“Never liked this damn rag,” he said. “One less reporter could only make the world a better place.”
Before Lawson could reply, the other man was out the door and gone.
Chapter 7
Bolan’s mobile phone buzzed. He pulled it from inside his jacket and put it to his ear.
“Go,” he said.
“Good news,” Kurtzman said, “I may have a lead.”
“That would be nice,” Bolan said, “since I have nothing.”
“The phone the police found? The one the Nightingale apparently left behind? It turned out to be an intelligence gold mine. I’m not sure they even know what they have right now. A lot of their stuff is fragments. But once I fed it into my own programs and started building links, I came up with some good stuff.”
“Nice of them to share the information,” Bolan said dryly.
“I meant to ask, but hated to trouble them. Fortunately, they were good enough to leave the data in a place where I could find it.”
“Behind firewalls in supposedly secure servers.”
“Exactly. Hey, do you want to hear what I found or what?”
“Give.”
“Gladly. The phone was purchased at a convenience store in Bayswater. Nothing special about the store. They deal in cell phones, beer, cigarettes, all of it legal, nearly all of it mundane as hell.”
“So she bought it there?”
“No, I said they were purchased there, but not by a woman. I’ll get to that. Just hang tight. The last phone, the one the Nightingale used, it was the first piece, or the last piece, depending on how you want to look at it, in a series of cutouts. This guy bought the phones and the minutes, then he’d forward the calls from one to another phone, then a third phone. Primitive tradecraft, but effective, nonetheless.”
Kurtzman paused and Bolan heard the click of fingers pounding against a keyboard. “So I gathered the phone numbers stored in the phone, backtracked them, hacked into the phone company records and gathered credit card data. The cards were all fake or stolen, by the way. This clown has broken some serious international laws.”
“Like hacking bank and government computers.”
“Don’t judge me,” Kurtzman said, a smile audible in his voice. “I have right on my side. Regardless, his tradecraft is pretty good. If I didn’t have all the, um, access I have here at the Farm, it would have taken longer to piece it together. Since technically we don’t exist, I technically didn’t hack into anybody’s computer. But if I had, I would have traced the purchases and figured out that several of them were denied by credit card companies. That triggered the shop owners to call the police, who were given surveillance film of the person buying the phones.”
“His face visible?”
“Yeah.”
“So much for the good tradecraft.”
“Yeah, he pretty much screwed the pooch at that point. Figuratively speaking at least.”
“We hope.”
“I had the cyber team work with the photos, highlight his face, run it through all the databases, blah, blah, blah. We got a hit. Guy’s name is Nigel Lawson. Apparently, several years ago, he tried hacking into computers of the Moscow police. More to the point, he succeeded in hacking their computers and stealing a bunch of investigative records.”
“Not to satisfy his morbid curiosity I assume.”
Another flurry of clicking on the keyboard, followed by Kurtzman clucking his tongue. Bolan assumed he was reading. After several seconds, he spoke.
“Not even close. Apparently, he had a brother who was murdered in Moscow. The investigation wasn’t moving at the speed he wanted, so he decided to take matters into his own hands. The first step was breaking into the police computer, which apparently wasn’t a huge stretch for our friend. The Russian police tracked him back to England and demanded the Brits extradite him to Russia to stand trial. To its credit, the British government told their counterparts in Moscow to bite the queen’s ass, again figuratively speaking.”
“Thanks for the clarification.”
“It gets better,” Kurtzman said. “The Brits apparently let Nigel sweat it for a little bit. They threatened him with extradition, even though they had no intention of following through. They told him if he cooperated, maybe they could help him.”
“Cooperation being?”
“He worked with MI5 and MI6, showed them how he hacked the Russian computers. In exchange, British intelligence let him waddle back to his mother’s basement, where he could eat pork rinds and drink sugary soda by the case. And here’s the best part. His case officer? Your friend Damon Blair.”
“The analyst?”
“None other. Apparently, he used to be an operations guy before he switched to analysis. No undercover work or anything. Just meeting with academic sources, interrogating defectors with computer backgrounds, that sort of thing.”
Bolan sipped his coffee and continued listening.
Kurtzman continued, “And Blair also lost a daughter years ago. See a pattern?”
Bolan scowled. “Yeah.”
“I guess he neglected to mention all this?”
“Yeah again,” the soldier said.
“One other thing. Another mindblower. I got a copy of the prints on the recovered phone. Apparently, it’s the first time—at least that anyone knows about—where one of the Nightingale’s phones have been recovered. I have no doubt she’s burned through a ton of them. But she obviously did a good job disposing of them along the way, too.
“This time was different, obviously, with people gunning for her. She dropped the phone when she fled. The Brits were able to get a partial print from it, which I in turn snatched from them. Damn good thing, too. I went back a couple of hours later and the damn thing was gone from the system. Wiped clean. My guess is, if you checked with the London Metropolitan Police, the phone’s gone, too.”
