Soviet Specter

by Don Pendleton

  Platinov walked them through the formalities as promised, then led them to a Chrysler sedan in the parking lot. “I knew you would need a car,” she said as she handed Bolan the keys. “Try not to wreck it—it’s in my name.” She reached out and took the soldier’s arm. “Care to tell me what you are doing?”

  “You’re better off not knowing,” Bolan replied.

  The gorgeous Russian intelligence officer smiled seductively at him. “We’ve broken a few laws together in the past,” she said. “Not to mention all of the rules.” Bolan saw her eyes flicker toward Polyakova to see how the woman had taken the insinuation. The other Russian woman either hadn’t heard or pretended she hadn’t.

  Bolan leaned down and kissed Platinov. “Not in Russia, we haven’t. And believe me, what I’ve got planned could cause you a world of bureaucratic trouble.” He pushed Nemets into the back seat and got behind the wheel while Polyakova took the passenger’s seat. Marynka Platinov stuck her head through the open window and gave her rival one last look. “Treat him well, my dear,” she told Polyakova. Then she unabashedly turned her head to Bolan and kissed him for a good ten seconds. Without another word, she was gone.

  “I take it you’ve bumped into each other before,” Johnny Seven said with an innocent face.

  Bolan stuck the keys in the ignition and drove away.

  Thirty minutes later, the Chrysler was parked along the street in front of the building that housed the Zdorovye Russian Fur Company. They were deep in Moscow now, and when he got out of the car Bolan could see the Kremlin in the distance. He glanced at Polyakova as she and Seven got out. He didn’t like taking her with him on what might very well turn into a gunfight. But he liked the idea of leaving her alone in the car even less. The Chechen would show up again, sooner or later. And there was no telling when that would be.

  Bolan opened the trunk, lifted the viola case out, and handed it to Seven. He turned to Nemets. “Remember,” he said, “you can live or you can die. It all depends on what you do in the next few minutes.”

  The blond man had been silent most of the time since giving Bolan the information he wanted. Staying true to that form, he just nodded and then led the way into the building. An elderly man—blind if his sunglasses were any indication—stood in front of a snack bar counter just inside the lobby. Bolan noticed Nemets glance his way, then reach up and tug at his ear.

  The blind man turned to a telephone.

  The Executioner drew the Desert Eagle and grabbed the blond man by the beard, dragging him down the hall to the elevator. No, he thought. They would be expecting that. “Where are the stairs?” he demanded.

  Nemets was leaning forward awkwardly as Bolan pulled him along, and the arm he shot out looked just as awkward, but it pointed Bolan toward the corner of the lobby.

  Pushing Nemets ahead of him now, Bolan took the stairs two at a time. The blond man was out of breath by the time they reached the second floor, where Zdorovye’s offices were. Bolan grabbed him by the back of the hair and waited for Seven to reach the landing behind him. “Open the door, Johnny,” he whispered.

  The DEA man complied and Bolan shoved Stavislav Nemets though the opening. A burst of automatic gunfire immediately broke out and the blonde danced like a mad puppet before hitting the carpet. Bolan leaned around the corner and triggered a trio of .44 Magnum rounds into a broad-shouldered man with closely cropped hair. The man blew backward into the hall outside the offices, cracking his head loudly on the tile. His AK-74 clattered to the floor.

  Bolan stepped through the opening as a man wearing a blue sweater and khaki slacks came out of another of the office doors. He held a short Simonov SKS carbine in his hands and with wild eyes and complete abandonment he sprayed 7.62 mm slugs down the hallway. Bolan dropped him with a well-placed shot just above the nose, decapitating him from the ears up.

  Seven had pulled the M-16 A-2 from the instrument case and now stepped through the door behind the Executioner. “Keep an eye on Luiza!” Bolan shouted as the shots still rang in their ears. He sprinted down the hallway to the open door where the second man had just come. Diving forward, he hit the floor rolling, as another burst of gunfire sailed over his head. Coming up to one knee, the Executioner triggered a double-tap of booming Magnums into the chest of a portly man wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and tie. The man turned and fell face forward over a desk.

