below her ear. She screamed and jerked forward, falling facedown on the carpeted floor.

  The stench of singed hair and burned flesh was strong in the air.

  "You son of a bitch! You bastard!" Carter shouted in English. "Kill her and you'll have to kill me, and then you will be screwed, Herr General!"

  The driver had gone around to the front of the chair, where he knelt down beside Roberta who lay there moaning.

  Ziegler motioned for the man to hold up. "I will be screwed. Curious. Whatever do you mean by that, Herr Carter?"

  "The nuclear power plant you're building in Iceland. You're diverting steam from Reykjavik to panic the Althing. You're bribing Josepsson and others. Lydia found out about it."

  Ziegler looked at his driver. "There isn't much else we can do with either of them. Kill them both. We'll see who comes looking for them." He started to turn away, but then he looked back. "Make it look like an accident."

  "Jawohl, mein Herr," the driver said with obvious relish.

  "But be careful, for God's sake," Ziegler said, looking at Carter. "This one is dangerous, I think."

  The driver yanked Roberta to her feet after he put the poker back in its rack. She seemed only vaguely aware of what was going on. The other man lied Carter's hands behind his back, then jerked him to his feet.

  Together the four of them went back outside, then down the long stairs to the parking area. There were several cars and a couple of small trucks parked there.

  They went directly to a BMW sedan on top of which were a pair of skis in a rack. The guard shoved Roberta in the passenger side in the front, and Carter was shoved in the back. The driver and guard got in, and they pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the very steep road toward the base of the mountain. One side of the road was a sheer rock cliff that rose hundreds of feet above them. On the other side was a drop of at least a thousand feet to a rock-strewn ravine.

  The car was no doubt registered to Hemispheric Technologies, and when the accident was "discovered," they'd claim he was an employee on holiday. Eventually Hawk and the West German government would figure out what really happened, but by that time Ziegler would have erased any personal connection with the incident.

  When the guard had hurriedly tied his hands, Carter had flexed his wrist muscles; now he relaxed them, and the knots loosened slightly. As they had walked down the steep road, he worked at the bindings.

  "Where are you taking us?" he asked the guard seated next to him. He had to distract the man.

  The guard just looked at him and smiled. "A very short trip, mein Herr. You'll see." He laughed.

  The thin nylon line was slipping.

  "It's a shame," Carter said. "She's such a pretty girl."

  The driver looked at him in the rearview mirror.

  "What's a shame?" the guard in the back seat asked.

  Carter shrugged. "She's a pretty girl. Helpless. You're going to kill us anyway…"

  His guard's eyes narrowed. "What do you get out of this?"

  "A cigarette, mat's all," Carter said, a tremor in his voice. "I know what you're up to. Maybe a drink. And then at the end you can knock me out.

  The driver laughed out loud at the same moment the bonds came loose on Carter's wrists.

  "You're going to let the opportunity pass you by?" Carter said disdainfully.

  His guard sat forward, reached over the front seat, and pulled Roberta's coat open.

  "What the hell…" the driver said.

  "Shut your mouth, Karl," the guard snapped. He ripped Roberta's blouse open and yanked her bra apart, freeing her lovely breasts.

  They had taken Carter's Luger and stiletto, but they hadn't found Pierre, the tiny gas bomb.

  The guard was laughing lustily as he fondled Roberta's breasts. Unnoticed, Carter managed to reach around to unzip his own trousers, reach inside, and withdraw the gas bomb, then shove his hands back behind him just as the guard turned to look at him.

  "Tell me, was she a great piece of ass?" the guard sneered.

  Carter almost killed him then and there, but he held back. "You can find that out for yourself."

  "Pull over, Karl," the guard said.

  "Son of a bitch," the driver snapped. "There's no place here." He glanced over at Roberta's exposed breasts. "About a mile. Near the hairpin turn. I'll stop there."

  Of all the weapons in his arsenal, Carter liked the gas bomb the least. The first whiff knocked one unconscious, and a few seconds after exposure, respiration ceased altogether. A few seconds was precious little time to prevent the wrong people from dying.

