No one wanted to cross a man from the Sixteenth Directorate.
He slipped the Volvo into gear and rolled forward into the base, taking in as much as possible during the drive up the four-hundred-meter incline to a nearly filled parking lot.
The high chain link fence, topped with barbed wire, ran the full unbroken perimeter of the base. He spotted walking three-men patrols all the way around.
A helicopter landing pad, alongside the parking lot, hosted three Mi-24 Hinds, the same type of gunship that had closed in on Bolan and Katrina Mozzhechkov's group when Bolan had first arrived in the Moscow vicinity. He knew these gunships were obviously on standby for defensive purposes in case of an attack.
"Sergei Fedorin," attaché case in hand, and Tanya Yesilov, stylish in her tan belted raincoat, left the Volvo and walked to the seven-story structure adjacent to the parking lot on the far side, a modern building of aluminum and glass shaped like a three-pointed star.
The objective.
Headshed of the State Committee for Security.
Not Dzerzhinsky Square, but right here for the one day of the month when the Group Nord meeting was held with the top echelon of every KGB operational division present and accounted for.
The First Chief Directorate Building.
The high command.
Bolan felt every fiber of his being attuned to the vibrations and dangers of this place.
He held the front double glass door open for Tanya and followed her into the marble foyer. They again had to pause to show their ids to sentries standing just inside the main entrance. And again the sentries carefully checked Tanya against the photo of her pass. And again the sentries treated "Sergei Fedorin" with all the respect and efficiency of men coming into contact with a carrier of some fatal disease.
Tanya and "the man from the Sixteenth Directorate" strode on past the newsstand and cafeteria to a bank of elevators. Bolan noticed that he drew scant attention except from those sentries who knew who he was, or thought they did.
The lobby of the headquarters building buzzed with human activity, mostly men in uniform, their attention on the svelte figure of the blonde in the trench coat that clung to healthy long legs and a classy chassis as she and Bolan strode to the elevators.
This was the way Bolan wanted it.
She pressed the button, and in the moment it took for the car to arrive he did a careful pan around the lobby without pretending to do so, spotting and placing armed men in uniform for future reference.
The elevator doors whispered open, and he and Tanya stepped inside. They had the car to themselves. She again pushed the button they wanted to the third floor, and the elevator started up.
They glanced at each other. She started to speak, but Bolan shook his head. It was barely perceptible, but she saw it and understood what he was telling her. No conversation. There could be, probably were, microphones and cameras every couple of feet in a place like this, and they would not miss the elevators.
She acknowledged with a flicker of her lovely green eyes, and they looked straight ahead during the brief time before the doors hissed open again.
They stepped out into a marble corridor where a cluster of some thirty men stood amid an atmosphere of more or less friendly idle chatter and drifting clouds of cigarette smoke; the heads of various KGB operational divisions engaging in conversation with one another were easy to spot from the equal number of tight-lipped, slit-eyed bodyguards who hovered near their respective bosses.
One man saw Bolan and Tanya emerge from the elevator and came toward them, a stout fellow of about five foot eight, a cheery smile pasted across his cherubic face.
"Ah, Tanya, my dear, how nice to see you. You look ravishing as ever. And who is your friend?" he inquired with a good-natured, though professional, appraisal of Bolan.
Bolan recognized him.
Viktor Frolov, in charge of Directorate S, the unit that illegally infiltrates disguised KGB officers into other nations.
"My name is of no consequence," Bolan bluntly snarled at one of the most powerful men in the KGB. He showed Frolov his Sixteenth Directorate id. "Why are you men not in the conference room?"
Frolov turned several shades paler when he realized who he was addressing. "Why, we were... we are waiting for Major General Strakhov. He seems to be a few minutes late."
Bolan caught the glance Tanya threw him.
A warning.
"I want everyone in the conference room," the man disguised as Sergei Fedorin ordered. "Immediately."
"The bodyguards?" Frolov asked.
