Assassin's Code

by Don Pendleton

  “No doubt,” Bolan agreed.

  Shushan registered a vague curiosity. “So why are you here?”

  “To offer you a choice.”

  The woman rolled her single eye. “You are boring me again. As I have said, you cannot bribe me, and you cannot threaten me.”

  “I didn’t come here to threaten you or to bribe you. I’m here to make you an offer.”

  Shushan blew a stray lock of hair off her brow. “Then at the risk of further boredom, what exactly are you offering me?”

  “Do you want to be operational again or not?” Bolan was pleased by the stunned silence that met the offer. “I know you’re not afraid of incarceration or death. We both also know I’m not going to carve the cooperation I need out of you. I need more than just information. I need your willing participation in the mission. Are you in or out?”

  Wheels turned behind Shushan’s single eye. She ran her tongue across her teeth. “And what exactly is it you wish of me again?”

  “I’m going to find out whatever is going on, and stop it. To do that I need to infiltrate the group perpetrating it. You’re one of my keys to getting in.”

  “So, you are going to ostensibly break me out of U.S. custody again, posing as ninjas, and trade me back as a gift?”

  “I’m not trading anything. You’re joining my team, and you’re going to do everything in your power to help me get in, maintain my cover, help me discover exactly what is going on, and you’re going to help me stop it. If I’m killed, I expect you to continue the mission to the end.”

  Shushan smiled. Despite the massive bruising on her face, the eye-patch and the fact that she was criminally insane, she was an excruciatingly beautiful woman. “Do I get a gun?”

  Keller scowled. “We all know you can get anything you want as soon as you’re back in the bosom of your assassin buddies. You’re thinking about escaping.”

  Shushan gave Keller an icy look. Bolan got the impression that the beautiful Israeli assassin didn’t care much for other women. “She’s thinking about her initial return, and the fact that she might be perceived as damaged goods. When we go in, we could be walking into another kill zone just like we did in Kolkata.” Bolan shrugged. “And, yeah, she’s thinking about escaping.”

  “And I want to help you because…?”

  Bolan glanced around the room. CIA stations didn’t have prison cells, but due to the nature of the business most CIA stations had a room or two that a person of interest would have a very hard time getting out of. “This is about as nice as it’s going to get. You’re best-case scenario is that I give you over to Agent Keller.”

  Keller gave Shushan a sunny smile.

  Bolan continued. “She’ll turn you over to the Navy. You’ll be tried as a terrorist by a naval military tribunal or in the Federal courts. You’ll very likely spend the rest of your life in jail, or leave it as a very old woman. Personally, I suspect your life behind bars will be short. Once you’re incarcerated, I think we both know there are people out there who will move heaven and earth to see you killed.”

  Shushan smirked. “And that is the best-case scenario if I do not cooperate?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what would be the worst?” she asked.

  “I wash my hands of you and turn you over to the Mossad.”

  That shut Shushan up for a few seconds. She cocked her head and gave Bolan a very curious look. “You are telling me, that if I assist you, we succeed, and I survive, you will give me my freedom?”

  “Well, those are three pretty big ifs,” Bolan conceded. “But yeah, a reasonable facsimile of freedom.”

  Keller just barely restrained herself from interjecting.

  The assassin lifted her chin in challenge. “And just what does a reasonable facsimile of freedom mean?”

  “I’ll be watching you,” Bolan said. “You seem to enjoy two things in life—sleeping with men, and then killing them. If you get out of this alive, I suggest you stick with the former and keep the latter a happy memory.”

  “And if I should fall back upon my wicked, black-widow ways?”

  “I’ll hunt you down and kill you. If by some chance I take you alive, you tell the director I said hi when you get to the detention center outside Tel Aviv. The offer is simple. You’re going into the field one more time. The man running the mission is me, and when it’s over, you’re retired. I’ll use my influence to protect you from Israeli Intelligence. Any other enemies you’ve made will be your problem.”

  Shushan considered this for a few heartbeats. “I will require a small, compact .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol.”