  Another mile of twists and turns, and they came upon a large patch of ice in the shadow of the mountain. It extended a quarter mile to where the road curved in front of a scenic overlook. It would have been a perilous stretch of highway in any event, but the ice made it a certain deathtrap for the unwary.

  The driver slowed almost to a crawl, and they still slid slowly to the bottom of the hill, the bumper of the car just nudging the low stone fence at the precipice.

  Far below, a mountain stream punished itself against the rocks, looking like little more than a thin, silver ribbon tangled at the bottom of a canyon. A car could lie down there for days without being discovered.

  "Here?" the guard in the back seat panted. He was pawing Roberta's breasts.

  The driver seemed frightened. He wrenched the gear lever in reverse, turned around, and headed back up the hill.

  "You gotta stop, Karl! Gott in Himmel! the guard slobbered. He was getting worked up.

  Carter slipped his thumbnail into the gas bomb's trigger. Cyatelene gas — a cyanide derivative — began pouring through the tiny jets in the bomb's perimeter, filling the car with billows of smoke. The guard next to Carter started to turn around to reach for his gun, but he promptly dropped it and fell unconscious against the far window.

  The driver started to roll down his window, but then he too slumped forward, and the car slowed, then stopped, and finally rolled backward at an angle across the road and down into a shallow ditch.

  Roberta was out almost immediately, and the race began to get her outside before she took in too much.

  Carter sprang forward, still holding his breath, unlatched her door, shoved it open, and pushed her outside as the car bumped to a halt.

  He opened the rear door, his own perceptions beginning to become distorted, and fell outside, his legs rubbery. He'd held his breath, but the gas was affecting him anyway. Burnt almonds… it was all he could smell. For a split second he could not remember what it was he was supposed to be doing.

  Then, summoning every ounce of strength and concentration he had, he pulled himself up toward where Roberta lay half in and half out of the car.

  All he wanted to do was lie there and sleep. His muscles felt like lead. But he began to remember there was no time, and he managed to get up and stumble to Roberta's inert form.

  He dragged her clear, then tried to pick her up, but it was hopeless. His muscles were too weak. He stumbled, dropped her, and ended up dragging her to the shoulder of the road, where he crouched over her prostrate body, panting. After several seconds the sharp, cold mountain air cleared his head, and his presence of mind returned. He took her pulse. It was dangerously weak.

  Quickly he tilted her head back, pinched her nose, and started blowing air into her lungs. He kept it up for almost five minutes, but nothing seemed to be happening. God, he didn't want to lose her. Not like this.

  He checked her pulse again. He felt nothing.

  Frantically he put the heels of his hands together and began a rhythmic heart massage, her chest very small and delicate, her breasts tiny, the nipples rigid with the cold.

  Her chest heaved after a few minutes, and her entire body shuddered as if an electrical current had run through it.

  He continued to work feverishly, heedless of his own problems be
cause of the gas. After a while the color began to come back to her cheeks, then her eyelids fluttered and opened.

  "Nick," she breathed.

  "Don't talk." He pulled off his thick workshirt, bundled it up, and placed it under her head. Then he got up and walked unsteadily back to the car.

  After thirty seconds cyatelene gas combines with the oxygen in the air to form dicyateloxide, a harmless compound. But before its thirty seconds of potent life expired. Carter's bomb had taken its toll. The side of the driver's face lay against the steering wheel, his eyes bulging, his blackened tongue swelling out of his mouth. The guard in the back had fared no better.

  He pulled the bodies out one at a time and dragged them off the road behind a jumble of rocks. Then he scuffed his tracks in the snow and went back to where Roberta lay on the gravel.

  "How do you feel?" he asked.

  "Woozy."

  He helped her to her feet, and with an arm around her waist he helped her to the car. He climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine.

  "Are you going back?" Roberta asked.

  Carter nodded, put the car in gear, made a careful U-turn, and headed back up the mountain.

