Have you ever seen an ant trapped in a sand pit? The pit is built by a ant lion, an insect that sits on the rim of the pit and watches his victim struggle futilely to crawl out. But the pit is constructed with slopes at just the right angle, so that the sand particles lose their cohesion, break, and send the ant tumbling back to the bottom. The ant lion waits until his prey is overcome with exhaustion; then he kills.

I knew what the ant felt like.

I was rolling, then flattened out on my stomach, trying to find a handhold with my fingers. But volcanic ash is worse than sand. There is no cohesion. Your fingers slide through as if the ash were water.

The .44 Magnum clapped again, the slugs digging deep into ash. One bullet sent a geyser of dust into my eyes, blinding me. I choked, sucking more ash into my lungs. At 17,000 feet I was having enough trouble breathing as it was. But all my troubles seemed to be coming to an end.

I was really falling now. The whole slope of ash disintegrated. Rocks started falling, little ones first, building up to boulders. Suddenly I was tossed up in a cartwheel, trying to protect my head with my arms. The sound of tons of ash and rock breaking loose was deafening. I fell through air, landing on my back. I groped up until I felt solid stone and wedged myself into it. I had bounced off a stone shelf. I knew then that I had a chance for survival if I could only cling to the overhang of the shelf. And if the shelf didn�t slip.

The slide continued for another sixty seconds. The silence after it was awesome, broken only by the shrill calls of ravens scared from their perches.

My red eyes teared, washing the dust out. The landscape below me was buried. A rivulet or two of ash still stirred. Even under the protection of the shelf, I was up to my chest in ash.

Carefully, I took out the package I had carried under my shirt. It was my Luger, which I had wrapped in a handkerchief. I unwrapped the big gun and waited.

After thirty minutes I heard them coming � two men, their feet slapping the ash at intervals, so I could tell they were using ropes. When they paused, I heard them poking the ash with rifle butts. Finally, they moved below me about fifty yards on the left.

The men wore ash-covered mountaineering clothes and each grasped a nylon rope with one hand and a semiautomatic .44 in the other. But there the similarity ended. One was young and robust, a gold-colored Chicano. The second was old and pale, as thin as an ironwood tree, and he carried a cold cigar clamped in his teeth.

I set the Luger�s sights first on one man, then on the other. A Luger shoots very flat out, so there was little correction for the downslope. Most Lugers also have a long trigger pull, but mine doesn�t. The hammer came forward the instant I squeezed.

The Chicano�s head snapped back as my bullet sang an inch from his chin, right where I wanted it. The old man, Hawk, clamped his foul cigar in a face-splitting grin. Hawk is my chief, and he has a strange sense of humor.

�Now don�t tell me you�re angry, Number Three?� he laughed. �This was your idea of a training exercise.�

I got shakily to my feet and couldn�t help glancing upslope in case a secondary slide was starting. There was nothing but black ash and volcanic rock, all very still, and far above like a postcard backdrop the white glacial cap of Mount Popocatapetl. Some ravens and vultures circled in frustrated swoops.

�All right,� I answered. �Now it�s your turn to train.�

Jaime is a Mexican-American who joined AXE the previous year, which meant he was something like Number 200. All of a sudden he had a real interest in the volcanic ash, shuffling it with his boots and whistling a Latin tune. Hawk turned ornithologist, studying the wheeling birds. After a minute of their rank cowardice, my anger subsided and I put the gun away, then carefully made my way over to my colleagues.

�That�s a good shot with a handgun,� Jaime remarked and rubbed his chin.

�I knew you weren�t dead, Nick,� Hawk jabbed his finger into my sore chest. �You�re the only agent I know who�s sure to die in bed, and I don�t mean sleeping. You�re only irritated at us because it would have been embarrassing for you to get killed doing a stunt you thought up yourself. Damn match.�

The thin air was windy, and he couldn�t get his cigar relit.

�Besides,� Jaime put in, �I don�t see how you climbed as high as you did. Scientifically, it is impossible to climb volcanic ash.�

�In other words,� I put in, �if I hadn�t climbed so high I wouldn�t have fallen so far. Another bright thought like that, Jaime, and you�ll be back in the CIA.�

�Don�t take it out on the boy,� Hawk huffed at me. His inability to get his cigar going was upsetting him more than my near death. At least, that was the impression he enjoyed conveying. He really thinks I�m indestructible. Someday, I�m going to surprise him. �What land of air is this?� he muttered. �No wonder nothing grows up here.�

�If you got yourself decent Havanas you wouldn�t have this problem.�

Hawk frowned. He loves his cheap cigars and off-the-rack suits the way another man might love a homely wife.

�Cuban goods are embargoed,� he took a patriotic tack. �Anyway, about this exercise, N3, I think it has definite possibilities.�

�I knew the sadistic element would appeal to you.�

�However,� Hawk went on quickly, �with ropes and without firearms. We can use a time incentive.�

�And one thing,� Jaime added hesitantly to me. �If I might speak.�

�Please, go ahead. Sorry I seemed edgy. Landslides do that to me.�

�It�s about that,� Jaime said. �My family have always been mountain climbers, first in the Pyrenees and then in the Sierra Madre. If you�re caught in a slide, curl up. It protects you when you fall, but it�s even more important when you�re buried. Curled in a ball you will have less weight on you, and you may be able to create an air space between your arms and chest. Another thing, if you are buried for a long time you will conserve your body heat better if you�re curled up.�

�Thanks, Jaime,� I replied after digesting his suggestion.

I could not know then how important that advice would be for me, but I respected him for saying it and for the way he said it. He was a good man. That was the last I ever thought about Jaime Montenegro, at least until he died.

It was two months later. Hawk had stuck me with some long-range-analysis papers, which is work I hate, but the Commander forcefeeds it to me because when he dies, naturally or unnaturally, I�m next in command. There is no N2 in AXE; he died a long time ago. So every once in a great while just to make Hawk happy, Nick Carter, Killmaster, sits behind a desk and plays administrator. At least it gives me a chance to see what new talent has turned up in the secretarial pool-

I was making a paper airplane out of the CIA�s latest proposal when Hawk called me into his office. There�s usually an undertone of sardonic humor in his voice. There wasn�t this time, and I crumpled the plane into a ball.

�Come in, Nick.� Hawk gestured to a chair.

He wasn�t angry or depressed because a man who gives out dangerous assignments can�t afford to be angry or depressed � it affects his efficiency. And he can�t take a drink under pressure because that turns into a habit, and he can�t use amphetamines because that would make him unreliable. But when an AXE agent is killed on the job, I can tell, because Hawk seems a little more weary than usual.

He slumped in the wrinkles of his suit, sitting behind a desk so scarred by cigar burns that it looked like the bridge of a battleship. We were surrounded by filing cabinets painted the usual government-issue Navy gray. The cabinets were too stuffed with For-The-President�s-Eyes-Only reports for many of the drawers to shut. Hawk�s genius incubates in such a mess that the security seems loose, but if an enemy agency ever tried to penetrate AXE headquarters, they�d have to use an armored brigade to get to his files.

�Remember the training exercise we tried out in Mexico, Nick?�

�Yes. I understand we�re getting part of the White Sands Testing Range for the other men to practice on.�

�And just what do you think we�ll learn from the exercise?�

�Fitness, for one thing. Character is what it should really test, though. Set a man running over dunes for days being chased by a dune-buggy-mounted machine gun. The first day is just hard work and a little perverse fun. The second day he�s dehydrated, and his legs are so oxygen-starved and stiff he has to keep running from sheer will. The third day he�s hallucinating. The men in the jeep shooting at him are no longer training instructors playing a game. They�re just black silhouettes out to kill or capture him. If our trainee still doesn�t give up, we�ve got a good man. If he makes an intelligent attempt to kill his pursuers, then we�ve got a very good man.�

�And if he does stop running or gives himself up?�

�Then he�s a fine, sane individual but unfit for AXE. We apologize and give him a wonderful recommendation as a civil servant somewhere else.�

Hawk picked a flake of tobacco from his thin upper lip.

�That boy who went to Mexico with us, Jaime Montenegro. Do you think he would have passed the test, Nick?�

I took a second to think. Hawk seems like a sloppy man, but he has no time for vague answers, and he loathes lies. I recalled how Jaime had spoken up to me on the mountain.

�Yes.�

Hawk rooted in his desk for a cigar. I won�t say a fresh or a new cigar, because that was not the description for his ugly cheroots.

�Well,� he lit up, �I�m glad you said that, Nick. Jaime was quite an admirer of yours. You�ll notice I said was. He turned up this morning, washed up from the Bay of Tehuantepec. He was tortured to death. You know, hold a man under water until he talks. The local police thought it was a simple case of drowning, but our autopsy was a little more complete. It showed, among other things, that there was salt water in his stomach, as well as in his lungs.�

�He committed suicide rather than talk,� I finished the thought for the Commander. Deliberately opening the esophagus while underwater took an enormous amount of muscular control, not to mention a degree of heroism that staggered my mind. �What was his assignment?�

�Narcotics. The drug route from Panama to Tucson. He was on loan to the Federal Narcotics Task Force.�

I tried not to show my surprise. Hawk didn�t lend his men out to anyone. He raised his eyes and caught my stoney face.

�A direct personal order from the White House made me share Jaime,� Hawk stated. �I told Jaime to move slowly until one of our more experienced men was free. He was a lot like you in some ways. He hated to follow orders.�

�I was free,� I reminded Hawk.

�You are not just an experienced man, N3. You�re too important to ship out every time the President picks up the phone.� He winced. �And, damn it, so was Jaime.�

There was no point in my adding to the regret he felt. But if this was the hell of being an administrator, I never wanted to be one.

�What do we have to go on?� I asked.

�Just about nothing,� Hawk�s lips thinned bitterly. �No particular clues about the body. We have no idea where Jaime was last seen, although he was headed for Puerto Vallarta.

�This afternoon we found his radio set in Panama City. The pad next to it had no words, but it bore the impression from the writing on the last page tom out. One word: �Snowman.��

Hawk spread his hands. I shook my head.

�It doesn�t mean anything to me,� I admitted. �Cocaine and heroin are both called snow, so it could be someone high up in either business. You ran down all the possibilities?�

�Every file. Also names of registered yachts and fishing boats and ships of all flags. Jaime may have just been doodling or may have made up the nickname for someone he was suspicious of.�

�Jaime spoke English but he thought in Spanish,� I pointed out. �He wouldn�t be likely to choose an English nickname. I think Snowman is a real person or a real thing. So when do I go to find out?�

�Forget about it, Nick. Forget I ever mentioned this Snowman.� Hawk had his hand up before I was even out of my chair. �Just wait a second. Say you do go to Panama, and there, or in Puerto Vallarta, you find some assassin called Snowman and kill him. That�s revenge, but that�s all it is. The Feds have been arresting small-time Mafia hitmen for years, and has that stopped the drug traffic? Not a chance. Why should we start copying them? I want a pure AXE operation � one Killmaster going right to the top of the Mafia drug dealers, not playing cops and robbers with Mafia messenger boys. We�ll hit back, but we�ll do it our way.�

We left his office and went down the hall to the projection room. The room would have impressed a casual visitor as a night-school lecture hall, which is to say, it wouldn�t have impressed a casual visitor at all. A professional might have noticed the identity scanners taking in the weight, height, physical characteristics, and weapons systems of each person entering the small auditorium. Dr. Thompson from Special Effects was already seated. Hawk�s secretary waited by the projector.

The doctor and I shook hands. The lights went out.

On the screen was a map of North and South America. Red arrows from Canada, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, and Brazil all pointed to the United States.

�The drug traffic of the Western Hemisphere,� Hawk announced. �Over the U.S.�� Canadian line because customs is looser there. Through Panama because of the shipping trade. That�s where Jaime was. But this is just a small part of the picture.�

The slide projector clicked, and a map of the world flashed on the screen. Now there were lines from the Americas, from Europe, Hong Kong, Guam, and Saigon.

�This is what we�re up against. Dozens of different routes. And the Panama line is one of the least important. The same with Southeast Asia. Here�s the real pipeline.�

Another click and we were looking at a map of Europe. Across it were routes that had nothing to do with trains or planes. These arrows were the underground highways of opium from the Near East with stops on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

�Palermo, Naples, Athens, Belgrade, Barcelona, Marseilles, and Munich,� Hawk rattled off. �But the real capitals are the last two, Marseilles and Munich. Eighty percent of the heroin in the United States comes from opium processed in those two cities.�

Next came a slide of the port city of Marseilles, an industrial sprawl on the Mediterranean.

�This is the old center of heroin processing. I don�t have to tell you, Nick, how the Corsicans of Marseilles monopolize the city and the drug trade there. Lately, the French have started having a drug problem of their own, though. The Corsicans have not been stopped, but the atmosphere in Marseilles is not as comfortable for them as it used to be.

�Which is why a lot of the trade has moved here.� The slide of Marseilles was replaced by one of Munich, the German-Bavarian capital of beer-flowing gemutlichkeit.

�Munich has thousands of Turkish factory workers, laborers who smuggle in Turkish opium. The operations have been successful so far because Germany has a constitutionally decentralized police system. But the Germans are organizing narcotics strike forces, too, which brings us to a very interesting situation. For the first time in years the pattern of heroin traffic is in flux. The Mafia can�t rely on their old contacts the way they used to. They�re considering new routes built by new contacts. And this is our opportunity.�

�I think I can guess what you�re getting to,� I interrupted. �Instead of approaching the problem from the outside, I should present myself to the Mafia as a European dealer with a safe drug route.�

�And be invited into the Mafia as a partner, a welcome guest, instead of an intruder. That�s right�

�Fine,� I agreed, �except for one thing. The European routes are run by families that are even tighter than the American Mafia. Let�s be realistic. If I show up as a Corsican, the Mafia can fly in ten of my alleged uncles to check my story.�

In the dark I could still make out Hawk nodding and smiling.

�Correct, Nick. But you won�t be a Corsican.�

The projector clicked for the last time, filling the screen with bright color, a rolling blanket of poppies in red blossom and with a stark range of mountains that I recognized as Anatolia.

�You�ll be a Turk, Nick. We�re going right to the source of the opium in Turkey. That�s where the Corsicans get their raw material and for a very good reason. Turkish opium is the highest grade. With its enormous morphine ratio it can be cut down more than other opiums.�

�The economics are fantastic,� Dr. Thompson spoke up for the first time. �A farmer in Turkey grows ten kilos, or twenty-two pounds, of opium for 330 Turkish lira. That�s the equivalent of $22. Once that opium has been processed into heroin and adulterated for sale on American streets, its value has increased to $1,936,000.�

�The Mafia will listen to any Turk who can come to them with a deal,� Hawk concluded. �And farmers all over Turkey grow opium poppies. You don�t have to be involved with the current suppliers at all.�

�A Turk,� I rubbed my hand over my face. It wasn�t the handsomest face in the world, but it wasn�t the ugliest either. I turned to Thompson. As head of Special Effects he takes a particular delight in rearranging my features to fit drops into China. A silicone bruise can last for months. On the other hand, he designs lovely little tools, like finger rings that turn into 36 inches of garroting wire. I regard him as being somewhere between a dentist and a wizard. �How much make up will that take?�

�Not much. Well make the port town of Izmir your home, and Izmir has enough nationalities so you could be blonde without being suspicious. As it is, you�re dark and menacing enough, if a little tall for a Turk,� Thompson paused. �The main problem is making you look a little less like Nick Carter.�

�You aren�t entirely unknown to the Mafia,� Hawk reminded me.

�We�ll build up the bridge of your nose a bit, emphasize the lines around your mouth, and reshape your hair,� the scientist said airily.

�A touch here and a touch there? No dueling scar?� I asked just to see Thompson wince. �All right, I assume we have tapes of the Izmir dialect and idioms.�

�All taken care of. But there is one other small matter,� Hawk remarked mildly.

The lights went on, washing out the poppies on the screen and revealing Hawk�s grin as he lit another of his evil cheroots.

�You see, Nick, it�s no problem for us to supply you with any amount of opium you need to impress the Mafia that you are a desirable partner. However, you have to have more than opium. All the suppliers have that.

�You have to prove to the Mafia that you have a foolproof system of moving your opium from Turkey to New York. And I mean foolproof. If customs catches you, you go to jail. If the Mafia so much as suspects that this is a set up, that customs is not doing its best to stop your shipment, then you may wind up dead. Either way, our whole operation collapses.�

�I�m glad you pointed that out,� I frowned. �The Corsicans have tried everything from coffins to cars to send their heroin through. You mean you�ve actually thought of something they haven�t?�

�Actually, no,� Hawk blew a puff to the ceiling. �We�ve left that for you. You have a week to figure it out.�

�A week!�

Hawk stood up. Suddenly, he was in a hurry to go someplace.

�You�ll think of something, Nick,� he patted my shoulder. �You always do.�

I was still thinking up Turkish curses for our beloved Commander when Dr. Thompson and I entered one of Special Effects� lower-level laboratories. Usually, the lab is full of weapons under research. Now it was littered with dismantled cars, all sorts of luggage, and even part of an airliner fuselage.

�It�s very frustrating,� Thompson confessed. �To impress your future partners you would have to bring in a substantial shipment. Everything my men and I develop seems to have been tried already or thought of by customs. Car engines, false panels, even Japanese radios. Either trained dogs can sniff the heroin out or customs X-rays see it. Some Mexicans have sewn heroin into the second stomach of cattle and then driven the cattle over the border, but customs is on to that now. You can�t bring fruit into the country. If you bring in canned goods, they have to be inspected. With all the hijacking that�s going on, handcarried luggage gets a much more thorough going over.�

�How about stuffing the heroin in my stomach?� I growled.

Thompson began considering the possibility, so I left him with a sigh of disgust and went over to the plane fuselage. It was of a first class section, and I found one of the wide seats had a hollow bottom.

�This would involve the cooperation of an airline sanitation worker, someone who would clean the plane after you left and deposit the shipment in his industrial vacuum cleaner,� Thompson explained.

�Not a bad idea,� I said hopefully.

�But it happens that it was tried last week at Kennedy Airport. You see, the suppliers in Marseilles and Munich have laboratories just like this, and they�ve been spending years working on new systems. They have a headstart.�

He was still muttering about his problems when I left him.

For the next five days, I rehearsed my Turkish background and tried to think of a way to ship 200 pounds of heroin into the United States. In the first endeavor I was successful, and in the second I was a bust. Special Effects kept calling me down to see how they were getting along but they didn�t seem to be getting anywhere. Heroin secreted in the mile of wiring of a Rolls Royce may seem clever to a researcher, but it wasn�t the sort of plan I wanted to stake my life on, not if a customs inspector tried to start the engine. Besides, I was faced with the task of bringing in a big shipment, not a token sample.

�Could you get me some aspirin and a bottle of Johnny Walker from the commissary?� I asked my new secretary when I made my way back to my office.

�You have a headache?� she inquired sympathetically.

�No, but I will have when I get to the bottom of the bottle.�

She was a buxom blonde with tight leather pants and a beauty spot next to her mouth. Her mouth was in perpetual motion, sucking the candies she constantly fed herself. She wrinkled her nose cutely now as she toddled off for the scotch and pills. From the start I�d labeled her as overly willing, and I hadn�t approached her except with some papers to type. In my depression I was starting to see her charms.

On my desk was the huge government ledger I�d been studying for days, the survey of all foreign imports from Afghanistan to Zaire and from anchovies to zircons.

�My, that�s a big book,� my secretary thrust out her chest as she came back.

�Yes, and the pages are heavy, too. Maybe you�d like to help me turn the pages sometime.�

�Any time.�

I noticed that there were two paper cups with the bottle. Somehow I got a grip on myself.

�Later, Miss Van Hazinga. Later.�

I went through the book for the tenth time. I kept letting myself be distracted, though, by the rattle of my secretary�s typing. My eyes wandered of their own accord to her long leather-clad thighs. Her waist was narrow, and I couldn�t help noticing that each time a finger hit a key, her generous breasts moved hypnotically. I wondered idly if it was worth encouraging her. Clearly, she�d be a more than sympathetic companion. Hell, in the right situation she might even be a witty conversationalist too.

Then her fingers flipped another gumball between her red lips, and I stopped thinking about idyllic affairs with Miss Van Hazinga.

At the end of the day, Hawk asked me into his office.

�Well, Nick, you ship out in forty hours. Have you and Special Effects come up with the system yet?�

�I have.� I placed a list on his desk. �This is what I need.�

His eyes scanned the paper in a second, and then he went over it twice more.

�I don�t believe it. An order with a Portuguese exporter, a railway-car lease, and ownership of this German firm. It�s so easy.�

�Special Effects wanted to hide the snow,� I explained. �That�s the wrong approach.�

�I can see that. Yet this is foolproof, so foolproof it�s a joke. You�ve done it again, Nick. Congratulations.�

�Oh, I don�t deserve the credit, sir. Miss Van Hazinga was my inspiration.�

Hawk narrowed his eyes.

It�s always amazed me how a man of Hawk�s genius can have such a dirty mind.

Sun glared off the beach. It was five days since I�d left AXE headquarters, four days since my arrival in Turkey, and one day since I�d moved on to Lebanon and the resort hotels of Beirut. Special Effects� changes in my appearance were small but effective. I was no longer Nick Carter, but Raki Senevres, Turkish national, aged thirty-seven, self-employed. My dark hair was cut close to the skull and curled, giving the effect of widening my cheekbones. The silicone bridge of my nose sharpened my face, making it hatchetlike, and the way my mouth curled, I looked like I wouldn�t mind some blood. My one pleasure was the excuse to smoke good Sobranie Turkish cigarettes as I padded along the sand in a white robe and sandals.