  The ghost of a smile passed across Bolan’s face. Shushan had been trained in the Israeli old school methods.

  “It does not have to be a Beretta 70 or 71,” she continued, “but it must be accurate out to twenty-five meters. It must be reliable, and loaded with the highest velocity ammunition available. If possible, it must be threaded for a silencer and be reliable with subsonic ammunition, as well.”

  Bolan nodded. “Done.”

  Keller made a disgusted noise.

  Shushan ignored the NCIS agent and kept her eye on Bolan. “I want two of them. With spare magazines, and I want a knife.”

  “Done. Anything else you require besides clothes?”

  “That will be sufficient.” The assassin’s eye roved over Bolan’s frame in open speculation. “For the moment.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Bolan whipped the sword overhead in a high guard. He stood in the courtyard stripped to the waist. Kengo had given him a sword and said he didn’t expect the soldier to have to use it, but there might be situations where he would need to wear it. Bolan put the sword through its paces. Unless he needed rest, downtime was training time. He knew he was no master of the sword, but the Executioner took the blade through one of the kenjutsu katas he knew. It was extremely simple. He raised the sword overhead, took three steps forward and cut, he took one step back and defended. It contained only three cuts, high, middle, center and one thrust. The retreat contained three defenses, high, low and center. These were the absolute playground basics of Japanese swordsmanship. Sweat pinpricked Bolan’s chest and back as he hit one hundred repetitions for each technique and started again.

  He should have been sweating buckets.

  Kengo’s pore-tightening technique left Bolan unable to sweat normally, and he felt himself starting to overheat. He doubted he could reach five hundred repetitions of the kata without suffering heat exhaustion. It was something he would have to keep in mind while he operated in Central Asia in high summer.

  Bolan knew he held a true ninja sword. It bore a slightly longer blade than a normal wakizashi short-sword blade mounted on a slightly longer than normal katana longsword hilt. The short blade was carried in a long scabbard. In ancient days it would give a ninja a heartbeat-quicker draw than a samurai carrying a katana of regular length and weight. The combination of a long hilt and a short blade gave the weapon a great deal of leverage, and optimized it for close-quarters combat. Bolan knew the kata he was running wasn’t quite correct for the blade he wielded, but he wanted to get a feel for the weapon. He raised the blade overhead in the high-guard once more.

  It felt good.

  Bolan cut, recovered and stopped as he became aware of Na’ama Shushan behind him. He lowered the blade and turned. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.”

  Shushan shook her head as she took in Bolan’s appearance. He was getting that a lot. “How did you detect me?”

  “Smelled you,” Bolan said.

  “Oh.”

  “It’s a nice smell.”

  “Thank you.” Shushan’s eye flicked to the gleaming curve of steel in Bolan’s hands. “You are very skilled.”

  “It’s basic kata number one.”

  “You can never practice your basics enough,” Shushan stated.

  Bolan sheathed the blade and laid it on the wrought-iron patio table. “True that. How ar
e your weapons? Up to spec?”

  Shushan had gotten her guns. One call to John Kissinger had produced a pair of German HK-4 pistols personally tuned and accessorized by the master smith himself. They’d been put on a courier jet to Islamabad within twenty-four hours. “I prefer single-action automatic to double, but I could not have asked for more beautiful weapons. The attention that has been paid to them would be obvious to an amateur. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Bolan remembered Shushan’s other request and reached into his pocket. “Here.” He handed her his personal Mikov switchblade. “I want this back.”

  The soldier couldn’t tell what was moving behind the assassin’s remaining violet eye, but her lips smiled as she took the knife. “Thank you. I will give it back.”

  Bolan gave it fifty-fifty that she tried to return it to him in the back, thirteen or fourteen times.

  She gave Bolan another curious look. “I have never met a man like you.”

