Hailing another cab just outside the hotel, Bolan got another talkative cabbie. The man pointed out sights of interest along the way. Bolan, Polyakova and Seven rode silently, listening to the discourse, which sounded as if the man had given it thousands of times.
All but the lights around the entryway to the art gallery had been turned off when they arrived. Through the glass, the soldier could see a faint glow coming from the rear of the building. He remembered that Smith-Williams’s office had been located in that area. He paid the cabdriver as the Russian and Seven got out of the back seat.
A doorbell that had been invisible behind the doorman when they’d been there earlier awaited them, and the Executioner rang it now. A few seconds later, the angular form of Raymond Smith-Williams came meandering through the shadows to greet them.
“Hello,” said the man with the David Niven mustache as he unlocked the door and then opened it. “Right on time. And I see you’ve brought a friend. Fine.” Smith-Williams still wore the ascot he’d had on earlier but had traded his blue blazer for a red silk smoking jacket. And, as if it might be required when wearing such attire, he held an intricately carved briar pipe in his right hand. Faint tendrils of smoke, exuding the fragrant odor of some exotic tobacco mixture, rose from the bowl.
“Let’s see,” the Briton said as he ushered them inside. “If memory serves me, Fielding and Perez-Riverte were your passions. Shall we look at them now?” He had moved to the wall and opened a small door hiding the master light switches for the building.
“In a minute,” Bolan replied. “First, let’s talk in your office.”
Smith-Williams raised a curious eyebrow but said, “Certainly, as you wish,” then turned on his heels and led the way back through the gallery.
Bolan had been right about the rear-central area being the office. They entered through a door in the main hall, and he saw more closed doors in all three of the other walls. One, he could tell, led into the rear photography room behind the oil paintings, and another would open to watercolors. Behind the third, in the back wall of the office, might go straight out into the alley or lead to yet another room.
The office itself was spacious, with an ancient oak desk the size of a small swimming pool in the center of the room. Soft cushioned sofas formed conversation areas around three sides of the desk, and a huge skylight made up three-fourths of the ceiling. Through the glass, Bolan could just make out the crescent moon through London’s thick fog.
Smith-Williams saw them all look up and smiled. “Yes, the skylight. This was once the studio of Sir Arthur Silversleeves, don’t you know. It is said, although it’s never been proven, that this is where he painted The Trumpet of Gideon.”
Bolan had no idea what the man was talking about, but Polyakova seemed to understand. She smiled and said, “Fascinating.”
The look on Seven’s face said he was as lost as Bolan. But in true undercover expert form, he said, “You know, I’d heard that about Silversleeves myself.”
“Yes, it is fascinating,” Bolan added. “Want to know another fascinating fact, Mr. Smith-Williams?”
Smith-Williams had walked to the center of the room upon entering and now stood there, as if presenting his office to them. “Certainly, Mr. Cooper,” he said. “Do tell.”
“We aren’t interested in your paintings,” Bolan went on. “What I am interested in is your involvement in the heroin trade.”
Smith-Williams’s face reddened—whether with anger or embarrassment it was impossible to tell. “I have no idea what you’re referring to,” he spit out.
Bolan smiled. Then he walked forward, grabbed the lapel of the smoking jacket and dragged the man around the side of the desk.
“Hey!” Smith-Williams screeched as the toes of his shoes trailed across the carpet. “You can’t just—” The briar pipe fell to the floor but Seven retrieved it, stamping his foot on the glowing cinders that had dumped out.
Bolan roughly shoved the art dealer into a wide armchair, then held a finger to his lips. “Quiet,” he said. “For now.” Bolan turned to face Polyakova and Seven. “You two might want to go look at some paintings.”
The woman had proved to be a good actress, so Bolan had given her yet another part. What he was about to do would involve more psychological than direct warfare, and it would be the cumulation of many tiny mental elements he instilled in Smith-Williams’s brain that would make it work. Polyakova’s next words were a part of that.