  Rivulets of melting snow were cutting channels in the gravel when they pulled into the parking lot below the mountain house. One of the cars that had been parked here earlier — the tan Mercedes — was missing.

  "He's gone," Roberta said.

  "Maybe not. But I'm going to check one way or the other."

  "You don't even have a weapon," she said.

  Beside them on the seat was the driver's weapon. An American military.45 automatic. "This'll do," he said. "You wait here. If you hear shooting, listen for the last shot, then count to ten. If you don't hear another, take off. Understand?"

  She nodded.

  His strategy was simple. The chalet was a modernistic affair with large plate glass windows in the front that looked down on the valley. In back, smaller windows opened onto a solid rock face. These were the bedroom windows, he figured. They'd be empty now, providing him easy access.

  He climbed up the back way, working his way around the side of the house to the rear windows, which were set a few feet off the rock base and only a few feet away from the face of the cliff on which the house was perched.

  Curtains were drawn over three of the windows, but the fourth was open, and he could see that the room inside was a bedroom.

  The window was unlocked, and within a few seconds Carter stood in the middle of the bedroom, holding his bream as he listened to the sounds of the house. But there was nothing. In fact, he thought, the house was too quiet, as if everything had been shut down.

  He stepped out of the bedroom, hugging the hallway wall, the.45's safety off, its hammer cocked.

  Within a few minutes he had checked the bedrooms, the living room and kitchen and bathrooms, but there was no one here. They had left.

  He pocketed the heavy automatic, then left by the front door and went back down to the parking lot.

  "Find anything?" Roberta asked. She was nervous.

  "He's gone," Carter said, climbing in behind the wheel. He looked up at the house.

  "Back to Argentina?" she asked.

  Carter looked at her and shook his head. "I'd guess Iceland. But you and I have to talk."

  "About…?"

  "You and the BND, If we're going to work together, I'm going to have to know everything you have on Ziegler."

  "And you're going to have to let me know what you have," she said. "A deal?"

  Carter smiled. "A deal."

  They shook hands. "Then what?" she asked as Carter started the car and they headed down the mountain.

  "We're going to Iceland, that's what."

  Nine

  The drizzling rain was doing little to dispel the August heat as Nick and Roberta's plane touched down at National Airport in Washington late that evening. Perkins, one of Hawk's aides, was waiting for them outside customs. Carter had telephoned from the airport at Munich.

  "You are expected, sir," Perkins said as he led them to the car. It was a code phrase meaning Hawk wanted to see Carter immediately.

  "Get us over to my place first, Tom. Ms. Redgrave will be staying there."

  "Yes, sir," the man said.

  When they reached his building, Carter helped Roberta inside, and when she was settled in, he kissed her, promised he'd be back very soon, and went back to the car. He presumed she'd be calling the German embassy for instructions. He'd have Hawk straighten out that end of things.

  As soon as Carter climbed in the car, Perkins headed away from the curb, a pinched look on his face.

  "Trouble?" Carter asked.

  "I think so, sir. They've been waiting for you. Mr. Hawk is very anxious."

  "I see," Carter said. And a few minutes later they had made it across town to Dupont Circle where, as they turned the comer toward the entrance to the underground parking ramp, he could see that the entire fifth floor of the Amalgamated Press building was lit up. Something big was going on.

  Perkins dropped him in the underground lot, and Carter signed in with the guard and took the elevator up to the fifth floor. Hawk was waiting for him in the conference room along with Jerry Baumgarten, head of the Western European section of AXE, Bill Cairnes, technical division chief, and John Starkey, liaison with the President's office. The four of them looked grim.

  "Are you all right?" Hawk asked, his voice gravelly. A half-chewed cigar lay in the ashtray in front of him.

  "I'm fit, sir," Carter said, taking a seat across the table.

  "We've had a chance to look at the photographs," Hawk said. "Now I want you to give us a complete update on everything you've gotten into."

