"You... know why we're here?" Katrina asked. "You were described to me." She glanced significantly at the two hulking Russian males who had not moved since she and Bolan had joined the little party. "We are here to see Niktov."
Zara caught Katrina's glance at the two men. "Don't worry about Boris and Igor. They are Niktov's right-hand men. And mine."
"I parked our transportation in the alley above," Bolan said.
Zara turned to Katrina. "You were told to park on the side streets near here like all the others," she reprimanded, nodding to the noisy crowd around them. "We cannot afford to have attention drawn to what we have here. Niktov... has many interests, you know."
"Things went wrong," Katrina began. Her eyes and voice told Bolan she did not know what to make of the Gypsy she had brought him here to meet. She was not sure how to play this. "We thought..."
Bolan took charge. "I need some license plates put on the car," he told Zara. "I thought someone here could help with that."
"You thought right," Zara turned to the two men who flanked her. "Boris, Igor. You heard the man. Plates from the office. You know where. See that they're put on the car in the alley. Immediately."
The two heavies did not look happy about leaving Zara with the strangers, but they also looked as if obeying direct orders from Zara was part of their job. They glowered in Bolan's direction, then eased away from the bar, disappearing into the noisy sea of humanity packing the place.
Bolan had had no doubt Niktov's friends would be able to fix the stolen Fiat with "clean" plates, enabling him to drive it around the city tonight. He intended to abandon the car at the finish of tonight's mission into Moscow. After that the owner would probably get it back. But since the owner of such a machine, living in an upper-class neighborhood such as the One where Bolan had found the wheels, could only be an upwardly mobile member of the Communist party, Bolan felt scant sympathy for him. The new plates furnished by Zara and her friends would prevent the Fiat from being stopped by the first Moscow cop they saw once the car was reported stolen and an APB went out on it.
Bolan had encountered Niktov on a previous mission to Moscow. Niktov's business as a dealer in rare art objects for the Soviet elite had proved an excellent cover for his bread-and-butter business as one of the ranking power brokers in this city's extensive black market.
Black marketeering in the Soviet Union is a thriving industry boasting an annual yield twice that of some small nations. This "underground" trade is supported by the enthusiastic patronage of millions of Russians who, without the private produce stalls, for instance, might well starve, not to mention having to do without blue jeans, music tapes, transistor radios and countless other items the black market gangs deal in.
Niktov, the smoothest art dealer in Moscow, was also the sharpest crime baron in the city, skimming every ruble made in the black market, or someone got hurt.
"Let's get down to business, Zara." Bolan pitched his voice so he and the two women could have their own conversation and not be overheard by the drinking rabble around them. "I'm on a tight schedule. I wish I had time for pleasantries, but I don't."
Zara reached up again and touched the spot on Bolan's cheek where she had slapped him. This time it was a gentle touch. He felt the slightest current of chemistry pass between them at her gesture.
"Perhaps the pleasantries will come... later," she said.
"Zara, I came to meet Niktov. Where is he?"
The Gypsy lowered her soft fingertips from his hard face. She polished off the vodka in her glass. Bolan and Katrina did not touch the drinks that the bartender had brought.
"Niktov waits nearby," Zara told them. "I will take you to him."
"Why isn't he here?" Bolan's eyes never ceased scanning the crowded after-hours bar. It had not been long, less than an hour, since he had been killing Russian soldiers on the outskirts of the city.
The military and police machines would already be clanking into high gear, he knew, sealing up the city and all possible routes of escape before closing in until they found the man responsible. They could well come looking for him in a place like this, even if Zara and Niktov and Katrina's dissident friends thought it was safe.
It would not do for Bolan to remain anywhere for very long.
"Niktov is having... problems with rival factions," the Gypsy explained. "He does not wish to make himself an easy target."
"That makes two of us. Take us to him."
"Us?" Zara appraised Katrina more closely. "No offense, darling, but I was told your instructions were to deliver my friend here to this place and that would be all for you."
Katrina didn't bat an eye, her face set in grim lines of determination. "My orders were to meet this man and deliver him into the hands of Niktov personally. This is what I shall do. Then my work tonight will be done."
Zara seemed to consider this.
Bolan grunted, "I can find the guy myself, Zara. Don't be difficult."
Her eyes flashed anger, then the Romany woman shrugged. "Very well. I don't see what the harm can be of having one more along. Perhaps I am jealous," she explained to Katrina in a friendlier, easier tone.
"You have no reason to be," Katrina assured her. "I love this man, but not the way you seem to think."
"Ladies, ladies," Bolan chided. He turned to Zara. "Is there another way out of here besides the elevator?"
"There is, but it is best we are not seen leaving."
"What do you suggest?"
Zara's dark eyes twinkled. "Perhaps a slight diversion."
Zara moved so that she was standing between Bolan and the closest male customers lining the bar behind her. She pressed against Bolan, her arms going around him, molding her body to his so he could feel every lush, wild curve straining against him. The perfumed scent of her hair tantalized his nostrils as she moved her lips to his ear.
"Push me," she said fiercely, hotly. "Hard!"