Well-paid Lebanese prostitutes played with beach balls and eyed me provocatively as I passed. I�d made sure to wear a platinum Rolex and an oversized diamond ring, trademarks of a hood and a potential �john,� but the girls hesitated to approach me. Dr. Thompson really had made me look fierce. Either that, or somehow the remodeling had brought out a latent cruelty in my face.

Girls, beach towels, and transistor radios thinned out as I came to a part of the beach monopolized by the very, very rich. Red-and-white-striped cabanas lined the water�s edge. Here the international set snoozed in privacy, running out from time to time to dip into the Mediterranean. Two girls, expertly made up, topless though with tiny breasts, stopped to stare at me arrogantly before they ran back to the arms of their boyfriends waiting in their cabana. I was an intruder, their eyes said, a hood.

�If you�re looking for Mister DeSantis, he�s over there,� the thinner girl said pointedly and waved at a far cabana.

�Thanks.�

I didn�t move though until I saw the goose pimples spread over their shoulders, and the girls covered their hard little nipples with their arms. Then I ground out the cigarette in the sand and walked in the direction the thin one had pointed.

Charles �Happy� DeSantis was just the man I was looking for � resident of Yonkers, New York, president of two refuse-disposal companies, real-estate dealer, racetrack shareholder, charity chairman. �Happy� DeSantis, as he was known, was also consigliere, counselor, to one of the two biggest Mafia families in New York. He was in Beirut for a short vacation, but I planned to make it a business trip.

I felt two men approaching me from behind. I sensed they had guns pointed at my back, so there was no point in running. I stopped, lit another cigarette, and waited.

They were burly Muscle Beach types in tight bikini trunks and windbreakers, their hands casually resting on the lead in their pockets. Dark glasses and white teeth.

�You looking for someone?� the biggest smiler of the two asked.

�I have some business to discuss.�

�Who with?�

�The man in that cabana. Here�s my calling card. I�ll move my hand slowly.�

From my robe I took a small plasticine sack of white powder. There wasn�t more than four ounces, about $20,000 of calling card altogether.

The talker of the two bodyguards grinned wide.

�If you think you�re going to plant that on the man in that cabana, you�re crazy. He�d just buy every cop in Beirut.�

�If I didn�t know that I wouldn�t bring my card onto the beach. Give him the card. He can dispose of it as he wishes. Only, tell him to take a look at me. I want him to recognize me when I see him later.�

The bodyguards considered. My approach was professional, and I was making things easy on them. I was pretty sure what their answer would be. You can get ahead in any business if you follow the rules.

�What�s your name?�

�Senevres. It�s Turkish.�

�Well, Mr. DeSantis doesn�t like to be bothered when he�s on vacation, but I�ll see what I can do.�

The silent bodyguard stayed with me while the first went to see his employer.

After five minutes a girl emerged from the tent. She was a sleek Eurasian in a chic transparent tank suit, part of Mr. DeSantis�s vacation. She ran laughing down to the water.

A minute later, DeSantis came out. He was tall, white-haired, with a tennis-club build. He looked around casually as he just wondered whether the sun was out, and then he strolled down to the water to join the girl for an innocent frolic in the mild surf.

But he�d seen me, I knew, and recorded my face in his consigliere�s memory bank. I strolled off.

The contact was made.

The rest of the day I laid low. I�d booked a cheap room in one of the larger resort hotels � the same one DeSantis was in. I knew DeSantis needed time to check the quality of the heroin I�d given him. My room�s television got Beirut and Cairo stations, and my Arabic was good enough to understand a new show that announced Israel had suffered one more horrendous, fictitious defeat.

By eleven o�clock I was asleep. At one there was a knock on my door. I opened it, and a gun in my stomach shoved me half over a bureau. The talkative bodyguard held the gun and with his other hand switched on the lights. His expression was as blank and businesslike as my own. The other bodyguard was pulling out the drawers of the bureau, searching my bags and mattress, going through every cache the room could possibly offer. Naturally, he found the Astra .32 I�d taped under the night stand; he would have thought it pretty odd if there hadn�t been a gun. Finally, when the search was through, the gun was taken out of my stomach, and Mr. DeSantis sauntered in from the hall, closing the door behind him.

He tossed the resealed bag of heroin onto the bed.

�You said you wanted to talk to me?�

His attitude was brisk but showed no displeasure. I guessed why. Busy men often find it hard to do nothing but relax. Breaking in on me put an edge on his vacation. He was having fun, and he was being shrewd. His dark eyes measured me for either a deal or a coffin. It made no difference to him. And he wanted to see how much I sweat late at night.

�I think you�d like to talk to me, too.� My accented English was slow and deep but not too thick. I didn�t want them having any problems understanding me. �I am taking a shipment of the highest grade Turkish heroin to the United States.�

�Oh?� DeSantis asked with faint interest, �who for?�

He had assumed I was a messenger, perhaps even double-crossing a supplier. The night stand had a bottle of scotch and two glasses. I poured two shots in each glass and offered one to him. He waited until I drank before he sipped.

�Myself, Mr. DeSantis, only myself.�

�Really?� He looked around the cheap room. It didn�t fit with a $20,000 calling card. �And how big a shipment are you going to carry?�

�A hundred kilos, Mr. DeSantis.�

I had to give him credit � he didn�t spill a drop of scotch. But the pupils of his eyes widened a few centimeters.

�A hundred?�

�That�s right. In the first shipment. About $20 million in end product.�

�The first shipment?� DeSantis took a heftier sip and laughed softly. �You talk awfully big, Mr. Senevres. If you don�t mind my saying so, I don�t know whether I can believe you. I made a few calls today. No one�s ever heard of you.�

�None of your regular suppliers.�

�Exactly.�

�Good,� I answered. �Let�s keep it that way.�

�Hardly,� DeSantis shot back. �Before we deal with anyone we demand references.�

�My calling card is my reference.�

�Also,� DeSantis went on, �it�s impossible to bring in a hundred kilos of dope in a single delivery. It can�t be done.�

�I can do it. The second shipment may be double the first. Let me make it clear to you so there are no misunderstandings. No matter what you believe can be done, I am bringing this shipment to New York. I am giving you first bid. If you are not interested I will simply go to another family when I reach New York.�

�I am interested. What�s your first name?�

�Raki. R-a-k-i.�

�How about that? Like �Rocky.� Well, Raki, I�m certainly interested.�

�But it�s too much of a good thing, you�re thinking. You look at me and say to yourself, here is a Turk with a deal that�s too good to be true. Let me define the real problem. I can buy the opium � anyone who knows the hills of Turkey can. The suppliers you called don�t know me? Fine, it would be stupid of me to announce my plans to my competition. Or,� I gestured at the room, �to live in such style as to draw attention to myself. No, the real problem is whether I actually have a system of delivery. I agree, you would be foolish to take me at my word. On the other hand, I would be insane to tell you my system in advance. But I do have one.�

DeSantis drained his glass and set it on the table.

�Everybody has a system, Raki,� he got to his feet and waved the bodyguards to the door. �Well, like I said, you interest me. If you ever get to New York, look me up.�

�I don�t think so,� I walked him to the door. �It wouldn�t be worth my while by then. Good night.�

I was alone.

My warning hadn�t been just petulance, and DeSantis knew it because as consigliere it was his fob to size up competition. The first influx of big narcotics money in the United States meant an earthquake in the American Mafia. Many powerful old families that had refused to deal in dope had collapsed. Many smaller families, buying armies of �soldiers� with their drug profits, grew great. Any family that could bring in a guaranteed hundred kilos at a time could become predominant in the whole nation. DeSantis just couldn�t take the chance of loosing a killing, even on the word of a stranger.

I made a man-sized shape under my blankets with a roll of clothes. The bodyguard who found my gun had emptied it. I carried extra bullets, and after I reloaded I wrapped the Astra with a towel. Then I turned the lights off, sat in a chair, and waited.

Two hours later, the knob of the door began turning. DeSantis had �bought� another key at the desk, as I expected. A bulky form slipped into the room. In his hand was a gun with the extra five inches of a silencer. He crossed to the bed, pointed the barrel at what was supposed to be my chest, and fired five times, five muffled coughs for five heavy caliber slugs. Satisfied, he turned for the door and walked into my fist, which wasn�t traveling as fast as a bullet but carried the padded butt of my gun.

I caught my assassin before he hit the floor and laid him neatly down. I stuck the Astra in the band of my pajamas, wound the towel into a cord, and held it between my two hands. I waited again by the door.

The door opened.

�Hurry up, Al...� the second bodyguard started to say. He said no more because my towel was looped around his neck.

I pulled tight, yanked him off his feet into the room, and swung his head full force into the wall. Just in case, I swung him into a second wall. He twitched a little on the floor, but it was just short-circuited nerves. He was out.

I emptied both their guns. The laundry hamper they�d planned to roll my body away in was in the hall. I brought it into the room and dressed, filling my jacket with their guns and keys. The boys gave me no trouble as I stuffed them into the hamper like overgrown baby twins into one bassinet. The dirty sheets made an appropriate blanket.

DeSantis had a top-floor suite. I rode up in the service elevator with a wide-eyed busboy who seemed to guess what made my jacket bulge. Before he got off on the floor below DeSantis�s he grasped my arm.

�I, too, am a guerrilla fighting for the liberation of Palestine,� he announced, and as the elevator doors closed between us, he gave me the salute of a closed fist. Which is one example of the difference between a Beirut�s hotel and the Biltmore. New York busboys never get involved.

I checked the Astra as I rose to the top floor. The Spanish gun fit better with my new identity than my Luger, and it wasn�t a bad firearm. The Astra factory imitates Colts and Walthers, and you can�t go far wrong that way. The .32 would hit what I wanted within a hundred yards, and no hotel room was that long.

�It�s Al,� I whispered through DeSantis�s door.

As soon as he cracked the door, I gave the hamper a kick, slamming the door open into DeSantis�s face. The hamper shot across the room, caromed off a coffee table, and spilled laundry and killers over the floor. My hand was on the consigliere�s chest, my gun nuzzling under his chin, and I pushed him gently into an easy chair.

�All right. We�ve been through the part where you�re not interested and the part where you murder me. Now, let�s be serious, Mr. DeSantis.�

He swallowed, and his Adam�s apple throbbed close to the Astra.

�Sure, Raki.�

�Serious means you give me a deposit of $100,000 as an option on my services. That�ll make us even.�

�What did you give me?� he worked up the nerve to ask.

�You will take my calling card.� I stuffed the plasticene bag of dope into his pocket. �I am also giving yon three lives. Don�t play stupid. Just look around the room and count.�

�You won�t get away with this.�

�If I wanted to get away I would not have come up here. After I leave here, I want you to find me. In fact, I will tell you exactly where I will be so that you can send a representative, someone you trust who can watch how I make the shipment. If you send someone to �hit� me, then I will kill him, and you forfeit your deposit.�

I moved the gun about a foot. His neck was red where the iron had burrowed in.

�You should have run, Raki.�

�Turks are an honorable people. Not like Corsicans, who have been taking all the profits in Turkish opium for too long. I said I was willing to make a deal with you. I still am.�

DeSantis fumbled for his cigarette case. He took his time lighting up, as if he were cagily stalling me.

�And how do you propose to get the hundred grand, Raki? Holding me while my boys go to the bank?�

�I�ll show you.�

It was four in the morning, but there are some banks in Beirut that never close. There are the casinos, naturally, but there are also very private money changers, men who are always available for the unannounced disposal of gold, uncut stones, or stock certificates. I picked up the phone, dialed, and spoke in Arabic, then switched to Portuguese when the changer himself came on the line. The Portuguese have been the world�s moneychangers for over five hundred years, and it took no more than a minute to explain everything I wanted.

�Now what?� DeSantis asked when I hung up.

�We enjoy each other�s company. Smoke or drink if you wish.�

�Thanks. You mean we just wait here?�

�There is a saying in Islam,� I explained to the consigliere. �It goes, �If Mohammed cannot go to the moneychanger, the moneychanger will come to Mohammed.��

The moneychanger came in fifteen minutes. By then DeSantis�s bodyguards were off the floor and staring sullenly at me from the sofa. The talkative one bore a purple bruise over half his face, and the silent one kept wincing with pain. Actually, neither of them was very talkative anymore.

�I am Silvestro Boaz,� the Portuguese introduced himself. He was small and as neatly dressed and punctilious as a head waiter. He did not introduce his companion, an African with a shaved head and shoulders that nearly touched the walls. �You have all the necessary papers?�

�Yes.�

�What the hell is going on here?� DeSantis demanded.

The African put an attach� case on the coffee table, opened it, and counted out eleven packs of G-notes, ten in each pack � $110,000 American.

�You said $100,000,� the consigliere swore.

�$100,000 for me. The rest is Senhor Boaz�s commission,� I explained. I scratched my Astra where it itched. �Don�t you think you should start making out your checks?�

�As soon as you get this money you�re a dead man,� he hissed under his breath. I handed him his traveler�s checks which lay conveniently on the table.

�I don�t want you to get writer�s cramp. Just write your name and the date,� I told him.

Making out the traveler�s checks was a time-consuming transaction. Boaz had a rubber stamp for himself, a fact that seemed to gall DeSantis.

�That�s it, then,� he exploded as he handed over the last check.

�Not quite,� I answered, as I handed the moneychanger his $10,000 and took the attach� case and its contents for myself. �We might as well get the rest of the paperwork done now, too. After all, if I just walked off with your money, I could be called a thief.�

�I have the transfer papers all typed in triplicate, witnessed and stamped with the official seal,� Boaz assured DeSantis.

�Now what?� DeSantis stared past the Portuguese at me.

�Sign please, here and here and here,� Boaz unfolded the very official looking onionskin agreement.

�Sign,� I repeated and shifted the Astra in my hand.

DeSantis signed three times. Then he read the statement.

�This says I just bought 500 shares of what?�

�Of Hauffmann Ubersee Gesellschaft. A little German exporting company I happen to head,� I said. �And you haven�t bought the shares. You�ve only bought the right to sell that many shares within the next year. I congratulate you. You�ve made a sound investment.�

�Who ever heard of this company? The shares are worthless!�

�Such a hard bargainer,� I commented to Boaz. Then to DeSantis, I said, �Don�t make a fool of yourself. You have made a much better deal than you could ever understand. I am going with Senhor Boaz so you will not see me again for a week. By that time I will let you know where I am. I leave it to you whether you choose to be a sensible partner or remain foolish and angry and forfeit the contract you�ve made.�

�There�s only one contract I�m interested in,� the talkative bodyguard put in from the couch.

DeSantis put his hand up for the bodyguard to be quiet. The consigliere had had a minute to cool off and think.

�You say I can send a man to watch you operate. What if he gets word to me that he thinks your whole scheme is a bust, that it won�t work. What then?�

�Your money will be returned. But that won�t happen.� I leaned over DeSantis and dropped his bodyguards� two unloaded guns in his lap. �If there�s one thing you should be learning by now,� I pointed to the hamper, �it�s that I deliver.�

Izmir sprawls down from Mount Pagus to the sea in the sultry white heat. In Izmir your meal comes with a bottle of raki, vodka, or wine, a selection of East or West, and somehow that describes the rest of the city, too.

Beside a dusty palm tree will be a billboard for International Harvester tractors; next to a sixteenth-century mosque is a skyscraper, and on the other side of the skyscraper will be a Roman ruin. Swarthy Turkish men in cloth caps, sultry women in baggy pants and blouses, their hair festooned with braided ribbons, walk across Ataturk Square, while American pilots bargain with taxi drivers and vendors selling sweetcakes and soft drinks, or as the Turks call them, pasta and serbetler. The sweetcakes carry the promise of rich honey inside the way Izmir carries the promise of exotic encounters, heady and strong. Istanbul is Western by comparison. Beneath its polyglot, semi-modernized surface, Izmir is Asiatic.

Near the top of the mountain is an ancient fortress built by Alexander the Great during his conquest of the Persian empire. The fortress is nothing but ruins but it provides an adequate lookout. I sat on the stones and trained my binoculars on a small restaurant half a mile down the mountain. Diners ate on an open-air patio surrounded by bowers of grapevines. Through the kitchen window I could see the cook spooning out dishes of figs and tangy milk pudding. A shirt-sleeved waiter served beer to a middle-aged American couple. Two muscular men with thick, curly hair shared lunch at another table but they argued more than they ate, which meant they were ordinary Turks and not assassins. At the best table a girl sat alone, a model from her looks. Long reddish hair, beautiful oval face, incredibly long legs. French, I guessed, from her chic clothes. I forced my glasses away. I was looking for killers, not sex.

Two days previously, I�d wired DeSantis that he could send his representative to the restaurant. We would make our deal there or leave blood on the patio flagstones. By inviting the Mafia to Izmir, I was taking a chance on my identity, but I couldn�t afford meeting the Mafia on its own territory again.

There were still no signs of DeSantis�s man. I checked my watch. There were five minutes till the appointed time. And it would take me exactly five minutes to reach the peaceful-seeming restaurant.

I left the glasses on the rock for some lucky kids to find and started down the mountain. On the way through the crooked streets, children and young girls watched me from behind iron-railed stairways, but they watched with little curiosity. I was a Turk, until proved otherwise on a coroners table. I felt the snugness of the Astra in my jacket and the other added weight of the stiletto holstered on my left forearm and the four-ounce bomb taped to my ankle. The added weight didn�t bother me, not even in Izmir�s heat.

I turned off the street and climbed up to the restaurant patio. The middle-aged Americans had been replaced by some local teenagers and their transistor radio. The two big Turks had stopped arguing to begin a game of dominoes; they�d be arguing again soon enough. The restaurant owner, his belly trying to push his shirt out of his belt, his accent like Akim Tamiroff�s, welcomed me profusely and with much perspiration. Then I saw his eyes go past me.

In back of me were four men in black suits and hats, their collars buttoned without neckties, each carrying a case for a musical instrument. They had come out of the house across from the restaurant. I slid my hand in my jacket and touched the Astras grip. The leader of the musicians opened his case and brought out a balalaika.

�Nervous about something, Mr. Senevres?� It was a husky voice, unmistakably female.

I turned around. The fashion model smiled quizzically, and for the first time I noticed that her table was set for two.

Obviously she wasn�t a model, but she was an unforgettably beautiful woman. In her early twenties, eyes wide set and dark in contrast to her golden hair, a high-bridged nose, full lips. Her Valentino dress clung to her full breasts and rounded hips. A sandal dangled from her tanned toes. Her smile grew and expressed amusement, intelligence, and eroticism.

I sat down and looked with frank amazement.

�You were expecting me, weren�t you?� she asked. Her accent was American, but with unusual poise, elegance, and a hint of Italian ripeness.

�I was expecting someone. Hardly you.�

�You don�t seem too upset, really,� she observed rightly. �I know how Turkish men are about women.�

�Do you?� I let that question hang in the air for a second, then added, �I also know how your people are about women. In business, I mean. I wonder if they are serious in sending you.�

She touched my hand lightly.

�My dear Mr. Senevres, do you think I would have come if they weren�t?� Behind us the musicians were tuning their instruments. �In fact, you can thank my interest that those men are carrying balalaikas instead of guns. Some of the people at the meeting thought you should simply be eliminated. What�s good to order here?� Her manner was smooth and confident.

I summoned the waiter and ordered stuffed grape leaves, white cheese, and a bottle of raki.

�Raki, that�s your name isn�t it? Or is it a nickname?�

�It�s what you can call me. What do I call you?�

�Vera Cesare.�

�Then I�ll call you Vera, like Americans do.�

�Oh, you�d never be American,� she laughed. �But I�ll find out what you really are.�

The grape leaves were tasty and tart, the cheese sharp, and the raki a powerful, licorice nectar. While we talked, the breeze picked up, ruffling the fine gold hair on Vera Cesare�s shoulders.

�There are some problems you may not be aware of. We will have to travel to different places, some large cities, and some small towns. There will be some labor and a small amount of danger. I had expected a man to be traveling with me, and it is too late to change plans now.�

�I assumed all that, Raki. The people who sent me assumed that, too. Don�t tell me you�re afraid of traveling with a woman?�

�I am afraid of weakness, cuteness, and stupidity. These are not necessarily female traits. But they are traits of most American women.� I watched her keenly for any blush of anger.

�You won�t have any cause for complaint,� Vera Cesare responded without a tremor in her voice.

The little band of musicians was in full swing now, serenading each table in turn. Miss Cesare and I might have been lovers. Only might have been. What we were discussing was a $20 million shipment of misery and death.

�And you can promise full delivery within two months, Raki? By boat or plane?� she pressed.

�You will see.�

�You don�t trust me, I can understand. But I must report something to the people who sent me. After all, you hold a $100,000 deposit of ours.�

�Not a deposit, payment for sale of shares, all very legal.�

�Shares in a little German company you use as your cover,� Vera corrected me. �We�ve checked into Hauffmann Ubersee Gesellschaft, of course. They sell gingerbread houses to the United States and South Africa. We aren�t interested in gingerbread houses.� There was an antique cameo ring on her left land. She rubbed her finger idly over it as she talked. �However, we understand how convenient a business cover can be, and we are willing to consider the $100,000 as a first installment on the $1 million we�ll pay you on delivery in New York. That�s quite an improvement on the $500 you�d get for 200 kilos here in Turkey, isn�t it?�

Beyond the beautiful face and body was the mind of an iron Mafioso. I�d see it many times later but this was my first experience.

