Kubrick was a different story. He was a classic Agency success story. He’d combined adequate fieldwork with a talent for playing the sycophant. He’d started out doing interrogation of captured North Korean infiltrators with the Defense Intelligence Agency before getting assigned to Berlin under Lich in the early eighties.
He bounced around playing the role as Lich’s number two for decades. Like Lich, he was rumored to have a considerable financial portfolio built using information gleaned during classified operations. The pair of them were known as down and dirty operators who brushed the line often—but as of yet no one had suggested that the duo had actually crossed it.
But Sanders had jeopardized his operational security to place that call from outside of station control.
Bolan mulled it all over while Kubrick drove. After about fifteen minutes they pulled up to a valet parking lot in front of a moderately expensive-looking restaurant in the International District. Such a place was real luxury—in a place like Grozny. A smiling employee in a red suit, took the keys from the massive Kubrick and gave him a paper ticket.
“This is on your expense account, not mine,” Bolan said, playing his part, as they entered the restaurant.
Once they were seated and had ordered food and coffee, the game was ready to begin.
“What do you know?” Kubrick demanded.
“I’m here to learn,” Bolan said, sidestepping. “Just start at the beginning. Walk me through it like I was a child.”
“Not much of a stretch,” Kubrick grunted.
“Then it should be easy,” Bolan said with a shrug.
Kubrick stared at Bolan for a moment over his plate. His eyes glittered, and he looked as venomous as a pit viper. Bolan bit into a piece of toast and returned Kubrick’s glare.
Kubrick relented.
“Sanders claims he’s bringing Sable in, that she’s turned. I think it’s bullshit. I think she’s playing that puppy. I’ve worked counterops against Sable for years now. I was the one who caught her penetration of the institute, Sanders was my stringer. I have more experience with this agent than anyone in the Company. Yet when Sanders gets a lead in the case, he fails to contact me. I find that troubling…and so should you, frankly.”
“Maybe he doesn’t trust you. Maybe Sanders thinks you’ve gone bad,” Bolan said.
He kept his voice deliberate, completely dropping the baiting tone he’d used up until then. He was walking dangerous ground. He watched Kubrick carefully for a reaction. He was disappointed.
“That’s the point, Cooper. I thought you troubleshooters were supposed to be savvy operators. If Sander’s doesn’t trust me, that means Sable is playing him. It means he may think she is coming over, but the truth is she’s probably working him for everything she can get. She’s good, Cooper. She’s good.”
“How about Tan?” Bolan asked, taking a chance.
Kubrick’s tradecraft went right out the window. His face grew red and he dropped his fork onto the table with a disgusted look. He picked up his napkin and dabbed at his mouth where food had caught in his beard.
“How do you know about Tan?” Kubrick demanded.
Bolan shrugged. “Guys talk, you hear things.”
“Sylvia Tan works at the Caucasus Data Institute.” Kubrick said finally. “She grew up in Taiwan in a fairly affluent family. They sent her away to college. She got a social conscience in college, Berkeley no less, where she studied programming and electronics.”
Bolan raised his eyebrows. “Chinese get to her, or the Russians?” he asked.
“First the Russians. Through a Berkeley splinter branch of the California ACLU. Tan joined when she returned home to Taiwan to get her master’s. The threat of Uncle Mao hits a little too close to home in Taiwan for even the lunatic fringe to fully embrace them.”
The waitress came with the bill and discreetly set it in the exact middle of the table. Bolan smiled fully at the blushing woman and pushed the little red folder toward the burly station officer.
Kubrick frowned, the paid the tab.
“Then she got a job at the institute,” Bolan prompted. “She left home and headed here? Just like that?”
“Yeah. There was a hint of scandal. I assume sexual, but I can’t verify it. She bailed out of Taiwan in the nineties. That’s all we know. I’ve had her under observation for a couple of years.”
“That much I had,” Bolan lied. “How does Sanders fit in?”