  Na’ama Shushan was a black widow. She slept with men and killed them. Telling a man what he wanted to hear was her first step in setting him up for the big, fat kill. Then again she was a murderer and a sociopath. She might very well fall under the rule that if you wanted her respect you had to beat it out of her. Bolan had defeated her in hand-to-hand combat, captured her twice and blown out her left eye with rubber buckshot. He didn’t suffer from the sin of pride, but neither did he put any stock in false humility.

  There just weren’t a whole lot of human beings walking the Earth with his résumé.

  “Thanks. How are you feeling?”

  Shushan raised one graceful hand to her eye-patch. One violet orb grew reproachful. “It still hurts. I get headaches.”

  “That’s to be expected. The optic nerve is one of the most sensitive, and it has the shortest route to the brain.” Shushan scowled.

  “It could be worse.”

  The assassin quirked one corner of her mouth. “What, you could have blown out both my eyes?”

  “My other option was lead.”

  Shushan’s gaze ran up and down Bolan again. “I don’t normally go for Asian guys.” Bolan laughed.

  Shushan joined him. He thought her laugh was beautiful. It was the kind of laugh a man might do anything to hear. “We should go upstairs.”

  “That’s a really bad idea.”

  “I want you to make love to me,” the woman said.

  “I’ve read the obituaries of men who’ve made love to you.”

  Shushan walked up to Bolan and lifted her chin a few inches from his face. Kengo’s face-changing techniques had done nothing to Bolan’s nose. He did smell Na’ama Shushan, and she smelled good. She was a master assassin, and a master seductress. He could feel himself responding and was glad that Kengo’s work had left his face an unresponsive mask.

  Shushan whispered, her lips inches from Bolan’s. “Their leader is a giant named Daei. The strangler I met was only known as V. You told me you broke him, but the V. that I met would never break simply by severing his hand. The man I met would willingly die for his cause. It would take horrific torture to make him talk. I saw the sketch your CIA artist made of V. It is identical to the man I met. He has a double.”

  “I know. I killed him.”

  Shushan ran her finger down Bolan’s chest. “You and I should go upstairs.”

  “No.”

  Shushan gave Bolan an insane grin. “When we insert, I am going to tell the giant and the strangler I am sleeping with you. I am going to tell them that you have betrayed your ninja training because you are obsessed with me. They will believe this because they have files on some of the men I have broken. I will tell them you are half-caste, and that while you are a brutal, dangerous fixer for them, your mixed heritage has nevertheless left you as something of an outcast. You are bitter about this. I am going to tell them I am pumping you for information, but you are ninja, and I must be very subtle. It will be in your interest of your cover to comply. They will think this will give them leverage over you. They may well try to actively recruit you and bring you deeper into the mission if they think I can sexually control you.”

  “And if I say no?” Bolan asked.

  “If you refuse now, the mission is over. Turn me over to Agent Keller.” Shushan leaned in even closer. “If you refuse midmission, I will betray the mission, you and Kengo.”

  “I’m going to have to get back to you on that one.”

  Shushan’s assassin-seductress smile stayed painted on her face. “Don’t wait too long.”

  Floatel, Kolkata Millennium Plaza

  V. REGARDED THE NINJAS with visible trepidation. His remaining hand shook as he drank his iced chai. The Thuggee had changed into an expensive taupe business suit. His arm lay in a sling like a tennis injury. Bolan himself would have included a lump for the hand, but it would take a sharp eye to detect anything amiss. It was V.’s demeanor that drew question. A lovely breeze blew off the Hooghly River. V.’s brow sweated as much as his chilled glass. Bolan and Kengo ignored their mutilated, strangler host and drank lagers and enjoyed the view. The Floatel was literally what it sounded like, India’s only floating hotel. Permanently docked in Millennium Plaza, it offered spectacular views of the river and the city. The promotional literature described it as having a vacation on the Thames or the Seine. Bolan considered it more spectacular.

  He idly wondered who was debriefing Shushan and whether they would leave the charming, open-air bar alive.