�Vera, it would be a mistake to play games with me. I intend to put the Corsicans out of business, simply because I�m a better businessman. The price you�re proposing to give me is the price you pay for wholesale heroin in Marseilles. That price is doubled on delivery in New York. Your people will pay me $2 million, plus a bonus of another $100,000.�

�Why in the world should we do that?�

�Because I�m worth it. Because you have never had that much heroin brought to you in one shipment before. Because it is the best heroin. And because I�m growing tired of this awful music.�

We were surrounded by the four musicians plucking their instruments and wailing out of harmony.

�You don�t like Turkish music?� Vera Cesare feigned surprise.

�It�s only that the balalaika isn�t his best instrument.�

I reached out to the leader of the band and pulled his jacket back far enough to reveal the .45 in his belt. Then I stuffed a ten-lira note beside the gun and left more money on the table as I rose.

�Where are you staying?� I asked the girl.

She was taken aback but not dumbfounded.

�At the Buyuk Efes Hotel.�

�Be outside it in four hours with a nightbag, and be alone.�

�Raki,� she said as I started to leave.

�Yes?�

�I think we�ll work very well together.�

The band leader, in pulling out the money from his pants, dropped his balalaika. It made a mournful sound.

Four hours later I approached the expensive Buyuk Efes Hotel, off Ataturk Square. It wasn�t hard to spot Vera Cesare. Among the arguing cab drivers and pasty-faced tourists she stood out like Botticellis Venus. A Venus with a handgun, I mused, and I wondered what kind of ladylike weapon she carried, a Beretta or a Kit. With all the traffic, there was no point in my looking for unwanted company.

I brought my Citro�n to a stop in front of her.

�Get in.�

She threw her bag onto the back seat and sat next to me. We pulled away from the hotel onto the modem sea-front boulevard that curves around the Gulf of Izmir.

�Where are we going? Or is that a stupid question?� she asked.

I gave her a look that said, �Yes.�

Occasionally, I glanced into the car�s side mirror. The roads of Izmir are like an automotive museum, except that all the old Buicks, Studebakers, Packards, Fords, and Plymouths are still rolling. A �53 Olds goes for $3,000 in Izmir. The cab owners who drive them stuff so many passengers inside that Turks call them dolmus, the word for stuffed grape leaves. A dozen of the aged dolmus followed me, and it was impossible to make out any individual faces.

I drove for a mile along the boulevard before cutting through the gypsy section and heading for the mountain road. One cab peeled off from the others in my wake. We climbed past fig orchards and groves of wild azalea, with the cab still tagging.

�I thought you were coming alone, Vera.�

She looked behind.

�Damn. I told them to stay away,� she said with pique.

�They don�t take orders from you?�

�It would be a little hard to explain,� she sidestepped the question.

�I can lose them or hurt them. Make up your mind, Vera.�

The cab made up her mind for her. It was a vintage Buick, but someone had dropped a lot of new horsepower up front. The cab shot past us on the upgrade. Two guns hung out the window pointed at my head, and over the guns I recognized some former balalaika players. Once ahead of us, the Buick�s taillights lit up.

The Buick had the power, but the Citro�n had a suspension like nothing else in the world. Without braking, I swerved to the left and passed. A gun came out of the Buick�s window but held fire for fear of hitting my passenger instead of me. A few seconds later, I could hear the Buick revving up to pass me again.

�You might as well stop,� Vera shouted over the sound of the engines. �You can�t outrun them.�

The road twisted over dusty hills like a snake. One hairpin turn followed another and as long as they did, the Buick had no chance of passing the Citro�n. The French car slid easily around curves that had the Buick�s shocks in convulsions. I shifted up when the Buick�s driver had to gear down, and when Vera and I crested onto a straightaway, the Citro�n was at sixty going on seventy.

The Buick crested half a minute later. We had disappeared. Ahead of the Buick was five miles of flat straightaway and no car to follow. The cab screeched to a stop. The Turks got out, lifting their caps to scratch their heads. A couple pointed to a farmhouse on the right side of the road. They all drew their guns and started walking toward it. A sleek rooster ran out of a cinder-block henhouse, gave one squawk, and ran off. There was no sign of life in the farmhouse.

�We�ll just have a small lead,� Vera whispered, though she needn�t have. We were on the side of the road opposite to the farmhouse with the Citro�n hidden behind a high stack of alfalfa.

�Fasten your shoulder belt.� She did as I said without more than a lifted eyebrow. �Now give me your answer. Do I kill them or lose them?�

�You�re dead serious,� she smiled as I brought the Astra out.

�They�re your men, but they�re in my way. Answer!�

Calmly, she considered both options.

�Killing would complicate matters, at this point,� she said. �However, I would be curious to see how you discourage them.�

�Then hang on.�

I held the Citro�n in neutral and gunned it until the tachometer needle bobbed into red. The last Turk in line in the farmhouse driveway was already hesitating and looking around for the origin of the engine�s sound. He started to call the others. By then it was too late.

The ground was hard and dry. Poor farming land, good drag strip. I hit twenty-five in first gear, fifty in second. By the time we reached the drainage ditch on the side of the road, the Citro�n was moving at seventy in fourth. The wheel gave one last tremendous buck in my hand and then we were in the air, flying at an oblique angle, the rear end fishtailing behind us, the Buick directly in front.

Citro�n and Buick met side to side. Side mirrors and door handles snapped off. The safety glass beside Vera cracked into spider webs. Not that I looked.

The Citro�n was still moving at sixty, fighting to swerve off the road, its hydraulic suspension out of equilibrium, the Michelin X tires stuttering from one side of the road to the other. Down to third gear, correct the drift, don�t pump, feed power, correct again, more power, straighten out, brain, eyes, hand, and feet collaborated. And it was not a smooth collaboration despite the hours spent on AXE�s driving course. It takes split-second reaction and anticipation, and discipline over instinct. But the Citro�n did straighten out.

Vera brushed glass crystals from her hair, stared at me, and then tried to roll down her window. The pulley had been crushed in the mangled door so she used her shoe to batter the honeycombed glass out into the wind.

�Their car is upside down in the ditch,� she reported when she pulled her head back in.

�I know.�

Vera was deep in thought for a minute. A tiny cut reddened on her cheek, and she dabbed the blood off automatically. When she lit her cigarette her hands were as steady as mine.

The shame of it all, I was beginning to decide, was that Miss Vera Cesare and I probably would work well together. Very well.

�We have no reports on a Vera Cesare. First of all, there�s very little dope on Mafia women. Second, Cesare is not a Sicilian name. There are only one or two women in the whole international Mafia and none of any consequence.�

I listened to what had to be the least informative radio transmission AXE analysis had ever sent. Around me, noses twitched. Thousands of rabbits huddled in cages, peeking out of little beady eyes. The stench was tremendous, and my own nose twitched from time to time. It had been explained to me that since Turkey was on the Russian border and was the Eastern command post of NATO and since AXE transmitters didn�t dare send too strong a signal into the Istanbul radio net, our safe house in Istanbul had to have an oversized antenna. The whole rabbit warren was the receiver, which was a damn clever idea unless you were the person sitting in it and taking down a message.

�Computers and analysis disagree with your theory that she is a daughter of an important Mafioso. Mafia family women do not engage in business ever.�

I waited impatiently for the five seconds of radio wave transmission and computer decoding time to pass.

�Bull,� I finally exploded. �Women have been important advisers to a lot of Mafia families.�

Five seconds passed.

�Not as �soldiers,� though,� the answer came. �Our estimation is that she is just a professional criminal hired for the job.�

Five seconds.

�Do you have any records, hearsay or gossip, about Mafia females at all? Anything that�s outside the usual run of adultery?�

Wait. Smell the rabbits.

�One curious story came in a few months ago,� the voice crackled. After a voice has been transmitted, scrambled and unscrambled, it is metallic, more artificial than human. �Do you remember Frank Musio, also known as Lover? A captain on the West Coast. His body turned up on Big Sur. Not drowned. Poisoned. Cantharidin. He�d been seen with a young woman. Hard to believe any woman would do that sort of thing, though. Anything else?�

I broke contact.

Outside the air was relatively fresh, wonderfully so, in contrast to the rabbit house. It was an experience I knew I�d recall the next time I ordered hare in a French restaurant.

Vera was in the Lancia we�d switched to after getting rid of the Citro�n. I was sure the boys in the band had taken the Citro�n�s license number, and even if we�d changed the plates, it was too easy to spot a sedan with one side crushed. So, in a suburb of Istanbul, Vera and I had stolen the Lancia, and she was as cool a thief as I�d expected her to be. Now she was catching a few minutes sleep while I called in. There was no way for her to follow me through the labyrinth of a Turkish ghetto and no phone near enough for her to call from. She would be getting the car seat cozy and warm.

Cantharidin, I pondered as I weaved through hovels back to the Lancia. Cantharidin is also known as Spanish Fly; in fact, it�s taken from a species of Spanish fly. Even high school kids talk knowingly about the incredible aphrodisiacal powers of Spanish Fly, how they heard about a friend of a friend of a friend who gave his girl Spanish Fly and the police had to pull her off the gear shift. As if that were a funny story.

Cantharidin stimulates the genitals all right. The sexiness comes first, then a burning sensation in the mouth, nausea, vomiting blood, difficulty swallowing, pain in the loins, blood in the urine, diarrhea, prostration, and coma. Twenty-four grains can cause death.

Could Vera give someone that much Cantharidin?

�Were you having a good dream?� I asked as I slid into the car beside her.

�Not bad. You made all the arrangements?�

�Yes. There�s a boat that goes to Athens. I will go on it third class and you will go first class. The authorities would be suspicious if we traveled openly together.�

�Why?�

�It would be a statement that you are a prostitute in a Moslem�s eyes. There�s no reason to cause you that embarrassment.�

�You are a very unusual man, Raki.�

Suddenly she made me strongly aware that we were alone at night in a car. Her eyes were nearly luminous in the faint fight. I could feel the warmth from her body. I could very easily imagine my lips on hers and my hand inside the blouse of her dress, going close to the source of that warmth.

�You�re not a very ordinary girl yourself, Miss Cesare.�

�Vera, please.�

�Vera.�

And there, despite all my private warnings, I kissed her. My hand went into her honey-colored hair and pulled her face to mine. Her lips were already open, and her tongue was sweet and eager. She placed my hand on her breast. Through the silk the peak of her breast hardened. As if she could read my mind, her fingers began undoing her buttons. Pulling one sleeve down, she slipped her bra off her shoulder and guided my hand in. Then she brought my head down.

Her breasts were even larger than I thought they�d be but young, very firm, and slightly salty from a day of driving.

�Do the seats go down, Raki?�

Her smile was not flirtatious but earnest. She was as aroused and hungry as I was.

�Not in this model, Vera. There�ll be enough hotel beds to come if you want to wait�

There was to be no waiting. Her hand was at my belt, pulling it open, and when it was open smiling with appreciation. Her fingers caressed me boldly, urgently. Her head went down with a deep kiss that was long and erotic and drew every nerve I had below my belt.

Unbuttoning the rest of her dress, she pulled off her pants and, facing backwards in the car, straddled me. The golden skin of her belly ended in a gold blur. She descended while I rose, and I found her ready, tight and soft. I cupped her buttocks, cool in the night air, and eased her down very slowly. Her fingers grasped my hair, and I heard her breathing stop inch by inch.

In the dark, barely seeing each other, we made love. It wasn�t just an act of sex, a release after the day�s long tension. We recognized something in each other. Something similar, shared. At that one moment, she groaned and threw her head back, thrusting herself as far onto me as she could, her thighs locked, and we came, together. In that orgasm in the dark we were in every way one person.

�Raki!�

She held my head between her breasts and rocked back and forth, spent but still very much warmed by the mutual glow.

In the flame of the match Vera had an angel�s face. She lit the cigarette in her mouth and passed it to me with a kiss. An hour had passed since we made love but our desire still burned brighter than the flame. She blew it out.

�Raki, you have known very many women. Do they all fall in love with you?�

�Not that I know of.�

�And you? Do you fall in love?�

�Very rarely.�

�A killer, a racecar driver, a smuggler, and a perfect gentleman. I could love you.�

Her words were serious. She took the Sobranie from my mouth, inhaled, and passed it back.

�But I won�t,� she let the smoke drift out. �I can�t. Do you understand?�

�I understand,� the hypocrite in me said. The barrier between us was much greater than Mafia and Turk, but I let her carry the guilt for drawing the line in our relationship.

Perhaps she even thought it was a measure of trust that I was planning to let her out of my sight for the ship ride. The truth was that I didn�t care if she made contact outside of Turkey. I could deal with that. The core of the plan, my false Turkish identity was most vulnerable in Turkey, and I had to keep her away from all contacts until we were out of the country.

�You really do have the perfect plan?� she asked softly.

�Perfect.�

�I hope so. For both our sakes.�

I kissed the valley between her breasts.

�What do you mean by that?� I asked gently.

She reached behind me and pulled something from the back of the seat. In the light of a match I looked at it. Vera�s little cache was a glass cylinder with one sharp, brittle end. A clear fluid resided inside.

Vera�s eyes, a soft cocoa brown, reflected mine, as her fingers snapped the cylinder in half. The fragrance of strychnine wafted upward, as she poured the liquid on the floor.

�I put it between the seats while you were making your call. I was ordered to use it unless I was positive you could make the shipment.�

I kept looking into her eyes. They weren�t so soft, I realized. They were like the eyes of an expensive Burmese cat.

�No,� she answered an unsaid question. �I wasn�t supposed to make love with you. That was the last thing I was ever supposed to do.�

Vera might have been telling the truth, but I couldn�t help thinking of Frank Musio floating on the California tides with a bodyful of poison.

Dozens of sunburned bodies bobbed in the surf. They were not the survivors of some shipwreck but English tourists doing what English tourists do when they reach the Mediterranean.

The surf and beach were Portuguese in front of the resort town of Albufeira. Twenty years ago, Albufeira was a fishing village. Now the fishermen sit on their high-bowed, brilliantly-painted boats and shake their heads at the hysterically vacationing strangers and at the enormous stucco and whitewashed resort hotels that dot the rugged coastline like fat dollops of whipped cream.

One thing about resort hotels, though. They aren�t scandalized by unmarried couples like Raki Senevres and Vera Cesare. The maid who brought drinks to our balcony hardly noticed that we were making one pair of pajamas serve for two people.

�Vodka and lemon juice for breakfast. I�ve never had that before,� Vera sipped from her glass. She wore the top half of the pajamas, and that was purely for decorum.

We were three days out of Istanbul, and we�d gone a lot further than just miles. I was getting used to having Vera near me, and I could feel the same thing happening to her. It was one thing to be lovers, another to find someone who could be both lover and partner. And like vodka in lemon juice, Vera had an added kick: she might be my executioner, too.

�It�s so you�ll get all the vitamins you need. I know how Americans want their daily vitamins.�

She smiled, but her eyes kept returning to my bare chest. Special Effects did what it could about battlescars, but there�s only so much that can be done with skin grafts. The muscles of my shoulders bore enough stripes for a master sergeant.

�You know all about Americans,� Vera said. �I don�t know anything about you. Could you tell me anything?�

�There is very little to tell.�

I shrugged her question off because I had no taste for any lying that wasn�t absolutely necessary.

�You�re trying to be mysterious and romantic,� she pressed.

�Not at all. I�m a very practical person, anything but romantic.�

�Your English is very good. Where did you learn it? From a rich American lady?�

�Vera, anyone who wants American money must speak English.�

�And you want money. Or is it the thrill of getting the money?�

I downed the last of my vodka and lemon juice.

�I tell you what, Vera. Let�s just go get the money and see how many thrills we have.�

We had a Mercedes 220S now, and an hour later we were driving it up through Albufeira�s twisting streets, past postcard stands and shop windows of Madeira lace. The coastal road was bordered with white and blue irises, a typical Portuguese touch. We zipped around horsedrawn wagons painted with symbols for protection against the Evil Eye.

On a side road, we passed a bullock market and rice fields of women working in rows carefully pulling up the crop by hand. We were back in the eighteenth century. Pastel flamingos balanced on one leg and searched for frogs in the shallow water.

We climbed steadily until we were above the marshlands into rolling, arid hills, the most typical Iberian landscape. Twisted cork trees cast sharp, garish shadows over the gray-green earth. Vera exclaimed, looking in the distance.

�Is that snow?�

On the far mountain was a blanket of white shimmering under the summer sun.

�There�s an old Moslem story,� I said. �When Spain was ruled by Arabs, an Arab prince married a Viking princess and brought her to Spain to live. She grew increasingly sad, and, when he asked her why, she said she missed the sight of Northern land, especially the snow. He couldn�t bear to send her back, so he planted Spain with almond trees, which covered the country with white blossoms like snow.�

�Almond trees,� Vera echoed softly.

The Mercedes hummed, and we climbed up toward what first seemed like a mirage or a magical glacier. Then we�d reached the orchard, and we were surrounded by a sea of shivering, pure white petals.

Almonds. The crushed kernels are the base of amygdalin, otherwise known as cyanide. But Vera looked particularly beautiful against a background of treeborne snow.

After mile upon mile of almond orchards we reached a complex of buildings: a garage, a mill, silos, and an office. We parked and entered the office. An old man in wellworn tweeds greeted us with a military snap of his heels.

�Herr Hauffmann?�

�No, I am Senhor Senevres. I am from Hauffmann Gesellschaft. Do you have our order completed?�

The old boy was disappointed, and I guessed why. He was German, very likely a war criminal gone into hiding like so many others who arrived in Spain and Portugal in �45. Now he was desperate for a touch of the homeland, poor fellow.

�Yes, yes, all ready.�

�Here is a cashier�s check drawn from the Banco do Lisboa for one rail-car-load of almond powder. I would like to see the powder now.�

�Very well.�

The three of us strolled over to the silos. A truck had been backed up to one, and our guide pointed to some half-filled cardboard barrels. The almond powder inside was an aromatic ivory dust. I couldn�t see it but I could feel Vera�s appreciative look. Except for the aroma, there was no apparent difference between almond dust and opium.

�You might as well give me back the check. I�m not taking this powder,� I told the old man.

�What do you mean?� he was startled out of his disappointment.

�We intentionally sent you large, transparent plastic bags to ship the powder in. If you pack the powder in barrels, customs at each border will tear the barrels open until we�ll lose ten percent just by contamination.�

�Customs will open the bags anyway,� he protested.

�That�s why the bags were supplied with elastic bands. That is the way Hauffmann Ubersee Gesellschaft operates. You should understand.�

Abruptly, he summoned workers and demanded they search for the plastic bags. In a few minutes the bags had been found, and the powder was transferred from the barrels.

�The freight car is waiting in the Albufeira yard. I expect it to leave on tonight�s train so you should load today. Hauffmann Gesellschaft will have much more business to give you if this shipment is handled correctly.�

�As you say,� the old boy nodded energetically.

�Wonderful,� Vera kissed my cheek as we drove down the mountain. �Almond powder is a perfect match. But I don�t understand how you�re going to do the switch. You were right when you said that border inspectors would check all the bags. They�re on the lookout for opium, and they�ll take samples from every bag.�

�Right. I want them to.�

�Well, where are you going to hide the opium then?�

�I�m not.�

We drove in silence through the almond orchard for a minute before the thought occurred to her.

�You mean, we�re not bringing the opium through Portugal?�

�I never said we were.�

�But, I assumed...� Vera frowned. Wind tugged at her long gold hair. �Then why are we here at all?�

�What do you have against almonds?�

She rubbed her cameo ring nervously on her chin and reached for a cigarette. When we stopped for a lunch of grilled sardines and green wine, she was still relatively silent.

�What�s bothering you? You seem unhappy.�

�Not unhappy,� she reached for my hand. �It�s just that you scare me sometimes. If DeSantis knew that he had $100,000 in almond powder and nothing else, he�d be very upset with you. I�d feel better if you told me at least how you�re bringing the opium in. After all, I have a stake in this now, too.�

�Vera, if you want to feel better you should drink more wine. As for the system, don�t worry. Everything is going as well as it could.�

�You sound so confident.�

�Salud,� I touched her glass with mine.

It was early afternoon as we got back to the hotel. The sun was a golden ball in the center of the sky, and we decided to get our swimsuits and find a nice private cove up the coast.

�Just give me a chance to wash up,� Vera said as we walked into our room.

I yawned the yawn of someone who�s had a bottle of wine and laid down on the bed. If only the Commander could see Nick Carter now, I thought, he would go through my expense account for the past ten years. It was a perversely satisfying daydream.

A pop with the same resonance of a champagne cork but ten times louder came from the bathroom. I was off the bed and drawing the Astra. The bathroom door opened, and a man plunged face forward onto the wall-to-wall carpeting. In his hand was a large caliber revolver. In the middle of his back was a powder burn and a small black hole.

Vera stepped out of the bathroom. Her hair was disheveled and her lipstick smeared. She still held a Beretta .22, obviously part of her toilet accessories.

�Who is he, Vera?�

�I don�t know. He was waiting behind the shower curtain.� She knelt by the dead man and hoisted his head up by the hair. The face was square and swarthy, the eyes bulged in shock. �Corsican. I�m afraid your competition has heard about you.�

�It looks that way. I guess you saved my life. That was some shot.�

And the Corsican must have been pretty dumb to let anyone but a friend put a gun on his spine.

�We�d better get out of here right away, Raki.�

�First, we�ll take care of the body. I�d rather not have the police on top of us, too.�

The dead man oozed rather than bled, and the slug never made it out of his chest. I didn�t worry about the sound of the shot. One person out of a thousand recognized the report of a small-caliber gun.