“Oh, darling,” she said, shaking her head in distaste. “Not again.” She paused a second before giving the gallery owner a look of pity, then said, “Why don’t you at least give him a chance to tell you what you want to know first?”
Bolan shrugged. “Want to tell me all about your Russian connection?” he asked Smith-Williams.
Already the Briton was beginning to look uncomfortable, but he said, “Sir, as I told you, I haven’t the foggiest idea what—”
Bolan looked back at Polyakova and shrugged again. “See?” he said.
The Russian woman rolled her eyes and sighed. “All right,” she said in a tone of resignation. That was the end of the lines the Executioner had given her. But like all great actresses, she knew when to ad lib. Walking forward, she grasped the lapel of Bolan’s jacket, then tiptoed up to peck him on the lips. Still looking up into his eyes, she rubbed the lapel with her fingers and said, “Try not to ruin your clothes this time, sweetheart. You remember what the dry cleaner said.”
In his peripheral vision, the soldier could see Raymond Smith Williams’s eyes darting back and forth between them. The man was thoroughly confused, but he was also thoroughly terrorized.
She turned away from Bolan. “Come on, Johnny,” she said, taking his hand and leading him back toward the door. “You don’t want to have to watch this any more than I do.” Without another word, the two disappeared back into the galleries.
Bolan swept his coat back to the side and reached into the rear pocket of his pants. In doing so, he accomplished two things. He retrieved the two-foot length of black paracord from the pocket, and made sure Raymond Smith-Williams got a good view of the big Desert Eagle on his hip.
The art-and-drug dealer’s eyes grew almost as big as the hand cannon.
Without speaking, Bolan reached forward, lifted the man to his feet by the front of the smoking jacket and spun him around. “No, please!” the Briton said but by then his hands were bound behind his back and he’d been thrown back into the chair.
Bolan tied more paracord around Smith-Williams’s ankles, binding them together. He stood and looked down at the man, staring into the terrified eyes. Over the years Bolan had found that the threat of torture could be almost as effective as the real thing.
Taking a seat on a couch directly across from the art dealer, Bolan said, “Okay, here’s how I see it happening. Feel free to jump right in and correct me if I’m wrong on any of the details. The paintings—both legitimate and stolen—come in from Moscow. You pick them up at the docks, then bring them here. Then somebody—my guess is it’s a Russian—comes here and culls out the stolen art, as well as taking the heroin out of the frames.”
Smith-Williams started to speak, but Bolan held up a hand. “Let me finish,” he said. “This Russian takes the stolen art and the heroin away, and you get your cut. Now, what I need from you are his name and the name of the guy who accompanies the shipments from Russia to England.”
The gallery owner had begun squirming. He couldn’t stand but was struggling to free his hands behind his back.
Bolan shook his head. “Don’t,” he said, looking down to where Smith-Williams’s hands were. “You’ll just make it worse. They’re slip knots. Ready to tell me what you know?”
The man quit struggling and slumped back in his chair. Tears began to form in the corners of his eyes. Bolan suppressed a smile. He was going to be easy.
But Smith-Williams wasn’t quite ready to give in yet. “Please,” he pleaded. “I told you. I don’t know.” His eyes
brightened for a second in hope. “Could you have confused me with someone else?”
The Executioner laughed good-naturedly. “No, I couldn’t have.” He looked across the room to the desktop where Seven had set the gallery owner’s briar pipe, then stood, walked over and picked it up. The bowl was still warm in his hand. “You have a lighter, Ray?” he asked.
As it had so many times in the past several minutes, Raymond Smith-Williams’s face contorted into a mask of complete confusion. “You…want to smoke my pipe?” he asked.
“No, I’m not going to smoke your pipe. But I do need a lighter.”
“But why—?”
“Where’s your lighter!” the Executioner boomed at the top of his lungs.
Another thing experience had taught him was that such sudden, unwarranted outbursts were of tremendous value in such situations. They insinuated a mental imbalance that further intimidated the man being interrogated.
