Terminal Velocity

by Don Pendleton

  Getting inside had proved easier than he'd allowed for — maybe that should have warned him.

  Zara had found out the address the same evening she'd introduced him to Panov. The cousin of a friend knew the woman who was Greb Strakhov's part-time housekeeper. A sour bitch, he'd said, but he knew where she worked on Petushka Street. The Romany woman had then driven Bolan past the place on his way to meet Antonov.

  The mansion, built by a wealthy merchant in the twilight years of czarist rule, was a sprawling Gothic monstrosity surrounded by a wall. Strakhov had the third floor of the three-storied house to himself.

  A KGB snoop, in fur hat and upturned collar, was lurking at the front entrance. Bolan walked along the side streets and made his final approach from the rear. He scaled the wall with no trouble. From there it was a short jump to a ledge that ran around the building. Police cruisers drove slowly past at twenty-minute intervals. Bolan watched one go by from his vantage point, keeping check of the time as he inspected each of the windows in turn.

  The side windows of the two main rooms facing west were wired to an alarm system. Bolan wouldn't trust the skylight with its frosted glass; it was probably wired, too. But there was a small window that he decided to risk. Within moments, he'd forced his way inside.

  Strakhov, ever vigilant of the security of the state and the Soviet leaders, lived with the assurance that no one would break into his apartment. It wasn't extravagantly stuffed with Western consumer goods like so many of the ruling elite. Bolan was surprised at how ordinary a place it was; almost as surprised as he was to find it empty.

  He prowled from room to room. At this late hour he'd felt it doubtful that Strakhov wanted to attract attention to his questionable operation by having a lot of activity at headquarters. Surely the man would have wanted to sit down with the rest of his private collection of Romanov material to read Duchess Marijana's conclusions.

  Bolan checked out the study. Standing on the floor by the desk was the dark brown briefcase. A daub of red mud was still caked on the side. Strakhov must have left in a real hurry; and, to be so careless, he must have had his mind fully occupied with other problems. Something big must have come up!

  He made another sweep of the apartment, searching even more thoroughly for the Fabergé egg and the journal. Bolan made periodic checks of the street outside, taking care that the movement of the floor-length draperies could not be spotted from below. He had worked his way back to the study when he noticed that the Brezhnev photograph was in a far larger frame than it needed.

  It concealed a Victorian safe.

  He had to stop twice when the phone rang but within nine minutes, using a sonar device that registered and calculated the tumbling numbers of the combination — ironically of Russian manufacture though supplied by the Stony Man organization — he had cracked the wall safe. The first thing he saw was the familiar leather case of the turquoise egg. He unclasped the doors. The imperial toy was safely cocooned in the velvet.

  The diary was lying underneath it. So Strakhov had found time to break the lock before he was called away. Bolan took a rubber band from the glass dish on the desk and wrapped it around the book. He put both objects in the small cloth sack he'd brought and pulled the drawstring tight.

  Bolan lifted out the folder from the bottom of the safe. He left the study door ajar and kept one ear cocked for the sound of anyone approaching as he flipped open the file.

  He couldn't translate the typewritten copy perfectly, but his fundamental grasp of the language explained its significance. And he understood the diagram. The left-hand side represented the United States. Bolan glanced down the list next to it. It was the eastern net that riveted his attention.

  Bolan wanted to light a cigarette; he did not dare to. He needed time to think; he didn't have it. He knew this wasn't a complete listing of every Soviet field agent and KGB operation, but the explanatory chart gave a concise summary of the entire infrastructure of the Reds' subversive army. This wasn't the moment to consider the implications of his find — he had time only to photograph it.

  He placed each sheet under the desk lamp and took the shots. The big diagram had to be photographed in two parts. He used up a roll, reloaded and finished the task.

  The phone started ringing again as he replaced the papers in the exact order he'd found them. At that moment, in between the repetitive rings, he caught the whirring sound of the elevator cables. Bolan had been concentrating so hard on photographing the KGB plans he did not hear the car draw up outside.

