The Istanbul Decision Read Free Page B

finished at the urinal, he joined his companion by the sink where the two of them talked for several minutes. Laughing heartily, they finally left, the sound of their laughter and the insistent beat of the music dying only gradually on the tiled walls.
    Carter lost no more time. He continued searching the body until he found what he was looking for a Frontier Airlines ticket that showed Josef Mandaladov had boarded the same plane as Carter at National Airport in Washington. He had been booked through to L.A., but had deplaned here in Phoenix, no doubt when he saw Carter getting off. This meant he had no idea of Carter's ultimate destination, and that the existence and location of AXE's rest facility here were still secure.
    Carter stuffed the plane ticket in his pocket. Then, after making sure from the angle of the body that the blood seepage on the floor would be minimal, he pulled himself up over the partition into his own stall, gathered up his suitcase, and walked out, leaving Mandaladov's stall closed, the word «occupied» showing in the tiny window on the lock.
    It would be ten or twenty minutes before the body was found, and by that time he planned to be many miles away.
    He crossed the terminal and went outside. As he'd expected, the bartered Chevy wagon was waiting curbside. Manuel Sanchez leaned against the door. His expression split into a smile when he saw Carter.
    "Evening,
señor,"
he said, taking the suitcase and throwing it in the back seat. "Did you have a good flight?"
    "Smooth as a baby's ass," Carter said, getting in and slamming the door. "Shall we go?"
* * *
    The next day a short article appeared in the
Sun
saying an unidentified body had been found in an air terminal lavatory. That was all. Carter watched the papers for the next few days, but there was no follow-up. He assumed the man's Russian origin had been discovered, and the FBI had taken over the case, blacking out the news media. He also assumed the FBI would be more interested in finding out what someone from that particular New York address was doing in Phoenix than they were in who killed him. Therefore, the security net around AXE and its rest facility in Phoenix would remain intact, a secret even from America's own internal investigating agency.
    And although the FBI might never unravel how a KGB agent managed to wander into a bathroom at the Phoenix airport to die, his presence there was no mystery to Nick Carter. It was Kobelev, who had the whole of the Executive Action branch of the KGB at his beck and call, making good or: his threat to kill him.
    And yet, to Carter's thinking, it was a stupid ploy, an angry slab in the dark motivated by pure vengeance with very little planning, hardly worthy of a man of Kobelev's ingenuity and resources. It indicated the man was desperate now that his daughter was being held in this country and knowing he couldn't get at her. And desperate was just the mood in which Carter wanted him. Desperate suited Carter just fine.
    Thus began Nick Carter's stint of intensive training at the Phoenix rest facility. It ended almost a month later to the day when he received a phone call from David Hawk, the acerbic founder of the AXE organization and the only man Nick Carter ever called sir. True to Hawk's well-known dislike for long telephone conversations, the message was terse: "She's ready."

Two
    Within twenty-four hours of receiving Hawk's summons, Carter arrived at the base hospital at Camp Peary. He passed through two of the security checkpoints unaided, one at the gate in front of the hospital and another just outside the elevator on the fourth floor. At the door to ward «C» he was detained while a gruff Marine sergeant made a phone call. In a few minutes a slender, distinguished-looking man in a business suit came out and introduced himself as Dr. Rutherford. He signed the sergeant's book, then led Carter down a long corridor.
    Rutherford explained that Camp Peary was where the Company brought its military