�Get that terry cloth beach robe from the closet. I�ll call room service.�

I ordered drinks for three and a wheelchair.

�What are you doing?� Vera brought me the robe. �He may have friends waiting for him.�

�As long as you�re my friend, what have I got to be afraid of?�

We had the robe on the Corsican when room service came. A few minutes later, we had the dead man belted into a sitting position in the wheelchair. I began prying the unfired gun from his hand.

Criminals sometimes try to make a murder look like a suicide by putting their gun in the victim�s hand. The reason police aren�t fooled is that the gun falls out of the corpse�s hand as soon as the body�s lifted. The gun won�t fall out if it was held in the hand at the moment of death. Then the muscles of the hand contract like steel.

I forced the death grip just open enough to free the gun and slip a glass into the hand.

�Now what?� Vera asked nervously.

�We wait.�

Eight hours is the usual time for rigor mortis to set in, but the hot Portuguese day speeded the process along. Within six hours our visitor had stiffened appreciably.

Vera paced from one end of the room to the other, occasionally flinging herself in a chair to smoke and flip through a magazine, but always getting up to pace again. I lay in bed with my gun in my lap and watched the door and balcony. It was, as she said, possible that another visitor might try barging in. But the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed.

�It�s dark. Can�t we go now?� she asked finally.

I undid the belt that had supported the Corsican�s torso. He stayed sitting up smartly. I replaced his shoes and socks with slippers and rolled his pant cuffs up, then did the same with his jacket cuffs. As a final touch, I refreshed the drink in his hand with new ice cubes and pulled the robe�s hood as far over his head as I could.

Whatever attack of nerves Vera had been having was over. Suddenly, she was as cool as the ice cubes.

We began our promenade.

Down in the elevator and through the lobby we rolled our rigid friend. Tourists on all sides exchanged tips on sunburn lotions. A maitre d�hotel stopped us to ask whether we�d be dining in. All the while, Vera and I kept laughing and joking, occasionally making a point of including the man in the wheelchair in the conviviality.

Outside it was dark. Vera opened the back door of the Mercedes, and I carefully lifted our friend into the car. I put the wheelchair in the trunk, and we got in front. No one tried to stop us.

No one followed us out of Albufeira, either.

Twenty miles west, I cut the lights and drove the Mercedes out onto a cliff. I removed the convalescent�s robe and slippers and put back the shoes and socks and rolled down the cuffs. It was impossible to get the glass from his hand so I smashed the glass with a rock.

�If you cut the stomach open, gas can escape, and he won�t float,� Vera suggested.

In the moonlight her face was soft and delicate, a complete mismatch to her words.

�Let him float.�

I dragged the body to the edge and looked down. Surf pounded into the cliff�s ragged skirt of rocks. The tide was rising, and water hissed over razor-sharp barnacles. Within minutes the dead man would be slashed past recognition. I pushed my foot forward.

A black form dropped onto the foaming rocks. A wave dashed over the boulders, and the form was gone.

�That�s it. He�ll turn up in a fishing net a day or two from now. If anyone thinks of us, we pushed a laughing, drinking, live man out of our room.�

Vera smiled, almost glowed.

�Raki, you�re a very smooth operator.�

�Vera, not as smooth as you.�

She faltered.

�What do you mean?�

�Why, I only got rid of him, Vera. You killed him.�

The border-crossing at Iran, in the Pyrenees between Spain and France, is a narrow valley. Our Mercedes was in a long line of cars being inspected by Franco�s border patrol. I played the part of the bored businessman. Vera read a French paperback. The sun was hot. The car radio blared American rock music.

About now, my freight-load of almond powder was crossing the border inspection on a different route fifty miles away. The Spanish and French wouldn�t be satisfied with just the appearance of the powder. They�d open every bag and dip in for a sample not only once but a few times, in case almond powder had been laid over some deeper opium. I wanted them to. I wanted everything as legal as possible.

Which meant we would have to take the risk now at the border-crossing. I wasn�t worried about Spanish customs. The dead man had been found by the Portuguese by now, but there was no connection between him and us yet, and there probably never would be. The Corsican�s family would know, however, and that posed special problems for us.

France has Corsicans in the Mafia but, at the same time, the French espionage network, SDECE, and particularly its assassination team, action, is composed in great part of hardened Corsicans. Actions training center is in Corsica. It�s as if AXE and the CIA were made up of Sicilians. The Corsicans in Action are very close to the drug dealers of Marseilles, which is one reason why efforts to stop the narcotics trade had been so unsuccessful until late.

Kill a Corsican and you commit suicide, that is the unspoken law of France. And having done just that, we were headed for France.

The Spanish official looked at our passports, visas, car registration, and insurance. After a moment of dignified perusal he handed the papers back and waved us through.

It was fifty yards of white highway to the French checkpoint. We handed over our papers again.

�Would you pull your car to the side, if you please?� the Frenchman said.

�What for?�

�Normal inspection.�

We left the line of cars for an area on the side of the road. Two men in plainclothes were waiting for us. They were Corsicans, one wirey, with olive skin, the other thick-set with beetled brows.

�What is this all about?� I demanded.

�Papiers.� There was no �s�il vous plait.�

�You have anything to declare?� the thickset Corsican pushed me. Not hard, it was almost accidental, but a push to let me know where I stood.

�Nothing.�

�He is a Turk,� Beetlebrow said as if this automatically meant something.

�Why are you traveling with him?� the burly one asked Vera.

�He�s a friend.�

The two men coarsely ran their eyes over Vera. Parked by the customs shed was a black sedan with official plates and a Paris suffix. The Corsicans were from Action, and they could do anything they wanted, as long as it looked legal. Revenge was not their only interest, though. The Mercedes was running a close second to Vera for their attention.

�Open the hood and the trunk, Turk, and be quick about it.�

This time a push knocked me back two feet. My face stayed blank, and I didn�t resist. One move and I would be shot down for assaulting an officer of the law.

I opened up the engine and trunk but their search didn�t stop there. The two thugs uncoupled numerous tubes, knocked off the hub caps, pulled up every bit of matting and, when they still found nothing, had the Mercedes put on a lift and disengaged the muffler.

�We can pull this whole car apart if we want to, Turk. Why not just tell us where the stuff is?�

�What stuff are you talking about?�

�Don�t be clever.� The burly thug picked up a tire jack and swung it lightly. �Maybe you want me to ask questions in a different way?�

�Hey, you two! Are you finished?� the captain of the border guard shouted from the line of cars at the checkpoint. �I�m pulling somebody else over.�

In a red MG were five longhaired kids, their heads lolling from side to side. Moroccan hash, I guessed, and they�d indulged themselves a little too early.

�Stay where you are,� one of the Action men shouted back.

The captain of the guard flared. He was elegant in a dark blue paramilitary uniform, and he resented the two agents from Action intruding in his station.

�I am in charge here. If I find narcotics I pull a car to the side. What are you doing with those people, anyway?� The captain came over, his fists on his belt. The Corsicans of Action are not popular with French police. The Corsicans call gendarmes �Little Blue Riding Hoods.� The gendarmerie call the Corsicans �Les Bouches,� the Butchers. �If you can�t find anything in that car, let them go.�

�They�re wanted.�

�For what? I have names and descriptions or all wanted persons. I don�t recognize these two.�

�Look, my little captain, if you don�t get your ass out of here, I�m going to put some lead in it for you,� the Corsican with the jack snarled.

�Is that so?� the captain seemed aristocratically amused. He nodded back at two of his guards who were watching the scene with great interest. Each had unslung his Lebell submachine gun. �My two little greasy islanders, if you so much as spit the wrong way you will find yourselves circumsized.�

The captain was an arrogant bastard, but I felt he had a certain charm. The Corsicans wavered.

�Pardon me, captain,� I interjected, �but this is very embarrassing. Can�t we go to your office to settle this? There you can call Paris and make sure of their authorization.�

�An excellent idea,� the captain concurred. In his office, his authority would be even less in dispute.

�Forget it.� The Corsican dropped the jack and slapped his friend on the back. �Never mind.�

�The car!� the captain pointed righteously at the parts of my Mercedes. �What about that, now that you�ve taken it apart?�

The Corsicans chuckled and gave him a pair of raised fingers. While he still sputtered, they jumped into their sedan and drove off.

�I apologize for France,� the captain said to me at attention.

He had the car put back together by fearful subordinates. The MG of spaced-out kids was forgotten as the captain did his commanding-officer routine for Vera. I amused myself by counting the minutes that Vera and I had left to live.

The Corsicans would be waiting for us past the checkpoint. The small town of Iran was nothing more than a two-lane road with shabby tourist hotels stuck on each side and beyond the hotels shrub and mountain. There were no side roads we could detour on. Iran was a trap. We could simply turn around and go back to Spain but not even the captain was so dense that he wouldn�t find that suspicious.

�Your car is as good as new, monsieur, with my compliments,� the captain gave me a little bow. I shook his white-gloved hand and thanked him. �You understand,� he added in an undertone, �that the Corsicans are not really French. They are only kept because they are useful.�

�Useful for that?� Vera asked with a touch of scorn.

�To use against the Communists, naturally,� he spread his hands. As we got in the car, he leaned on the windshield and gave innocent Vera a broad man-of-the-world smile. �Bon voyage, mademoiselle, and for my sake stay out of trouble.�

We returned his goodbye wave and drove off from the checkpoint.

�The Corsicans,� Vera said as she stopped waving, �they have to be killed.�

The Corsicans� black sedan began playing bumper tag with us halfway through the border town. Vera fixed her long hair in a bun. Her Beretta was in her lap.

�You can put your gun away,� I said. In my side mirror I could see the thick-set Corsican at the wheel.

�If we don�t kill them, they�ll kill us.�

That wasn�t entirely true. I glanced at Vera.

The man in the car behind us would kill me, but not her. How did the first Corsican show up in our hotel room? There was only one way: Vera. By then she was supposed to know where the opium was. That was why she was upset on the drive back from the almond orchard, because she knew the Corsican would be waiting. Under my deal with DeSantis, all his money would be forfeited if there were any interference from his �representative.� Having the Corsican show up as Vera�s partner would have blown everything, so Vera made a decision. She blew a hole in her partner�s back.

Now she was willing to kill two more men so they wouldn�t say or do the wrong thing. And I had to kill them too because having Action on my back would ruin AXE�s project. So, Vera and I, two lovers, made a mutual, lethal business decision.

A tanker truck coming in the opposite direction pushed the Corsicans out of the passing lane. As soon as the Corsicans pulled out again to pass, a logging truck made them pull back. I gunned the Mercedes up to ninety; it would reach 140, but I wanted to remain in the Corsican�s eyesight.

Mountain pine and oak flashed by. The Pyrenees was logging country, with deer, bear, and wolf. I might be able to lure the Corsicans up a logging trail, but the net result would look too much like murder. I needed a fatal accident.

I pushed the button that rolled my window down and told Vera to do the same.

�You do want me to shoot their tires?�

�Just do as I say, Vera. We�re setting a trap.�

I swung into the left lane and slowed to sixty-five around a tight curve. Iran was far away in the valley now. We were high and ten feet away from the road�s edge was a 1,000-foot drop. A track klaxon wailed, and I swerved the Mercedes onto the right lane. The tires screamed, and the lines of Vera�s jaw tensed.

Another girl would have been clutching the dashboard with terror.

The Corsican�s black sedan loomed behind us again. I swung left into the oncoming lane.

�He�ll just come up on the right, Raki.�

�That�s the whole idea. You be ready for him and we�ll be all right.�

One s-curve followed another. The tires of both cars kept up a dangerous howl as we swung left and right up the mountain. The Corsicans would have shot one of our tires by now but for one reason: the car. They still believed that opium was being brought in m the Mercedes. A road accident would draw gendarmes, who would be bound to spot opium spilling from a wreck.

My rear left tire skirted the road�s edge, throwing pebbles into thin air. Vera looked at the white crosses we were passing by the roadside-each cross planted for a death by accident. A heavy truck in first gear appeared before us. As I moved to pass, a second truck came barrelling down the mountain. I fishtailed the Mercedes from eighty to ten miles per hour. As soon as the truck went by in a shudder of wind, I pulled out with the other sedan right behind.

We were at the crest of the mountain now, cut off from view in back and ahead. The air was sharp with the taste of pines. I held the left lane, the sedan moved alongside on the right.

The Corsican driving had his window down. He had a gold tooth among the lower molars, I noticed for the first time. I edged the Mercedes closer until the two cars, traveling at sixty miles per hour, were almost touching. With his left hand, the driver shoved a .45 in through Vera�s window.

She ducked out of the line of fire, as was natural. And as I wanted her to do. Exultant, at a range of four feet, the Corsican aimed the automatic at my head.

�Slow down, Turk!�

The muzzle pointed at my temple. I continued driving. The Corsicans wouldn�t want an accident, not yet. The dark-browed Corsican glanced ahead, steering with one hand. His head turned sharply when he noticed the pressure on the wrist of his gun hand.

Vera had pushed the button that rolled up her window. She leaned on the button, locking his hand inside. I began steering toward the right of the road with its steep drop. The Corsican, seeing where he was heading, screamed.

I ducked. Two .45 slugs went over my head and out my open window, their heavy caliber claps echoing in my ears. They were desperate shots. The Corsican dropped his .45 on Vera�s lap to free his hand. It didn�t work. His hand remained in the Mercedes up to the wrist. The other Corsican in the passenger seat tried to fire, but the driver couldn�t pull out of the way. Slowly, the more powerful Mercedes pulled its way right. The space left for the sedan dwindled from ten feet, to six, to five.

Vera released the window button.

The hand vanished first, the Corsicans second. Where there was a sedan was now whistling air, and a moment later the sound of something falling very fast down the mountain side.

Vera picked up the .45 with her scarf and threw the gun out the window. It spun far down toward the trees. Then she sat back, looked at me and sighed.

�You�re very good. Raki. In every way. What I don�t understand is how we never heard of you before.�

�You�re not so bad yourself, Vera.�

She thought it over. My meaning was clear enough. There just was no way the Corsicans could have been on our trail without her leading them to us, and no way to dispose of their untimely appearance without murder.

Three dead men in three days. It was a Mafia daisy. She loves me. She loves me not. She loves me.

The next petal might be me.

Saarguemines was French. On the other side was Saarbrucken, Germany. Dividing the towns was a river and a railway customs station.

�I don�t understand,� Vera said for the hundredth time. �If we�re not bringing the opium in by the railroad car, what is so important about a shipment of almond powder?�

�Vera, if I thought I should tell you, don�t you think I would have by now?�

�I m sorry.�

She stepped out onto the balcony. Our hotel room overlooked the river. In the twilight, the river barges floated by the way they had for centuries, their cabins lit by oil lamps.

�Sometimes, though,� she added. �I think this railway car of yours is nothing but a decoy. Is that the case, Raki?�

She turned to face me in the electric glare of the bare bulb in our room. Vera looked as if she were near tears, and she never looked more desirable. I desired her, to put it simply. Living with her, making love with her had become part of my life. It was a lie, and lies come to an end, but while it lasted I welcomed it.

�Without the almond powder, there is no shipment.�

I joined her on the balcony. In the gloom beyond the balcony�s marble rail, in Saarguemines� twisting streets was probably a car of waiting men. If I told her now where the opium was, the men would come up, kill me, and feed what was left of me to the river�s eels. Of course, there might be no car of men. The last double murder might have ended all contact between her and the Corsicans. No matter what her status with the American Mafia was, it might be that she was as likely to be hit now as me. Or maybe she was so in love with a Turk named Raki Senevres that she only wanted to help him.

The last possibility was the least likely.

I took Vera away from the balcony to the bed. Lying down, her hair a gold fan around her face, she watched as I undressed her. Her breasts spread slightly, touching her arms. Her nipples were pink and erect. She raised her hips as I pulled her pants off. Glints of gold shone in the soft triangle of hair on the Venus mound. I dropped my own clothes in a chair. She spread her legs slightly as I joined her.

�So I should trust you,� she whispered against my ear.

�Like I trust you.�

At the same time, two border guards, one French and the other German, dipped cups into bags of almond powder at the Saarguemines-Saarbrucken crossing. Each would taste every bag, I knew, dipping their scoops at increasingly deeper levels to make sure that in the shipment of sweet almond dust there was no hint of opium�s dreamy alkaloid bouquet.

Vera�s eyes closed. Her tongue ran over her teeth. I plunged farther. Her stomach rose to meet me, then fell away as I came halfway out. Vera�s fingertips sank into the tight curls of her triangle and pulled the lips wide.

The customs guards would roll the last bit of almond powder between their tongues and soft palates, then wash out their mouths in comraderie with a shared bottle of local wine. Each bag would then be bound and its documentation slip stamped with the customs stamps of the Republics of France and Federal Germany next to the customs stamps of Portugal and Spain. The bindings of each bag would be sealed by wire and lead impressed with the S-S mark of the Saarguemines-Saarbrucken station and the code numbers of both the French and German inspectors. The bags would then be dragged out of the inspection shed, over the station platform, and into the car. During the night, the car loaded with almond powder would be switched with all other inspected cars onto the track heading over the bridge to Germany.

Our hotel room was quiet, locked into a moment of time. Vera�s mouth remained pressed to my cheek. The climax was spent, but I stayed inside her, still hard, still feeling as much a part of a woman as a man ever can.

A metallic cry broke the distant night.

�What was that?� Vera asked.

�It�s the switching yard. They�re assembling the train for the early morning run.�

�Where to?�

I could feel her pulse quicken.

�From here it goes to Hell,� I said.

The next day was bright, with a sky as blue as a Teuton�s eyes. No Corsicans from Action delayed us on the French side of the river, and on the German side we were welcomed like any other tourists. Our Mercedes purred up a clean German highway to Cologne. Cologne is an industrial center, and Vera thought she had the answer to the system.

�There are 50,000 Turkish workers in this area. You have them bring in the opium here and in Munich. You probably process the opium to heroin here. The almond powder was nothing but a ruse to keep the Corsicans watching you instead of the shipment. I still don�t see how that helps you get the shipment to New York, but Cologne is the key.� I didn�t bother to reply.

We drove through Cologne and on north. Vera�s theory fell further and further behind us.

�I don�t get it. Why are we still traveling?�

�Look,� I pointed out the window.

Over rolling farming land, set so far away it looked like a toy, was an old steam locomotive pulling a train.

�The train? We�re still following that? But we�re going to Bonn, there�s nothing there.�

Vera was almost right. Bonn is the capital of West Germany. Other than that, Bonn could be a forgotten country town. It is sleepy and bucolic, too dull even for German legislators who prefer to commute from homes in more cosmopolitan Cologne. Bureaucrats, who can�t afford such style, live well outside Bonn in tidily planned suburbs. The foreign diplomatic corps finds what excuses it can to travel to Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt or Hamburg, in short, anywhere but Bonn.

Nothing ever happens in Bonn, especially nothing like crime. Berlin has the spy business, and Munich has sex.

�Bonn,� I told Vera.

We got a motel room near the center of the capital. Vera fretted, looking out the motel window at a �Keep Off The Grass� sign. People in Bonn do keep off the grass.

�Take it easy,� I reassured her. �You look like you�re related to the Krupps. I look like a foreign diplomat. We�re not so out of place. Haven�t you ever been in Germany before?�

�Berlin, the Alps.�

�Ah, wherever the international set congregates. A skier?�

�I�d heard Bonn was dead, but I never knew it was this dead,� she avoided my question, turning her back to me.

�You�re wrong. This is just where it gets exciting.�

Vera had more than Bonn to be nervous about. Mafia influence is centered in the Americas and Mediterranean Europe. The influence fades the further from those centers you go. Munich, in the south of Germany, is the last outpost of any Mafia power. Cologne, near the middle of Germany, is the last contact point with Munich influence. Bonn, north of Cologne, is out of reach. We were now in No Man�s Land. Vera�s last options were dead; she was on my side now whether she wanted to be or not.

In the motel room�s mirror, I watched her take a Sobranie from my pack and fight it. She blew out a steady stream of blue smoke.

�Okay, Raki, it�s your show.�

After supper, we drove out of town to Bonn�s airport. The airport is equipped with jet-length landing strips, implying a heavy stream of international traffic, but the terminal is small, and, it was almost deserted that evening.

�This is my idea of a slow town, when you drive out to the airport for excitement,� Vera joked.

�Good. Now, I am going in by the hangar gate. In twenty minutes the night flight from Cairo will be coming in with diplomatic pouches for all the Arab states. I am collecting those pouches, and I will drive out through the gate in a black Cadillac with diplomatic plates. You will follow the Cadillac at a distance. When I stop, wait until I�m alone, and then pick me up.�

I got out of the car and strided to the hangars. Vera gave me the satisfaction of a laugh that was on herself. It was a sweet sound and one I�d been waiting for a long time.

�Identifikation?� the green-uniformed guard demanded at the gate.

I handed him a diplomatic passport with my picture and the name of Political Officer Faisal Ben Sihd.

�You�re new here?� the guard studied my photo.

�Not that new,� I gave him a tone of rebuke as if he�d meant he couldn�t tell one Arab from another. He blushed defensively but still looked for my name on the list of authorized carriers.

�Come on, come on,� I prodded him.

�Your name isn�t here.�

AXE had paid well to have the name on the list. Was this going to be the one mistake that would bring the whole elaborate plan down?