  Strakhov was coming back.

  36

  Bolan replaced the file, closed the safe door and spun the recessed dial of the combination lock.

  The phone stopped ringing.

  He replaced the Lenin picture.

  The elevator door clanked open.

  Bolan looked around the study. There was no sign of his visit. There wouldn't be until Strakhov discovered the stolen treasures were now missing.

  The key was rattling in the front door lock.

  He was too late to cross the hall to the kitchen area and the pantry window. Bolan had no other choice... He picked up the cloth bag and stepped behind the thick draperies. The bay window they covered had been painted shut long ago, but it was still attached to the alarm wiring.

  He remained motionless.

  * * *

  "This matter must be brought to a head. We have to finish it." Strakhov was lecturing his subordinate as he ushered Vichinsky down the hallway. "We have to come to a decision now."

  Vichinsky felt absurdly grateful for the way Strakhov had backed him. Questions regarding the recent events in Zubrovna and the pursuit of the American agent had come up in the course of the meeting. Vichinsky had been summoned into the planning room, feeling that his whole career was about to be dashed on the rocks. But to his surprise, Strakhov had not thrown him to the wolves; of course, the major general was ultimately covering himself and protecting the reputation of his department, but Vichinsky was no less thankful for that.

  "Drink?"

  Vichinsky nodded. He needed one.

  Strakhov poured out two stiff measures of vodka.

  "The question is how we can best use..." began Strakhov, but the phone started ringing again. He sounded tired when he grumbled, "What do they want this time?" Strakhov picked up the phone. "Yes... yes, anything you know about him!"

  Vichinsky watched his commandant's face as he listened intently to the news from his stukach, his stoolie. "At Masha Shukina's? Yes, I know the place... You're absolutely certain?... No, stay right where you are... Not long."

  He put down the instrument and growled, "He's here, Vichinsky. In Moscow!"

  "Who?" Vichinsky was still thinking of his narrow escape at the meeting.

  "Phoenix! Karl Kelsen is Colonel John Phoenix. You were standing a foot away from him in the park tonight!"

  Vichinsky felt giddy. It was all closing in on him with a rush. Things were moving too fast, too dangerously: the gun to his head; the Kremlin briefing; his whole plot unraveling... Everything was spinning out of control. He managed to force out little more than a plaintive whisper. "But why... why has he come here?"

  "For the truth, you fool!" Strakhov had run out of patience. "Or can't you recognize that much anymore?"

  Strakhov took a gulp of vodka and gestured to the phone. "That was Yura. He had a few drinks with a young draft dodger tonight. The youth says he knows the foreigner, Karl Kelsen. He met him at Masha Shukina's. The boy's willing to testify if we give him a clean slate. Well, he can miss out on his army service in Siberia! I'm going to pick him up now."

  "What shall I do?"

  "Phoenix is here searching for the truth about his double. He mustn't find him. You're to go straight to Akinova. Pick up Stefan Boldin and drive him down to my dacha near Dnestropol. We'll hide him there."

  "I'll take Lednev, too."

  "Take as many men as you need," Strakhov urged. "And kill him at the first sign of any trouble. Now, come,
we've no time to waste. Phoenix is so close I can almost smell him."

  The two men drained their glasses, then marched down the passage. The front door slammed shut behind them.

  Bolan took a deep breath. He'd just made the hardest decision of his life: he knew the information he had photographed was more important than anything else.

  He had sacrificed an opportunity to even the score with Strakhov directly. He had avoided executing his enemy. Because the gains to be had from the list were too great to alert the KGB machine that it might have been found. It was the blueprint for his new war against the global terrormasters.

  People spoke of the KGB with awe and fear, as if whispering its very name would contaminate the soul. They thought of the Soviet terror machine as some virulent and unbeatable scourge. And it was — to those unfortunates who dared speak out.

