Silent Threat. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ spent so much of his own life merely waiting for something to happen, Schribner could be very patient. He did his homework, studying fully the medium he planned to use to execute his plan. Phineas Elmington had shown him the way. When Schribner had pulled the trigger of that pistol, he had known a sense of satisfaction, even of pleasure, that was unlike anything he had previously experienced. He yearned to feel it again, and more, to share it with others. He would use this new and marvelous worldwide Web to spread his message, to gain converts to what he could only describe as a religion. A religion of death. A religion of oblivion. A religion of ultimate pleasure.

      As he studied, and as he began to notice the fanciful names and nicknames used by those who created accounts on the file-sharing sites he visited, Schribner realized that the task before him wasn’t one for a “Helmut Schribner.” No, he would require a new name, one that held within it a hint of the future, one that concealed his past while showing the way ahead. He thought, very briefly, about adopting Phineas Elmington’s name, but that wouldn’t do. Elmington’s time was past, and to appropriate his name seemed almost disrespectful to his legacy.

      Looking through the ledgers, Helmut found it.

      One of the account names in the ledger, one of the pseudonyms—many of them almost gibberish, nonsense words that Elmington had used as placeholders to keep the accounts separate—was “Dumar Eon.” He liked it; “Dumar” sounded vaguely German, while “Eon” held a hint of timelessness. It was, simply put, the name of someone who could lead others, the name of someone who could share the gift, and the giving of that gift, that Phineas Elmington had demonstrated and experienced.

      And so Helmut Schribner became Dumar Eon.

      The name of the organization he would eventually form, in order to give Elmington’s gift and his cause an identity that lent itself to marketing, he took from Elmington’s own words: Iron Thunder.

      In the coming months and then years, Dumar Eon learned he had a natural gift for marketing, an intuitive showmanship. He spread the word of Iron Thunder’s beliefs, which he codified on several anonymous Web sites. Like a virus, word of Iron Thunder grew among those receptive to its message. The appeal of the sect cut across demographics, reaching something primal.

      All the while, Dumar Eon’s fortune grew.

      Through shrewd, patient, long-term investing, Eon managed to multiply his start-up funding tenfold, then a hundredfold, then beyond. It was, therefore, only a matter of time, as he grew more educated in such matters, that Eon thought to create a German investment fund of his own. He located men and women he could trust, people who, even if they were not members of Iron Thunder, were either sympathetic to his cause or so blinded by desire for money that they cared little what he did. These he put in charge of the corporate face and broadening ventures of his new Security Consortium. And he implemented his long-term plan: to use the resources of the Consortium, first to gain control of certain very important industries in Germany, and then to funnel the matériel produced thereby to those international entities who could—however unwittingly—continue to carry the gift of death.

      It had worked so well. The Consortium had grown larger than any one person could manage, and he put the appropriate individuals in place to run it. He had made sure to choose only those who valued secrecy, who safeguarded their identities, as did he. If he chose his most trusted operatives from among the shadows, they would remain within them. Thus they all had something to lose if they were exposed, and all would look to their own interests and preserve the whole.

      Recently he had, as was only expected, become aware of the Interpol investigation. It paid to have the right people in the right places. To preserve Iron Thunder, it was necessary to stop the investigation before it began. And so he had dispatched the appropriate personnel. Eon imagined they were even now bringing peace to the would-be crime fighter Interpol had assigned. With the agent dead, the whole affair could be quietly covered up. A little push here, some thoughtfully used influence there, perhaps a bribe or two. The authorities could be bought, or otherwise contained. An object lesson now and then helped keep them in check. As for his own organization, the killing of a single bureaucratic drone, or even a swarm of them, would draw little attention.

      Over time he had learned that, except for those true believers from among the ranks of Iron Thunder, very few of the people running the Consortium cared what went on, where the money went, what the investment fund’s ultimate goals were, or what actions were taken in pursuit of those goals. They cared only to fill their own pockets. Eon preferred that. It was predictable, and predictable quantities were quantities that could be managed and manipulated for his own purposes. Those purposes were what truly mattered. Those purposes would be poorly understood by certain less…spiritual entities within the Consortium, and thus those entities didn’t need to know what Dumar Eon really wanted.

      In the long term, Dumar Eon sought to burn the world.

      He wished to cleanse it with the fires of pure oblivion. He would, if he could, kill everyone and everything in and on it, everything moving across the face of the earth. Eventually.

      There really was no hurry. As he contemplated the finer things he had acquired and did enjoy, he thought that while the final and most blissful peace of death was undeniable, neither was there any reason to rush toward it.

      There was so much work left to be done.

      4

      Adam Rieck drove the BMW, which Bolan gathered was a rental, bringing it smoothly to the curb a block away from the building that housed Becker’s residence. Bolan got out and turned his back, using the interior of the car to discreetly check his weapons. It was dark and getting quite late, and there were no people on the street that they could see, but it always paid to assume unseen eyes were watching.

      They had endured no small amount of bureaucratic wrangling from the local authorities. Rieck had been forced to phone his contacts at Interpol, which prompted several more calls back and forth before all the red tape was untangled. The police were none too happy to let Bolan and Rieck go, especially armed as they were. Bolan had seen it countless times before. When the lead started flying, those left standing were immediately assumed to be at fault in some way.

      Rieck used his trench coat to shield the bulk of the 12-gauge Remington 870 shotgun he carried. He had begged, borrowed or otherwise obtained the weapon from one of the responding German police units; Bolan didn’t know exactly how he’d managed it and didn’t care. The Uzi and the other recovered weapons had of course been taken as evidence, and Bolan was happy to leave that cleanup to the local authorities.

      He turned to face the entrance to the building, surveying the block and scanning the windows. He saw nothing. The street was unnaturally quiet. A dog barked, somewhere faraway. He watched an empty coffee cup roll in lazy semicircles back and forth, stirred by a strong night breeze, grime from the wet street clinging to paper. He looked left, then right again. Something was wrong. Something subtle…

      “Rieck,” he said, “do you smell that?”

      “Smell what?” The Interpol operative paused and sniffed at the air. Then he caught it. “Smoke,” he said.

      “Move,” Bolan commanded. He drew the Beretta 93-R and hit the front door, shoving the glass-and-metal barrier aside and covering the corridor beyond. Rieck followed. The two men covered each other in turns as they worked their way up the corridor. Bolan followed his nose, more concerned with clearing each space than in reaching Becker’s dwelling.

      They cleared the first floor without incident, but on the second, the smoke became a visible haze. At the stairwell exit to the third floor, they found a body sprawled in the doorway. The man wore СКАЧАТЬ