�Give it to me,� I snatched his clipboard away and scanned the names. �There, you fool. You people have spelled it Feisal Sihid. Typical.�

Under my facade of arrogance, the sweat gathered on my brow. The guard was too cowed to notice. He opened the gate and almost dropped his submachine gun in the process. He never thought to ask why I hadn�t come with the embassy car.

The Cadillac belonging to the embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt was parked beside a fire truck. There were no Arabs present to give me an argument. The Arab Republic of Egypt Airline planes landing in Bonn were serviced by Lufthansa personnel. The driver who had brought the limousine from the embassy to the airport was gone, waiting in a park nearby for his last payoff. One of the traits of socialist countries like the UAR is that their embassy staffs are miserably paid or, as the CIA coins its euphemisms, �open to outside sponsorship.�

The red and white lights of the airport were spread out like a sparsely decorated Christmas tree. In five minutes, the running lights of a 707 appeared. The plane itself loomed out of the dark, as it landed in the roar of reversed turbines; I was already heading out onto the strip, following exactly the practice of the usual courier.

The ARE liner followed the luminous candles of a ground director and came to a halt like a great silver dog. A mobile ramp rolled up to the opening door, and the few night passengers disembarked glancing with sleepy curiosity at the waiting Cadillac. When they�d paraded past, I emerged from the limousine and ran up the steps.

�Where�s Ali?� the steward asked when I presented myself.

�The English flu.�

�You�re a liar,� the steward accused me. �I know Ali well. He�s out with some German girl, right? You can tell me.�

�But don�t tell anyone else,� I returned his male chauvinist smirk.

�That Ali,� the steward shook his head as he went to the baggage compartment. He came back dragging two canvas bags. He wasn�t laughing anymore. In fact, he was about to have a hernia to judge from the expression on his round face.

�What do you have in this bag?� he grunted. One of the bags sagged heavily against the side of the ramp.

I looked into the mouth of the baggage compartment as if Dr. Kissinger might be hiding in there.

�Codes,� I answered in a low voice.

�Aaahh,� the steward nodded, in on the secret.

I took possession of the bags. Each was of canvas and steel wire, closed at the top with a combination lock, and each was decorated on the side with the stencilled stripes and green stars of the UAR.

The weight was uneven � one bag was about thirty pounds and the other was over 200 pounds � and I slung the heavier one over my shoulder as I went down the ramp. At the Cadillac I found the steward indeed knew Ali well. Three Egyptian stewardesses sat happily in the back seat waiting for a ride into Bonn. They jabbered unhappily when I chased them out. I slung the diplomatic bags on the warmed seat.

The guard at the gate gave me no trouble. Diplomatic pouches are, except in extreme circumstances, immune to search. I could have been naked, and he wouldn�t have said a word, not unless he wanted to start an international incident. A white Mercedes coupe fell in behind the Cadillac as I rolled out the airport exit to the Bonn road. Vera let a few cars get between us as we entered traffic, then she followed, matching my speed.

Midway to the city, I swung the Cadillac off the main road into an area of mowed fields, creeks, and children�s playgrounds. On a bench, chainsmoking, was Ali.

�Everything is going well?� he sputtered as I opened the door and let him in. I told him about the steward and about the stewardesses.

�Inch Allah, everything is perfect,� I added and proved it with an envelope thick with German marks.

Ali ripped the flap open and flicked through the bills nervously. Venality out of the way, he became a patriot and checked the locks on the bags.

�You understand,� he said, �I wouldn�t do this if it had anything to do with the security of my country.�

�Naturally. Undo the bag, Ali. I won�t look.�

I heard a dial clicking. I could have told him the combination just from the sound, but there was no point in making a fool of him.

�It�s too heavy,� he groaned.

�I�ll do it.�

From the opened canvas bag I dragged a plastic bag stuffed with an ivory powder, 100 kilos of powder, $20 million of it.

�That�s opium,� Ah gasped.

�What did you think I was smuggling? Library books?�

�This is robbery,� Ali shook his envelope at me. �I should get much more.�

�If you�re lucky, and if you remain perfectly quiet, Ali, you will get more with the next shipment. Now, open the other bag, and redistribute the pouches so no one will ask why you arrived at the embassy with one full bag and one empty one. I am talking to you as a partner, Ah. I can talk to you in another way.�

Ah got the message. The envelope suddenly seemed adequate. He equalized the bags neatly, and I gave him a brotherly pat on the shoulder before he drove off. The psychology of a man like Ah was a simple one. There was no way of turning me in to Egyptian or German authorities now without making himself look bad, but with the next shipment he would � so he�d tell himself � get tough and demand more money. In the meantime, he would enjoy the rise in self esteem of being a dangerous character.

The Mercedes coasted up with its lights out. I threw the bag in the back, covered it with a blanket, and got in beside Vera.

�Now?� she asked.

�Now our railway car.�

I gave her the directions to Bad Godesberg, a small town south of Bonn.

We were there in ten minutes. Bad Godesberg was nothing more than a miniature hamlet with toy houses suffused by the blue glow of television sets. On its outskirts was a railway yard. A hurricane fence surrounded the yard but the fence had been broken through at a dozen different places by kids. In a night watchman�s faraway shed was the same mind-numbing hue of a television tube.

�You�re sure this is all the security here?� Vera wondered.

�Why should there be more? There�s nothing of value in this part of Germany but foodstuffs and manure. The natives say they spread the manure from Bonn.�

We parked, and I pulled the plastic bag out. Through one of the fence�s unofficial entries we climbed up the gravel sidebed of a track, into the yard.

There were five tracks in all, but I knew where the Bonn-Saarbrucken train would be sitting. With a dim flashlight, I found the car leased to Hauffman Ubersee Gesellschaft. I opened the door with my lessor�s key and hoisted up Vera and the bag. I closed the door behind us.

�So this is the car we�ve been following all across Europe,� she looked around. Twenty 100-kilo bags of almond powder covered the car floor. But for the customs stamps and inspection seals, the bags were exactly similar to the one I�d brought in.

�All across Europe so that they could be inspected as many times as possible by the most alert inspectors, Vera. That was the point.�

�How are you going to do the switch, though, Raki? Dump a bag of almond powder all over the car...�

I was already answering her question by making the switch. With a wire cutter, I snapped off the wire holding the inspectors� seals on one bag of almond powder. The bag was still closed by its own elastic band. At the bank neck I inserted the tip of a penknife and cut around in a circle following the band.

�Hold this,� I gave Vera the knife.

Using both hands, I began pulling the sides of the bag down. What had seemed one bag was actually two, a heavy inner container with a thin outer skin. It was the outer skin, tattooed with customs stamps, that I peeled off. I held the bag of opium, and Vera pulled the skin up over it.

�How are you going to keep the outer bag on?�

I pulled up the band of the opium bag. The lower half rolled into my hands, revealing a tape that I removed. Underneath was an adhesive surface. She understood, helping me pull the outer bag snug as I fastened it to the underside of the band. When I let the band snap back the transfer was complete.

�And the seal?� Vera asked.

I bound the seal�s wire around the neck of the bag and brought the snapped sections together with a bond of cold solder.

�That won�t hold forever, Raki,� she protested. �Besides, any careful inspector will see its been cut.�

�It won�t have to hold forever,� I laughed. �Don�t you get it, Vera. All the careful inspections are over for these bags. They�ve been certified as nothing but pure almond powder, and the inspections from here on will be nothing more than a peek in the car to check the stamps. As for the handling, we�ll be doing it. The work is over, Vera. Everything from here on is fun.�

I dropped the bag of opium further back among the almond bags. There was no difference. The opium was anonymous and, better yet, stamped with the seal of approval. This was what the scientists in Special Effects hadn�t been able to figure out. They had searched for ways to hide 100 kilos of opium. The simpler, more effective method was to have the whole shipment right out in the open, but made so innocent it was beyond suspicion.

�You�ve done it,� Vera exulted. �It�s incredible. The German railroad will ship $20 million of opium for us in this car. Raki, I want to make love, now, here.�

Hurriedly, she pulled her sweater off. Her lush breasts hung as she leaned to step out of her pants. Before I could even start, she was undoing my belt.

I don�t know if it was the promised success or the money or the power that the system could bring, but Vera was urgently, amazingly aroused. In a second, at the touch of her fingers and hot mouth, I was too.

This wasn�t part of AXE�s masterplan. It was a strange, erotic bonus, a compulsion I gave in to. I laid Vera on the railroad car floor with a force that almost made it rock on its wheels.

�Rotspon?� the sommelier asked.

I nodded. Red wine flowed into crystal glasses. Around us, wealthy patrons of the Schabbelhaus, Lubeck�s most exclusive restaurant, dined in sedate ease. With the typical stubborness of Lubeckers, they permitted themselves only furtive glances at Vera, who looked as if she were born to wear low-cut evening dresses. Her blonde hair was piled high and decorated with a single emerald. Her lively smile showed none of the awe most Americans have in European restaurants, especially in places like the Schabbelhaus with its sixteenth century luxury. Vera was plainly no ordinary Mafiosa. We brought our glasses together in a mutual toast.

�Prost, Raki. And congratulations.�

�And the same goes to you, my partner.�

�I said we�d be good together,� she sipped her wine, as we ate artichoke hearts in Bearnaise sauce.

Our waiter appeared with a silver tureen and dished out wine-simmered veal � l�ancienne. An errant drop of juice spotted the edge of Vera�s plate, and he dabbed it off with a napkin held ready for the purpose. Rotspon, actually a French wine imported by the Lubeckers for centuries, was a little heavy for the veal, and I ordered a white Traminer, spicy and aromatic.

�Something tells me you�ve ordered wine here once or twice before,� Vera remarked while the sommelier vanished toward the cellar.

�No. It�s simply a matter of knowing what you want.�

�You always seem to know that. You�re like a one-man computerized army. DeSantis isn�t even in the same league with you. I should have realized that when we started out.�

�Well, Vera, now you know.�

�But, I still know almost nothing about you. Were you born rich or poor? Were you a smuggler or a mercenary soldier, or both? We�ve traveled through Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Spain, France, and now Germany. How is it you speak every language? When I tell them about you, they�ll say you�re too good to be true.�

�Is that bad?�

�Unusual, Raki.�

�Then let�s say I�m unusual.� I chose to ignore the rest of her questions.

The Traminer arrived with fresh glasses. By then, Vera was holding my hand with an intimation of another kind of treat when we returned to our hotel room.

On the way to the hotel, though, we stopped at the Petrikirche cathedral and went up the tower for a panoramic view of the city of Lubeck. It was late afternoon and a cool breeze off the sea blew around the high spire.

�You�re finally going to tell me why we came to this city?� Vera asked after the guide had been paid and went on his way down the tower staircase.

�Just look around.�

Lubeck is the most medieval of all Germany�s major cities. The Petrikirche dates from the thirteenth century. The town�s best known landmark is the Holstentor, a dark, massive gate with twin dartlike spires standing in the middle of the central plaza. The Holstentor is famous enough to adorn the German 50 mark note. The town is crammed with narrow streets and tall, graceful houses also many hundreds of years old. At one time, Lubeck was the powerful capital of the Hanseatic League, and it retains a fierce independence. No army ever took it by siege. Hitler never visited, choosing even at the height of his fuhrership not to chance his popularity here. Typically, Willie Brandt was from Lubeck and ferried from there north to Norway to fight Hitler. Just as typically, Lubeckers still insist on calling Brandt by his pre-Resistance name of Herbert Frahm.

�I see a lot of interesting examples of medieval architecture,� Vera said. �What else should I see?�

I pointed over the city to the north. On the horizon was a green ribbon of water.

�That�s the Baltic Sea, the Lubeck Gulf of the Baltic Sea. Ships from the gulf go on to Kiel and take the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal through the peninsula to the North Sea and the Atlantic. And on to New York. Now, do you know anything about the people of Lubeck?�

�Nothing.�

�Once, during a siege, the people here ran out of flour. The army outside was trying to starve Lubeck to death. Instead of surrendering, though, the people ground up almonds and made bread out of almond powder. The almond bread is called marzipan, and today Lubeck is the marzipan capital of the world. They had some marzipan at the restaurant. Here.�

I gave her a piece. It was artfully shaped like a pig and colored pink. Miss Van Hazinga at AXE would have gobbled it up. Vera just looked at the candy sculpture with the eye of an art appreciator and returned it to me.

�A little sweet for me, thanks, Raki. I hadn�t realized before that you were such a walking almanac.�

�Not just a walking almanac. Over on the left in that street of red brick houses is the Hauffmann Obersee Gesellschaft. That�s me. I also export marzipan.�

Vera frowned and stared back and forth from the street I�d pointed at to me.

�Darling, I assumed that your little company here was the cover for the railway shipment of almond powder and that made the perfect camouflage for getting the opium here. That�s done. When are you going to tell me how you�ll get the opium to New York?�

I let her irritation mount for a few moments and then I answered.

�Vera, I just did.�

The processing of opium to heroin is complicated and requires a laboratory. I had one ready-made in the candy factory of the red brick building belonging to Hauffmann Gesellschaft. It was evening and the regular employees had left for home. Dressed in overalls, I backed the truck I�d driven from the Lubeck rail terminal up to the factory door. Vera opened the factory door as I jumped out of the truck�s cab.

�Everything go well, Raki?�

I handed her the railway invoice for twenty inspected bags of almond powder. Then I started bringing each bag in. When they were all in and the door was shut and locked, I selected the $20 million bag and dragged it to the candy vats.

�I still don�t get it.� Vera was in overalls too with her blonde hair piled under a green wool cap. �I�ve never processed dope before, but I know that it comes out as white powder. How are you going to hide it?�

�We are going to hide it.� I checked my watch. �We have just fourteen hours until the workers return so we better get started.�

I handed her a rubber gas mask.

�The fumes will put you on the far side of the moon if you don�t use it,� I warned her.

She slipped the mask on as I did mine. Her cat eyes followed me with lingering doubt.

I removed the seals from the neck of the bag, pulled the band apart, and dumped the contents into the vat, shaking it so almost every expensive particle would fall.

�Take the bag to the incinerator chute and throw it in.�

Vera picked it up hesitantly.

�Won�t someone smell the burning opium?�

�The bag will be burned tomorrow with the rest of the bags. Nobody will smell anything but plastic.�

She shoved the bag down the incinerator chute. I poured acetone into the vat along with the opium.

�We�ll have to let that work by itself for a while,� I said and switched on the vat�s mixing paddles. �Don�t worry about the sound. This is a commercial street. It�s deserted now, and there�s still enough traffic on the streets to muffle what noise we make.�

�That�s all we have to worry about?�

�No. There are some real dangers. The mixture has to be heated. If you get it too hot, it blows up like a bomb. Then there are the problems of the amount of electricity you use and what to do with the waste water, tricky details if you�re trying to hide your laboratory in your home. But a candy factory uses a lot of electricity, and we have a commercial sluice for tainted water that flows right into Lubeck�s main sewer.�

�You�ve thought of everything, so far.�

After thirty minutes I opened up the temperature dials on the vat, usually used for melting almond powder and sugar, in this case for a different kind of taste delight. I set the heat at 100 degrees centigrade (212 Fahrenheit).

�The opium is really nothing more than a morphine base. The acetone will take out impurities.� Candy vats come equipped with vacuum pumps because impurities in confections are removed in much the same way as those in opium. I siphoned off the cleansing acetone, leaving the morphine base a rich brown color, the normal color of top grade opium. To change the purified dope back to white I added a bag of carbon black and started the vat�s paddles going again.

�We�re setting a world record tonight, Vera. The most opium any Marseilles lab ever processed at one time was less than twenty pounds. Were doing more than ten times that.�

Vera looked around the factory full of vats, ovens, and candy trays. On the walls were cheery scenes of children and cows, the two most wholesome symbols in the German imagination. Tomorrow at eight o�clock the room would be full of cheerful hefty fraus in white aprons, all working for the greater glory of Lubeck�s marzipan.

�I keep thinking you must be crazy,� she said, �and then I realize that you�re not, that you just simplify problems very effectively.... at least, so far,� she amended her praise slightly.

�What are you doing now?�

�Adding Chloric acid to neutralize the mixture. We�ll let that blend for a while, too.�

�And if a German policeman walked in now, even if he didn�t have a good reason, what would you do?�

�You still have your Beretta?�

She took it from her overall pocket.

�Good. Keep it out of sight, Vera. If anyone knocks at the door, we�re making candy. If he gets too suspicious we�ll even give him a taste. He�d get about one step before diving to the floor.�

�What if he won�t take a taste?�

�Then, we�ll let him come in to check, and, after about a minute of breathing this without a mask, he should forget what he came in for. But nobody�s going to bother us.�

�We�ve got only ten hours to go,� she checked her watch. �How much longer will this take?�

�You can get the candy molds now.�

Vera lost her breath for a second.

�Candy molds?�

�That�s right. I said we were making candy. The molding trays are on the shelves by the wall.�

�I take it back. You are crazy. You�ve lost your mind.�

I ignored her and went to the huge baking oven that took one whole quarter of the floor. Again, I set the dials at an explosion-proof level. When I returned to the vat, Vera was holding an armful of trays and shaking her head.

�Just hold one at a time. Set a bucket at your feet. Get a leveler in your hand. I�m going to open the vat taps. I�ll fill the molds, and you level the runover into the bucket. Got it?�

For all her doubts, Vera was an expert coworker. The opium, half-processed into heroin, was ready for pouring, and I threw open the vat�s smallest tap. A white cream flowed out over the tray. As Vera leveled it, she set each filled tray aside on a table and lifted another. There wasn�t time for questions or doubts anymore, there was only time for work. The entire 100 kilos had to be baked or thrown out before the day workers arrived in the morning. And it had to be boxed too, because I couldn�t afford to have a frau spaced out from nibbling on the company product.

There were trays with molds of pigs, fig leaves, cows, babies, the Holstentor, fish, apples, bananas, bread, pears, cupids, potatoes, grapes and grape vines, and peaches. When we had fifty trays in the oven, I rolled over a wagon carrying spray cans of vegetable coloring. After fifteen minutes, enough time for our �candy� to have an outer crust, I pulled the trays out.

�It�s like fudge!� Vera exclaimed.

�That�s right,� I said. �Fudge just happens to be one of heroin�s states during processing. Only we�re keeping it at the fudge state with chemical stabilizers. Then, when our fudge gets to New York, we�ll do the last step of the process, and our heroin will be the white powder you�ve been expecting to see all this time.�

�If I didn�t have this mask on, I�d kiss you. In fact, I�d do more than that.�

�Later, please. Just use that spray can. Try to make your potatoes brown and your fish blue instead of vice versa.�

We worked furiously, as two criminals intent on a $20 million batch of marzipan could be expected to. What eight normal employees might have done in eight hours, we did in four. Every redeemable ounce of heroin was poured, baked, colored, and baked again. Now we started boxing the warm candy. We filled only the bottom layer of each box. Despite our pace, it was only two hours before the morning shift would arrive.

From the previous day�s output of finished boxes, we took the top layers of real marzipan and covered our heroin candy. One hour was left, and the most critical work was still undone. There had to be not one trace of heroin or even the slightest hint of the abnormal when Vera and I left. We scoured the vat and the floor around it. Cans of vegetable coloring were refilled from stock. The trays had to be cleaned, new boxes brought from stock, and the whole work area and oven ventilated. All excess candy, boxes, the overalls, and gas masks were thrown down the incinerator chute and, last, the invoice for the bags of almond powder had to be changed from twenty to nineteen.

�The oven, what about the oven?� Vera asked. �It�ll still be warm.�

�An old oven would be. This one is gas heated and water cooled. We have eight minutes. Let�s go.�

I locked the door behind us. By the time we reached the end of the block I saw the first women arriving for work, walking in pairs in their white aprons. I felt like a wrung rag. Vera was exhilerated.

�You�re a genius.� She almost danced to the car.

�You�re a genius,� she was still saying when we got to our hotel room. �If you just made up a batch of special candy once a month, you could control the whole North American market. You could flood it and drive everyone else out of business.�

I dropped backwards onto the bed and gratefully let my head sink into the pillow. My eyelids shut simply from their weight.

Vera undressed me. She was still intoxicated with success.

�You will be the most powerful man in Europe, do you know that, Raki. And with my help, nobody can stop you.�

I was too beat to know or listen. A month of impersonation and precise planning was at an end. I�d beaten the Corsicans and half the customs systems in Europe. The marzipan would pass easily through the Lubeck inspection.

Raki Senevres was now worthy of the Mafia�s respect. I felt Vera�s naked body slide under the sheets next to me. We fell asleep in each other�s arms. Like scorpions mating, a voice in the back of my mind told me.

�I knew you could do it, Raki. From that first day in Beirut, I said this guy has got what it takes.�

Charles DeSantis filled my glass and patted my shoulder. Two weeks before, his hand might have held a knife. Now he was full of bonhomie. The whole room was filled with bonhomie, Mafia style. Chiefs from a dozen New York, New England, and Middle Atlantic families were in attendance, invited by DeSantis so that they could witness his coup and get in line for distribution rights. There were enough elaborately cut suits, curdled gold cufflinks, Countess Mara ties, tiger�s eye rings, and Rolexes for a jewelry convention. Vera Cesare, sipping Chivas Regal with a secretive smile, stood out like Marie Antoinette in an ornate court.

But the heavy-handed fashion was a symbol of power. Just as DeSantis�s address was: a whole floor of the World Trade Center, the tallest building in the world. Manhattan and New York harbor were at the bottom of some great canyon. I was supposed to be very impressed.