He pushed, shoving her away with enough effort to propel her, into the drinking man at her back. She used the backward movement to jar the man off balance, spilling his drink.
The guy whirled sharply, angrily. "Here, now! What th..."
Zara regained her balance. She spun toward the man, pointing in the direction of two other guys standing nearby engaged in a conversation.
"He did it!" she shouted at the man she had bumped into. "He said he'd kill me if I didn't go with him!"
That was all the guy at the bar needed to hear.
"Did he, now? I'll fix the swine!"
The man reached with one quick movement for a long-necked beer bottle next to him on the bar. He stepped forward, swinging the bottle in an arc that connected, the bottle smashing to bits on the other man's head.
The guy and his friends whirled to glare at the attacker.
The bearlike dude he'd swung the bottle at shook his head to clear it, then barreled forward with a battle cry, head lowered like a battering ram. He plowed into the first man's gut with such force that the two of them flew into a somersault backward over the bar where they commenced trading punches and breaking more bottles over each other's heads.
The first man's buddies dived into the fray with the second man's companions, and soon others joined the melee, pushing and shoving, throwing punches and catching them.
In a matter of seconds a full-scale brawl evolved, women screaming and shouting, trying to get out of the way, lusty curses and laughter floating amid the thudding of fists into jaws.
Bottles and glasses flew everywhere, some connecting against heads, others shattering when they missed and hit a wall or furniture. Chairs and tables flipped through the air, the impromptu slugfest intensifying by the second with all the glee of children on their last day of school before summer vacation.
"This way!" Zara said.
She made a beeline to a place where the bar met the wall, a few feet away from the raging fight. She touched a button below the bartop.
A panel in the wall slid sideways.
Zara en
tered the secret compartment, motioning for Bolan and Katrina to follow.
"Hurry!" she urged.
Katrina went on through.
Bolan began to follow, but someone tried to take a swing at him. He blocked the punch with his left arm while his right rocketed up with pistonlike force squarely under the other man's chin.
The guy's eyes rolled back in his head, and he went unconscious but remained standing, held in that position by the close-quarter slugging going on all around him.
Bolan unleathered the Beretta, not for anyone in the subterranean brawl, but for whatever he might encounter on their way out.
"We are wasting time, Mack," Zara said impatiently.
He stepped into the passageway.
The panel whispered shut behind them.
Zara had been right. No one appeared to notice their withdrawal; the patrons of the place were having too much fun taking their frustrations out on one another.
Bolan and the two women had stepped into a stairwell. A soft red light, like that in the elevator they had ridden down in, illuminated the narrow ascent to a landing. From there the stairs rose farther, angling out of Bolan's field of vision.
He marveled again at the expert job of soundproofing someone, probably Niktov, had installed in the subterranean after-hours joint. He could not hear the hint of a sound to indicate there was a full-scale battle royal in progress on the other side of the sliding panel.
The women stood against the wall, side by side, waiting for him.
Zara seemed unaware that Katrina had swung her Uzi out from beneath her jacket with a well-practiced flip, all the while eyeing the unknown at the top of the stairs, her shapely legs flexed in a battle crouch, the weapon held in firing position.
Zara started up the stairs.
"I will show you the way."
Bolan moved forward, grabbing her by the arm just above the elbow, checking her progress before she reached the third step.
"I've done enough following tonight," he growled, not unfriendly, to the Gypsy lady. "It's not my style."
He glided past her, taking the lead, easing against the wall, arm bent, the Beretta ready to open up on any danger that might present itself.
Zara trailed two steps behind him, followed by Katrina who covered their backtrack with the Uzi another two steps behind Zara.
Toward the next link in the chain for this meanest hit of all for Executioner Mack Bolan.
Unless something or someone else unexpected got in the way first.
Unless something else went wrong.
It was that kind of a mission, yeah.
All the bloody way.
The Executioner was hitting Moscow.
And the night would only get bloodier.
4
Bolan drove the Fiat through the almost deserted Moscow streets.
Zara sat beside him this time, giving occasional directions.
Katrina sat in the back seat at such an angle that her gaze connected with Bolan's in the rearview mirror as they passed beneath streetlights.
They passed no police cars this time.
The time: 0330 hours.
A street-cleaning machine lumbered ungainly through one intersection to the wide inner circle of the Sadovoye Ring; it was the only traffic they encountered. The sedan crossed one of the bridges over the Moskva River, which appeared far busier than the streets as barges chugged their way up and down the waterway.
They encountered a few vehicles when Bolan steered them along Valivov Street, but the sparse traffic faded to nothing when Zara curtly instructed Bolan to take another turn into a sprawling six-hundred-acre city park — Sokolniki. As they drove along a winding parkway, Katrina's eyes, reflected in the rearview mirror, held wary apprehension, something Bolan also felt.
There had been no conversation among the three of them since leaving the after-hours club. They had reclaimed the Fiat, which Boris and Igor had dutifully supplied with new license plates. The two sad-eyed giants had wanted to come along, but Zara had told them a firm no.
The weather had continued to change during the short time Bolan and Katrina had been in the warehouse. The stars were now blotted out by low cloud cover, and the air carried a brittle chill to it. The night breeze had died down to nothing, and in the stillness Bolan sensed the promise, or threat, of snow.