  From behind the desk came a whimpering sound.

  Bolan rose to his feet, changing magazines as he walked to the side of the desk. He kept one eye on the only other door in this outer office as he said in Russian, “You! Under the desk! Come out.”

  A small woman in a skirt and blouse crawled out from the desk looking terrified.

  “Who are you?” Bolan demanded.

  “Amalia,” came the high, screechy voice.

  The Executioner pointed to the door in the rear wall with the Desert Eagle. “Zdorovye back there?” he asked.

  Amalia’s head bobbed up and down quickly.

  The Executioner waved at the door behind him with the big hand cannon. “Go, Amalia,” he said. “Now.”

  He didn’t have to say it twice. Amalia was gone with a speed that would have rivaled that of former Olympian, General Marynka Platinov.

  Bolan waited until she was gone, then moved to the closed door. He heard movement on the other side as he reached down, twisting the knob. Throwing open the door, he dropped to a squat as several rounds exploded over his head. Behind the desk he saw a tall man with black hair turning gray. He held a Heckler & Koch Mark 23 in both hands, and when he saw the Executioner near the floor the barrel began to drop.

  The Executioner triggered a lone round that blew upward at an angle through his chest, blowing flesh, bone and a pink mist of blood and other body fluids out through his back. The man screamed and fell to the side of the desk on his back.

  Bolan rose to his feet and walked forward. The man on the floor was still alive. Kneeling beside him, he aimed the Desert Eagle down at his nose. “Who is Gregor?” he said.

  Slowly, Anton Zdorovye shook his head.

  “Tell me,” Bolan said. “Do one good thing in your miserable life before you die.”

  Zdorovye’s eyes rose beyond the Executioner then came back. “I am dying?” he said.

  Bolan nodded.

  “I…will tell you who…Gregor is…” he said. “If you will kill me…the way I want to die.” His eyes rose again, to the wall. “And I will tell you…something else as…well.”

  Bolan looked over his shoulder and saw a Cossack sword hanging on the wall. He turned back. “The sword?” he said.

  Zdorovye nodded.

  Bolan turned and walked to the wall. Seven, M-16 in hand, suddenly appeared in the doorway. “What—?” the DEA said, looking around.

  The Executioner waved him off, not wanting to break whatever strange bond it was that seemed to have sprung up between him and Zdorovye. The sword held some kind of significance to the Moscow drug peddler, and if dying by the sword rather than a bullet meant he’d tell Bolan who Gregor was, that was fine with the Executioner. He took the sword off the hangers and unsheathed it, then stepped back to Zdorovye’s side. “Tell me,” he said.

  “It is…too late for the woman’s family,” he breathed out, and another pink mist blew out with each word. “I learned of…Smith-Williams.” He closed his eyes for a moment as his last strength began to fail. “I have sent men….”

  Bolan felt the fury build up in his chest as he raised the sword over his head. He wondered how much head start the men had toward Polyakova’s family, and whether or not they were already dead. “Who is Gregor?” he said.

  Anton Zdorovye kept his promise and told him. When he heard the name, Bolan nodded. Suddenly many of the odd coincidences began to fall into place.

  Bolan kept his promise, too, and Anton Zdorovye died the way he wanted. But even as the sword came down, he heard Polyakova’s bloodcurdling scream from the hall. The Executioner had heard her scream like
that only once before at the Smith-Williams gallery—when the Chechen had grabbed her.

  10

  Both Bolan and Seven moved back into the outer office as Polyakova screamed again. “Matt! Johnny!” She was somewhere down the hall. And the Executioner had no doubt as to what was prompting her outcries. He glanced to the DEA man, who had disobeyed his order to stay with her. But rebuking him now would serve no purpose.

  Another voice, low and gruff, with the accent of Chechnya’s northern Caucasus Mountains, now replaced the woman’s. “You! Americans!” Movlid Akhmatov shouted. “Step out into the hallway now or she dies!”