“Either they handed it over to the spooks,” Bolan said, “or one of the spy agencies snagged it on their own.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kurtzman replied. “But that’s a sideshow. Here’s the interesting piece. The prints at first came back as nothing, but that’s because I was putting it through a criminal database. Then I remembered what Blair told you, about Jennifer Davis. I broke into her old employer’s system, found the prints she submitted when she was first hired at the bank. Voilá! I had a match.”
Bolan’s eyes narrowed and he unconsciously gripped the phone harder.
“Jennifer Davis?” he asked.
“Jennifer Davis.”
“So, she’s alive.”
“Either that or someone’s carrying around a dead woman’s finger and poking things with it. If so, this is a whole new level of weird.”
Bolan allowed himself a tight smile.
“Let’s stick with the more plausible scenario,” he said. “She’s alive. That brings us back to Blair and Lawson.”
“It’s possible Blair really thought she was dead. Two analysts can look at the same information and come to totally different conclusions.”
“Or he knows she’s alive and is covering her tracks for her.”
“Because he sympathizes with her.”
“Right.”
* * *
USING A CREDIT CARD, Bolan jimmied open the front door of Lawson’s apartment building and climbed the stairs. Kurtzman had given him the man’s address before they ended their phone call. The soldier’s hand drifted inside his jacket. He wrapped his fingers around the weapon’s grip, but kept it holstered.
On his way to the apartment building, the soldier had tried calling Blair at his office at MI5’s headquarters, but got his voice mail. A call to the man’s cell phone produced the same result. Bolan decided against leaving a message. He knew the other man likely would see and recognize Bolan
’s telephone number among his missed calls. He didn’t mind if Blair knew he called. But the Executioner was suspicious of his newfound ally and Bolan didn’t want his voice to betray that fact.
The Executioner reached Lawson’s door, started to knock, but hesitated. He had circled the building a couple of times, taken some time to watch for obvious surveillance and matched what he saw with satellite photos that Kurtzman had sent to his phone.
Nothing seemed amiss. But it was hard to know for certain as he was in unfamiliar territory.
Bolan heard the creak of a doorknob turning. A glance over his shoulder revealed the door to the apartment next to Lawson’s swinging inward.
The soldier tensed, but relaxed almost immediately as he saw an elderly woman shuffle through the door and pull it shut behind her. Her frail form wrapped in a black coat, head covered by a matching scarf, she looked up at Bolan, who acknowledged her with a nod. Clutching her purse to her side, she shuffled past the soldier and headed for the stairs.
“Just buy ’em and get the hell out,” she muttered.
“Excuse me?”
The woman looked at Bolan with a panicked expression. He stepped up behind her and gently set a hand on her shoulder to stop her. Her shoulder twitched in fear at his touch.
“It’s okay,” Bolan said. “I’m with the police.”
The woman pivoted toward him, the soles of her shoes scraping against the floor.
“Where’s your badge?”
Bolan pulled out his fake Justice Department credentials and flashed them at the lady, not giving her a chance to study them.
“You said, ‘Just buy ’em and get out.’”
“No, I said get the hell out,” she responded, not missing a beat.
Bolan stifled a grin. “Sure. Why did you say that?”
She gestured at Lawson’s door with a bony finger.
“That boy there? Nigel? He’s lived here for years. Quiet. He’ll open a door for you, carry your groceries upstairs. He drinks, but he’s quiet. No women coming over. No drugs. None of that.”
The woman looked side to side before staring again at Bolan. “That was until this week.”
“What happened this week?”
She licked her lips and gestured at the door with a nod. “Then they came.”
“Who’s they?”
“The Russians. The damn Russians have been here all week. They knocked on my door, asking me questions. I slammed the door in their faces. Told them to go to hell. Told them I didn’t like the bloody Commies twenty years ago, and I still don’t.”
Bolan considered pointing out that the Soviet Union had dissolved decades ago, but decided to save the lecture in geopolitics for another visit.
“What kind of questions were they asking?”
She hesitated.
Bolan mustered up his most earnest look. “Please,” he said. “It’s important.”
“Wanted to know where he was, when he’d be home. All sorts of questions. None of it was their damn business.”
She shifted on her feet uncomfortably and leaned a hip against a nearby rail.
“At first, I thought they were harassing Nigel. But then I saw them coming and going. All of them.”
“Today?”
“You deaf? Yes, today. In and out the door. Doing God knows what.”
“How many are there?”
“Three. The tall one—he looks like the walking dead—left an hour ago. The other two are still there, I think.” She leaned forward, scrunched up her face as though she’d tasted something awful. “One of them had tattoos on him, too.”
She studied Bolan, apparently gauging his reaction. He hoped his face reflected the requisite amount of shock.
“You could hear them?”
She shook her head. “Can’t hear nothing. Place is a century old. Walls are brick. Doors are heavy wood. That’s why I stay here. I don’t like people nosing in my business.” She stopped and took a breath. “But I saw ’em go in,” she said, “and haven’t seen ’em come out.”