“Top drawer, right!” Smith-Williams shouted back almost as loud. But his voice squealed more than boomed.
Bolan found the lighter. Designed specifically for pipes, it resembled a small black scuba tank. He pushed a button on the end and a long jet-flame shot out. He dropped the pipe back on the desk, and returned to his seat on the couch. The gallery owner’s eyes followed his every step.
As soon as he was seated, the Executioner looked at the man across from him. “There’s still time for you to tell me what I want to know while I get ready,” he said. “Really, this can all be done without pain as easily as with it. The decision’s up to you.” Then, as the man’s fearful eyes opened even farther, Bolan drew the Loner knife from the Kydex sheath under his right arm.
Bolan ignored the gasp that issued forth from the gallery owner’s lips as he ignited the flame again and held it to the edge of the blade. The Loner was of top-quality steel and craftsmanship, and the black epoxy coating on the blade wasn’t affected. But the silver steel running along the sharpened edges hadn’t been blackened. Slowly it began to glow a bright red.
“What…are you doing?” Raymond Smith-Williams choked out.
Again the Executioner ignored him, frowning at the edge of the blade as it grew ever more red in his hand.
“I will tell you!” Smith-Williams suddenly screeched. “Just stop! Stop that! I will tell you what you want to know!”
Bolan knew that as soon as he dowsed the fire from the lighter, half of the psychological advantage would evaporate. “No,” he said, refusing to look at the man. “I think I’ll go ahead and finish this just in case you try to lie. It takes a while to get it just right, and I don’t want to have to start over.”
“But I will tell you!” screamed Smith-Williams.
“Then start talking,” Bolan said as he continued to heat the blade.
“The man who accompanies the paintings from Moscow is—”
Before the name could leave his mouth, an explosion sounded above the Executioner’s head. Out of reflex, he let both the lighter and knife fall from his hand, swept back his coat, drew the Desert Eagle and fired up at the bullet hole that had appeared in the skylight in the ceiling.
A split second later, the entire skylight came crashing down as both a man and a rifle burst through the window. Thousands of tiny, glistening particles of glass rained over the room like a sudden hailstorm. The rifle—a Heckler & Koch 93—hit the carpet and bounced across the room to come to rest against one of the couches. The man fell directly onto the desk, facedown.
Bolan kept the Desert Eagle trained overhead for a second, half-expecting another attack. He still didn’t know whether or not Seven had killed the sniper on the rooftop. But in the brief second it had taken the man to fall from the skylight, he had seen that he wore a gray hooded sweatshirt rather than a black coat like the hit man at the hotel.
Of course that didn’t mean he wasn’t the same man who had attacked them from the room across the hall at the Durrants. He could have changed clothes the same way the Executioner had.
Satisfied that there was no more threat from above, Bolan hurried to the desk. He grabbed the man by the back of the hair and rolled him over. The bullet had struck squarely in the chest, and his cold brown eyes stared sightlessly into eternity. He had high, Slavic cheekbones and a square jaw. Bolan had seen only glimpses of the man across the hall but he remembered him as taller and far more muscular than the body on the desk in front of him now. And the rifle now lying on the carpet was a .308 caliber.
This was not the man. It was his friend, the sniper. But the man was there, too. Somewhere.
The Executioner got at least a general answer to that question a second later when a volley of submachine gun fire suddenly broke out in the gallery outside the office. The shots sounded as if they had come from the front of the building, on the left-hand side of the main hall. That would be the oil-painting room.
Bolan sprinted to the closed door to the hallway, reaching up to flip off the overhead light before he opened the door. He would already be framed in the doorway from the outside light filtering into the building, and there was no sense in painting an even more distinct bull’s eye on his forehead. More subgun fire erupted as he swung the door open, then dived into the hallway. He hit the floor on his shoulder and rolled to his feet again against the wall.
Pistol shots followed the autofire this time. They were .357 Magnum rounds. Seven’s namesake Taurus.
