The door of the room opened and a man was pushed into the room, stumbling to a halt.
“So,” Xiao said gently, “your duplicity has only taken you down the same path as myself.”
The younger man straightened and looked defiantly at Xiao. “I am not ashamed of those I serve. We may not have won this battle, but we will bring the party back to the right path in the long run.”
“Such a shame you won’t live to see this, assuming you are correct.”
The Chinese man who stepped into the room was identifiable by his voice as the man who had spoken over the loudspeaker. He was flanked by two other men who carried AK-47s that were leveled and sweeping across the three men already in the room. The speaker carried a Desert Eagle .357.
“Nice piece,” Bolan observed, indicating the gun. He was still holding his Glock at an angle that suggested a standoff. “So what happens next?”
“You fulfill your mission and kill Xiao Li. Then you can report to your superiors that the job is done, and that the East shall no longer attempt to influence this trial.”
“You’ll just let me walk?”
“Surprising as that may seem, yes. As security head, I have the authority to command this. Your disappearance would cause ripples, even though I have little doubt you are officially off radar. We do not want ripples. We are not proud of our past regarding the Balkans. In fact, the current regime would wish to expose and make examples of those still alive who were responsible for this piece of misjudgment.”
Xiao laughed bitterly. “Misjudgment...that is one word, but not the one I would choose. If you had seen—”
“Now is not the time for recrimination or self-pity,” the security chief interrupted. “Now is the time to pay for your errors of judgment.”
“I had no choice, I was following orders—”
“We all follow orders. We sometimes choose to follow the wrong ones, that is all. You die by the hand of the American and he reports this. And this next weak link in the chain—”
With an abruptness that was surprising the head of security turned the Desert Eagle on the young man in the center of the room and shot him in the temple.
“—has been executed now that we have full details of what has occurred and who they answer to. This will enable the current regime to purge those who have links with the past and so atone in the view of the West. It will prove that China wishes to open itself up to the world.”
He smiled mirthlessly, and Bolan wondered how many of those with real power and something to hide would actually suffer, and how many scapegoats there would be.
“I don’t like the idea of shooting a man in cold blood. I’m a soldier, not an assassin. What’s to stop me from taking all of you out and making a break for it?”
The security chief shrugged. “Nothing. Your entry was really very impressive. We only knew you were here once you had entered the room. So we were forced to expedite a situation that we may have dealt with differently. You offer a more pleasing option. You may kill us, but you would not be able to leave in the manner you had no doubt planned. You would be killed yourself, and your body would cause an international incident. I don’t think you want that.”
“I don’t think you do, either. It wouldn’t sit well with your masters.”
The security head smiled. “You are, of course, correct. There is one simple solution.”
He turned, and before Bolan could do anything he shot Xiao in the face. The Chinese man collapsed against the desk, crumpling to the floor. Bolan watched, and in part wondered why he had just let this happen.
He knew. It was an inevitability—whoever pulled the trigger, Xiao had been a dead man walking even before Bolan had decided to come after him.
“Now, if you will be so kind as to lower that gun, we will show you the way out,” the security head continued, as though nothing had happened. He continued. “You will tell your masters that the mission is complete. I trust you have disposed of our Serbian colleagues, assuming the late Xiao was incorrect?”
“Correct,” Bolan said, allowing the Glock to hang off his thumb. “Holstering it, okay?” The security head assented, and the soldier holstered his weapon.
“I assume you were going to use a knife before Xiao Li pushed you into use of firearms?” the security head asked in an oddly incongruous manner as he gestured for Bolan to leave the room.
“I didn’t want to cause any commotion and rouse your forces,” he said flatly. “Not that it would have mattered, anyway.”
“No, but it satisfies my curiosity that your planning is like your execution. Tell me, are you happy with the U.S. government?”
“I’m happy with the homeland. The rest comes and goes,” Bolan replied in a tone that dissuaded further questioning.
The embassy was fully lit by this point, but as the soldier and his three-man guard walked down to the lobby of the old house, he saw no one else.
Outside, the driveway to the main gates was illuminated, and Bolan walked down it toward the exit, flanked by the two guards, with their chief at his rear. The gates opened as they approached, and Bolan was standing on the sidewalk before he had time to fully assimilate this bizarre twist of events.
“What about the dead men?” he asked as the gates began to close.
“They will be transported home. The diplomatic bag is a useful tool, is it not? Of course, their official demise will be on Chinese soil. Which, I suppose, it was in one sense. I do hope we do not meet again. I respect you, and would not wish to have to kill you,” the security head said as the gates began to close.
