The Istanbul Decision by Nick Carter Page A

discreetly under her pillow.
    This would be the tool of her vengeance, she thought, watching the scalpel spin. With it she would set into motion events that would free her from this confinement and bring about the death of Nick Carter, a consummation she wanted more than anything else in the world.
Soon,
she told herself.
The time is almost at hand.
    The Americans had already parried. This she knew. How she knew was a combination of intuition and tradecraft, although which predominated was impossible to say. Her father had taught her the tricks of the agent's art — the suspicious turn of mind, the secretiveness, the prodigious powers of deduction, the constant alertness and attention to detail — at such a young age and engrained them in her so thoroughly, tradecraft and intuition had become indistinguishable in her thinking.
    Three weeks ago she'd fallen asleep reading in bed and two hours had passed of which she was completely unaware. This was highly unusual. She'd always been a light sleeper, given to restless dreams, some of them so vivid they'd caused her mother a great deal of concern when Tatiana was a child.
    But this was a dreamless sleep, and when she'd awakened she tasted something bitter on her lips, and her skin was achingly dry except beneath one earlobe. There was wax. Conclusion? Her food had been drugged, and while she was unconscious a wax impression had been made of her face. There could be only one reason: they were making a double of her to fool her father.
    Whether or not this operation had succeeded, she had no idea. Daily she searched the faces of everyone around her for some clue, but their expressions revealed nothing. They were too stupid to be told, she concluded. And yet she lost sleep each night wondering if she'd unwittingly become the instrument of her father's destruction.
    The time is coming soon,
she thought as the scalpel slowed. Soon she would be strong enough, and already the agony of not knowing was driving her into frenzies at night. Soon her own restlessness would force her to break out at any cost.
    The door lock clicked, and the sound pierced Tatiana's body, bringing it rigid and alert. She was standing! For the sake of Lenin! They mustn't see her!
    She hobbled to the head of the bed and tried to climb in, holding on to the bed table for support. But the table's casters shot out underneath, and it crashed to the floor — reading lamp, cards, water pitcher, everything. She scrambled under the covers just as the door flew open.
    "What's going on in here?" asked Lieutenant Dilsey, staring down at the overturned table.
    "I pushed it," Tatiana answered. "I was lonely. I don't like being ignored."
    Dilsey's eyes went from Tatiana to the table, a dim suspicion beginning to dawn in them.
    Tatiana looked down and to her horror noticed she'd left the cap off the bedpost. She still had the scalpel in her hand underneath the covers.
    Dilsey picked up the table with some difficulty, then she rolled it back and forth across a small patch of floor, testing it. "These things don't fall over all that easy," she said thoughtfully. "You must have given it quite a shove."
    "I was angry," said Tatiana sullenly. "I am still angry."
    "You know something, Little Miss High and Mighty," said Dilsey coming closer and leaning down to the girl s face, "Bernie Green swore up and down you could walk, and I told her I thought she was crazy. 'Bernie, I said, 'you've just let that girl get to you. She can't walk. But you know, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe Bernie wasn't right."
    Tatiana's fear at having been startled now turned into anger. This, coupled with the resentment she'd harbored for weeks against this woman and the one they called Green, quickly proved too much for her restraint. With a lightning motion, she pulled out her hand with the scalpel set firmly in her fist and slashed the old woman's face, splitting the eyebrow, the eye, the nose, and opening a long slash in the cheek.
    So quick was this