“I gave the Tan surveillance to Sanders, as a way to get his feet wet. He surprised me. He got Vesler, the director at the institute, to put him on as a security consultant in addition to his liaison role from the Agency. He began to cultivate Tan. I think she’s the one who led him to Sable.”
“I’ll need to see the files on Vesler, Tan and the institute,” Bolan said.
“Fine. I’ll call ahead to Ms. Pong and arrange it.”
“You’re not coming back?” Bolan queried.
“No. I have other matters. Matters that are none of your business.”
“Great. You springing for cab fare?” Bolan goaded.
“Look, asshole,” Kubrick snapped, rising to the bait. “I don’t like you paramilitary cowboys. I don’t like outside interference in my operations, and I don’t like you.”
“You don’t have to like me, fat man.” Bolan answered back. “You just have to make sure I have everything I need to get this job done.”
Kubrick rose, and his face was so angry that Bolan thought he’d finally pushed the case officer too hard. He tensed the muscles of his legs to rise and meet Kubrick’s attack.
Kubrick made a visible effort to control himself. He reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and removed his valet ticket. He threw it on the table.
“I’ll take the cab,” he said. “You can take my car to the station. Try to be gone by the time I return.”
Pulling out his cell phone, Kubrick turned and stalked out of the restaurant before Bolan could reply. The soldier watched him go, his face impassive. He reached over and picked up the valet ticket. He contemplated it thoughtfully before also rising and making his way out of the restaurant.
8
Bolan slid behind the wheel of the idling Mercedes after tipping the valet. He pulled the car out into traffic. Bolan knew, given the attempt on his life, that if Sanders had left Kubrick out of the op because of fears his supervisors were dirty, then Bolan had every reason to suspect that Kubrick was setting him up now.
Bolan checked out the interior of the vehicle. The Mercedes was an automatic. To get the best performance out of an automobile, especially under offensive driving situations, a standard transmission, preferably a five speed, was usually best. The CD player held nothing but classical music, heavy on Wagner, light on Chopin.
Bolan eyed his mirrors, reflexively looking for a tail. Kubrick’s hostility was something he’d come to expect from case officers. Even the most experienced agents couldn’t comprehend the world in which Bolan existed. They often feared what they couldn’t understand.
Bolan gunned the automobile through traffic. He didn’t think Kubrick—if he was crooked—would do anything so obvious as to plan a hit in his own vehicle. Unless he was going to try to make it look as if the hit were intended for him.
Bolan tried to order his thoughts. He’d taken in a lot of information in a very short time. Each bit of information opened up a multitude of possibilities. He needed to itemize and then prioritize that information. He found a station on the radio, turned up the volume. The sound system in the Mercedes was top-notch. His eyes flicked to his rearview mirror.
Bolan surveyed the traffic. He didn’t try to concentrate too closely on any one thing or automobile, but instead let his eyes flit across the view, getting a feel for what was behind him. He tried to match up what Kubrick had told him with the briefing he’d been given.
Sanders had been running a flip operation for a freelance ex-Soviet agent, something that would be a gold mine for American intelligence. He’d been w
orking the Grozny Station under Lich, in the field as Kubrick’s stringer. He’d managed to somehow bunny hop Sable’s stalking horse, Sylvia Tan, and get to Sable herself, a feat Kubrick hadn’t been able to manage in more than eight years of covert fencing.
Then, when it was time to bring the prize into the boat, Sanders disappeared. He circumvented his normal chain of command and used unsecured lines to activate the turnover—a turnover he failed to show for. A check of his blind drop revealed an accumulation of sensitive material that Kubrick should have known about and collected. Then someone tried to kill Bolan when he went nosing around.
Bolan snapped out of his reverie. Ahead of him a light at an intersection suddenly turned yellow. He was too close to the light to stop, short of slamming on his brakes. Instead he exercised the Mercedes’ big engine and shot through the light and across the avenue. Automatically his eyes found his rearview mirror.