�Hey, Happy,� a portly pin-stripped consigliere from Boston grabbed DeSantis by the elbow, �You say we�ve got to rush for a piece. How soon is the stuff going to get here.�

�Raki says in a week, right?�

�It�s coming by boat,� I said. �I flew ahead so that I could meet everyone.�

�So Raki and I could get together and iron out the last details,� DeSantis broke in possessively. He clapped his hands loudly. All the heads in the room turned in his direction. �Let�s have some quiet here. I got an announcement.

�A lot of you have been asking me why I bet $100,000 that this guy here, this Turk, could do what no organization on the other side has ever done. That is, to bring in 100 kilos of top-grade Turkish snow. Everyone said it was impossible, and I know that there are still a few people here who wouldn�t want to swear on their mothers� graves that I�m telling the truth. I mean, everybody but everybody knows you just can�t hide that much stuff. Well, it turns out you can if you�ve got enough imagination. But,� he started smiling, �before I go any further, I see some hungry faces. Anybody like some candy?�

From the table drawer, DeSantis took a box of marzipan. On the lid was a raised gold illustration of the Holstentor. Along the edge in elegant script was a note that Royal Hauffmann marzipan was exported exclusively by Hauffmann Ubersee Gesellschaft. The box was a sample from a long night�s work.

�What is this? A joke?� one or two of the Mafiosos demanded.

�Take a piece,� DeSantis shoved the box at the most uninterested guest.

�I didn�t come here for candy.�

�Try it, you�ll like it,� DeSantis rose to the top of his wit. �Take it,� he added with rougher emphasis.

The Mafioso, a boss�s son type with mod sideburns, shrugged and took a piece. He bit, chewed, and spit on the rug.

�God, what the hell is that?�

�Marzipan, you jerk,� DeSantis laughed. �You never heard of marzipan before?�

�Come to the point,� one of the older men in the crowd shouted.

DeSantis took a piece of candy from the lower level in the box and gave it to the kid with side-burns.

�I tasted.�

�Taste again.�

With a grimace, DeSantis�s victim took a bite from the new piece. He spit on the mg again, but this time he knew what he�d eaten.

�Jesus, that�s pure snow! It�s heroin!�

DeSantis gave the rest of the piece to the Boston chief. All the other guests crowded around for a look at the candy box.

�It�s semi-processed opium,� a veteran from Chicago said. �Then what else did you do to it?�

�Vegetable coloring and stabilizer. They�ll come out in the processing here,� I answered.

The Chicagoan smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand.

�A goddamn brainstorm,� he exploded. �How much is a box worth? $200,000?�

�About. The top layers of all the boxes are real marzipan. There�s no way customs can spot the fake,� I said. �X-rays won�t help because nothing is hidden. Dogs won�t be any good because the heroin odor is covered by the almond smell. Besides, all customs really looks at is the contents slips we have to file with the Food and Drug Administration for imported food, and we have customs slips from four countries testifying to the purity of the almond powder. As long as nobody tries to hijack the shipment, it�s perfectly safe.�

Conversation in the room dwindled a lot faster than when DeSantis shouted for quiet.

�What do you mean by �hijacked?�� DeSantis asked, some irritation showing through his hospitality. �The only people who know about the shipment are in this room. Who here would try to hijack the stuff?�

�You,� I said. �You would.�

DeSantis pointed at his chest.

�Me? It�s my stuff? Why would I hijack it?�

�Because it�s not your stuff. You�re not my partner.�

DeSantis took a quick glance at every face in the room, but his eyes ended on me.

�This is a double cross? We made a deal, Turk, and you�re going to stick by it. You can�t just get here and start making a new deal with someone else. We respect a contract. All you�re going to get from acting so smart is a big zero.�

�You broke our deal, Mr. DeSantis. You sent at least four contracts out on me after we became partners. So there is no deal, and you forfeit your $100,000.�

DeSantis flushed. Angrily, he bullied everyone out of the way until he confronted Vera, who still sat as calmly as a purring cat on the sofa.

�He�s lying,� DeSantis told her. �Tell the people he�s lying.�

Vera set her drink of the sofa arm and looked at DeSantis with her wide eyes.

�But he�s telling the truth, Charlie. When I went, you told me just to find out where the opium stash was and then kill Raki. Then you also sent three Corsicans to do the job. But Raki took care of them instead.�

�And what about you?� DeSantis�s face turned a deeper red.

�I decided that he was telling the truth, that he could bring the heroin in. So, for the sake of the organization, I did not follow your stupid advice.�

�You little punk,� DeSantis wheeled towards me. I wanted him to get within arm�s reach, but a wall of broad shoulders suddenly came between us.

�Sounds to me,� the man from Boston said to DeSantis, �like you�re out a partner, Happy. He�s free to make another deal as far as I�m concerned.�

The other chiefs expressed unanimous agreement. DeSantis, who had been host, was now on the outside looking in.

�How do we make this new deal, though?� a pug-faced captain from Miami asked. �A 100-kilo shipment the first time. Another 100 kilos a month after that. That�s a lot of financial pooling Just to pay you off, Senevres. Hell, at $2 million cash on delivery, you�re asking for $24 million a year.�

�But it�s a lot of profit for the partner too,� the Boston consigliere interrupted. �$240 million on the market. The main distributor controls the biggest business in the country. At any rate, the family in charge has to operate from an East Coast port.�

�Any port will do,� the man from Los Angeles spoke up.

�The first shipment is coming to New York, so the main distributor should be here,� one of DeSantis�s local competitors pointed out.

�With your permission,� I said loudly. �With your permission, I want to remind you that it will be a week before the first shipment of candy arrives. That�s not a lot of time but it gives everyone a chance to put together their bids.�

�Bids?�

�Right. Since I no longer have a partner here, I�ve decided to auction off all the rights for distribution at one time. The auction will be five days from now, and it will be open to anyone.�

�It�ll be a damn convention,� the L.A. chief objected. �It�s tough enough as it is for this many of us to get together without the FBI on our backs. An auction is fine for you, it drives the price up. For us, it�s impossible.�

�No, it�s not,� Vera twirled the ice in her drink. �There�s one place everyone will be safe � Snowman.�

The only sound in the room was Vera�s ice cubes.

The Mafia chiefs were tom between greed and concern for their safety. In a sense, they had no choice. By allowing another family to wrap up the narcotics windfall I represented, they would allow their competitors unlimited money, and money bought �soldiers.�

My thoughts were different. I�d brought my shipment from Turkey to Germany. I�d killed men in Portugal and France. Now I was close to the jackpot, and the jackpot�s name was Snowman. Vera had first mentioned the name the day before when we were plotting DeSantis�s downfall.

Snowman was the neutral ground, the inviolate headquarters of the American Mafia somewhere in the Cascade Mountains, a fortress Washington had never even heard of except in the scribbled notebook of Jaime Montenegro. How did he hear of it? I didn�t know, but I remembered that he was heading for the Jet Set spa of Puerto Vallarta when he was killed. Who was luring Jaime? Perhaps Vera had the answer to that, too.

�Maybe,� the chief from the West Coast said, �that might be a very good idea. Not that anyone in this room would try to make a deal with Mr. Senevres behind everyone else�s back.� Not much, the Mafioso�s eyes said. �But a good, fair auction with everyone�s interests protected is what�s called for.�

�Right,� the Boston chief joined in. �Everybody gets a chance to bid, with the understanding that everybody respects the results. We�ll have what, shares in this German company, right?�

�That�s the way it will be done.�

�Watch out,� DeSantis�s angry voice cut through the room. �How do you know the whole thing isn�t a trap? He may be trying to set you all up for a raid by the Feds.�

The gathered Mafiosos broke into laughs.

�A little sour grapes, Happy? That�s tough.�

�Besides,� another added, �there�s no way they can reach us at Snowman, not with an army of Feds.�

The airline only took us as far as Spokane. Vera and I got on a chartered plane equipped with skis for another fifty-mile hop onto a glacial lake. There the plane left us, and we waited.

The air was frigid; the lake itself had been frozen for thousands of years. Directly up from the lake perimeter, jagged mountains rose in a ring of teeth up to the brilliant blue sky. Vera, wrapped in a wolfskin coat, looked warm and comfortable. I�d made a right guess about her sometime ago, that she was a skier. Hawk and I had made some wrong guesses, though. The Mafia was something we�d associated with the dirty business of drug running and the grimy streets of big cities. Here was Raki Senevres 10,000 feet up in the crisp, clean wilderness of the United States�s last untamed mountain range.

�You always wanted to know more about me,� she said, each word made visible by a puff of condensed air. �Now you will. To begin with, you will now call me Vera King.�

There was a shudder in the air before I could call her anything. Skimming low over the lake�s ice surface was a helicopter. As it approached, I could see it was no ordinary bush chopper. The slim, dartlike nose had a machine gun stinger. Slung under the nose was a grenade launcher, and on the sides of the copter�s lean fuselage were rocket pods. The copter was an AH-1 Huey Cobra and the last bird like it that I�d seen was outside Saigon. The Cobra was no civilian craft, but its markings � a light blue that made it nearly invisible against snow and high sky � were definitely not Army.

As the Cobra swung around us, its machine gun trained at our chests, Vera waved. The Cobra dipped and veered off.

Another copter appeared, apparently after some radio signal that the coast was clear. This bird was plumper, a sky-blue Huey Iroquois, a passenger carrier, a very special passenger carrier with modified Gatling guns jutting out the bays. It hovered over us and came down on the whirlwind of its rotors.

�Welcome aboard, Miss King,� the gunner gave Vera a hand as she climbed on. He and the other gunner, as well as the pilot and copilot, wore uniforms the same color as the copter. I got on board with no help.

�We�re on our way, Raki,� Vera held my hand.

The seats of the Iroquois were of contoured leather. The bays closed shut with plexiglass windows. At the touch of a button, a walnut bar slid open.

�The Snowman is an exclusive club,� Vera poured me a glass of brandy as the copter lifted smoothly backwards and up. �Here, get warm.�

Mountain after mountain, like an angry sea turned to stone, spread out in every direction. The reflection of sun on ice and snow made the peaks glint.

�Fabulous country, isn�t it,� Vera said. �To the south is Snowking Mountain. To the west are Despair, Redoubt, and Triumph. Devils Dome is to the East.�

�Where is Snowman?�

�Just keep your eyes sharp. You won�t miss it.�

We flew for another twenty minutes through the teeth of the ice peaks. The copter was rising steadily. The pilot radioed, and in back I could see the Cobra watching to see whether there were any followers. Our Iroquois rose faster, heading for one immense crest.

The copter shot over the crest. The top of the mountain had been leveled off as if with a knife. Instead of rock and ice, there was a modernistic stone mansion, an angular creation of glass � bulletproof without a doubt � and, jutting through the stone, cedar timbers. It looked like many other expensive resort hotels, with one great difference. Snowman had no advertising, not one billboard. And the whole thing must have been airlifted at incredible expense.

The glass pod of a roof gunner followed the copter�s flight. A shelf of ice split to reveal a landing pad. A second pad appeared for the Cobra, and, looking closely, I could see three other pads with connecting steps to the main building. Now I guessed where Snowman got its name. If all five pads were in use, the complex would look from the air like the outline of a man. Or of a corpse.

The Iroquois descended, humming, to the pad. Our bay window was yanked open by our gunner, and Vera stepped out first.

�Father!�

Two men stood on the pad waiting for us. One was a soldier in the Snowman uniform and carried an M-16 slung over his shoulder. The other man was older, broad-shouldered, and richly tanned, with silver hair, black eyes, and a Roman nose. He was one of the most impressive men I�d ever met. Intelligence and ruthlessness emanated from him like heat from the sun; and he was Vera�s father. He put his arm around her protectively and measured me with his eyes before giving me a firm handshake.

�Mr. King, I am Raki Senevres.�

�So I�ve been told,� he answered in Turkish. �I very rarely believe what I�m told. Don�t you think that�s the wisest course?� He kissed his daughter again and switched to English. In any language his voice resonated with Italian. Other Mafiosos tried to hide their accent, not this one. �I�ve had strange reports about you from my French friends. Vera, my dear, you have a lot to tell your father about yourself and your friend. Come on.�

As we walked up the steps, King caught me looking at the Cobra hovering overhead.

�You fly, Mr. Senevres?�

�Planes, not helicopters,� I lied. �I admit I was wondering how you got that.�

�In parts from the South Vietnamese. From wrecks, you understand. I rebuilt them at a tenth their original cost.�

�That would be $50,000, instead of $500,000?�

�That was no guess, was it, Mr. Senevres? You�re right. Vera, I think your Turkish friend has spent some time in the arms trade.�

I wondered whether King had. Strapped to his pants leg was a beautiful pre-war Luger, easily the match of the handgun I�d had to leave behind for the Astra. King ushered us into a cedar-paneled foyer and then into an enormous living room. Three fireplaces were going. Fur rugs covered the floor, along the walls was a small library, and, for the thirsty, there were two bars. We were the only people in the lodge living room. It seemed not at all abandoned but, rather, as if it belonged to a very profligate, wealthy man.

Picture windows created views of the Cascades and an occasional glimpse of a guard or a Cobra. At a nod from King, a waiter wheeled a mobile bar over to where we sat.

�Some raki for you?� King asked me. A bottle of the Turkish liquor was nestled between Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker.

�Vodka, please.�

King was looking for a slip, so I avoided being a stereotype. He and Vera had Camparis.

�You�ll enjoy yourself here,� she told me. �There are game rooms, saunas, a heated swimming pool, a shooting range.�

�Girls, if you want them,� King added.

�No, thank you. Skiing, too, I would think.�

�You ski? Perhaps we will take a ride to the slopes before the auction starts,� King remarked. �You see, I do plan to get to know you, Raki. You know, you are the first guest outside the families who has ever been invited here. My daughter is very strongwilled. Like her father. You impressed her greatly. You impressed the chiefs. Now you must impress me. You see, if you don�t, you will never leave here alive.�

�I assumed that.�

�You should. The chiefs are like children sometimes. They are willing to throw away all the networks that have been built up over so long in France on the chance you have a better system. They should have consulted me, as Vera should have consulted me, before committing themselves to you.�

�You say �children,�� I answered King. �Don�t you mean �peasants.� In comparison to you.�

�What do you mean?� King asked, interested.

�The heirloom cameo Vera wears as a ring. It�s a portrait of a Borgia. You�re a Borgia, aren�t you?�

King sat back, smiling.

�Well, I must admit I am impressed. You are correct again. We do come from that noble line. And the chiefs are all descended from Sicilian peasants. This knowledge of yours only clouds your future more, however.�

�No,� I told King. �All that determines my future is my shipment. I produce it or I don�t. From then on, it doesn�t matter whether I know you�re the Pope.�

King stood and paced, stopping to say, �I am beginning to see how you got this far, Mr. Senevres. You have sufficient nerve, that is for sure.� He turned to Vera. �You have a sample of his candy?�

Vera gave him a gift-wrapped box of marzipan. King inspected the contents and handed it back to her.

�Clever. I never doubted your Mr. Senevres was clever. No wonder you made a fool of DeSantis. I will see you at supper.�

He left us alone. Vera kissed my cheek.

�You�re the first man who�s ever stood up to my father. Even the toughest chiefs are scared of him. But how did you know about the ring?�

�I was in the jewelry line once. I had to know what was worth stealing,� I said, although there were too many other give aways. His accent was anything but Sicilian, and I�d seen too many portraits of Borgias to miss the family resemblance. Also, the usual Mafia chief is happy just to get a daughter accepted in college. Vera had been born to finishing schools.

�Am I worth stealing from my father? That�s what he�s really afraid of.�

If the waiter hadn�t been standing at the bar I would have shown her my answer. Instead, I just touched her thigh.

A gun-toting servant led me to my room. I hadn�t been allowed to bring any luggage; there was a selection of clothes of all sizes in the closet. A complete toilet kit was provided in the private bathroom. From the room�s window was a sheer drop of a mile or so.

I shaved, using the electric razor provided. When I was done, having checked the bathroom for hidden cameras, I opened up the shaver and planted a magnetic, buttonsize transmitter in it. I left the shaver plugged, which, if Special Effects was right, turned the whole of Snowman�s electrical wiring into a low power transmitter. A Minos satellite orbited the day before would crisscross the space above North America until it picked up the signal and then self-adjust constantly until my position was absolutely defined.

From the well-stocked bureau I chose a fresh shirt. Borgias and the Mafia, that was enough for the mind to conjure with. Even today, centuries after the height of their power, the Borgias meant evil and omnipotence. No wonder Vera and her father were treated with such respect in Europe and America by men who would wipe their feet on history books. It also explained why King would be trusted as the guardian of Snowman, the Mafia�s neutral ground. As a Borgia, he had their esteem and fear, and at the same time he was not connected to any Mafia family. This was only part of the explanation � it didn�t take into account Kang�s personality, which was hardly that of a mere caretaker � but it said something about Vera.

I first really noticed her ring because it was a special land of cameo, the hollow kind that the Borgias first made popular for carrying discreet amounts of poison. That ring had been on Vera�s hand in our most intimate moments. Did it carry my death sentence?

The room phone rang to tell me supper was served.

King, Vera, and I ate in a glass-enclosed patio that overhung the mountain. The meal was Veal Milanese, the wine a white Frascati. Our entertainment was the Cascades themselves, their snow blazing like fire in the rays of the setting sun.

�Perhaps I was a little brusque for a host before,� King mentioned as the table was cleared for brandy and cigars. �You must have some questions about Snowman. Please ask them if you do.�

�I do. For instance, how do you manage to keep a place like Snowman out of public notice? I know this is about as out of the way a place could be, but still some private planes must venture nearby sometimes. How could they miss you?�

�They don�t. But, to begin with, we have invested some money in a few men at the local weather bureau. They are paid to report fog or air turbulence in this area at all times. Very rarely, a private pilot enters the area anyway and comes close enough to see Snowman. A Cobra is sent to shoot the intruder down. Naturally, the loss of life only reinforces the message that this is not a good area to fly through.�

�Doesn�t the pilot radio that he is under attack, and aren�t search parties sent out?�

�The very first thing we do is jam all radio transmission,� Vera answered. �As for search parties, we also have some men at the Civil Air Patrol to mislead planes far enough away.�

�That certainly sounds like complete protection.�

�Mr. Senevres,� King tapped some cigar ash into a silver tray, �that is only a small part of the protection. Weren�t you wondering how much the families of the Mafia pay for this sanctuary I provide?�

�I was. I thought it would be impolite to ask.�

�One hundred thousand a family, a year, plus expenses. The arrangement I have for intruders who come by plane is only the start of Snowman�s protective system. We have the most sophisticated system money can buy. Come with me. I think you�ll be interested. As a matter of fact,� King allowed himself some amusement, �I�m even interested.�

We were three levels down under Snowman, but we might have been in the War Room of the Pentagon. Over a full bank of computers and programmers was an illuminated map showing Snowman in the center of all the mountains within a radius of ten miles.

�Part of the expenses,� King said. �The newest Honeywell computer.�

�But what for?� I asked. �Radar would cover the sky and your helicopters scan the ground. Nobody would try to approach through the mountains at night.�

�And if they did.� King waved one of his programmers aside and pressed a square button. One of the computer�s magnetic tapes became alive. On the screen two words, HEAT SENSORS, flashed and vanished. From a score of different points blue circles lit up. SOUND SENSORS flashed next. Again blue circles followed. �If they did, we would see some red lights. Tell me, Raki, what do you think we would do then?�

�Send out your Cobras?�

�Yes?�

�And have the Cobras attack.�

�No. No, Raki. You miss the essence of Snowman, just what makes this the perfect fortress that it is. And I�m surprised because you�re so clever. The way you manipulated the appearance of another kind of snow, opium, was a stroke of genius. Your snow was its own camouflage. My snow is its own weapon. Outside of a nuclear bomb or a volcano or an earthquake, perhaps the most powerful weapon on earth. What do you know about snow, Raki?�

�It�s white and cold. Not much more than that.�

�Then learn.�

King halted the sensor bank and pressed a button on the next computer. The map vanished from the screen and in its place were shifting crystals magnified 100 times.

�There are many kinds of snow. One Japanese scientist has defined seventy-nine different types. We, however, are willing to settle for the ten kinds used in the International Snow Classification Scale. This particular kind of snow is called plates. You�ll notice an inset with the international symbol, a hexagon.� King pressed the next button in the computer sequence. �Stellar crystals, like parallel stars. The symbol as you see is a six-pointed star. Plates and stellar crystals are what most people think of when they think of snow. But there are many other kinds.�

With Kings finger down on the computers RUN button, a profusion of crystals and symbols seemed to explode on the screen. Columns, needles, spatial dendrites, capped columns, irregular particles, graupel, ice pellets, and hail bloomed in icy splendor while my host talked.

�Avalanches are what I�m talking about. Avalanches falling thousands of feet, carrying a white blanket weighing a million tons, enough snow to bury whole armies, that�s what makes Snowman impregnable. But what makes an avalanche? Not just gravity, my friend. You have to consider temperature, depth hoar, rime, grain size, water content, wind drift, evaporation, tensile strength and viscoelasticity, and layer formation. Plate crystals easily make wind-driven avalanches. Needles and granular fragments pack together like a block of concrete, slower to break apart but colossal in its power when it does.�

�When it does,� I interjected. �That�s not a very dependable protection.�

�Like the weather, you mean? At one time you would have been right. But what do you think I have this computer brain imbedded beneath Snowman for? At a thousand sites in this part of the Cascades range I have not only heat and sound sensors but sensors grading every change in the snow formation. Telling me crystal formation, water flow, layer depth and stress, like the inventory of an armory. I would like to claim it was all my own idea but it was not. Look!�

King placed a magnetic tape on a computer. As soon as the tape started whirling, the screen filled with a mountain view.