Bolan watched them shut, then turned and began the walk back to where he had left the car.
“Hal is never going to believe this,” he said to himself. “I’m not sure that I do, either.”
* * *
THREE DAYS LATER, Bolan drove Grozny to the court building. The streets around still showed the scars of their previous attempt to come to trial, and the court building itself was cordoned off, with a guard allowing them through only by arranged password. Inside, it was a building that was running on a skeleton staff, with only a few selected press in court and no public as Grozny was led to the dock, and proceedings were begun. In the eyes of the world, justice would be done and—perhaps more important—be seen to be done. The press allowed in represented the largest of the wire, TV and syndication agencies, giving the widest spread possible for the fewest reps. Security was still a matter for paranoia, even though there was no chance of anything disrupting proceedings.
Once Bolan had seen Grozny take the dock, he left the courtroom. His eyes met those of the warlord as he left, and in Grozny’s stare was understanding.
The two men, with only Grimaldi for company, had spent the past two and a half days in the safe house. Bolan had told Grozny what had happened at the embassy, and this had caused the Serb to open up. Bravado gone, and the need for courage in the face of death eliminated, he had explained how his actions had stepped over the lines that Bolan would never have considered crossing. War was a kind of madness, gripping those taking part and making them treat as everyday occurrences those things that they would normally consider beyond any kind of reasonable action.
His argument was that war made men do bad things. It was hardly original, and hardly profound, Bolan considered. And yet, for many men it was an answer to the dilemma that hindsight placed them in.
“What makes us different, Jack?” Bolan had asked Grimaldi when the warlord was sleeping and the two soldiers sat over a beer.
“Hindsight, Sarge. We ain’t got it. We ain’t ever got it.”
“Why?”
Grimaldi shrugged. “You get hindsight when you finish something and look back. We can’t look back because we haven’t finished yet. What is it you’re always calling it?”
“The war eternal,” Bolan said w
ith a wry smile.
“Exactly. Eternal—it ain’t never gonna end, Sarge. Only when we do. Even then it’ll go on, with some other bastard picking up the slack.”
Maybe that was it. Bolan thought he was a better man than Grozny, and maybe he was. But thinking it would make him just that little bit less of one. Everyone was the same, but you had choices on how to react, and when to draw back. Grozny never drew back, and so it had spiraled out of control to the point where a soldier in wartime becomes a common criminal, no matter how high his original aspiration.
Bolan left the court thinking that he could do with a drink rather than homespun philosophy. His thoughts then went back to what went down at the Chinese embassy.
The head of security took out two men in cold blood. At least with Bolan’s way, Xiao would have had to fight for his life, and would’ve had some kind of chance. That may be flawed reasoning in some ways, but he’d take that over the madness that followed the path trodden by the Chinese security officer.
Every day, anyone who put themselves in the line of combat was taking the chance of stepping over that line. It was a judgment call. He could only hope that he made the right one every time.
His reverie was broken by a voice calling his name. He turned, and saw Clelland coming toward him.
“You didn’t want to stay?” the young man said as he caught up to the soldier.
“I’ve heard it all, believe me. You don’t spend any time with Grozny without hearing his whole war chest of stories. He’s going to have a long time in confinement to polish them for his memoirs. I can’t wait to get away now. I don’t envy you being here for the duration.”
Clelland grinned. “I won’t be. There appear to have been some strings pulled in DC, and I’ve been headhunted for a new post with an organization nominally unrelated to the one in which I’ve been working. I figure I may have you to thank for that.”
“I said a few things to Hal, and I’ll stand by them. You’ve been invaluable in your ability to gather and process information. That’s a rare talent. But believe me, Hal won’t just take my word for it.”
“Well, regardless, I’d like to thank you for this chance, and for trusting me enough to let me prove my worth.”
Clelland extended his hand. Bolan took it—the young man’s grip was firm.
“Don’t let me down,” the soldier said simply. “Don’t let yourself down.” He looked around at the almost empty lobby of the court building. He could see the damage still under construction. It would be some time before the building was completely repaired, and maybe longer before the damage within the agencies who had been corrupted could be repaired.
His work was done, though—time to move on.
“You know something?” he said to Clelland. “Let me buy you that coffee I said I would. I think I need to get out of here now that I’m done.”
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781460307090
Copyright © 2013 by Worldwide Library
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