The coming storm, threatening from the dark sky, matched the rising excitement Bolan felt in his gut. This last link of the chain, he hoped, would send him into the thick of what he had come this far around the world to do.
Get Strakhov.
Then the score for April would be settled.
"There," Katrina said, pointing.
Bolan saw it at the same time. He braked, coasting to a stop on the shoulder of the parkway. He pulled up not far behind a vintage Rolls-Royce that sat beneath the overhanging branches of an ancient tree near a statue honoring the war dead who had fallen fighting the Nazi hordes.
Sokolniki Park was wrapped in a quiet of near total solitude, a far cry from the warehouse district where Bolan had met Zara, but seemingly every bit as remote within the heart of Moscow.
There was a bench situated against the base of a lamppost several meters down along the parkway, the light offering enough illumination for Bolan to clearly make out the three men waiting at the base of the monument.
A hulking bodyguard stood on either side of the bench. They could have been cloned from Zara's friends, Boris and Igor, thought Bolan.
The Executioner approached, glancing about, his senses penetrating the night. They seemed to be alone here — Bolan, the two women, the man on the bench and his two sidekicks — though the lamp glow along the parkway was hardly sufficient to light up much of the ominous gloom.
Bolan strode toward the three men waiting by the monument, leaving his jacket open so he could grab his concealed weapons without hesitation. He did not like the setup here.
"Hello, Niktov."
The elegantly clad, elderly man seated on the bench sat in much the same posture as when Bolan had last seen him. To Bolan it seemed as if time had stood still since their last encounter.
Niktov's clawlike hands rested on a silver-topped cane, his prominent forehead framed with eccentric waves of thinning hair, the black dye job still rather too obvious. The Russian sported a pair of rimless glasses that rode on a beaked nose. As always Bolan was reminded of a schoolteacher.
"Mack Bolan," the "art dealer" acknowledged in return, the inflection of his voice aged but strong and steady. "I have learned your true identity since our last encounter, you see. I forgive you your little charade from the last time, pretending to be of the world of art. Yes, I now know all about you, Mr. Bolan."
It was made as a simple statement of fact with no apparent malice or implied threat. Bolan centered his attention on the old sharpy. He knew Katrina would be eyeing their surroundings, the index finger of her right hand again curled around the trigger of the Uzi concealed beneath her jacket.
"And yet you agree to meet me here like this," Bolan said to Niktov. "Like spies."
The art dealer chuckled. "Yes, indeed. Exactly like spies. And I suppose you would like to know why."
"I suppose I would, and make it fast. I hear there are people after your head."
"Some of my, er, business rivals, yes." Niktov lost any trace of his good humor. "You're right. We shall make this brief. Nowhere is safe for me in Moscow."
"I thought you were the boss."
"I am, truly, but there is dissension in the ranks, if I may say so. It will only take some straightening out. Negotiations are in progress. And at this moment these rivals I speak of should be under the impression that I am at home in bed, alone and asleep and, might I add, under very efficient personal protection."
"Then let's hear what you have to say. You know why I'm here."
Niktov nodded. "Strakhov."
"The last time I was in town, you and the Major General were friends."
"Associates," Niktov corrected.
"The Major General is a collector of sorts, as you know."
"What happened?"
Niktov's face darkened. "I was cheated."
"By Strakhov?"
"None other. To the tune of several hundred thousand rubles... well, more than I could afford, though even that is beside the point. The sordid details need not concern us. Suffice it to say I can abide most anything in my fellow man..." Niktov bowed gallantly in the direction of Zara and Katrina "...and woman, but chicanery... never!"
"This misunderstanding with Strakhov. Does it have anything to do with your black market troubles?"
"Possibly. That would hardly surprise me. Misunderstanding, indeed. The man is a liar and a scoundrel."
Bolan thought of April Rose and of a whole lot of human suffering he had seen since undertaking his unsanctioned activities against the KGB. He thought of atrocities that happened for no other reason than that they helped line the pockets of scum like Greb Strakhov.
"He's a lot worse than that," Bolan told the old man seated on the bench. "What have you got for me?"
Niktov answered with a snap of his fingers. The bodyguard to the art dealer's left stepped across to the Rolls, opened the back door, reached inside and withdrew a slim black attaché case from the car. He brought back the case, handing it to Niktov.
"You perhaps wonder why I risk sitting outside of my comfortable car," Niktov said to Bolan as he took the attaché case from his bodyguard.
"It had crossed my mind."
Bolan felt uneasy. He glanced around them into darkness that could conceal anything.
"I am dying, as are we all," Niktov said. "I am closer to death than most. Months. Weeks. A cancer grows within me. I may be dead before then, if my enemies have their way. They are not content to let nature take its course, it would seem. I rarely go out anymore." He looked skyward. "It will snow. Good. I had feared I would die without seeing snow again."
Bolan nodded at the attaché case. "Is that for me?"
"It is." The Russian extended the case to Bolan. "Here, take it. It is a new life for you, or more likely, I fear, it is your death..."
Moscow Massacre Page 6