A gunmetal gray Audi cut out from behind a battered old Toyota delivery truck. It slipped around the larger vehicle and shot across the intersection, running a red light and triggering a cacophony of angry horn blasts. The car cut its speed on the other side of the intersection and dropped into traffic about three cars behind Bolan.
The soldier wasn’t particularly surprised. He was being tailed. For the Audi to take a risk on such an obvious play as running the red light, he assumed that it was a single shadow and not a team.
Bolan wondered what if it was a legit stringer for Kubrick checking up on the new kid in town. Was it a part of some corruption on Kubrick’s or Lich’s part? Was it a third party player, perhaps whoever had taken a shot at him near the railway station? Bolan had plenty of questions, but he didn’t have any answers.
At the moment the only people with the answers to those questions were in the Audi behind him. Bolan kept his speed down to match the flow of traffic as he crossed the bridge over the river and into one of Grozny’s refugee-filled ghettos and one of the largest open-air markets in the Russian republic.
He had intended to head directly back to the Meltzer Emporium to look over the files. He debated with himself over a new, bolder plan. This Sable op was not an intelligence operation, it was a counterintelligence situation. He was not conducting a survey on a known article, but rather was attempting to ferret out an unknown to whom Bolan might already be a very well-established entity.
Bolan considered a method of operation used to jump-start investigations where there were either no leads, or too many. Dubbed the Judas Goat Scenario, it was risky and dismissed as cowboy antics by more austere and reserved operators. Named after the practice of Indian or Kashmir hunters, it was a metaphor for their strategy of using a staked goat to draw whatever tigers were in the area into an ambush.
The operator simply placed himself in the contested environment and announced his presence and intentions. Whoever went after the bait tipped his hand and revealed himself. Bolan needed answers, and he was fortunate enough to know of someone readily available who could answer them.
The driver of the Audi.
Bolan took some time to get into position. He drove carefully, keeping in deep pockets of traffic, stopping for streetlights, driving carefully and defensively. He made every decision opposite to the way a person trying to lose a tail would act. His hope was to lull the Audi driver into complacency. It was imperative that the hunted think he remained the hunter.
Bolan chose his trap as best he could with his limited knowledge of the foreign urban environment. He stayed away from shopping complexes. Those kinds of settings would encourage the shadow to get out of his car and follow Bolan inside, in hopes of observing who the mark met with. Bolan needed something like a restaurant or apartment building where the tail would feel it too risky to do more than survey Bolan’s entrance and exit times.
Finally, on the edge of market district, Bolan found a suitable location. High-rise apartments, modern but basic, they lined several streets between the market and the river. They were relatively unmarked by bullets or artillery fire.
Bolan pulled the Mercedes to the curb. He set himself before stepping out and checking the street. Groups of pedestrians loitered in the open. An alleyway between two buildings was strung with ropes of laundry. The traffic on the street wasn’t as thick as that of the market district, but was still busy.
Bolan approach a group of teenage boys with sullen looks on their faces. He walked up to them, smiling. He wasn’t about to play the tough guy with a group of kids who could strip the Mercedes in seconds and then disappear into the urban topography like ghosts. The interest of the group perked up immediately when Bolan pulled a large number of U.S. dollars out of the pocket of his leather jacket.
Speaking in Russian, Bolan promised to match the amount of money if the Mercedes was fine when he came back from doing his business. Arrangements made, Bolan loitered long enough for the Audi to move slowly past his position on the street. He then entered the apartment building through the front door in full view of the vehicle’s driver.
Bolan stepped into a stark hallway lined with the apartment doorways. A staircase to his left led to the other floors. The hall bisected the building in a straight line, and Bolan could see the rear door easily. It was held ajar by an old, stained cinder block to let in gray sunlight. Bolan turned and took up a safe vantage point just inside the door to view the Audi’s actions.
