“And now they know where it’s going to be,” Bolan added.
“Exactly. This is the very definition of an open secret. And trouble.”
“But right now we have the drop on them, right? No one else knows the route they’re taking?”
“Not as far as we know. But once they reach the city, God knows how many of the extremists will be waiting for them.”
“Maybe we need to leave now, get to them before they reach the city.” He turned to the Russian. “Are you with me?”
“I hate that little bastard for what he has done to my country. Hell, I just hate him anyway. But I am known, Cooper, remember that. If I go back to Russia, and I’m caught, then I’m dead. And that will mean you will be, too. Do you want that?”
Bolan grinned. “That’s called occupational hazard. The question is, do you want to go back for this? The money will be good, I can guarantee that, but—”
The Russian waved him away dismissively. “It’s never been about the money, you know that. Sure, Lana will like it, and I guess it’ll be a good pension if I don’t get back. But I know she’d miss having someone to complain to. I also know that I haven’t had this much fun since the last time you landed me in hospital.”
“That’s a yes, then?”
“Two heads are always better than one. Although I have one proviso. We’ll need another car. My Saab can’t take any more punishment, Cooper, and even the idiots they have running security in this town should be looking for it by now.”
“You hear that, Hal?” Bolan said into his smartphone. “You get these guys to cooperate just a little more, and maybe we can get to Freedom Right before anyone else does.”
“Wait,” the Russian added, holding a finger in the air. “Let us not waste any time.”
He strode to the door, opened it and bellowed down the corridor, bringing a puzzled security man in response, who was greeted with the words, “You, talk to my boss in the States. He has something to tell you. You know him, right?”
He pointed the security man toward Bolan, adding to the soldier, “There’s no time like now, right?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Brognola’s authority needed no backup. Within minutes of speaking to him, the security man returned to the room with an older man, seen only in passing when they had first entered the safehouse, who was obviously his superior officer. With a barely disguised irritation at having his authority usurped in his own little kingdom, he informed them that a vehicle would be available for them within thirty minutes, being currently in transit. He visibly swallowed his bile when Dostoyevsky told him where their ordnance was located in the Saab, and to have it transferred. And when Bolan told him that they wanted to talk to Sundby, the man could only answer in a barely controlled, strangled tone that this would not be permissible.
“The prisoner is under my charge and under interrogation by trained personnel,” he snapped.
“Who’ve got nothing useful from him,” the Russian pointed out.
“And since when did it have anything to do with our Russian friends?” the security chief directed at Bolan, pointedly ignoring Dostoyevsky.
“It doesn’t,” Bolan replied coldly. “This man is with me, and he’s right. You want this situation resolved by the good guys? So far, it’s been brewing under your nose without you having the first idea, so you’re in no position to argue, as far as I can see. I have prior knowledge of the prisoner. Do you want me to pull rank on you and make your life difficult, or do we do this the sensible way?”
The security chief held Bolan’s stare for a moment, but the flinty eyes of the soldier made him look away. Without a word he indicated they should follow, and in seconds they were in the room where Sundby was seated, secured by straps to a padded chair. He was sweating, his hair plastered to his face, and his eyes were glittering and distant. Bolan ordered the two men in the room who had been questioning the prisoner—and the security chief—to exit the room. After a curious glance at their superior, they departed, only leaving Bolan and the Russian alone in the room with Sundby.
“You know who I am, right?” Bolan said easily, seating himself on the edge of a desk while the Russian stood impassive in the corner. Dostoyevsky wanted to leave the field to Bolan and also was determined to keep an eye out for possible intrusions.
Sundby had trouble focusing, but the faint smile that crossed his lips showed that he had no problems remembering Bolan. He said, in halting tones, “You...you started this ball rolling, dude. You here to hit the home run?”
“You Scandinavians, man—you love us Yanks, but you can never quite get it right.” Bolan grinned. “I’ll level with you. Estonia is a write-off. Whatever they’ve told you about Freedom Right when they were interrogating you...they don’t know what they’re talking about. I do. I was in Tallinn. I left that house in ruins. I took out the Estonian who was supposed to blow Oslo sky-high. Me...and my friend, of course,” he added, indicating Dostoyevsky. “There’s not much left of Freedom Right.”
“Except maybe the Soviet shit, yeah?” Sundby grinned. “And you know that’s going home. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. Was it you who saved me?”
Bolan nodded, and the Norwegian continued. “What about Hades and Visigoth?”
“Gone. Your own security services got them.”
“Not mine,” Sundby snapped back coldly. “My people would gladly wipe them out.”
“Your people couldn’t wipe their own noses,” Bolan said. “Freedom Right is one truck and a couple guys. With every terrorist on the mainland chasing them—you really think they’re going to hit the mother lode like that?”
Sundby grinned. It twisted into a grimace as he tried to fight the impulse to gloat; the drugs in his system screamed at him to reveal all, and he was too weakened to resist.
