"I thought all was calm."
"All was calm, but all of a sudden ail is chaos. The big man has had us all running all night like there was no tomorrow."
"You look like hell."
"Thank you, Nick. We've been going for two days, twenty-four hours a day, nonstop."
"What's up?"
"The missile heist in Germany a few months ago. Remember it?"
"I read the bulletins."
"Good, then you're briefed. Go on in."
She dropped her head into her hands and began massaging her temples with the tips of her fingers. For the moment Carter forgot Delores.
"Hey…"
"What?"
"Dinner tonight?"
"Impossible," she said with a chuckle.
"Why?"
"You'll be in Paris."
"Then we'll dine at Maxim's."
The beautiful features cast off their weariness for a second, and her lips spread in a wide smile.
"You're incorrigible…"
"And in love, and hungry, and horn…"
"Scram… before he swallows his cigar."
She buzzed him through the massive oak doors, and Carter entered the walnut-walled inner sanctum.
The air conditioner hummed at full throttle, but it was fighting a losing battle with the brown rope wedged in the corner of David Hawk's mouth.
"Carter. Good, sit! Drink?"
"No, thank you, sir. It's a little early for me." He coughed, twice, and lowered himself into a huge leather antique. The chair was so soft that Carter could barely see the other man over the piled top of the huge mahogany desk.
"Good. You familiar with this?"
A stapled file folder flew across the desk and landed on Carter's lap.
"Yes, sir. I've kept up with the bulletins."
"Well, as of this morning they're outdated. We think we might have a link between the missiles and the disappearance of two men: Adam Greenspan and Lorenzo Montegra."
"Who are they?"
Two more folders found their way into Carter's hands. Instead of case files, these were dossiers.
"Look them over, N3, all of them, carefully," Hawk rasped. "And think about our recent soiree in northern Spain while you're at it. I'll get us some coffee."
Carter lit a cigarette, thought of Delores, thought of Ginger Bateman, and opened the first folder.
It was titled: MISSILE THEFT — EUROPE — TOP SECRET…
It had all begun on a clear but moonless night six months earlier, outside Enschede, near the Netherlands-West German frontier.
Because of increasing peace marches that had nearly developed into riots in The Hague and Rotterdam, NATO Command in Belgium had decided to remove eight medium-range missiles from the Netherlands.
It was not an earth-shaking decision. The missiles were practically obsolete and would have been replaced or removed soon anyway.
They were moved across the West German border in a caravan consisting of two sixteen-wheeler semi transports, a staff officer's car, and two armored personnel carriers.
In addition to heavy ordnance in the personnel carriers, four men armed with heavy-caliber machine guns rode on the top of each trailer.
From the standpoint of hardware, the caravan could have held off a small army.
Their destination was a NATO-leased factory outside Hamburg. Once there, the missiles would be broken down into components, deactivated, and sent on to Frankfurt in separate shipments. From Frankfurt they would be flown back to the United States and either destroyed or stored.
They never reached Hamburg.
Outside Bremen, the caravan entered a long runnel. Just before the far end of the tunnel, a large section of the roadway had been dynamited, making it impassable. Over the end of the tunnel, a huge polyethylene tent had been secured.
The officer in charge, sensing an attack on his cargo, ordered his men to the rear of the caravan. There, guns primed, they began to lead the vehicles back out the end of the tunnel they had just entered.
They never made it.
Another charge had been set at that end of the tunnel, as well as another airtight polyethylene cover.
Through the vents in the roof of the tunnel, a deadly gas was pumped into the semidarkness by a powerful generator.
Chaos reigned supreme in this sudden gas chamber, but it only lasted a few minutes.
They died to a man.
Runners were placed across the blown-out portion of the roadway, and the trucks continued on their journey… only now in the hands of hijackers.
From the time the missiles left the tunnel, it was ail speculation bolstered by the accounts of a few witnesses.
Their final destination inside Germany was evidently the northern port of Bremerhaven.
That same night, a Libyan-registered freighter sailed from Bremerhaven. She was the Star of Ceylon, and her first port of call was Malta.
She never arrived.
Rounding the tip of Portugal, thirty miles out and still some distance from Gibraltar, the Star of Ceylon radioed a mayday. There had been a massive internal explosion in the bowels of the ship. Fire had already spread from bow to stern.
By the time Portuguese and Spanish air-sea rescue units had arrived, the Star of Ceylon had sunk with all hands.
The lines between NATO headquarters and Brussels went wild. The Mediterranean fleet attempted exploratory dives, all to no avail.
The question hung like a leaden cloud over all concerned…
Had the eight obsolete but still deadly missiles gone down with the ill-fated Star of Ceylon?
Or had the missiles been off-loaded from the freighter before her «accident» had taken place?
Carter closed the folder and dropped it on Hawk's desk. He rubbed the room's smoke from his eyes and heard a cup rattle against a saucer at his elbow.
"Cream or sugar?"
"Black," Carter replied.
"Finished?"
"Just the missile file. Not much I didn't already know, except the supposition about current whereabouts."
"Read the dossiers," Hawk replied, "and I'll fill you in."
Carter opened the first folder and read quickly.
Two weeks after the missiles' theft, Adam Greenspan, architect, arrived in Milan, Italy.
His intent was a few weeks of skiing at the Rapiti resort in the Dolomites near Bolzano.
After renting a Mercedes at the Milan airport, Greenspan supposedly drove north toward Bolzano.
He never arrived.
There was only one clue to his disappearance. Before leaving Milan, he had made one stop at the Hotel Excelsior Gallia to meet a woman. The doorman remembered putting the woman's bags into the trunk of the Mercedes.
The doorman usually remembered Mercedes. They went along with large tips. Adam Greenspan was no different. He had tipped the doorman ten thousand lire.
The woman had been registered at the Excelsior under the name of Carmen D'Angelo.
Normally, the disappearance of an American architect would not raise very many eyebrows. The disappearance of Adam Greenspan did.
Reason?
He was a genius in his field, one of the few experienced designers of concrete launching pads and storage silos for ballistic missiles.
Carter looked up from the Greenspan folder and whistled.
"That's only part of it," Hawk said. "Go on."
Carter took a sip of the coffee, chain-lit yet another cigarette, and opened the folder with MONTEGRA written across its top right-hand comer.
Lorenzo Montegra was a first generation Mexican-American from San Diego, California. His coworkers at Hughes Aircraft in L. A. disliked Montegra, but they admired his brains and skill.
Why the dislike?
Because Lorenzo Montegra had it all. At Stanford University, he had been one of the highest-ranking amateur tennis players in the world, as well as a Phi Beta Kappa in physics and math.