In textbook manner the Audi went up the street past the mark and parked on the opposite side where the occupant of the vehicle could sit and watch his target using the rearview mirrors.
Bolan scoped out the street, figuring his approaches from the best possible angles. He memorized the license-plate number though he had little hope that it would provide a tangible clue. Turning, Bolan moved down the hallway and out the back of the building. He moved fast, avoiding any kind of contact with the people he passed. He turned away from where the Audi was parked.
Coming out of the alley, Bolan mixed in as best he could with the flow and rhythm of the street. He crossed with a knot of pedestrians to the side of the street opposite the apartment building he had cut through, and moved past the first buildings on that block to the alley running behind them. He traversed a U-shaped pattern in an attempt to flank his shadow.
All around him the life of the republic city went on with raucous noise. Unfettered by city ordinances, the refugee inhabitants kept livestock in the form of goats, chickens, and even the occasional pig. People milled about or called down from open windows and out of doorways. Children played boisterous games and loud music from a wide mixture of cultures played and echoed down the crowded streets and alleys.
Bolan moved quickly to the mouth of the alleyway, heading for the building opposite to where the Audi was parked. He knew he’d have to move fast.
At the lip of a tiny alley Bolan halted, getting his bearings for his final approach. The Audi was parked barely twenty yards away. Bolan frowned. The engine was running. That was in the driver’s favor. The Audi was not boxed in by other parked cars, but the driver’s room to maneuver was severely limited. Bolan called that a draw.
Without the element of complete surprise, Bolan wouldn’t have risked what he was planning.
He looked up and down the street. There were pedestrians present, but the thong of people was not immense. He did not want to risk any innocent lives and reached around behind his back and pulled out the Glock 17. He clicked his fire selector off safety. He put the hand with the pistol into the pocket of his jacket, keeping his finger on the trigger, but with the weapon safely concealed from sight.
Bolan stepped out of the alley and began walking briskly toward the car. As he’d hoped, the driver had grown lax. Instead of constantly checking his points of vision, he’d settled into surveillance mode, with his eyes fixed on his angled rearview mirror. Bolan used his free hand to remove his cell phone from his jacket pocket.
As he came even with the car, Bolan flipped his cell phone open and his thumb rapidly clicked his accessory options, bri
nging up the camera setting. He kicked the car door of the Audi once, holding up the phone. The driver jumped, startled, and whirled around. Bolan clicked a picture.
The driver’s face went red and then white. He reached for a paper set on the passenger seat beside him. Bolan tapped the barrel of his pistol against the glass of the driver’s window. At the unmistakable sound of metal on glass the driver froze. He looked up. Bolan clicked another picture. The driver was a bulky man in what Bolan estimated was his late twenties.
Slowly the man sat up.
“Roll the window down,” Bolan ordered in Russian.
“Go to hell.”
Bolan lowered his phone and leaned against the door. He tapped the muzzle against the glass twice.
“Roll down your window.”
“Or what? You’ll shoot? In the middle of a street like this?” The man’s speech was concise. “No way.”
“You didn’t care last night when you tried to take me out.”
The man’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I don’t know what you are talking about. I’m just here to meet my girlfriend.”
“Was that your boy I got last night?” Bolan asked, goading the man. “The one who screamed and cried like a baby? You guys close?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said, his voice tight with emotion.
Bolan’s opinion of the man dropped. That he could get to him so easily spoke a lot less to the Executioner’s interrogation skills than it did to the man’s internal discipline. Bolan tired of baiting the driver. It was pointless.
It was a stalemate, and Bolan knew it. He’d taken a chance and it wasn’t playing out how he wanted it. He wasn’t going to blaze away with his pistol on an open street unless the guy went for his own gun. Without that as a threat, the shadow didn’t feel the need to cooperate. Bolan had disrupted the survey operation and had the means to identify the agent. He would take the situation as a win.
Rebel Force Page 5