“Maybe you missed them?”
“I don’t miss anything.”
Bolan nodded.
“I think they’re selling drugs in there,” the woman said. “All those Russians, they’re all in the mob. I know that. You know that. Everyone knows that.”
Bolan hadn’t known that, but nodded again anyway.
“Thanks for the help,” he said.
She gestured dismissively with her hand.
“Just do something about all these damn Russians, eh? Place is going to hell. Fix it.”
“Consider it fixed, ma’am.”
* * *
LAWSON WAS HIS third drink into the whiskey when he decided to fix his situation.
After Mikoyan had left, he’d gathered up the newspaper and his groceries and moved to the kitchen. The Russians apparently considered him beneath their notice. The one who’d been watching television—a stubble-faced guy with a rangy build and long, gray hair—came into the kitchen long enough to take half of Lawson’s sandwich and his bag of chips before returning to the living room to zone out in front of the television.
Lawson had eaten the other half of his sandwich. That and the whiskey had formed a nice warm spot in his belly. A pleasant light-headedness had come over him.
He looked at the second thug, the one covered in tattoos. The guy stood in front of the kitchen window, backside resting on the sill. A rectangular phone in his hand demanded all his attention. The unlit cigarette still protruding from his lips, he stared down at the rectangular mobile phone. His thumbs moved up and down like little pistons.
“You texting someone?” he asked.
The Russian glanced up. “Yeah,” he said. “Your brother.”
His eyes returned to the phone’s screen.
“Ask him if your grandma still gives the best blow jobs in Heaven,” Lawson said.
The man raised his head and glared at Lawson. He tensed himself for a confrontation, but the thug shook his head and returned to his phone. After a few seconds, Lawson rose up from the chair, setting a hand on the tabletop to steady himself.
The man covered in tattoos looked up at him again.
“Gotta take a piss,” Lawson said, slurring his words more than necessary. “And, no, you can’t come in and hold it for me.”
The other guy glared at Lawson, but made no threatening moves.
The Englishman lumbered through the living room. When he stepped between the gray-haired Russian and the television, the guy looked up at him. “Where the hell you going?”
“Gotta take a dump,” Lawson murmured.
The man pointed back through the kitchen. “Bathroom’s through there.”
“I need a book,” Lawson said. “You know, those thick things with all the words.”
Like the other guard, this one with the stubble just glared at Lawson, but made no move to stop him.
Once inside the bedroom, he scuffed his feet against the floor. The way he saw it, the more noise he made, the less attention he’d garner. When he reached his dresser, he slowly pulled open the top drawer, reached a hand inside and felt around for the Walther. When his fingertips brushed against it, he grasped the weapon and drew it from the drawer.
“What’s taking so long?” a voice said from behind.
Normally, Lawson would have froze, but the alcohol seemed to lubricate his movements. Turning his head, he leveled the pistol at the gray-haired man and fired.
The pistol’s report in such a confined space seemed deafening to Lawson. A small, red hole opened on the Russian’s shoulder and he stumbled backward. Lawson walked toward the guy, ready to line up another shot. The fallen man brought around his own gun, a large-bore, silver revolver, and fired it. Lawson’s gun crack
ed in the same instant. The round opened a hole in the man’s throat.
The impact from the large bullet had shoved Lawson off his feet. He’d fallen to the ground and was leaning against the bed. The shock wore off almost immediately and he felt white-hot pain lancing through his midsection. He placed a hand over the wound in a vain attempt to staunch the bleeding.
Footsteps thudded outside the door. He guessed the other thug was coming. Once he saw what Lawson had done, he’d likely kill him. It was at that moment, he realized he’d lost his pistol, leaving him injured and defenseless.
* * *
EVEN THROUGH THE brick walls, Bolan heard the gunfire. The Desert Eagle was holstered in the small of his back. He reached under his jacket and unsheathed it. He quickly tried the door but, as expected, found it was locked. He raised the pistol and fired two rounds through the lock.
The door swung inward and Bolan went through the door.
He heard someone yelling in Russian from farther inside the apartment. He moved quickly through the kitchen and into the living room, where he saw the man with the tattoos kneeling next to an older man who was sprawled on the floor.
With his right hand, he was shaking the man and yelling. In his left hand, he held a large silver automatic that he was pointing into another room that Bolan couldn’t see into.
The soldier raised the Desert Eagle, centered its muzzle on the guy’s back and fired. Thunder pealed in the apartment and the .44-caliber round lanced through the man’s spine, killing him instantly. The guy pitched forward. Bolan walked past him and into the bedroom at his left.
He saw Lawson sitting on the floor, back propped against the edge of the bed. A dark stain was spreading over the fabric that covered Lawson’s ample midsection. His breath was coming in ragged gasps. A blood-covered hand was clutched over a wound.
Bolan saw a pistol on the floor just out of Lawson’s reach and kicked it away before kneeling next to the guy.
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