Bolan shook his head. "In the hallway. Quickly now. I want everyone in place when Strakhov arrives."
Frolov nodded uneasily and turned to rejoin the others.
Bolan and Tanya stood back as the party in the hallway began breaking up, Frolov whispering Bolan's instructions to the others.
Word got around fast. The bosses of the largest terror machine in history began docilely filing into the conference room at Bolan's command, though they and their bodyguards studied him with long, speculative looks that he returned with steely directness.
He recognized this bunch, to a man.
Savages all.
These were the ones who pulled the strings. The ones who caused the suffering in Afghanistan, in Poland, throughout the Third World, and even in their own homeland, stifling freedoms and growing fat on loot extracted from the decent of the world who had too much decency to fight back.
These were the cannibals, those of the species driven by the dark side of human nature, who feasted and grew obscenely from human suffering and grief.
The scum at the top and, yeah, Bolan had them mentally mug-filed to a man.
He spotted Albert Kulagin, slim and dapper in a French-cut suit. Boss of the Twelfth Department of senior officers who, having proven themselves abroad, had been given carte blanche to chase and capture any quarry anywhere in the world.
Oleg Liyepa, as swarthy and simian-looking as the photos Bolan had seen of him. Chief of the Fifth Directorate, the dirtiest part of the KGB; the crud entrusted with prosecuting religious opposition and silencing all elements of dissidence.
Aleksei Obinin, head of the Technical Operations Directorate, which developed new poisons, weapons and the like; the directorate responsible, in fact, for developing the attaché case acquired by Bolan from Niktov.
Obinin gave no indication that he recognized anything familiar about "Sergei Fedorin's" attaché case, if he saw it at all and, after all, one of its primary benefits was that the case carried by Agent "Fedorin" looked no different from any other; there were at least a dozen black attaché cases in the crowded hallway.
Last but not least, among the fifteen men filing into the conference room, Bolan identified middle-aged Yevgenni Trekhlebov, pleasant-looking in a family-man sort of way; the guy responsible for overseeing Active Measures, which is propaganda, disinformation, sabotage, terrorism and murder committed for psychological effect.
Trekhlebov worked closely with any number of international terrorist groups, bombings, arson and killings by terrorists essential in buttressing Active Measures campaigns by generating social unrest, creating the illusion, the impression, that a society may be degenerating into chaos.
These men and the eleven with them were the ones Bolan had come to take out, counting on the Sixteenth Directorate ruse to pull him through. But that was not all he had counted on, and he noticed an essential element missing from the picture.
The bodyguards fell back along the walls of the hallway amid a murmuring of idle conversation, only a modicum of their attention directed at "Fedorin," who held slightly back from the others with Tanya.
Because the KGB is organized in a rigid, vertical chain of command, cronyism is widespread, particularly so at this level of the hierarchy. The KGB bosses continued chatting socially as they filed into the conference room, only a bit more subdued than before.
Bolan said to Tanya, speaking low enough so no one else could hear, "Pet
rovsky's not here."
"He should be. Perhaps he's coming with Strakhov."
"Yeah, perhaps. All right, let's join the party."
They crossed the hallway, moving past the bodyguards who eyed them without expression. Inside the conference room, fifteen bosses of the KGB were in the process of taking their seats at a long, polished oak conference table. A sideboard against one wall boasted carafes of water and cups.
Bolan knew there would be a bottle or three of vodka out of sight within easy reach in the cupboard below. It has been said that vodka is the water of Soviet life. The USSR has an extremely high rate of alcoholism, and this was nowhere as evident as in the ranks of these men, though they would stay clear of the bottle with a representative of the Sixteenth Directorate in their midst.
He closed the door behind them, spotting another door in the opposite wall of the long, airy room.
Tanya legged it directly over to a small separate desk against the wall, away from where the men sat at the conference table. She sat at the desk, uncovering a keyboard machine intended for keeping minutes of the meeting.
Bolan took a chair midway down the length of table facing the doorway at the nearest end of the room toward him. He could sense the tension increasing among those seated around the table, their conversation with one another decreasing to nothing, their attention turning to him.