�This is a film made by the United States Government at Alta, Utah in January 1964. It was made after a prolonged snowfall of fifty inches, and it illustrates avalanches and their causes.�

The screen showed a shelf of snow. The snow seemed solid enough. The film switched to a man in Forest Service uniform making a snowball. He smiled at the camera like a kid, and, like a kid, he threw the snowball. It was a soft lob, and it landed on the shelf with no more impact than a pound, but the whole shelf broke away. The Forest Service cameraman obviously knew what they were doing. The film followed a fracture line that stretched a mile down the slope as more and more tons of snow collapsed.

�Too unstable for our purposes,� King commented. �New snow on depth hoar. What we want is a reliable formation but capable of being triggered.�

The film focused on the Forest Ranger�s hand. Now, instead of a snowball, he held a grenade. The camera switched to a shelf of ice and snow � �More needles and columns,� King explained � and showed snowballs being thrown at the shelf without effect. The hand pulled the grenade pin and threw the grenade. It exploded in a white puff and, in a delayed reaction, the entire shelf split apart.

�I�m beginning to understand,� I admitted, �but that would hardly stop an army.�

�This will.�

The boys in Utah had gone all out. On the screen was a seventy-five-millimeter Howitzer being loaded for action. The target was one whole face of a mountain that looked about a mile away.

�An explosive shell,� King said. �What you want is shock to break the supporting layer. Of course, as you will see, these men did not know exactly how much shock.�

The Howitzer fired. The screen showed an almost invisible hit on the mountain, and then, in a rapid transformation, the mountain seemed to shake. Ton after ton fell from the high peaks to lower ones, collecting more weight and speed. Around the base of the mountain, a white skirt grew.

Suddenly the camera wheeled. On the next mountain another avalanche was falling. The same was true of the third mountain in the range, all from the one artillery shell. And the snow from the first avalanche continued to fall and move towards the camera.

�The snow is approaching at about 120 miles per hour,� King commented.

Again the camera turned. This time to the mountain directly behind the Howitzer. The peak was hidden in a haze of snow powder as tons of snow cascaded downward toward the men and the cannon. The camera became agitated. Men could be seen running. Others stopped to strap on their skis.

Two tidal waves came together. The men furthest from the camera disappeared first. The Howitzer bounced like a toy into the air. The camera swung wildly, and the screen went black.

King leaned on the END RUN button. On the screen again was the illuminated map of Snowman.

�They understood the power they were releasing but they made two errors,� he said as he took the tape off. �Their crystal analysis was nonexistent, and they fired from the ground. Thus, they no longer exist. Our Cobras are fitted with explosive grenades or rockets. We know exactly how much of what ammunition to use because our computer constantly analyzes the snow on every approach to Snowman. Intruders are wiped out and buried at the same time. Our Cobras, operating from the air, return untouched. You see, our secret weapon is snow, and the humorous thing is that no approaching enemy would ever guess our secret until it was too late.�

�That is probably true,� I confessed. AXE was going to send in its raiding party by foot. The whole attack force would be erased according to King�s plan. �A very ingenious system.�

�That�s not all of it. The avalanche system eliminates the strike by force. There is also infiltration to deal with, the threat of one man insinuating himself into Snowman as a guest. So I have computerized a system to guard against spies as well. This,� King�s eyebrows rose, �you may find most fascinating of all.�

From his jacket pocket he took a punched computer card.

�On this card is a portrait of Raki Senevres. That is, everything we have learned about you from my own direct observation and from Vera�s experiences with you. Physical characteristics are noted by only up to a point so that disguise won�t mislead us. However, your body build and special skills, physical and mental, such as languages, driving, and murder, everything absolutely known is here. We will see literally whether Raki Senevres is actually someone else, someone who has been sent here to dispose of us and whom we should dispose of first. My daughter wants to believe you are what you seem. I,� he tapped his lapel with the card, �take a slightly different tack. I believe you are what you seem, also, and you seem to me far too competent an operator to have suddenly come from nowhere, the way Raki Senevres has.�

I looked at the punch card, and my back crawled with fear. I shrugged.

�You�re right, I�m interested. Go ahead.�

King fed the card into the Honeywell�s scanner. Again, the map vanished from the view screen. Vera�s eyes slid from me to the screen. She may have loved me, but she was a Borgia. She was curious, too.

The screen split in two. Line by line, moving from the top down, the computer was building a silhouette of me on the left half of the screen, a literal silhouette of my body with notations of weight, height, body type, skull shape, musculature. Combat experience and linguistic abilities followed with social skills and general knowledge. The psychiatric profile was heavily emphasized, and I knew enough Freud to read that I was independent, genital, and Oedipally antagonistic.

�Now, let�s see who matches,� King set a new magnetic tape in motion.

On the right-hand side of the screen, silhouettes and statistics flashed by.

�You see, I have been preparing for a man like you, and I�ve created a special memory bank of the most dangerous men in the world. I looked for men with very particular talents, men of courage and intelligence, men who worked for any agency with any possible reason for destroying us. In the bank are agents of the FBI, CIA, and military intelligence, but also agents from every European and South American intelligence group, including Cuba and the USSR. Since the United States has reached a detente with the People�s Republic of China, I�ve also added their top agents to the list. Not to mention the very best assassins from our natural business competitors...�

A silhouette stayed on the right side of the screen. There was a match.

�I�m flattered,� King said, as he read the name of the match. �Nick Carter. Well, Mr. Carter, now would you say Snowman�s protective system is complete?�

�I don�t understand,� I said, as King casually laid his hand over the butt of his Luger. Vera edged away from me.

�Nick Carter, the best agent from the very best agency. Killmaster, the man the Russians and the Mafia have a $100,000 reward for,� King introduced me to my name. �You understand very well, just a little too late.�

I looked at the screen.

�But it�s not a match. It says Carter is six foot three. I�m not that tall.�

�Carter is a very feared man. Your enemies have given you an extra inch in their imaginations just from fright.�

�You have no picture of Carter?�

�Not a good one, and it doesn�t matter. The incredible reaction time, the command of languages, the intelligence and personality, body structure, everything else matches. Who but Nick Carter would have dared take on the Mafia by himself? I should have thought of you immediately.�

I felt the small barrel of a Beretta in my ribs.

�It was my mistake, father. I�ll take care of him,� she said. Her face was taut with hate.

�Your father�s made a mistake,� I insisted.

�The computer chose you. I only pushed the button,� he answered equably.

I could have disarmed both Vera and her father, but the room�s guards were listening and cutting off all escape routes with M-16s.

�Then the computer is wrong. All I know is that I am Raki Senevres.�

�To eliminate Nick Carter,� King allowed, �I am willing to kill Raki Senevres. You�re dead right now, young man.�

�I�ll be executioner, Raki. You�ll be sorry you ever tried to use me,� Vera twisted the barrel.

�The computer is wrong. You can see one discrepancy already in the height. The �brain� doesn�t demand a perfect match, right?� I argued. �Keep running through the memory bank. Let�s see who else I am.�

My voice was full of righteous anger. Vera�s gun was still shoved in my side, but there was hesitation in her eyes.

�That would be pointless,� King said.

�Pointless? Or would it show up your computer as a little less wonderful than you claim it is? Maybe you�d just use any excuse to get rid of me and keep Vera for yourself.�

�What about that, Father?�

Vera looked sideways at her father. Speculation was on her face. King glanced nervously at her Beretta.

�All right. It�ll serve no purpose but I�ll go to the end of the tape.�

The tape began whirling again and immediately halted.

�Ergon Zag,� Vera read from the screen. �Hungarian Committee of State Security. Assassin. An exact physical match. He doesn�t speak Turkish at last report. But a match.�

King started the tape a third time. Thirty seconds later, it stopped again for a third match.

�Wolfgang Muhler, East German State Police. A match except for personality. Go on, father.� The tape started and halted. �Andrei Lubov. Russian. KGB.�

Vera stopped the tape.

�Father, maybe you owe Raki an explanation or an apology.�

�Why? Don�t you understand? The Communists are recruiting doubles for Carter. We have the real one.�

King was right, but his own good work had undone him. The Reds were collecting doubles of me in hopes of infiltrating AXE. Hawk and I had known about the plan for a year. But I had to silently thank King for the scrupulousness of his files. I�d counted on the perfection of his system more than he had.

�Let�s forget it. It was a mistake, Vera,� I said.

�No mistake, Carter,� King answered.

�His name is Raki. He�s the only man I�ve ever met that I could respect, father. We�re lovers. We�ve killed men together. Raki and I can control the whole narcotics trade around the world. If you want to stop us, you�d better have something else than this.�

Vera ripped the tape off the computer spool and threw it across the room. Her father moved, and she swung the Beretta towards him.

�If Raki is who you say he is, then I�ll kill him for you. If he�s not and you touch him, then I�ll kill you.�

King looked over the gun�s barrel at me. There was no expression of defeat. He was not a man who had ever been bested, and he was not bested now. He was only waiting.

�Very well, Vera. Your friend is safe, until you choose otherwise.�

The night�s entertainment was over. We all went to our rooms. In mine I put a chair in front of the door, not against the door handle to lock it but a foot in so that any intruder would trip in the dark, accidentally. No weapons were allowed to be brought to Snowman; Vera had warned me about fluoroscopic inspection. With the pillow case, I made a serviceable garrot. Then, not quite as snug as a bug in a rug, I went to sleep.

The first Mafia chiefs began arriving in the morning. Iroquois copters kept shuttling them in on the landing pads. The Mafiosos carried nothing larger than attach� cases, a wise precaution. If twenty family chiefs around the country suddenly were seen with suitcases at the same time, that would be a veritable public announcement that an underworld convention was taking place.

Most of the chiefs had a holiday air. They soon got into comfortable, flashy resort outfits provided by the management. The huge living room filled with blue jokes and amber scotch. I had more drinks pressed into my hand and more slaps on the back than a man at his retirement party. One of the gang, Nick Carter, also known as Raki Senevres, played pool, swam, and steam-roomed with the cream of the country�s notoriety.

King kept his suspicions to himself; he knew what Vera�s reaction would be if he didn�t. During supper, he was the genial lord of the manor. I discovered that he was more than just that, though.

�Mr. King,� said the chief to my right, �is what you might call a consigliere to all the families. The FBI was putting pressure on the Swiss government to release the names on our numbered accounts, and the Swiss were giving in. That�s a hell of a thing to have happen, you know. You work all your life to put away a little money, and then some stinking little banker hands out your name, and you�re up on income tax evasion.�

�Terrible,� I commiserated with him.

�Sure. So Mr. King put together what you might call a cover story. We give the money to him, he deposits the money in investments in little companies, like each investor is his own company. Mr. King set up the banks himself in Switzerland and Luxembourg and Nassau. The hell with those numbered accounts.�

The system certainly had its mutual advantages. The chiefs got the double protection of corporate anonymity and the reluctance of any King-owned bank to cooperate with Federal agencies. King, in return, got the interest on a capital that must have amounted to a billion dollars. And I�d thought the marzipan stunt was cute.

�Been showing Raki a good time here, Mr. King?�

�Oh, I think we�ve kept him busy,� King kept his sangfroid. �Just as we�ll keep you busy.�

The remark was greeted with excitement. As we left the long table, Vera explained why.

�While we were eating, some other guests were being brought in. My father understands what makes a vacation spot popular. When the guests return to their rooms they will find their bed partners.�

�Women?�

�Not hot water bottles, Raki. Father believes that a little pleasure mixed with business helps to do away with hard feelings, and he thinks there will be some hard feelings after tomorrow�s auction. After all, there will be one winner and many losers.�

I caressed her waist.

�And what about me? Do I get a girl, too?�

�If you want one. They�re very cute. Some German girls from Munich and Thai girls from Bangkok. Take your choice.�

�How about an Italian girl from Izmir?�

�No. I promised my father that I wouldn�t until everything was settled.�

�The auction?�

�More than that. Whether you�re with us or against us.� She kissed me. It started out as the sort of peck that tells you to be patient, but I caught her and held her until both our mouths were open, and her hips ground into mine.

Vera pushed me away.

�No, please. Wait a little longer. By tomorrow evening everything will be over. And tomorrow will be just the start for us, Raki. Just the start.�

I was alone in the dining room. I refilled my glass with vodka and walked slowly to the picture window�s view of the Cascades. The sun was gone, and the ice crags seemed to float on a haze of blue.

What if I didn�t send a signal to Hawk? If I didn�t, if I kept being Raki Senevres, in twenty-four hours I would become one of the richest, most powerful men on earth. I would also have at my side and in my bed a remarkable, incredibly beautiful woman. Together, as she said, nothing could stop us. We would have unlimited assets, control over the Mafia�s investments and a fortress that defied attack. Not that we would need Snowman anymore. We could buy a small country, if we wanted. We could take over the Mafia and squeeze the Corsicans out of France. With what I knew from intelligence reports, we could blackmail any politician here or abroad into acquiescing to our demands.

And there would always be Vera Cesare King. Sexually irresistable. Highly bred and spirited. Fiery and lovely. Brave to a fault. What more could I ever ask in a woman?

The mountains spread out, moonlight diffusing over ice, a dreamlike world covering the hidden sensors of King�s trap. I left the window to go to my room and send the signal Hawk was waiting for.

The sounds of drinking and sex filled the corridor outside my room. I went to the bathroom and found the shaver as I�d left it. I screwed the back off and uncovered the transmitter.

By now Hawk would know the exact position of Snowman. A U-2 recon flight would be finished, and its photographs analyzed. Hawk would know the layout of Snowman with an accuracy leaving room for no more than six inches of error. My fingernail tapped on the transmitter in code: BY AIR AT 500. I repeated the message for a solid minute.

I checked my watch. It was 10:00, seven hours until AXE�s raid. I doubted that King would have any Cobras in the sky when AXE started dropping its own copters onto the roof. There was the heavy caliber machine gun on the roof to be disposed of, though.

I wandered away from the guest quarters back into the living room. With all the activity that was going on in the bedrooms, the rest of the criminal resort was deserted. Outside I could see King with his bodyguard. On one of the landing pads was a giant Chinook copter taking on fuel preparatory to flying the girls out in the morning. I hoped for their sake they were gone before five o�clock.

I slipped out a side door into the cold night air. A Snowman guard was at one corner of the surrounding patio. He stared out at the mountains.

�Cigaret?�

He almost jumped and then took the offered cigaret. I lit both of ours.

�You can get hypnotized by these mountains,� he said apologetically. �They don�t move, you know, no matter how long you look at them. Aren�t you a little cold?�

The question had a friendly tone but not enough of one to mislead me. The guards had been given special orders to keep an eye on Raki Senevres.

�I come from the Anatolian hills,� I said. �I�m used to cold.�

�You�re lucky. When my shift�s over it takes me an hour just to defrost.�

�You ought to switch. Learn computer programming like American matchbooks say.�

He laughed.

�What I ought to do is pull roof duty and spend all night in the nice, warm bubble pulling Z�s. You dig?�

�I�m afraid not. Goodnight.�

�Yeah.�

He stood with his back to me, smoking. I went to the door, opened and closed it, and slid into the shadow along the outside frame. The guard looked at the door and pulled out his radio.

�Control, this is Ricco. Mr. Senevres came out a minute ago. We engaged in conversation... No, no information was passed... He already went back in... Over.�

He immediately left his post for another. I climbed up the unguarded side of the lodge. It had been built with bare beams and unpolished stones for a rugged, handsome look; there was no lack of handholds.

The roof gun was .51 caliber with twin barrels. Anti-aircraft class, it would cut apart any copter ever built. The bubble was one-and-a-half-inch plastic, strong enough to deflect anything less than a rocket. The turret rollers were protected by steel, and from a special vent I could tell the gunner had a private air system inside the bubble so that he couldn�t be incapacitated by any gas attack inside the lodge. Even if AXE�s copters dropped tear gas on the special vent, he could close it off with enough air in the bubble to keep him firing for an hour or more.

The gunner, his features clear in the bubble�s light, read a magazine. Abruptly, he put it down. The turret whined and turned at the pressure of the gunner�s feet. His twin MG�s pointed in the opposite direction, the same direction the guard on patrol had been diverted to.

An Iroquois was landing on the pad near the Chinook. Whoever the late arrivals were, the attention of the guards had been distracted. I unscrewed the vent cover with my penknife blade. If the turret turned I was dead; there was no way I could pull my head and arm back fast enough. Snow from the last storm was left on the roof, proof of Snowman�s insulation. I used a handful of it to wet my handkerchief. Through the wet cloth I pressed a piece of heroin �candy,� mashing the morphine fudge into the fibers. I spread the handkerchief over the air intake and watched the prepared cloth spread over the grill. The turret stayed still, pointed at the unloading Iroquois. I screwed the cover back on and smoothed the disturbed snow. The turret whined. The twin barrels pointed in my direction, but by then I was gone.

Air would still reach the machine gunner. The amount of opium that he�d breathe would be very small. The opium was pure, though. Cut down, it would have serviced hundreds of hard addicts. Also, the gunner would be breathing it for hours. By the time the AXE copters appeared, he would be paralyzed in terms of Snowman�s defense.

Before the first guard returned to his post, I slipped back into the lodge. Whoever had arrived were being led to their rooms by King. The living room was empty, except for Vera. She was on a sofa by one of the fireplaces. She seemed to be expecting me.

�A walk, Raki? You must be freezing. Have a brandy.�

�Thanks.� I didn�t ask how she knew I was outside. My brandy had already been poured. I drained the glass. �You can�t sleep?�

�No. Maybe I have a case of nerves,� she said. She�d never had the problem before. �Do you have a case of nerves, Raki? Are you ever afraid of anything?�

�You�ve had either too much brandy or not enough, Vera.�

�My father doesn�t like you.�

�Your father doesn�t like losing. Tell him he�s not losing a spy, he�s gaining a partner.�

�He kills people he doesn�t like.�

The conversation was getting overfamiliar, and Vera was in a strange depression. Perhaps she had a foreboding that I was not who I said I was. I said goodnight and went to the guest quarters. All the sounds of merry making had died, and I checked my watch. It was 11:30, a little early for all bad boys to be asleep. I didn�t think about the fact much because I wanted a few hours of sleep for myself before five.

I went into my room and turned the light on.

Every Mafioso in Snowman was waiting for me. In the middle was King. Next to King were the new arrivals: Charlie DeSantis and a Turk. The Turk stood around six foot seven and weighed 340 lbs. His neck was as large as most mens� thighs. His skull was shaved. His face was a scarred scowl, decorated with a mustache. If he�d pulled an arm off the nearest chief and eaten it as a late night snack I wouldn�t have been amazed.

King didn�t disappoint me, though.

�Raki Senevres,� he addressed me, �I want you to meet Raki Senevres,� and he patted the Turk on his back.

I was more than amazed.

Special Effects had chosen my identity. Where had they selected my name?

�Where did Raki come from? What do we know about this prospective partner of ours, I kept asking myself,� King said. �I asked my friends in Istanbul and Izmir. They never heard of him. No criminal in Turkey had the name. Another man might have had to be satisfied with no answer, but I wanted to help our friend Raki, to clear away any lingering doubt about his identity. So I kept searching and had my friends search for anyone named Raki Senevres. Finally, I found him. And what could be more perfect? As you know, I always try to provide Snowman guests with entertainment. This should be very entertaining, two men who each claim to be Raki Senevres, the greatest wrestler in Turkey.�

�Mr. King,� I broke in, �what kind of a stunt is this? I never told you I was a wrestler.�

�Are you Raki Senevres?�

�Yes.�

�Then you must be the greatest wrestler in Turkey. And this other man must be a liar.�

�I am not a liar!� the other Raki Senevres said. His voice sounded like gears grinding on bone.

I appealed to the family chiefs.

�This is a ridiculous test. I never said I was this man.�

�Mr. King insists this is the only Raki Senevres he was able to find,� the Boston chief answered. �Are you calling Mr. King a liar?�

�I�m not calling anyone a liar. I�m only saying Mr. King is wrong.�

�If you�re not Raki Senevres, who are you?� the outspoken Bostonian shot back. �I�ll tell you, Raki, we�ve always taken Mr. King�s advice in the past, and it�s always paid off. Now, we�d feel a lot better if you proved you really were someone. I can understand wanting to avoid identification, but there are some things worse.�

He nodded to the M-16 pointed at my back.

The Mafia mentality was medieval but it had some logic. Better to know I was someone, even the man I denied being, than to deal with a phantom, especially a phantom who might take a much more unpleasant shape than that of a corpse.

With the automatic rifle at my back I was marched to the billiard room. The other Raki Senevres pushed the pool tables to the side, a job that would have taken me a block and tackle. I looked at my watch as I removed it. The time was 12:30. I�d be cold by the time Hawk arrived.

Senevres and I stripped down to rolled up pants and bare feet. It�s fair to say that I am a muscular, well-proportioned man, but I looked small. The Turk was an ape. Hairy platforms of muscle sloped up from his shoulders to his neck. His stomach was broad but without a wrinkle of fat, and his curled fingers hung to his knees. Just in case I thought I might have an advantage in speed, he turned a warmup cartwheel and flipped from his hands to his feet.

King looked pleased.