  But Bolan felt differently. He had fought the Mafia in thirty-eight campaigns, weakening their infrastructure with each thrust, bewildering the enemy with his brazenness and persistence. He would do the same with the KGB; in fact, it was time to abandon the idea that the Mafia and the KGB were geographically and philosophically separate. They were not.

  Intrinsically they represented the same thing. Evil — cancerous and insidious evil.

  Bolan knew he would never eradicate the menace. Like the Mob, the sheer manpower of the Soviet secret police was formidable. Amorphous and pervasive, it multiplied like cancer cells over the entire globe. But he would fight them — not only for what they had done to him, but because he felt that the goodness of man must and will prevail over its nemesis.

  Bolan had a primordial instinct that man was inherently good, indeed, great. And every ounce of his soldier's strength was devoted to achieving the best that a man could achieve.

  Was he a fool? A victim of delusion? Did one man really have a chance of making a difference?

  The tentacles of the KGB wrapped themselves around the soul of a fatigued world. But that octopus functioned more like a rodent, or even a seething mass of germs.

  The KGB agents were not soldiers, not commandos, not men responsible to themselves. They represented only the boundlessness of Death. They thrived only on the corpses of their victims. The Soviet empire itself was threatened with suffocation by the KGB slime.

  Well, they could condemn Bolan to living hell in Siberia.

  But first they would have to catch him.

  * * *

  Bolan had to take Zara into his confidence. How else could he persuade her to drive him south?

  "Tell me about it on the way," she had said. "It is a long journey to Odessa."

  She was right.

  Yan the Fixer felt so relieved that Zara was ready to take the furniture to the minister's holiday retreat that he never asked her why she had so suddenly changed her mind.

  Bolan warned her of the treachery of Masha's nephew. Sometimes you had to take a chance with someone; Zara's eyebrows indicated she'd never taken more of a risk than with "Karl Kelsen" — but for the most part she was careful. The crates of handcrafted furniture were quickly loaded and within two hours they were on their way.

  They stayed with some Romany friends on the first night. After that, the two of them rigged a makeshift tent next to the truck, or napped in the cab on the side of the road. The papers Yan had supplied were examined at intervals, but they were accepted without any awkward questions. No petty official wanted to receive an irate call from a minister in Moscow.

  Zara detoured around a forbidden-entry zone. The forests thinned out, the air grew warmer and the sandy yellow soil gave way to the rich dark earth of the heartland steppes. Bolan had always thought the prairies were impressive, but their distances shriveled in comparison with the almost incomprehensible vastness of the Russian landscape.

  Imposing whitewashed gates marked the dusty side roads leading to collective farms somewhere far beyond the horizon. Tree-planting schemes withered before the winds. Irrigation schemes seemed abandoned before they were completed.

  Only the small plots that villagers were allowed to tend for themselves were already sprouting green with the new crops. What a land this could be if the people were allowed to work it for themselves!

  It was midmorning on the third day when Zara pulled the truck over to the embankment of a gurgling stream. She climbed out and stretched under the huge shimmering vault of the azure sky.

  "It's in the air," she said.

  "What?" Bolan asked her, puzzled.

  "Can't you smell the sea?"

  * * *

  "Will he help you?" asked Zara, when she picked up Bolan on the beach outside Orekovo.

  "Yes, for a price Zakop will risk it. It's going to be an expensive trip, especially when I told him there would be two of us. Zakop doesn't know the other man is going to be my identical twin." Bolan closed his hand over Zara's. "Are you sure you won't come with me?"

  The Gypsy driver shook her head. "I have learned to survive here. I could not do that all over again in another land."

  "What did you find out?"

  "The minister's gardener helped me unload the furniture. I told him I had to make a delivery at Strakhov's place. He gave me the directions." Zara grinned. "Dnestropol is thirty minutes on the other side of Odessa. The dacha is about two miles farther on along the coast road."