  Johnny Seven’s face turned red with anger. He raised the M-16 and started toward the hallway. Bolan reached out and grabbed his shoulder. “No,” he whispered softly. “He’ll just shoot you as soon as you step through the door.”

  “But we can’t just let him have her,” the DEA whispered back.

  The Executioner shook his head. “He’s not going to kill her. At least not here. Not now. If that was what he wanted he could have done it back at the gallery.” Bolan’s jaw hardened with his outrage at the monster in the hallway. “He wants her alone.”

  Seven lowered his rifle, his face a mask of frustration. “Well, what do we do?”

  Bolan told him. “But you’ll have to be convincing,” he said. “We tried a similar scam back at the gallery. It never went far enough to know if it would have worked.”

  The DEA man nodded, then moved to a position just inside the office by the door. “Let her go!” he yelled through the opening.

  “You must come out first, American,” the Chechen shouted back. “You and your partner. Then we can discuss the situation.”

  “My partner’s dead,” Seven answered. “Zdorovye shot him.”

  Vicious laughter echoed down the hall. “Again you lie, American pig,” Movlid Akhmatov said. “That is what you told me when we were among the paintings and statues. Yet I saw both of you enter the building a few minutes ago.” A long dramatic sigh came down the hallway into the office. “But if you are telling the truth, send Zdorovye out to prove it.”

  Bolan caught himself nodding silently. The Chechen hadn’t yet bought the story but he hadn’t categorically rejected it, either. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  “Zdorovye’s dead, too,” yelled Johnny Seven. “I shot him right after he killed my partner.”

  There was a moment’s pause, then Akhmatov said, “Step back into the room. I will come see for myself. The woman will be in front of me, and if you are armed when I enter, she will die first, then you.” A few seconds went by, then he spoke again and it was obvious that he had moved closer to the office. “Throw out all of the guns in the room,” he ordered.

  Seven turned to the Executioner. Bolan nodded. He guarded the doorway while the DEA man hurried back into the other office and grabbed Zdorovye’s H&K, then gathered up the guns the other men had used. Seven added his SIG-Sauer to the collection, and moved back to the door. Again he looked to the Executioner as his eyes dropped to the 7-shot Taurus jammed into his belt under the tweed sport coat.

  Bolan shook his head.

  Seven left the weapon in his waistband and Bolan dropped the Desert Eagle on top of the pile of guns already in the DEA man’s arms. Seven turned back to the door. “Here they come,” he shouted. One by one, he slid the weapons out the doorway on the tile.

  “Is that all?” the Chechen asked.

  “That’s it.”

  Once more came the horrendous laugh. “Except for the sound-suppressed one you used at the gallery.”

  Bolan had expected it. He drew the Beretta and handed it to the DEA man, who slid it out the door.

  “And the .357 Magnum someone also fired,” Akhmatov said. “It makes a sound like no other firearm.”

  Johnny Seven was worried when he looked at Bolan this time. But the Executioner nodded yet again. The Taurus, too, went in the hallway.

  Another of Bolan’s suspicions had just been confirmed—the Chechen wasn’t sure who was who, or who was talking to him now. He had caught only glimpses of them both in the dark gallery and at the hotel, and while he had heard Bolan speak he hadn’t known from which body the voice came.

  That meant they could still switch places for the rest of the Executioner’s plan and Movlid Akhmatov wouldn’t know.

  “Where is your dead partner?” Akhmatov demanded. He sounded as if he was just to the side of the open doorway now. But that meant so was Polyakova.

  Bolan hooked a thumb over his shoulder and mouthed the words “Back there.”

  “He and Zdorovye are both in the back office,” shouted Seven.

  “Lie down on the floor,” the Chechen ordered. “On your stomach, arms spread, your head away from the door.”

  The DEA man started to kneel but Bolan grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him toward the rear office. Seven looked confused for a second but understood a moment later when the Executioner dropped to the floor himself. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he whispered as he disappeared into the back office.

  Bolan drew the Loner knife as he turned and dropped to his knees, then tucked it under his chest as he lay down in the position the Chechen had ordered. He stretched his arms out to his sides and waited.