  He and Kengo had allowed themselves to be disarmed out on the plaza. A single mutual slide of the eyes upon boarding the Floatel had them agree on diving over the side if things went south. The strangler, the ninja and the warrior waited while fates were decided in a stateroom below. V. spoke quietly over the sound of Bollywood dance music coming from the stereo inside and the hoot and call of river traffic on the Hooghly. “It is quite remarkable that you were able to wrest the woman from U.S. custody not once, but twice. May I ask how such a thing was accomplished?”

  Kengo deigned to look at the little killer. “The same way you will strangle in the future. With great difficulty.”

  V.’s eyes widened in shock. His hand flew reflexively to his stump.

  Bolan took up the good cop mantle. “Nevertheless, you came within a heartbeat of being the first man in history to ever strangle a ninja. Your technique was breathtaking. It is regretful to have damaged an artisan like yourself, V.-san.”

  Kengo got up and walked over to the bar with a scowl. Bolan gazed back out over the Hooghly. “One of your compatriots took that honor. My clansman would have died beneath the rumal had I not aided him. There is some shame in this.”

  V. gulped chai. “You are kind.”

  “May I ask you an honest question?” Bolan said.

  “Of course.”

  He looked pointedly at V.’s maimed appendage. “Is this an insult that can be forgiven?”

  V. stared at his stump. “I was trained not to think in such a fashion, yet…” V. shook. “I yearn to cast the rumal one last time upon him.” He gave Bolan a shy smile. “Hopefully when you are not around.”

  A powerful-looking Sikh in turban, tunic and trousers moved directly to the table. He pressed ham-size hands together in respect at V. “Greetings, Holy One.”

  V. couldn’t return the gesture, but he brought one hand edge-on to his chest and nodded.

  The Sikh gave Bolan a bow. “Greetings, Mas-san.”

  Traditionally, Thuggees were Hindu, but historically there were anecdotes of both Muslims and Sikhs having been indoctrinated into the ranks. Bolan nodded back. “Greetings, Singh-san.”

  Every male Sikh’s last name was Singh, which meant “Lion.”

  Singh bowed once more. “Singh is all the honorific I require, honored guest. Will you and Kengo-san accompany me?”

  Kengo watched from the bar. Bolan rose, and the two men fell in behind Singh, followed by V. V. might have been missing a hand, but Bolan still didn’t like having the little strangler behind hi
m. They walked down the plushly appointed hallway to a conference room. Bolan was struck again by the venue. The hotel had only one entrance and that was the docking bridge. If the bad guys were willing to shoot up the Floatel, it would be one hell of a shooting gallery.

  Two Indian men who looked like private security stood outside the door. They nodded to Singh and opened the door. Bolan and Kengo followed. One guard came in and the other stayed outside. It was a typical business conference room. A long teak table dominated the room. A vast plasma screen for audio-visual presentations hung on the far wall. A bowl of fresh fruit and flowers formed a bright centerpiece. Bolan and Kengo’s gear bags and suitcases were in the corner. Na’ama Shushan sat at the right-hand side of the table, and next to her sat a man Bolan didn’t recognize. Like a lot of killers, at first glance he didn’t look like much. Average height, build and features. To Bolan’s eye he looked Persian, but he had very little about him that would stand out anywhere from Egypt to India. The man gave Bolan a very long look, but then again the soldier knew he was pretty striking-looking at the moment. He knew his instincts were right when the man spoke with the accent of man whose first language was Farsi.

  “Please, be welcome. Be seated.” He gestured at a sideboard. “Would you care for bottled water? Juice?”

  Bolan and Kengo spoke in unison. “Beer.”

  Bolan and Kengo sat, with V. taking a seat next to the big American. The guard went to fetch beer.

  “Kengo-san, Mas-san, the incident in New Town was most regrettable.”

  “Regrettable,” Bolan responded, “but not absolutely unforgivable, given the circumstances.”

  The guard reappeared with an ice bucket containing a six-pack of beer. The Persian waited while Bolan and Kengo opened their beverages and then opened a bottle of water. “Cheers.”