  It took them an hour and a half to reach the seashore village of Dnestropol, because Zara drove them along a narrow country road around the back of the mineral lakes. "I want to make sure we can get back to Orekovo after dark. If we use the main road we'll be stopped for sure."

  They came out onto the coastal highway near a summer home that had been converted into a sanatorium. They turned right and followed the sweeping curve of the bay. The Black Sea had earned its name. Bolan watched the dark inky waters splashing the shingle on the far side of the road.

  "I think it's coming up on the right, behind that row of poplars."

  Zara drove past so that Bolan could get a good look at the dacha. The place was worthy of the major general. It was a huge wooden chalet, painted green and brown, set back from the road on its own exclusive estate. Apart from a dilapidated boat house farther on the beach side of the road, there were no other buildings along this stretch. The privacy must have suited Strakhov fine.

  "Can we get up into those hills?" Bolan asked, pointing to behind the estate.

  "Let's find out," said Zara.

  About a mile beyond the dacha, on the shore of the next secluded cove, was a small ice-cream kiosk. Zara bought two scoops of the confection and jumped back into the cab. "There's a gravel track we can follow. Used to be a vineyard up there. It's abandoned now."

  She drove them as far as she could, then they left the truck and walked along heath-covered hillside. The path brought them to a stand of stunted pine trees. The overlook gave them a good view of Strakhov's property; it was almost directly below them.

  The estate was a wedge-shaped acreage on the narrow strip between the shoreline and the coastal hills. To the left, the stately row of poplars formed its eastern boundary, dividing the garden from the open cabbage fields of a neighboring collective. Strakhov's grounds were mostly grass, and much of that unmowed, with a stagnant pond and rambling orchard bordering the stream that marked the back of it.

  On the right-hand side of the house was a large wooden shed that served as a garage and behind it a greenhouse.

  Bolan calculated the approximate distance across the brick-lined patio from the garage to the side door of the house.

  One of Vichinsky's sentries was washing down the black sedan parked in the driveway. A second guard came out from the kitchen to join them.

  The two men were too far away for their voices to carry up the hillside. Bolan watched as the newcomer said something to the man cleaning the car. He dropped the soapy rag and reluctantly offered his partner one of his own cigarettes.

  "They look bored," said Zara.

  "Yeah, and that just might make them careless."
/>   "How many do you think are there?"

  "Four, I'd say," replied Bolan. He pointed to the big Volga. "There's only one car. Strakhov's second-in-command must be inside with the prisoner."

  The smoker wandered down the garden path, tossed a pebble in the pond and turned to slowly survey the wild slopes on the other side of the stream. Bolan and the woman shrank into the shadows beneath the trees.

  "Look... Who's that?" whispered Zara.

  She poked her finger toward a small window set high under the carved eaves at the rear of the dacha. The pale oval of a man's face stared out at the fleece-lined sky.

  The distance that separated them now was greater than in Revolution Square, but Bolan had no doubt who it was who gazed longingly from the confines of the top room. It was the guy he'd come to find; the man he was going to take back.

  He would give his double the opportunity to cooperate. Despite the danger he was in, the prisoner might not come quietly. Still, Bolan would give him that chance. It was better odds than Strakhov had allowed.

  His callous threat echoed in Bolan's mind: "Kill him at the first sign of trouble!"

  37

  So it came down to this...

  Bolan was alone.

  A friend of the night.

  And that's the way it would always be.

  Bolan watched, and waited.

  Then he moved as silent as a wraith of mist, gliding over the stony bed of the stream bordering the back of the lawns. The dark wall of poplars loomed like sentinels ahead of him, blocking out the starry spangle above the horizon and the dim glow from the far-off lights of Odessa. A crow uttered a muted caw as it performed a restless dance on a nearby birch. A cricket chirped in the grass.

  Bolan's pulse throb matched the flicking digits of his chronometer as the seconds flew by.