The Killmaster didn’t need to check. Umberto Grossman was dead. He found the revolver and waddled his way through the smoke.
“Lorena...?” he shouted, stumbling down the hall. “Lorena!”
He had planted the explosive on the roof. It was gone, or at least most of it, and the flames were eating their way downward. If there had been a high wind, the house would have already been devoured. As it was, on such a calm night and with the lack of wind, it was moving slowly.
Slowly, Carter thought as he slammed door after door open, but surely.
“Lorena!”
Still no answer.
Suddenly he burst through the last door in the wing and found them.
It was a sight out of hell.
Bolivar was on a satin-covered settee. He sat, slightly hunched over, his hands clasped over his middle. Blood oozed in waves through his fingers. His eyes were bright, alert. He even looked up as Carter entered the room.
A few feet in front of him, Lorena was on her knees, much in the same position as Bolivar, her hands clasped over her middle.
Carter was frozen in time and space.
They were talking, actually seemed to be chatting.
Between them on the floor, scattered like so many pieces of pretty glass, was a fortune in gemstones.
Slowly, through the shock and the smoke filling his mind and the room, Carter heard the conversation.
“Your brother,” Bolivar was saying, “is an evil man. You were a child, a baby. To raise you with revenge all these years was a waste.”
“No,” Lorena replied calmly, “every minute was worth it... for this.”
Carter could believe neither his eyes nor his ears.
“And what have you gained?” Bolivar gasped, his life pumping out from between his fingers. “Your family baubles back?”
“No... no, no, no,” Lorena whispered. “I’ve gained more, much more. I’ve been able to shoot you in the belly and watch you die, very slowly.”
Bolivar shook his head, coughed blood, and looked up at Carter. “Who are you... Odessa?”
“Does it matter?” Carter replied, amazed at himself with the flames creeping around them all that he could be so calm.
“He’s just a man,” Lorena said, “a hired hand, a conduit to get me to you.”
For the first time since Carter had met him, Bolivar laughed out loud. Blood poured from his mouth and there was a hacking sound, but still he laughed.
And then suddenly he stopped.
He removed one hand from his punctured belly and waved it at the floor.
“Then take your payment, man. Gather them up!” He laughed some more.
Carter ignored him. He turned to Lorena and tried to lift her to her feet. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“No!” she cried.
“Yes!” Carter screamed at her, fighting the fury of her resistance.
“No! I want to watch him die!”
“Don’t be a fool,” Carter hissed. “He’s a dead man. You’ve got the revenge you came for.”
“No. Not yet.”
“Yes!” Carter cried, yanking her to her feet. “He’s an old man. He’s dying and he knows it and he doesn’t care.”
Another laugh from the near-dead man on the settee. “We’re all dead, or waiting to die. What’s the difference? Leave her. But take the jewels. They’ll only be found by ignorant Indians.”
Carter’s mind was glazing over, like his eyes. He found it impossible to breathe.
Lorena had wrenched herself from his grasp. She was on her hands and knees on the floor. He stumbled toward her, but she managed to elude his grasp.
“There!” she cried, suddenly coming back to her feet with her hands cupped beneath his chin. “Look!”
Carter looked down. In her cupped hands were several diamonds, glittering even in the thickening smoke.
And in their center was the enormous symbol of a lost world, a dead monarchy.
The Heartstone.
“We have it!” she said.
“Yeah,” Carter replied, seeing the madness in her eyes that he had always known was there but had never admitted. “Now, we go.”
She shoved the stones into Carter’s pocket and turned back to face Bolivar. “He’s still dying.”
Carter pulled the revolver from his belt, aimed, and put a slug right between Bolivar’s eyes.
“Not now he isn’t.”
He slung Lorena over his shoulder and ran out into the hall and down the stairs.
Sixteen
Carter stood at the window. Outside, he watched the Amsterdam street come alive with whores, pickpockets, hippies, and good, honest foreign businessmen out to get laid.
“He was a good man.”
Carter turned. The beautiful Oriental girl sat at the desk, her brother standing beside her, his hand on her shoulder.
“I wouldn’t think about it if I were you,” Carter said. “Mortimer always had a will, even when he didn’t have anything to leave anyone.”
“It was nice service, yes?” the girl said.
“Yes, a very nice service,” Carter replied, forcing his face to remain stone.
Otto had got them out by boat, down the long river. Then there had been a charter to the Canary Islands and a commercial jet to Frankfurt.
At the castle they had found Mortimer Potts with his neck broken, crucified to some timbers in the basement.
Fabian Huzel didn’t just kill. He took gleeful delight in the killing.
Otto knew a doctor. The cause of death was listed as a heart attack. Mortimer had been cremated and his ashes brought back to the Yum-Yum Club.
“We were so poor,” the girl said, “and now we are so rich.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Carter said. “If Mortimer hadn’t wanted you to have everything, he wouldn’t have given you everything in his will. Live, enjoy... that’s what Mortimer did.”
Carter headed for the door.
“Mr. Carter,” the girl said, “if there is ever anything...”
Carter smiled. “There might be... and if you did it, you’d just be carrying on Mortimer’s tradition.”
He left the Yum-Yum Club. A block away he crawled into the front seat of a black Mercedes. Otto was behind the wheel.
“How did you do?” Carter asked.
“Very well, actually,” came the stoic reply. “A little over a million and a half, American, for the diamonds. The two emeralds brought forty thousand per.”
“That should take care of you... and her,” Carter said.
Otto smiled. “Leave it to me, Nick. I’ll have her back on her feet in a year.”
It was the way he said it that made Carter smile. “Otto, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were in love.”
“Well,” Otto shrugged, “it is about time for me to act my age. Shall we get on with it?”
“Yes,” Carter nodded, “let’s. You’re sure everything the baroness has is traceable?”
“Oh, God, yes.”
It was early morning, the dead hour, the hour of the ultimate thief.
The Mercedes barely paused as the darkly clad figure rolled from the door. In seconds he was over the fence.
The whole operation took less than seven minutes. Break in, go up to the attic — past the master bedroom, the nursery, the empty guest room, the maid’s room where the au pair girl dreamed of warmth and sunshine and lemon trees — up to the deserted attic, a little of toys, books, discarded furniture, the squeak of a rusty window hinge, and Carter was on the roof, moving velvet-pawed across the leaded guttering to the attic window in the house.
He used a diamond with four neat strokes, waited for the glass to fall — a tiny brittle whisper of noise — then put his hand into the hole he had made, opened the window, and lowered himself into the house.