The Executioner moved cautiously along the wall toward the entrance to the photography area. From there, he could cut through to the oil room. His objective was twofold. He had to find Polyakova and Seven before they got killed. But it was also time to end the threat the man in the black coat posed, once and for all.
The gallery fell silent. Bolan moved on, his back to the wall, finally reaching the archway into the photo area. He ducked, keeping his eyes up as he rounded the corner. But he encountered no resistance. And whatever was happening in the front of the gallery had stopped momentarily. Silence continued to reign, and the lack of sound was, in its own way, deafening.
Bolan stayed low, the Desert Eagle held tight against his body as he maneuvered between the photographs. Some were small, extending from the tops of easels like flowers at the end of a stalk. Other, larger pictures, blocked his view as he continued toward the oil-painting room. But whether they were large or small, all of the exhibits in the photography room had at least one thing in common. They were framed, and protected by glass. Unlike with the oils and watercolors, that glass picked up and reflected every lumen of light that managed to reach it, and more than once the Executioner swung the barrel of the Desert Eagle at a darkened mirror image of himself.
He had passed the last row of pictures and was nearing the front room when the gunfire erupted once more. Bolan moved to the door, crouching as he peered around the corner into the opening. Through the forest of easeled paintings, he could see automatic muzzle-flashes near the front of the building. They appeared and disappeared with each round fired, partially hidden by the staggered paintings and giving off a strange, kaleidoscope effect. He didn’t know where Polyakova and Seven were until he again heard the boom of the Taurus. It had come from the front, from the far left-hand corner of the room. Where, if he remembered correctly, the painting Polyakova had said was by an artist named Fielding had been located.
The hit man was obviously preoccupied with Seven, and Bolan took advantage of that fact, moving quickly but stealthily through the easels. When he had gotten far enough into the maze of canvases to get a decent shot at the muzzle-flashes, he raised the Desert Eagle.
Almost as if he knew what the Executioner was doing, the man with the Soviet PPD quit firing. Bolan froze, listening. He could barely hear the sound of shoes moving quietly near the spot from where the flashes had come. Then they stopped again. The hit man couldn’t have moved far. But it was far enough to ruin the Executioner’s aim.
Bolan remained still. Shooting now would do nothing but give away his own position. As far as he could tell, it
was nothing but bad luck that the subgunner had quit firing and moved when he did. He didn’t know Bolan’s position, or that the Executioner was even in the room. And Bolan would take advantage of that fact as long as he could.
Slowly, careful to remain silent, Bolan dropped the Desert Eagle back into its holster and drew the sound-suppressed Beretta 93-R.
Thirty seconds, then a minute went by, and Bolan was reminded of the shoot-and-duck game he had played with this same man earlier in the day at the hotel. The temptation in that situation had been to barrel forward, heedless of the danger, and end the threat as soon as possible. There was a similar temptation now, as the tension mounted with each second.
The hit man had patience; the Executioner would have to give him that. Whoever he was, he was a far cry above the gunmen the Russians had sent after Polyakova in New York. This man was a formidable foe. He was well-trained and experienced. But he had something else going for him—Bolan could sense it in the way he fought. It was something no one could be taught or even learn on their own.
The man liked what was going on. No, Bolan corrected himself. The man loved it. It gave him power. It reinforced his personal belief that he was above the laws of man, and that deciding when others should die was his God-given right.
Which meant that the hit man had a form of insanity. And that made him more dangerous.
From where he had heard the gun fire before, Bolan now heard Seven’s .357 Magnum pistol boom again. One of the paintings fell off its easel and crashed to the floor. Almost immediately, the autofire and the muzzle-flashes of the Soviet submachine gun erupted again, this time from a spot roughly ten feet from where Bolan had seen them earlier.
The Executioner swung the Beretta that way and pulled the trigger, sending a trio of all but silent rounds ripping through several canvases toward the lights. The sound suppressor also covered his own muzzle-flashes—at least to a certain extent. But just to be safe, the Executioner took two steps to his right, then dropped to one knee as soon as he’d let up on the trigger.
Soviet Specter Page 18