He placed his attaché case on its side on the table before him.
Someone coughed nervously.
Viktor Frolov cleared his throat at one end of the table, opposite the vacant chair at the other end. "I, er, must apologize again, Agent Fedorin, for the major general's tardiness. I have, however, advised the rest of those of us present as to your identity."
"A most irregular procedure," Oleg Liyepa grumbled across the table from Bolan. "I should think those of us in the Group would have been advised of any sort of investigation directed our way by the Sixteenth Directorate."
Bolan eyed the guy coldly. "It is not your place to question. Comrade Liyepa, nor yours," he added to Frolov, "to apologize or patronize. I will tell you why I am here..."
He had no intention of starting this show until Strakhov put in an appearance. His role camouflage as a Sixteenth Directorate hit man had gotten him this far. He would have to ad lib now to maintain the illusion for just a few minutes more, he hoped.
He was interrupted as the door across from the hallway door, the one in the wall opposite near Bolan, opened. Greb Strakhov stepped in through that doorway from what looked like a narrow passageway of steps leading upward. Strakhov entered the room and closed the door after him. He turned to survey those seated around the table, "Sergei Fedorin" included.
Bolan felt a quickening of his pulse.
Frolov again cleared his throat with some visible discomfort. "Uh, Major General, this is Sergei Fedorin of the Sixteenth Directorate."
Bolan took the initiative before Strakhov could speak. "I understood Major Petrovsky would be present. Where is he?"
Strakhov remained where he stood near the door, eyeing "Fedorin" with something Bolan read as almost amusement where there should have been apprehension even from a man as high up in the organization as this boss of bosses.
"Petrovsky is dead, as you soon will be," Strakhov snarled at "Fedorin." "Uh-uh, keep your hands where we can see them... Mack Bolan. Gentlemen."
And the game suddenly went all to hell.
Every man seated at that table had positioned himself in such a way as to fast-draw a concealed weapon at this obviously prearranged signal. In the blink of an eye, every one of the KGB bosses had a pistol in his hand. And fifteen gun barrels were aimed at Bolan before he could respond.
He obeyed Strakhov's command, keeping his hands on the attaché case on the table before him, one hand on either side. Bolan held eye contact with the man he had come so far to kill, but his peripheral vision panned the smug, amused faces of the men around the table and the guns trained on him.
He said to Strakhov in an almost conversational tone, "The whole charade, all the way back to me being brought in by Brognola, it was all a trap."
The KGB boss bowed slightly from the waist. "My sole regret, my dear Bolan, is that you wear that silly life mask, that I must see you die owning the features of another."
"Care to tell me how you worked it, or is that why I'm still breathing?"
A sneer crinkled the Russian's fleshy lips. "You retain your spirit right to the moment of your death. That is good. I admire you, Bolan. Under different circumstances, we could have been friends."
"Don't flatter yourself. I don't run with cannibals."
Strakhov lost the sneer. "I see. Very well, then, perhaps I have something that will shock you into losing your persistent arrogance."
Bolan remained looking straight ahead, but he could sense Tanya's presence behind him. His nostrils caught the faintest hint of perfume.
"I doubt it," he told Strakhov. Then, without turning, "Tanya, you lying, traitorous bitch."
The cool, round snout of the lady's Walther PPK touched lightly against the nape of his neck. "I'm sorry, lover," she told him in a low voice.
"Now you're the one flattering yourself. Why, Tanya? That's all I really want to know. Why did you change sides for real?"
She laughed, a mocking, soft tinkle of sound. "Why, they pay more, darling, of course. What other reason could there be?"
"None, I guess, for someone like you," he grated, almost spitting the words.
She chuckled, and the pistol retained its cool kiss against his flesh. "I must say, my big bad Executioner, you have hardly been at your best, either. I never thought I would get the drop on you this easily."
