The Turk let go and backed up. He turned his face aside and vomited on the shoes of the nearest member of the audience. Then he regarded me again. The fight was not as he’d expected to find it. I was no Turk, that much was clear to him, and he had the advantage of knowing how to use the oil’s slipperiness. And he was incredibly strong and agile with an amazing pain threshold. Still, something was wrong, and the something was that I was a Killmaster and he wasn’t. In a subtle manner the battle had changed. The Mafiosos weren’t aware of it yet, but we were. The Turk was losing. It was a fight to the death, and it was going to be his.
Bravely, he tackled me and got a knee in his teeth. I chopped his neck without effect, but, as he rose from the floor, I crossed his face with a right that staggered him back into King. The Turk moved into a second punch, and I ducked under his swing to drive a spear-shaped thrust into his abdomen.
The Turk didn’t give up. Again, he out-muscled me into a wall and trapped my throat with his forearm while his knee searched for my groin. I twisted away, which was what he wanted me to do because his hand, holding shards of broken glass between the fingers, was already slicing towards my eyes. I ducked, but not enough.
Fresh blood from my brows poured into my eyes. I dodged and retreated by instinct as the Turk slashed again. Glass sliced along my arm. There was no way of clearing my vision. The Turk kept slashing, his own hand spitting blood from the glass it held. My back grew colder, and I could tell I was backing up to the smashed window. Then more broken glass was under my feet. I was right at the window, and there was no place left to go.
Through the red film I saw a bulky silhouette approaching. A foot stepped on glass. A jagged, glittering fist shot forward.
At the sound of the footstep, I ducked. The Turk stumbled forward from momentum. His fist and arm flew over my head. I rose, catching his waist on my shoulder and lifted. It wasn’t much of a throw but it didn’t need to be. He’d supplied force and direction that carried him out the window.
I’d looked down the mountain side before. Below Snowman were sheer, iced walls of rock. Wisps of clouds played about a 1,000 feet down. Another 1,000 feet below that were the first outcroppings, the first obstacles to a falling body. The Turk never screamed, never made a sound, not that we heard. The room was very still and very cold.
Beginning to believe I was still alive, I staggered away from the window. Someone came forward and wiped blood from my eyes. It was Vera. I’d never noticed when she entered the room. Now she looked angry and vindicated. With my vision cleared I looked around the room. It seemed as if someone had gone around the room with a sledgehammer and a brush and a pail of red paint. Red was everywhere, covering the floor and walls where you could see an occasional outline of a back or shoulder. Red marked the clothes of the Mafiosos where they’d happened to come too close to the fight. Everything breakable was broken. On the floor was a pink tooth, a molar. I ran my tongue around my mouth and found no gaps. It was the Turk’s tooth, and I’d knocked it out, but I never knew when it happened.
“I think you can say Raki flipped your boy,” the Boston chief remarked to King and broke the silence.
“And now Raki’s going to bleed to death, thanks to you,” Vera told her father.
King stepped in front of the chiefs and consiglieres. As he started to speak, I interrupted.
“The winner and still Raki Senevres,” I said. “You make your apology. Then I’m going to go get some iodine.”
The boys were in no mood for King’s suspicions anymore. They’d had a better fight than Frazier-Ali, and they headed upstairs for the liquor and cigars. So, King delivered his little speech to me alone.
“All this proves you can only be one person. Only Nick Carter could have won that fight.”
“Flatterer,” I said and stumbled off in Vera’s arms.
Seventeen
It was three o’clock in the morning before every cut had been cleansed. Fortunately, few of the slashes required bandages, mostly on my forehead and forearms. I simply looked like a man who had fallen face first into a barrel of razor blades. In my brain was the double glow of local anesthetics and scotch, the first provided by the resident doctor and the second by Vera.
In two hours AXE would hit, and I would be alive. That realization didn’t hurt my morale either.
“You’ve proven yourself now, Raki,” Vera eased me into my room. “You even beat my father.”
Her eyes glowed with love. I’d won her. In two hours I would betray her. I’d only been doing my job: infiltrate and destroy. The job meant using her, just as her job in the beginning meant destroying me. I tried to rationalize her out of my mind as just another woman, just another enemy. It was no use. I held her face and smiled deceptively, as if I were nothing but happy. Could it have worked in another place or another time, Vera and me? The most I could do for her now was to try to keep her alive when AXE’s copters came down.
“Will you stay here tonight with me, Vera?”
“I was waiting for you to ask.”
As I said, my cuts were mainly superficial. In the dark I couldn’t see them, and, when Vera climbed naked into bed with me, I couldn’t feel them. Her breasts were cool and soothing, her body a lithe blanket. Her mouth was hot and hungry. As we kissed, my legs spread hers. Vera’s tongue found mine as I rose up into her, past her mound’s fringe and soft lips, into the female core.
“Raki,” she sighed with pleasure. “No one can stop us. No one.”
I turned her over without withdrawing and pulled her thighs around me. My guilt melted in the heat of lovemaking. Vera Cesare King was never more passionate and giving, her breasts soft pillows with stiff cones, her flanks wide and welcoming. At the end, the bed rocked under deep, rhythmic sex, and then we were locked together, holding on as if letting go would mean time would run out.
Sexual exhaustion overwhelmed my battered body. Vera left me with a kiss to go to the bathroom, and I was half asleep when my head hit the pillow. Something fell on the bathroom floor, but the sound registered faintly on my brain. I could sleep deeply, sweetly for one hour and be ready for Hawk when he came.
“You are Nick Carter.”
The voice was Vera’s, and it wasn’t in any dream. I sat up, immediately wide awake. Vera held the radio transmitter in the palm of her hand. In her other hand was her Beretta.
“I accidentally knocked your shaver on the floor. The shaver broke, and this fell out,” she bounced the tiny transmitter in her hand. “You rotten bastard.”
I could have started lying again and argued it was a bug of her father’s, but I didn’t have the heart for it. The he was over, and we both knew it. Raki Senevres was dead.
“I’m sorry, Vera.”
I meant it. Vera’s brown eyes stayed as hard as topazes. She was still naked. The bathroom’s light cast the gun’s shadow over her sleek belly, where I’d laid minutes before.
“So am I,” she said.
Vera pulled the trigger. A tinny click came from the gun. She pulled the trigger a second time and a third. The hammer came forward on the bullet in the chamber, but there was no firing pin. I’d removed the pin days before.
“Bastard!”
She threw the gun at me and ran for the door. I tackled her from the bed and climbed up her body. On the chair were my clothes. My shirt served as a gag around her mouth, and I tied her hands to her feet with my pants. Bent in a bow, she rocked back and forth furiously. I couldn’t help throwing a blanket over her to hide her nakedness from whoever might come.