“This is your room, Herr Huzel. You, Fräulein, are across the hall. Your bags will be up shortly. The pool is in the center courtyard, if you care to swim.”
She clomped back down the hall and disappeared.
Carter looked at Verna. Her mouth was open. “Awesome, isn’t it, in the middle of nowhere?”
“It is that.”
“Care to pool it?” Carter asked.
“I think I’ll sit in a tub.”
“Suit yourself.”
Inside the room, Carter went over it. In ten minutes he found three bugs. From his window he could see a brace of four armed guards patrolling beyond the walls around the house.
Short-and-chunky entered the room without knocking and dropped Carter’s bag on the bed.
“I searched your luggage,” he grunted.
“My God, it talks,” Carter exclaimed.
“And took your gun.”
“I figured you would,” the Killmaster said with a smile.
Much to Carter’s surprise, the swimming pool was highly populated, all women. They were predominantly blond, and German was the common language. Only the bottoms of bikinis were worn.
He dived into the pool and after five fast lengths got rid of the kinks from the previous night’s fight. Feeling better, he climbed out and sat on a stool at the outdoor bar.
“A drink, mein Herr?” Carter turned. He was tall, built like a tank, and very Aryan. “My name is Bernard.”
“Yeah,” Carter replied. “Ein Bier. All these lovelies Bolivar’s guests?”
Bernard shrugged. “In a way. They are flown in for a month at a time, two or three times a year. They liven up the parties and keep the guards happy.”
Carter sipped his beer. Bolivar, he thought, probably got a lot of loyalty out of his troops.
A well-built girl parked a well-built thigh on a stool two along. She ordered an orange juice and smiled at Carter.
“You should try it with vodka. It brightens the day,” he suggested.
“I don’t drink. You’re German?”
He nodded. “But I live in Amsterdam.”
“I live in Bremerhaven. I went to the university.”
“Went...?”
“I ran out of money.”
“Oh,” Carter said. “And that’s why you’re here?”
“That’s why I’m here. See you.”
She walked around the pool and Carter watched her until she entered the house. He turned back to Bernard.
“I understand Senhor Bolivar is hunting. What’s good up in the mountains?”
“Men,” Bernard replied calmly. “Rebels. It’s been a good week. He has bagged five.”
“Good sport,” Carter said, managing a smile.
He watched the bevy of beauties a while longer, and then wandered into the house. There was a maid here and a maid there, but no one seemed inclined to stop him so he kept wandering.
At the far end of the first floor, he heard radio chatter and a teletype. That would figure. If Bolivar never left the place, he would need some kind of constant communication with the outside world.
He climbed to the second floor and continued to move around until he found a trapdoor that went up to the roof. He had already guessed that there would be access to the roof from the inside, and was elated he had found it so soon.
He moved on through the rest of the rooms until he entered what he assumed was Bolivar’s office. It was book-lined, the desk a fine piece of English walnut, a fireplace mantel adorned with carvings of horses. The top of the desk was clean save for the usual ashtrays and pens. The top drawer was locked. He found a letter opener and, working crudely, snapped the lock open and yanked the drawer out. He sat down in the chair and began to rifle through the papers and file folders, moving from the top drawer to those at the side.
What he found was enlightening. Bolivar was rich, but he was also very overextended. Vinnick had been wrong about the man’s reason for wanting to liquidate the jewels.
Bolivar needed the cash.
Carter replaced the desk as he had found it and turned to the wall. A large print of a steeplechase hung on the wood-paneled wall. He lifted up one corner, his eyes narrowing, lifted again, and removed the entire print.
The wall safe, neat and flush to the wall, stared back at him. It was an old one, he saw, a combination lock. It would take time and patience to open, he thought ruefully, more than he had now. He put an ear to the dial, turned it carefully, played with its clicks, counting, making mental calculations.
After another minute he knew that, given time, he could crack it.
Just as he replaced the print, he heard footsteps in the hall. He tugged a book from the wall and opened it.
Big Eva came through the door, saw him, and came up short. “You are looking for something, Herr Huzel?”
“Ja, a good book to read,” he replied, glancing down at the book and then back up to her with a smile. “But everything in here seems to be in Russian.”
Eva-the-Amazon had informed them that drinks were at eight, dinner at nine. At eight sharp, Carter descended the stairs. From the great room he heard the sound of music, guitars, drums and marimbas.
He entered the great room to see a three-piece band in a far alcove, and preparations for a huge buffet being made along the opposite wall. There were about twenty people, mostly the young women he had seen by the pool that afternoon. Interspersed among them were a few young, unsmiling men in gray trousers and dark blue blazers. Besides the clothes, each of them had a hard, alert quality to his darting eyes.
Then Carter realized. This was part of the security force, the new stormtroopers. They had no brown shirts or Sam Browne belts, no jackboots, but stormtroopers they were.
He was working his way toward the bar when he saw Sergeant Boris Glaskov alias Enrique Bolivar. He was a bull of a man, with shoulders and arms that stretched his dinner jacket. Despite his relatively short stature, he was a commanding presence, with cropped white hair, the sharp eyes of a condor, and thick, cruel lips.
He was deep in smiling conversation with a woman whose back was partly to Carter. She had a long, lithe figure in a sleeveless, backless, almost frontless white gown, eyes that were black-olive moist and deep. He saw skin, browned and burnished as if dusted by gold, long black hair and a straight nose, full, sensuous lips. He saw a woman who glowed outside and inside, smoldered with a throbbing, pulsating earthiness.
Then he recognized her as the girl from Bremerhaven he had met by the pool that afternoon.
A little makeup, a change of hairstyle, and clothes, he thought, can make a hell of a difference.
He had just reached the bar when Bolivar spotted him and started over.
“What would you care to drink, Herr Huzel?” It was big blond Bernard.
“You have long hours, Bernard.”
A shrug. “The compensation is good. Scotch?”
“A double, one cube.”
“Herr Huzel, we meet at last.” Bolivar didn’t offer his hand. He bowed sharply from the waist.
“Senhor Bolivar,” Carter said, executing the same bow, “a pleasure.”
“We must talk, privately.”
“Of course.”
“There is a sitting room, this way. Bring your drink.”
Carter followed him from the room. Just outside the door they were joined by another man.
“Umberto Grossman,” Bolivar explained, “my head of security.”
Grossman was tall and athletic, handsome in a heavy way, with slick black hair and an arrogant mouth. He took Carter’s measure and then seemed to dismiss him with a nod.
They entered a small sitting room with chairs around a fireplace and not much else. Bolivar waved Carter to one of the chairs, and took the other. Grossman became a statue by the door with his hands in an at-ease position over his crotch.