"Maybe it's just my way of making sure," he told her. Then he turned to Strakhov. "When Dragon Lady here sold out and told you about Petrovsky, you saw how you could nail two birds with one stone — the spy the CIA had planted next to you, and me."
"Two birds with one stone," Strakhov echoed with a mildly amused chuckle that did not sound pleasant at all. "You Americans have such a quaint way with your rather plain language. Yes, my dear enemy, that is exactly what I set out to do."
Bolan picked it up from there. "Coming from Tanya, the very agent they had planted to monitor Petrovsky, was enough to sell the Company, Brognola and the President."
Strakhov nodded, a wary gleam in his eye, tightening and loosening his hands into fists at his sides. "We lost you in Helsinki. Picked you up again when you arrived in Moscow, thanks to Agent Yesilov. It was Niktov who supplied you with your Sixteenth Directorate cover?"
"It's nice to know Niktov wasn't in on it," Bolan grunted. "Hiked him."
"Dear no," Strakhov mused. "Citizen Niktov is one of the ones we were after, the swine, and all of the other cells of the dissident underground that assisted in your infiltration. They have all been targeted, thanks to you.
"The Mozzhechkov woman and her friends, the Gypsy scum who served Zara and Niktov... We have monitored you as much as possible. All over Moscow at this moment, and at several points between here and Helsinki, agents I have in place will close in when they are signaled that you are dead and it is over here."
"The flare gun," Bolan thought aloud.
Strakhov started visibly when he heard that.
"You know too much to live, Mack Bolan. This moment has been a long time in coming." Strakhov spat the words at Bolan. "You will never know the hours I have spent contemplating the sweetness of your death."
"I think maybe I would," Bolan growled, still as a statue before all the pistols pointing at him across the table. And he could feel the one the woman held against his neck. "I've spent the same amount of time waiting for this."
Strakhov considered that for an instant, Bolan could see. Then the cannibal chief, this evilest of the evil, April's killer, drew himself erect.
"Enough. The time has come to end it. I had anticipated pulling the trigger myself, but under the circumstances I think it would be far more enjoyable to those of us of th
e high council, as well as being a test of Agent Yesilov's complete loyalty, were I to order the lady to blow your brains out. Are you quite agreeable to that, my darling?"
The barrel of the Walther PPK did not budge from the nape of Bolan's neck.
"I am," the blonde replied without inflection.
"Then kill him," Strakhov snarled. "I want to see the Executioner die."
Without saying another word, Tanya Yesilov squeezed the trigger.
15
Bolan's index fingers touched the panel buttons on either side of the attaché case in front of him — buttons not detectable by the naked eyes of those seated around the table. At the same instant he heard the metallic click instead of a gunshot from Tanya's Walther PPK.
Niktov had been killed back in Sokolniki Park before he could tell Bolan about the armament capabilities of the innocent-looking "attaché case," but Bolan knew all about this model of KGB spy equipment anyway. Two similar devices had been confiscated from the bodies of Russian agents from different points around the world, and the findings by CIA lab personnel had been issued to all Top Classified U.S. intelligence agencies, including Stony Man Farm.
Several things happened at once.
The fingering of the trigger mechanism of the "spy tool" fired off seven silenced rounds simultaneously from the front of the "attaché case," 9 mm bullets zapping several KGB bosses across from Bolan.
At the same instant, billowing clouds of poisonous white gas hissed, from concealed nozzles on either side of the attaché case, around the heads of those not struck by the bullets. Death spasms tightened trigger fingers as the poison gas did its rapid, deadly work on Viktor Frolov, Aleksei Obinin and the rest.
As he triggered the firing mechanism of the attaché case, Bolan dived sideways from his chair, still hearing the click of the PPK Tanya had held against his neck.
He hit the carpeted floor of the conference room as bullets fired by men already dead cut through the space he had occupied a millisecond earlier.
He heard those bullets slap into Tanya Yesilov's body before she had time to move or die from the poison gas or figure out how he had managed a miracle.
Moscow Massacre Page 18