  Carter had expected this, and he was ready. Quickly he told them everything, beginning with the letter from Lydia Coatsworth, his run-ins up in Iceland, and then the chain of events in Argentina leading from Mendoza to Braga to Pepé, and finally back to Mendoza who identified the man with the monocle as Marc Ziegler.

  "What about this Ziegler?" Baumgarten asked.

  "He was an S.S. general. According to what I learned, he's now a power within the Odessa."

  Baumgarten looked pale. "Are you positive about this, Nick?"

  "Reasonably," Carter said, and he told them about the Israeli in Buenos Aires who had provided the ID.

  "That's it then," Baumgarten said to Hawk.

  "What's 'it', sir?" Carter asked.

  Cairnes sat forward. "The photographs you sent up here. Carter, were most curious." The man was a brilliant scientist. "And disturbing."

  "They're building a nuclear reactor in Iceland?" Carter said. "With Odessa help?"

  "That, as well as a waste material reprocessing plant. Some of the equipment you photographed could be used for nothing else."

  "Reprocessing…" Carter started to say, but then he realized exactly what Cairnes was driving at, and his blood went cold. "Reprocessing of spent uranium fuel into weapons-grade material."

  Cairnes nodded. "Those bastard ex-Nazis are building nuclear weapons."

  "But why Iceland?"

  Hawk broke in. "We're guessing now, Nick, but we think it's because a country such as Iceland would have had no trouble obtaining the international licenses to build a nuclear plant with outside help."

  "Argentina certainly would not be granted such a permit," Baumgarten said.

  "Evidently the Odessa has worked its way into Icelandic politics sufficiently to form such a partnership," Hawk said. "I don't think they realize who they're dealing with, but evidently the partnership is there."

  "If the Nazis get the bomb…" Carter said, letting it trail off.

  "Exactly," Hawk said. "I want you up there immediately. We're going to have to put a stop to it. ID section has a background worked up for you, as well as for Redgrave."

  Carter perked up. "I was about to tell you about her, sir."

  "No need," Hawk said. "Schmidt phoned this afternoon from Bonn. He's had Miss Redgr
ave working on this for some months now. She's on loan to our agency for the duration… that is if you want to work with her."

  Carter grinned. "That'll be fine, sir, just fine."

  * * *

  Carter sat in a chair across from the bed, a drink in his hand. Roberta had been sleeping fitfully, and now she lay on her back, one hand flung above her head.

  She had not telephoned her embassy; in fact, in the several hours Carter had been gone, she had done nothing but sleep.

  She looked very young, Carter thought, watching her sleep. Too young and innocent to be involved in this business. Yet the dossier they had received from Schmidt, along with her bags that had been delivered to AXE, indicated she was very good. A pro.

  She moaned again and rolled over. Sodium pentothol dreams, he thought. They recurred sometimes for months afterward. He'd been there, been chased by insane monsters with no possibility of escape.

  After a while he turned on the light and came back to the bed. Beads of sweat glistened all along her hairline. "Roberta," he whispered.

  Her eyes suddenly popped open and she sat bolt upright. "Nick," she exclaimed, throwing her arms around his neck. "Oh. God… I dreamed you had left me!"

  "I just got back. Your things are here already."

  "My things?" she asked, confused.

  "From Schmidt. He sent them over. You'll be working with me officially now. We're leaving for Iceland in a few hours."

  She pulled away. "I don't know…"she said vaguely, letting it trail off.

  "You don't have to," Carter said. He had a fair idea what she was thinking.

  "I told Ziegler everything I knew." she cried. She tried to hide her face in her hands, but Carter pulled them away.

  "You're a professional," he said. "You know the hazards. It was sodium pentothol. There was nothing you could have done about it."

  "I talked! I told him everything — like some babbling schoolgirl!"

  "You were drugged!" Carter said. He got up, went back into the living room, and poured himself another cognac and one for Roberta.

  "I really thought I had him," she said. She took the drink from Carter and sipped at it. "I really thought I'd wrap the case up soon." Her face was pale, and the muscles in her jaws were tight.