Critical Intelligence. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ supposed to ask what you want, I know,” Milosevic said in English. “But I don’t like playing twenty questions.”

      “Twenty-two pounds,” Klegg supplied for him.

      “Twenty-two pounds?”

      “Twenty-two pounds,” Klegg confirmed.

      “For what?”

      “Call it earnest money, for a conversation.”

      “Which conversation?”

      “The one we’re about to have.”

      “Why would you bring me twenty-two pounds to have a conversation? This conversation—” Milosevic leaned forward “—which is starting to become ludicrous.”

      Twenty-two pounds was the exact weight of one million dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills.

      Beside Klegg, Svetlana had taken a fat, sticky bud and coated it liberally with powdered cocaine and then thumbed it into the bowl of the vodka-filled bong. The giggling mad man with the nose diamond provided a pocket lighter that seemed closer to a butane torch, and the coven huddled around the implement.

      “There’s nothing ludicrous here,” Klegg assured him, not without a sense of irony. “I’m giving you that money to listen to my proposal. To consider it seriously. If you say no to what I’m suggesting, fine—you take the money and we part on good terms. But I’m not here to talk real estate or banking or oil futures out of Chechnya.”

      Milosevic snapped his fingers and settled back in his lounge chair. The music in the club was deafening but the ballistic plastic surrounding the deck landing muted the sound to a tolerable level.

      A muscle-heavy thug with a crew cut and fifty-five-inch chest bent down and picked up Klegg’s briefcase. Beside him Svetlana coughed and a cloud of cocaine-laced marijuana smoke rolled out like smog from a chimney. Immediately, Klegg felt light-headed and he instantly wondered if that wasn’t part of Milosevic’s plan.

      “Talk,” the ex-KGB operative said. “You have purchased five minutes in which to interest me.” He lit a cigar. “Frankly, I don’t expect you to succeed.”

      “I came here on certain assumptions.”

      “Dangerous.”

      “It can be,” Klegg conceded. “But risk preempts reward. For example…six plus one equals seven.”

      The Russian made a face. If he was surprised he didn’t show it. “Just as five plus two equals seven,” he replied.

      “Even my assumptions are grounded in certain…continuities,” Klegg smiled.

      Milosevic waved his free hand in a “come on” gesture. Svetlana passed the bong to the girl in the red couture dress.

      “The first assumption,” Klegg continued, “is that you retained your contacts from your time in a KGB station house in eastern Africa. That you could, if properly motivated, reach out and reactivate stringers, cells and networks across the region.”

      “You must have these kinds of contacts among your own community,” Milosevic countered. “Why come to Ukraine to get what you could get in London or New York?”

      On the couches the entourage exploded into laughter and applause as Svetlana and the girl in the red dress began making out.

      “Because,” Klegg said slowly, “I need contractors and operatives who don’t mind pulling down on Westerners. I want businessmen, not ideology. For that, it was come here or go to Palermo.”

      “Rio, Caracas,” the Russian offered. “Even Uruguay.”

      “I go to the cartels, I might as well go to the fucking monkey house at the zoo.” Klegg paused. “Though for what I have in mind, an outer circle of cannon fodder might be appropriate, given an inner cadre capable of dealing with them afterward.”

      “A fixer who exercises total unit closure on his field talent tends to have an abbreviated career,” Milosevic countered.

      “You’ll land on your feet, I’m sure.”

      Milosevic released cigar smoke in a huge plume and settled back comfortably in his chair. His eyes cut over to where Svetlana was making out with the girl from his entourage. The Russian oligarch looked back at Klegg.

      “You start tying up loose ends, it can sometimes be hard to know when to stop.”

      Now it was Klegg’s turn to shrug. “Tie up the knots that can’t tie you back. Call it acceptable.”

      Like a scene out of Faust, Milosevic leaned forward and extended his hand.

      IT WAS COLD in the alley outside the Kiev nightclub.

      Klegg’s and Svetlana’s breath plumed up between them as they kissed furiously. The American plunged his hands inside the woman’s ankle-length fur coat. Her eyes were glassy marbles as they kissed. He ran his hands over her body underneath her coat, stroking her up to a fever pitch of excitement.

      She moaned as his fingers worked at her.

      The back door to the nightclub was just a few yards away and the muted sound of the dance beat music rattled the blacked-out windows in their frames. The alley smelled strongly of the urine of drunk and stoned patrons. Garbage overflowed out of battered old cans and three giant green bins.

      Rats, braving the frigid chill to get the remnants of greasy food, swarmed across the refuse and watched the humans with glittering eyes.

      Though thousands of citizens of Kiev went about their lives within little distance of couple, it was as if they were alone in a vast, urban wasteland of empty windows, rubbish and deep shadows. It called to Klegg’s mind the poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.

      “I’ll show you fear in a handful of dust,” the lawyer thought idly. It made no sense but his mind was starting to click with adrenaline.

      “Now,” Svetlana whispered in his ears. “I want it now.”

      “Now?” Klegg asked, his heart starting to beat even faster.

      “Yes, yes,” she breathed.

      “Okay.” He laughed. “But remember, you asked for it.”

      The American psychopath stepped back from the Russian woman, leaving her gasping. Her glassy, red-veined eyes opened in confusion.

      Klegg grinned like a maniacal clown.

      His hands went to the small of his back underneath his coat. He emerged with a pair of nunchaku.

      The martial-arts weapon was designed from the width of a single, slightly thicker than average handle cut smoothly down the middle, allowing for more compact and thus easier surreptitious carrying. The handles on the thicker edges were octagonal, presenting a variety of sharp edges for contact when swung.

      “My favorite movie when I was growing up was Enter the Dragon,” Klegg explained, speaking fast as his breath continued coming СКАЧАТЬ