Extraordinary Rendition. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ already, with tonight’s failure,” she said. “Whoever they are.”

      “It’s a start,” Bolan said. “And it doesn’t matter much who sent the welcoming committee. As I see it, there are only two or three real possibilities.”

      “And they are…?”

      “Sokolov himself, for starters,” Bolan answered, ticking off the options on his fingers. “Second, someone from the Mafiya who’s working with him. Third, somebody in authority.”

      “Those men were not militia or FSB,” Pilkin said.

      “But maybe working under contract.”

      “Yes,” she said reluctantly. “It’s possible.”

      “We’ll find out more when I start rattling cages,” Bolan told her. “Are you up for it?”

      “You’re asking me?”

      “Seems only fair. If you don’t want to ride the tiger, now’s the time to bail.”

      “I have a job to do,” she said. “My orders don’t include surrender.”

      “Right, then,” Bolan said. “Our first stop needs to be an all-night hardware store.”

      MAKSIM CHALIAPIN HATED late-night phone calls. None had ever brought him good news, and they typically required him to take action that posed some risk to his standing and career, if not his life.

      Such risk and aggravation came with service to the FSB, in which Chaliapin held the rank of First Assistant to the Director of the Economic Security Service. Chaliapin’s duties included supervising campaigns against organized crime of all kinds within Moscow Oblast—the city proper and its surrounding federal district—as well as liaison with Interpol and other foreign law enforcement or security agencies.

      As Chaliapin left his bed and lumbered toward the shrilling telephone, he knew that he was lucky to have any job in government, much less a post with so much personal authority. At fifty-eight, he was a thirty-four-year veteran of what passed in Russia for a civil service. Chaliapin had joined the KGB as a fledgling strong-arm man in 1976 and worked his way up through the ranks to major with a combination of fancy footwork and apparent slavish obedience to his superiors of the moment. When President Boris Yeltsin dissolved the KGB in August 1991, Chaliapin had pulled every string within reach to secure a post with the new Federal Counterintelligence Service, or FSK, which, in turn, was magically transformed into the FSB in April 1995.

      He was, if nothing else, a survivor.

      Lifting the telephone receiver as if it weighed fifty pounds, Chaliapin spoke into the night.

      “Hello?”

      “It’s me.”

      Of course it was. Chaliapin grimaced at the sound of Gennady Sokolov’s voice. Double-edged steel sheathed in moldy velvet.

      “Good evening,” he said, careful not to use names. “How may I help you?”

      “I assume you’ve heard about the difficulty at the airport?”

      “No.” Lying was second nature to a lifelong member of the KGB.

      “Nothing?”

      “Is this about—?”

      “It is.”

      “And what went wrong, exactly?”

      “You were not informed?”

      “I’ve told you—”

      “Then, by all means let me break the news. Our package went astray tonight. Four of my men attempted to retrieve it.”

      “And…?”

      “You’ll get an invitation to their funerals.”

      “All four?”

      Now Chaliapin was surprised. He had supplied a name to Sokolov, a flight number, and then had washed his hands of it. He’d wanted to know nothing more about the problem unless Sokolov discovered something that affected Chaliapin personally. He had regarded that as an unlikely circumstance.

      But now…

      “All four,” Sokolov said, confirming it.

      That meant more paperwork for Chaliapin, poring over field reports of four deaths presumed to be Mafiya-bound in some way. It would be busywork, at best.

      Chaliapin could play stupid with the best of them.

      But he was curious. “How did this happen?” he inquired.

      “Another person claimed the package,” Sokolov replied. “Ran off with it, in fact. My men…protested. They were unsuccessful in asserting ownership.”

      “Apparently. This other person—”

      “Was a woman.”

      “That is most unusual,” he granted.

      “It’s unheard of,” Sokolov corrected him. “Unless she was official.”

      “What? You can’t mean—”

      “Do you not have female agents?” Sokolov demanded. “Certainly. But—”

      “And it’s possible that some other department might be operating at cross-purposes to yours?”

      It was entirely possible. Within the FSB, he constantly competed with the Military Counterintelligence Directorate and the Service for Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight against Terrorism. Beyond that lay competing agencies—the Federal Protective Service and the militia. Both employed women as agents.

      “I will look into it,” Chaliapin said.

      “I know you will, Maksim. And find the bitch that I need to kill.”

      THE “HARDWARE STORE” that Bolan needed didn’t carry saws, hammers or nails. It wouldn’t keep the hours of a normal Moscow shop, and definitely wouldn’t advertise in print, or through the broadcast media. Its reputation—its existence—would be carried on the whisper stream that underlaid so-called police society in every nation of the world.

      The hardware store he sought carried the tools of death.

      “In Moscow,” Pilkin informed him, “there are several outlets for the merchandise you seek.”

      “There always are,” Bolan replied. “Take me to one that offers quality as well as quantity. I don’t want rusty junk from Chechnya, much less Afghanistan.”

      “Perhaps Iraq would suit you better?” she replied.

      “Nothing immediately traceable,” he added, carefully ignoring her remark.

      “Such dealers are…how do you say it in America? Connected? They won’t hesitate СКАЧАТЬ