�Gentlemen, this is Turkish greased wrestling. Our competitors, both of whom happened to be called Raki Senevres, will be covered in olive oil. There will be one fall. A fall is scored, according to Turkish rules, by picking your opponent up and carrying him three steps, or by flipping him completely over, or by dragging him face down by his feet. You can do this to him before or after he is dead. There are no other rules. The winner will receive $100,000,� he said to Senevres. �And the loser will simply be the loser,� he said to me.

Cans of cooking oil were punched and poured over our heads. As the slick ooze spread over my skin, I heard the betting action among the chiefs. I was 100 to one, what you might call a longshot.

�Shall we begin,� King waved us to the cleared center of the room. I mimicked the Turk�s loping, athletic approach. There was no point in appearing completely ignorant of the Turkish national sport. Every Turk was a fan and every Turkish man learned the rudiments in the Turkish Army.

�Allah, Allah, there is no god but Allah.� Senevres and I stepped toward each other, each singing the ancient battle cry. Our bodies glistened with oil. The heavy muscles of Senevres�s chest expanded like a bronzed balloon. His skull had the glow of a new bullet. He meant to kill me as quickly and efficiently as possible, but there was ritual to go through first

Senevres and I crossed each other�s path, embraced, and slapped each other on the thigh. The traditional start looks like pure friendliness. What it is is a ritualized search for hidden weapons.

�They both seem to know what they�re doing,� the Boston chief said.

King replied in Italian, and the audience laughed. Loosely translated, he�d said, �the pig is on his back.� A pig is only put on his back to be castrated or slaughtered, and he was talking about me.

The Turk punched my shoulder with the heel of his hand, and I rocked back. I retaliated, and his shoulder moved less than an inch. This was the last part of the rite, testing the opponent�s strength. The Turk�s confidence grew. He grabbed my arms in his hands and bulled me at will from one billiard table to another. I spread my arms and disengaged, then I tried the same bullying tactic. My fingers wouldn�t even reach around his biceps. My hands slipped off his oiled skin futilely.

The Turk grunted and stepped back. Tradition had been satisfied. Now the slaughter would begin.

Crouching, our hands out, the Turk and I locked, heads and shoulders meeting. He feinted a shove to one side, shoved to the other, but I kept my balance. He disengaged and slapped my face to the side, raking my forehead with his nails and sliding to the floor at the same time for a leg tackle. I pulled my leg away and elbowed his kidney as he went by. His hand caught my belt and swung me down on the floor like a sack, but my head had rolled out of the way when the edge of his hand slashed at my throat. We both got to our feet warily. He was a little surprised that his work wasn�t over, and I was thinking that in hand-to-hand combat, the Turk was one of the strongest opponents I�d ever met.

He moved forward with his big hands out again, but, as soon as we engaged, his shaven head shot forward like a cannonball. He held onto my arms and butted again and again. His skull was as thick as armor plate. I ducked, but he�d opened up cuts, and the blood ran into my eyes, blinding me. His head came through my reddened vision like a concrete fist. I rolled back with his momentum and kicked him off. He landed on his feet like an acrobat, laughing, and waiting briefly.

I wiped my blood off on his shirt, which changed his humor. He bounced forward again.

At the top of one of his bounces, I made a bounce of my own, flying with both feet high. My heel exploded onto his nose, snapping the cartilage from the bone. He dropped onto his back and rolled away. I�d missed. He�d already been pulling away when I hit, proof of unusual reflexes and body control in a big man. Otherwise, the bones of his nose would have been broken, too, and shoved up into his brain. He blew a crimson stream from his nose and moved towards me again, not the least bothered by the trail of blood he left. I wiped the blood from my forehead and met him.

I ducked the straightened fingers that jabbed at my eyes. My fingers, straightened in the same fatal karate form, shot at the Turk�s solar plexus. He caught my wrist in mid-air. Wheeling with all his weight, he swung me around and off the floor up to his shoulder. He began walking the three steps that would give him victory. I brought the palms of my hands together on his ears in a deadly clap. Cerebral hemorrhage should have killed him instantly, and I tensed for his collapse. Instead, the Turk screamed with pain and threw me over the audience. I hit a wall and landed half-in and half-out of a trophy vase. I was covered with small cuts.

The Turk, howling in agony, bled dark blood from his ears and mouth. He tore through the Mafiosos and grabbed my hair. I felt dizzy and helpless, vaguely aware that I was traveling through the air again. I smashed head first through a rack of cues. I rolled desperately as soon as I hit the floor, moving underneath billiard tables on my elbows and knees. The Turk cursed in frustration. I stood up in front of the room�s bulletproof picture window, and at once he pushed one of the billiard tables at me. I jumped to one side and the table caved through the glass into the dark night. The temperature of the room began dropping.

The Mafiosos were getting cold and frightened. They�d come for entertainment. Now they found themselves in a room splattered with blood and glass. Not just in front of them, but all around the room, the huge Turk raged after me. When he caught me we fought at close quarters with butts, elbows, and fists. I landed first every time but once, and then his knuckles nearly broke through my rib cage. I backed off gasping for air and threw an arm chair at him. He ducked, while the Mafiosos scattered. When the Turk lunged forward, I knocked his arm up, locked his wrist back and started forcing him onto his knees. As if he were snatching an insect, he grabbed my neck with his free hand and pulled his wrist out from my grasp. Air rushed from my throat as the Turk squeezed. The muscles of his shoulders and arms swelled with the pleasure of murder. My vision was already pink with blood. Now it became splotched from the lack of oxygen reaching my brain. King and the other Mafiosos were shouting encouragement to the Turk. The sound rose and fell with my pulse.

My hands, locked together in one fist, slammed up on the Turk�s jaw, once, twice, three times. The vise on my throat loosened. I hooked into his exposed gut, knocking some of the air from his lungs and out his bloodied mouth and nose. With one knuckle out, I punched his sternum, a blow hard and precise enough to stop another man�s heart, enough to make the Turk�s skip a beat. I hooked into him again, first into his abdomen and then into his ear.

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.

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.

There was more than an hour to go until the raid. From the closet I chose the warmest clothes, sweater and parka, and a pair of head racing skis. I bound the skis to my back with two belts. Then I threw the window open to a half-mile drop. Instead of sex, adrenalin was dulling the pain of my cuts. I took a last look at Vera. She turned her head away.

I went out the window onto the ledge. The Cascades were a hazy, deep blue like an undersea mountain range, the stars shimmered like iridescent fish, and low clouds moved across the face of the sky. I climbed up the two stories to Snowman�s terrace where I had been walking earlier in the evening.

Over the terrace wall I could make out the copters on the pad. Flying out was a temptation, but it would have alerted the entire fortress prematurely. I had to disappear another way. I ducked as a guard marched by on his patrol. As soon as he was past, I reached my arm along the inside of the wall. My hand felt a long coil of rope and a grappling hook, one of the coils I�d seen earlier placed at regular intervals along the wall for the guards to use whenever something or someone needed retrieving.

I didn�t use the coil right away, not until I�d climbed fifty feet down the lodge�s base. There I scanned my escape route. The rope I gauged at 150 feet. The mountain face was veined with ice but its very steepness would be useful for disengaging the hook. The hook should have been padded to reduce noise, I should have had climbing boots, and I should have been able to see what I was descending to, but a man can�t have everything.

The hook fit neatly around a ridge six inches deep, and I stepped off into space. Keeping the pressure on the grapple as evenly as possible, I leapfrogged backwards down the stone face. At any second I expected to hear an alarm and see an M-16 appear over the terrace. There was no alarm and no M-16. I reached the end of the rope and balanced on an ice ledge. I jiggled the rope. It went slack, and I pressed myself back against stone. The hook, freed from the ridge, dropped by my head, and, far below, hit stone with a ring. I waited while adrenalin pumped sweat out of every pore. Everything on Snowman remained peaceful. I pulled the hook up.

Dropping down the mountain by grappling hook was insane but fast. Within thirty minutes I covered the 1,000 feet to the snowline. The snow was fresh, and the slope eased off to forty-five degrees. I left the rope and switched to skis. Half an hour remained till the raid, and I was determined to put as much distance between myself and Snowman as possible.

The low clouds had lifted, and moonlight covered the snow. It was all downhill. I went into a racer�s tuck, and my skis began to sing. I don�t know what King would have analyzed the crystals as, but the snow base was perfect. My speed built to fifty miles per hour, and I could have let it reach seventy if I hadn�t been traveling over unfamiliar terrain at night. Snowman was miles back and out of sight. I flew over a crest and a whole valley of escape routes lay before me.

Another sound rose over the hiss of skis. The sky echoed with the whine of a Cobra�s turbine. The killer copter was not ahead or on my flank. I looked back and saw in the distance a white oblong shape floating over the snow, following my ski tracks. Above the eerie pursuer was the Cobra, a spotlight mounted beside its machine gun. I huddled tighter, cutting wind resistance, and let my speed start building.

I�d made a crucial miscalculation. I had realized the Snowman computer and sensors would be sufficient for tracking any intruder approaching the Mafia fortress. The approaches were uphill and difficult. Leaving the fortress I should have been able to move fast and erratically enough to confuse automatic trackers. I�d never thought of a Cobra following me with a light on my telltale tracks. A Cobra can move at over 200 miles per hour. I couldn�t outrun it, but I could keep running as long as I could.

I veered to the right as I passed a ridge. The snow sprayed beneath me, slapping my skis. I couldn�t slow down, and if I fell I was really wiped out. My turn had brought me onto a southern slope. The snow had a coat of ice. I jumped from one knoll and landed 100 feet downhill. The impact was like landing on concrete, but my speed was still building, and my tracks would be harder to find on crust than snow. Maybe I could outwit the Cobra.

My skis jerked and shook, strained by a speed no skis were designed to take. The least turn was dangerous. I was already on the razor�s edge of control. My control almost broke when the snow around me suddenly bloomed in a dazzling circle of white light. Ahead of me was my shadow. Overhead was the Cobra.

Despite my speed, I cut to the side. In the vacated circle of light, snow and ice were exploding in a machine gun rain. The Cobra didn�t fire at snow long, but it had to circle to find my new trail simply because it was traveling faster than I was. After a ghostlike circle, it found my tracks and began following me again. I cut right and left desperately, at times on one ski. The white circle enveloped me, and I leaned with my shoulder brushing the snow to steer away. When the machine gun opened up, I�d vanished onto a new course.

Two minutes later, the copter gained another sighting, and this time the Cobra sat on my head, but I dug my pole into the snow for a turn that nearly tore my arm out of its socket, and again the copter shot round after round on an empty slope.

The Cobra rose. There was no way for me to look at my watch to check when AXE would attack. The white spotlight had found me again but hung at a distance, as if the two man team in the Cobra were rethinking their strategy or getting new orders from Snowman. The Cobra rose a bit more. The strafing was over.

The rocket pods of the Cobra erupted with red flame. The missiles were not aimed at me. They passed far overhead, exploding in the snow of a high slope. The whole slope dropped, and I heard a roar growing. The sound filled the entire valley. Tons of snow fell and brought more snow down in a churning white mass. The Cobra fired more rockets. What was a white slope turned black as its sheath of ice and snow collapsed, adding its tons to the first avalanche. The Cobra kept on firing, until the entire east side of the valley was rushing down so that it looked as if an earthquake were convulsing the Cascades. The snow beneath my skis shook. A thin tree line vanished under the wave. A wind, started by the rush of snow, tore around the valley walls.

I remembered the film King had showed me. Those men never had a chance. Neither did I. The valley was ten miles long and I was moving at seventy. But the whole side of the valley was falling down in a wave that traveled almost twice my speed. As the wave grew nearer I could make out for the first time its dimensions. Boulders as big as houses bounced on top of a thirty-foot high white wall. As the wall closed in, the ground shook so badly I could barely stay up. As a last resort, I tried turning toward the upper slope on the valley�s other side. The first chunks of snow began dancing up to my feet. Larger chunks hit my back. The avalanche�s yawning roar made my ears ache.

Have you ever seen an ant in a sand pit when the pit falls in on him? I was lifted, still strangely maintaining my balance, up from the ground as if I were a surfer. For a second I rode and felt the immense, incalculable power of the avalanche almost as I were a god riding a thunderstorm. Then I became the ant again.

The wall rose over me. My legs were sucked down. Everything was black, and the avalanche kept rolling.

I might have been one of the million boulders buried under the quiet snow. I awoke not sure I was alive. But I was merely freezing, not frozen. I could see nothing. There was a lot of snow on top of me. The only airpocket I had was what I�d made with my chest, arms, and knees when I�d curled up. That was Jaime�s doing, the fact that I had air and was alive. If I�d just fallen without going into the egg position, I would have suffocated, lost enough heat to freeze, and been ripped in four different directions. As it was, my chances weren�t so great.

Cold numbed my variety of cuts, but I was first concerned about broken bones. I tensed every muscle, waiting for that jolt of raw pain when flesh moves over shattered bone. I found plenty of bruises but no broken bones. In my cold tomb, I pulled back the sleeve on my left wrist.

It was ten in the morning according to the luminous dial of my watch, five hours since I�d been buried, five hours since AXE�s raid. I might have been in the center of the earth for all I knew what happened at Snowman. I felt along my legs. The skis were gone, the boot latches snapped cleanly off. I tried shoving myself up. The snow over me didn�t give an inch. I was sealed in tight. Sooner or later I would freeze. The air I was breathing was already poisoned with carbon dioxide. This was what it was like to be buried alive. I corrected my thought. Not like, I was buried alive.

Something was restraining my wrist. Fumbling, I felt the strap of a ski pole. Quickly, I pulled the pole towards me. It was bent, but all in one piece. If there were less than five feet of snow over me, I could make an airhole with the pole. I shoved the pole up, twisting it like a drill. It pierced the snow as far as I could reach, but the pole didn�t reach light or air. Killmaster was buried deep.

I pulled the pole back. Reaching for air was futile. I could go into a Zen trance. That would increase my life span by decreasing the amount of air I needed and the amount of protein energy I was burning up just to maintain some body temperature. The tactic would make some sense if someone was digging me out. No one was digging, though. A trance was giving up.

I shoved the pole sideways into the snow. Working used up oxygen and energy, but I�d made my choice to fight. On the fiftieth or five hundredth probe, the pole hit something solid in back and above me. I kept tapping until I felt certain what I was hitting was wood and not stone. It was a tree, ripped from its roots and brought all the way down the mountainside by the avalanche. Slowly, I started pulling the pole-loosened snow between me and the tree out of the way.

To move the five feet to the tree took ninety minutes by my watch. I pulled my gloves off and felt the bark gratefully. It was a fir with branches emerging at right angles to the trunk, a regular ladder. I was weaker and colder than earlier but now I had hope and, more important, leverage. Blindly, I burrowed my way upwards an inch at a time. The carbon dioxide began playing tricks with my mind, creating subtle, fatal hallucinations. At one point, I became certain I was digging down, not up. Deliberately, I closed my mind to thought and kept digging mechanically.

The snow seemed looser. I ignored the sign. I could make out light. That might be another hallucination. Then the snow was falling in on me. My hand groped and felt nothing but air. I was breathing again, great draughts of cold, fresh oxygen, and minutes later I broke through the surface and crawled out on top of my tomb.

The time was four in the afternoon. Moving five feet laterally and eight feet up had taken six hours. Snow was packed into the fiber of my clothes, and my skin was white with cold, but I had no complaints. After the claustrophobia of the snow tomb, I lay down and stretched my arms and legs, luxuriating in being alive. The condensation of my breath was a victory signal.

I turned over on my stomach. The valley floor was a mass of broken snow. I�d just decided to make my way back to Snowman, when I saw two dots moving towards me. They might have been searchers from AXE, but I doubted it. Whoever won the battle of Snowman would have copters. These two were traveling on snowshoes and escaping. I was sure I hadn�t been seen; if there was one thing I looked like now it was snow. I lay still and waited.

At 1,000 yards I made them out. One was King. The other was Vera. They were coming straight towards me.

He looked very tired. He had a wound on one cheek, and he kept looking back at the sky. Vera just looked tired. There was no way they�d miss me if they stayed on course. King kept his Luger in one gloved hand. I had nothing.

I crawled back to the hole I�d climbed out of. I could bury myself again. The idea nauseated me as soon as I looked down the shaft. Besides, I�d come to stop King, not hide from him. The Kings, father and daughter, were 900 yards away. I reached into the hole and pulled the tree branches up into a bower. I pushed loose snow over the branches until they were covered. My tomb had become a trap. I scuttled back, away from the hidden cave, and stayed still.

When King and Vera were fifty yards away, I stood up. They halted, shocked as if a ghost blocked their path.

�You�re dead!� King blurted out, as if to reassure himself.

�You�re dead,� I answered. �You had some visitors last night, I assume.�

He reddened and it wasn�t from cold. I had my answer.

�Kill him, father,� Vera said. �Kill him for good this time.�

King was still in shock.

�The men in the copter, they saw you die, Carter. The sensors said you were dead.�

�Just hibernating. Throw me your gun, King.�

�Kill him,� Vera shook her father. �You shoot or I will.�

King seemed to wake up, enough to see I had no weapon. He raised the Luger and sighted it on my chest. The muzzle wavered. He fired, and snow kicked up to my left. He rubbed his eyes and moved forward. Snowman was gone. His millions were gone. The Borgia was suddenly a tired old man. He halted and fired again. A bullet whistled past my ear. The day before he could have hit me running at 300 yards. The day before he wasn�t shaking.

I dropped to the snow. His aim was improving, but his reflexes were slow. His shot hit where I�d stood, not where I landed. He staggered forward clumsily on his snowshoes. I rolled back over the snow as he emptied three more bullets from the Luger�s clip.

�Give me the gun,� Vera ran after him angry and frustrated. King stood only feet away from the pit I�d prepared, when Vera caught up and made him stop. �Let me kill him.�

She grabbed his arm and he pulled away. King lurched back, fighting free of her hands. Then, with a snap of branches, he dropped through the snow surface. A geyser of snow flew up from the pit, and a gunshot went off under the snow. Vera edged to the rim of the pit, looked, and covered her face in horror.

A ghoulish, horrible scream of pain came out of her. She dropped her hands, stared at me and began running, away from me, back to Snowman.

�Vera, wait!�

I got to my feet and ran after her. Around the pit�s rim was a freckling of blood and half of her father�s head. As he�d dropped, his arm had hit a branch and he�d fired again. The last time he hadn�t missed.

�Wait, Vera,� I cried, as I tripped and fell. On my hands and knees, I felt a familiar, unnerving sensation. The ground was shaking. One whole side of the valley, the side that hadn�t fallen the night before, was spilling its wave of snow now. The first avalanche had loosened the opposite hillside. King�s gunshots were the last vibrations needed to trigger another avalanche. Tons after ton of white death was falling from the high peaks, collecting more snow, and gathering speed. I yelled, and I couldn�t hear my voice myself.

And Vera kept running toward the gathering avalanche. Hysteria gripped her face whenever she looked back at me. I ran over the trembling earth after her. Fatigue and lack of snowshoes slowed me down. The avalanche swept over the lower slopes, building force as it descended to the valley. The tree line vanished, the roots tom out by a mile-long white hand. I fell again over a jumble of ice. Vera looked back, not at me, as I�d been thinking, but over my head.

An AXE copter hovered twenty feet above me. It was the copter her father had been fearfully searching for when he kept looking back. Hawk was beside the pilot waving at me feverishly, with evident relief that I�d finally noticed them. The sound of the motors was completely lost in the fury of the avalanche.

A rope ladder dropped down to me. I jumped on, but instead of climbing, waved the pilot forward. Hawk waved me to come up. I shook my head and pointed at Vera. I couldn�t hear Hawk cursing, but I could read his lips. He tapped the pilot on the shoulder and, reluctantly, moved toward the approaching snow.

I skimmed seven feet off the ground. We gained ground fast on Vera but she had a good head-start, and when she saw me on the ladder she ran all the harder. She didn�t seem to see the avalanche at all. The white wave roared down at her. We would reach her, though, I was sure of it.

Before the snow rolled a wave of turbulent air. The copter bucked and dove. Hawk tried to wave me up again. I hung from the ladder and reached out my hand. We were almost to Vera and so was a tidal wave of snow twenty feet high and moving just as fast. Vera suddenly looked very small, a dark figure against a rolling white background. I yelled until my throat was hoarse. Under the bucking copter, the ladder jumped and twisted.

At the last moment, she seemed to see the avalanche. She froze in terror. We dipped down, rocking in the wind of the avalanche, and I reached out as far as I could. Vera stood on the shaking ground, inches from my grasp, hate warring with fear in her eyes. The snow poured down.

Her hand shot out and grasped mine. At once, the copter lifted, desperately trying to rise above the cascading snow. The avalanche hit with all its force, rising to Vera�s waist. She said something I couldn�t hear. But the hate was gone from her face and so was the fear. There was only acceptance.

Then she was gone, tom away as the trees had been torn down. The snow wave covered her. The avalanche kept moving and building, killing and covering what it killed. Just as King said it would.

Stiffly, I climbed up into the copter. From there I watched the avalanche roll to its violent end. Hawk and I couldn�t talk above the noise, which was just as well.

Finally, the avalanche was over. The valley was still, very white and, from a great height, very pretty. I opened my fist. My fingers were smeared with blood and in my palm was an antique cameo ring.

�Hers?� Hawk asked. When I nodded, he said, �You must have been holding her pretty hard.�

�I was.� I opened the false top. Inside was white powder.

�What�s that, Nick?�

I didn�t have to taste it to know.

�Her suicide if she ever needed it. Heroin. An overdose of snow.�

The copter wheeled and headed for Snowman.

�She never needed it,� Hawk said.