  Akhmatov would come in behind the woman, using her as a shield. But before he went back to check on the dead men in the rear office, he would put a bullet into the head of the man on the floor. Whether he and Johnny Seven survived the next few minutes, and Polyakova escaped what he suspected would be a hellish experience, would be determined by when and where Akhmatov chose to pull the trigger.

  If the Chechen chose to shoot Bolan as soon as he stepped into the room, from a distance, it would all be over. It would be physically impossible for the Executioner to move out of the position he was in and close the gap with the Loner before he was riddled with bullets. But Bolan’s instincts told him that Akhmatov—a man who considered himself superior to mere mortals—wouldn’t be able to resist moving closer to taunt him first. The odds would still be stacked against the Executioner. But there would at least be a chance.

  From the floor, Bolan could see the open door into the rear office. His eyes shot around the room, looking for anything that might act as a mirror, reflecting even a distorted image of what was happening behind him. There was nothing.

  A moment later he heard slow, shuffling footsteps enter the room to his rear. “Are there any other guns?” the Chechen demanded. “If you lie and I find them, you will die slowly.”

  Bolan hesitated to speak. While Akhmatov didn’t seem to know which of them was which, he had just heard Seven’s voice and might note the difference between the two. Still blind to the man behind him, he shook his head.

  Footsteps shuffled toward him, and a few seconds later he could smell Polyakova’s perfume. He tensed his muscles, ready to spring. Ready to take the only chance of survival they would get. Polyakova’s scent grew stronger, and he knew the Chechen was still holding her in front of him. How close were they now? And how would he know when they were close enough? Bolan needed some kind of cue when they entered striking range or Akhmatov might shoot before he even decided the time to act had come.

  Bolan felt a soft hand squeeze the back of his calf—too soft to be any man’s. Polyakova. It had to mean the Chechen had forced her downward, still using her for cover as he leaned in to deliver the coup de grâce. She was telling him where they were—by the placement of her hand. She hadn’t spoken, which meant that, at this moment, Akhmatov still had the gun jammed into her neck or back.

  But to kill Bolan, he would have to take it away and aim it at the Executioner. There would be a split second during which the weapon would be pointed at no one. The Executioner’s timing would have to be perfect. He wouldn’t get a second chance.

  “Like all Americans, you are a fool,” the Chechen said. “Say goodbye to the pretty lady. I will take care of her for you.”

  With those words
, Bolan knew the moment of truth was at hand. Without warning, he twisted like a cobra, twirling onto his back, as he swept the Loner from the floor. With his other hand he grabbed Akhmatov’s gun hand. The 9 mm Stechkin exploded, the bullet passing harmlessly to the side. At the same time, the Executioner lunged upward and drove the knife past Polyakova’s ear and through Movlid Akhmatov’s throat.

  Sobbing, Polyakova fell forward into his arms, loosening Bolan’s grip around the knife. But the Loner had done what it had been designed to do.

  The Chechen staggered two steps back, both hands clawing at the blade embedded in his neck. His face drained white as bright red shot from the severed arteries. He dropped hard onto his knees, jarring a paperback book from his back pocket, and mumbling words the Executioner couldn’t make out through the blood flooding his throat.

  But Bolan had read the man’s lips, and Movlid Akhmatov’s last words were “She loved me.”

  The Executioner glanced to the book on the floor. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche.

  THERE WAS NO TIME to rest.

  Bolan leaped to his feet, pulling Polyakova up with him as Johnny Seven came barreling out of the rear office. “What happened?” asked the DEA man.

  Bolan still held the Stechkin in his hand by the barrel. “I’ll tell you on the way,” he said.

  “The way?” Polyakova said as he hurried her out into the hall. “Where?”

  “Your family,” Bolan said as he swept the Beretta and Desert Eagle up off the floor. “Zdorovye sent men after them.” Polyakova swore in Russian.

  Two minutes later they were down the steps and in the Chrysler. Seven had retrieved the viola case from where he’d left it in the stairwell, and shoved it into the back seat before diving in after it.