“You think they’re going to do it alone? There are those who support us, who have already been called into action. You are too late to stop them. They have a schedule that will take them right into the belly of the beast.”
Despite himself, Sundby’s pride in the organization that had used and abused him overrode any desire to stay silent. Detailed queries about the base of the organization and its structure had been wasted on him. He knew nothing of that. But the questions had been all wrong. The only thing Sundby knew about was the route to Moscow.
Bolan had gambled on psychology. The mercenaries who had first used Sundby had fired his imagination with the grand plan, sucked him into murder by feeding him details of this plan, including his potential involvement in something so large in scale. It had pandered to his ego, and as far as Freedom Right was concerned, he would be dead and discarded long before the plan became operational. They hadn’t expected him to be the survivor while they were long gone.
Bolan and Dostoyevsky left Sundby, exhausted by the effort of trying to deny his monstrous ego, and immediately went down to where the replacement vehicle had arrived. They confirmed that the ordnance had been transferred from the Russian’s sedan to their new ride and departed, leaving the frustrated U.S. security men in their wake.
“You think our friend will be up to telling the story a second time?” the Russian asked as he piloted the vehicle out of the city center.
“You think they should know?” Bolan returned.
The Russian shrugged. “I think that maybe it would be better if you told your chief and then he decided whether those idiots should know. At the very least he should jump on them before they do anything stupid. We have enough ground to make up on the truck as it is.”
“You drive. I’ll speak to Hal,” Bolan replied. “And then we’ll get a route and make tracks.”
“You know, I always wanted to be a long-distance truck driver,” the Russian mused ironically. “I guess this is the next best thing.”
* * *
DOSTOYEVSKY
HAD SPOKEN to Bolan of the castles that littered the Estonian landscape and how the isolation of these would provide cover for any organization wishing privacy. Rightly the soldier had surmised that to hide in plain sight was a smarter plan for the leadership of any such organization. Yet the more obvious plan had its advantages for smaller, not-so-important cells with less in the way of hardware to hide.
A damp, derelict seventeenth-century structure thirty klicks outside Tallinn—considered deserted by the locals—was just such a place. One wing of the castle had been covertly restored by the cell, which now lived there, with a gasoline-fueled generator keeping it heated and powered for the six men. They had two trucks and a car under tarps in the old courtyard, and had early warning systems in the form of motion sensors and fiber-optic surveillance cameras set up at points all around the moated castle, with the primary focus being the track that connected the isolated castle with the nearest main road.
Even before Velio had called ahead on his cell phone to announce he and Andrus were nearby, they had been spotted, and men were opening the gates to the courtyard. They had been identified from surveillance cam images and their arrival had been unexpected. A ripple of surprise and panic had spread through the men of the cell. Those who had not been on watch had been roused from their beds, and now all six stood in the courtyard, anxiously awaiting an explanation from their leader.
As Andrus detailed to them what had happened in Tallinn, spinning events so that it seemed as though a last-ditch escape had actually been a glorious rear-guard action to defend their assets, Velio wondered at the skill with which his chief drew in the six men whose gaze was rapt. The conviction that Andrus imbued in them would be necessary for the coming future.
During the following day, the cell had worked hard in transferring some of the hardware from the transport truck into the two trucks that stood in the courtyard. When that had been done, the six men had been briefed on their part in the upcoming mission.
“My friends, we stand at the threshold of greatness. I had not chosen which of my soldiers would have the privilege—as Velio and I have the privilege—of being the men who would make this glorious strike on the homeland of our enemies and so set spark to tinder for the revolution. We are all—all of us in Freedom Right—soldiers who stand together and are of equal ranking.
“But this mission requires the kind of experience that is unique to this cell, which is why Velio and myself are here now. Only you have the kind of skills and talents that are necessary. Only you have the ability to respond as required to the speed of the challenge before us. From here, we can spread the word of what is about to take place and then put that plan into operation, with a speed and cunning that will inspire our allies and terrify our enemies.”
Velio watched the faces of the men as they listened. There was no doubt that they would happily die for their leader. Velio? He wasn’t so sure. He believed in the cause, but recent events had made him wonder if Andrus was really the great leader he had led them all to believe.
Getting their hands on the nuclear weapons had been a coup, especially as other groups would happily have wiped them off the face of the planet to get those now into their possession. But what they had done since, and the way in which they had been so easily swatted back in Tallinn, had made him wonder if Andrus’s rhetoric was enough.
Velio listened with half of his attention as Andrus detailed their duties and destinations within Moscow. Much of it Velio knew already. The other half of his attention was focused on something of greater import. He truly believed in the mission and wanted it to work. He was not now so sure of the man who was his leader. So Velio’s greater duty, as he saw it, was to find a way whereby he could ensure that the mission could be completed—regardless of where that may leave his erstwhile leader.
Dutifully he followed in Andrus’s wake as Velio prepared on a laptop the announcement to the world of the imminent strike. More than that, he sat at Andrus’s right hand as word came through of the debacle in Oslo. Initially it was apparent that the ex-Soviet device Arvo was to detonate had either been defused or captured. Then, as news leaked of the siege at the courthouse, it became even more obvious that whatever Arvo had tried in Oslo had gone awry.
The Norwegian authorities had not released information about the nuclear bomb, which made it apparent that the American black ops team had captured it. That impression was reinforced by the revelation that two of the young Norwegians were dead but that Sundby was missing. There had been no word on any of this from the cell in Oslo, and the only conclusion was that they, too, had been taken down by the Americans.
“What was Nils doing, letting them get weapons?” Andrus asked.
“Maybe he had no choice. Maybe the American team has a greater hand in this than we know,” Velio replied. “They’re everywhere. Who is to say that they did not destroy our cell and substitute one of their own for Nils? How else could Sundby disappear?”
“More to the point, what could they get from him?” Andrus mused.
“Nothing,” Velio said flatly. “He knew nothing. We told him nothing. He is a dead end.”
“Of course, you are right,” Andrus said with renewed confidence. “We must make sure the world sees this how we want.”
And as Andrus spun events for his proclamation to the world, Velio once again marveled at his leader’s ability to bend the truth to his own ends, while at the same time deciding that this ability to only see what Andrus wanted should not get in the way of the mission, should events dictate that Velio need to take the upper hand.
He shadowed his leader throughout the rest of the preparation process. Finally, when they got ready to leave, they separated. Andrus would ride in one truck, he in another. All three trucks would travel the same route, keeping in visual contact, but they would not stop until they reached the target city, nor would they break a communications silence unless an emergency arose. All that needed to be said had been said, and anything that could attract detection was to be avoided.
The last Velio saw of Andrus was the leader’s face staring out of the side window of a truck as it pulled out in front of the other two. Maybe it was his imagination, but Velio could swear that, despite the air of confidence he had exuded to his men, Andrus looked worried.
* * *
“AND SO I LOOKED the British prime minister full in the face, and I said to him, ‘If you have never wrestled with the bear of life and won, then you have no idea of how to swim with the salmon of truth.’ I fixed him with my best stare.”
The Russian president sat back on his chaise longue, and sipped at his vodka and cranberry. The slim blonde seated opposite had an expression on her face that was supposed to be awe. The president was not the fool she believed, and he could see that she did not believe him. His glittering eyes met hers, and she cracked.
“You did not, Vlad. You could not. No one would—what did he say?” she asked finally.
“He looked at me as seriously as if I had told him that his mother had cancer, and he said, ‘Yeah, I know exactly what you mean,’ in the same sincere voice he uses when he tells his people that it is all for their own good.”
“No...”
“But yes,” he said triumphantly. “He swallowed it whole. He is a bigger fraud and idiot than even his worst enemies would believe.” He felt the cell vibrate in his breast pocket, and excused himself as he pulled it out and answered, “Make it quick, I am busy...”
He listened and his face hardened. He stood up, dismissing the blonde with a perfunctory gesture.
“You go now. I will text you later,” he said in an offhand way before barking into the cell phone, “You—here now.”
He paced the room restlessly for a couple minutes as he waited for his security adviser to arrive. When the man shuffled into the room, the premier gave him no chance to speak first. “They issue threats. This I understand. Your people m
issed out at the bunker—that I do not understand, by the way, but it is for another time—and this gives you a second chance. Now you tell me that you have missed them in Tallinn, and they are coming here?”
“To be fair, Excellency, the Americans have black ops teams who have excellent intelligence and were just marginally ahead of us, as they were in Finland...and in Norway, and—”
“So what? Why was our intelligence not better? They are our weapons! It is our country they want to attack! It is bad enough that the armaments were taken from under our noses, let alone that we cannot even get them back. What now? Have the Americans got half the Navy SEALs running around northern Europe?”
The security chief sighed, and said hesitantly, “As far as we can see, it may just be one man—”
“One? And you cannot stop him?” The president was apoplectic and for one moment the security chief thought he might avoid censure by virtue of the man dropping dead.
But the moment passed, and the president continued. “When I was in the KGB, we could have crushed such a feeble opposition. One man can be strong as an individual, and in some ways I would like to shake this man by the hand. Not as much as I would like to shake him by his throat, but...”
He shrugged. “One man can move mountains, but we have the manpower to blast the mountain while it is on his back. Why is this not being done?”
“It is possible that he has assistance—”
“Ah, so he is not alone? So there is a team? This is not so bad.”
The security chief felt on safer ground. Yet this may have been a mistake. He said, with a smile, “Apparently there are reports that he has a man with him who lives in Tallinn and used to be a Russian military man—”
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