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  Polyakova acted as navigator, telling Bolan when and where to turn. They hurried out of the Red Square-Kremlin area, crossed the Moscow River and turned off the main thoroughfare into an area of long block buildings. Bolan had seen such residences before, many times. They had been built by the Soviet Union as housing units.

  Polyakova directed him down the street past at least two dozen of the stark, characterless structures, then pointed him into a building that looked no different than the rest. They parked the car in front, and the Executioner threw the transmission into park. “What numbers?” he asked the woman next to him.

  “I’ll show you,” Polyakova said as she opened the door.

  Bolan reached out and grabbed her arm. “There’s no reason for you to risk it now,” he said. “The Chechen’s dead. You can stay here.” But before he had finished she had shrugged out of his grip and was racing toward the entrance to the building.

  Bolan caught up to her halfway there with Seven a step behind. As the Executioner reached out to open the door to the common entryway, he looked through the glass and saw a tall Russian pulling a shorter man out of a doorway at the end of the hall. The tall man had wavy brown hair and a bushy Joseph Stalin-style mustache. In his hand was some sort of pistol.

  The Executioner’s hand froze on the door handle and he dropped low, waving the others behind him to do the same as he stared through a corner of the window. A woman, not as beautiful as Polyakova but with the same coloring and bone structure, came awkwardly out the door into the hallway in the grasp of a man with a shaved head. He also carried a gun, and together the two of them began to herd the couple down the hall.

  Bolan turned to Polyakova, who had crept up and was looking over his shoulder. “Your sister and her husband?” he whispered.

  She nodded. Her face was drained of emotion, as if she had experienced more terror and tension over the past three days than her system could handle, and it had simply shut down.

  Bolan turned back to the window in the door. What was happening was painfully clear. The two men were taking the young couple to the apartment of Polyakova’s parents so they could kill them all together. “Stay here,” Bolan said. “Wait until I wave at you.”

  Seven and Polyakova both nodded.

  Bolan stood and opened the door, whistling as he walked boldly into the hallway. As he’d suspected they would, the two men heard him coming and shoved their guns into their captives’ ribs, hiding them from view. They continued to walk toward him as the Executioner whistled his way down the hall, then stopped just as they were about to pass each other.

  “Excuse me,” he said in Russian. “Could you tell me which one of these apartments belongs to Karl Gellbert?”

  Polyakova’s sister and her husband’s eyes pleaded for help. He pretended not to see them. The two hardmen looked at him blankly, then the one with the mustache said, “We don’t know him.” They started to walk on but Bolan reached out and grabbed the forearm of the bald man and said, “Wait, I have a picture of him.” His hand went under his jacket as he added, “Maybe you’ll recognize him from this.”

  The Executioner’s hand came back out from under his jacket holding the Beretta 93-R and flipping the selector switch to semi-auto. One 9 mm round went into the head of the bald man and the next hit the other man two inches above the bushy mustache.

  And it was all suddenly over.

  Except for Gregor.

  IT WAS REQUIRED that he be unarmed. But that was no problem for a man of the Executioner’s skills.

  Bolan entered the office and said hello to the woman whose black hair had white roots. She nodded, and said, “Oh, hello. Go on in. He’s expecting you.”

  Bolan walked toward the door. Luiza Polyakova had decided to stay in Moscow for a few days to visit her parents. It would also give Hal Brognola time to do the behind-the-scenes groundwork that would get her charges dismissed, and publicly clear her name. Bolan had dropped Johnny Seven off at his apartment in Manhattan to get some well-deserved rest. The DEA man had proved to be an able partner during the mission, but Bolan didn’t want him involved in this final lap of the race. It was one thing breaking the laws of another country—even for a good cause—but another in the U.S. And Seven was nearing the end of his career. He had served his country well, and didn’t need anything coming back to bite him in the rear and cost him his pension.

  Bolan smiled inwardly as he thought of the man, still wearing the Harris tweed sport coat and cap when he’d waved goodbye. He had been lucky that Johnny Seven hadn’t accompanied him to El Cuchillo Rojo where the Russians had first videotaped the Executioner accepting the heroin. And keeping the DEA man away from the cameras he had known would be at Duane Park had been another reason Bolan had gone alone. Johnny Seven’s face wouldn’t be on any of the tapes should they surface sometime in the future, and he could end a long and distinguished career with no worries.

  As for the Executioner, should the tapes show up, just let them try to figure out who he was.

  Bolan opened the door and entered the office, greeted by a smiling face wearing black horned-rim glasses behind the desk. “Ah, Agent Cooper,” Rutherford B. Kasparak said. “Good to see you again.” He leaned across the desk and extended his hand.

  Bolan saw no particular reason not to shake it. So he did, then sat in a chair across from the desk. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again, too,” he said.

  The New York City Department of Corrections deputy commissioner still had the nervous twitch to his hand, and it fluttered lightly back and forth as he interlaced his fingers on the desktop. But, all in all, he didn’t appear to be as skittish as he had been when Bolan had last been in the office. “And how is Luiza Polyakova working out?” Kasparak asked.

  “She’s done an excellent job,” Bolan said. “We’ve been very pleased with her cooperation.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” Kasparak replied. “As you know, I was a little worried about releasing her the way we did. But…well, it all seems to have worked out splendidly, then.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Now,” he said, wearing a smile that looked like he might be planning to run for governor, “I don’t like to sound mercenary, mind you, but you had mentioned that the Department of Justice was grateful….” He let the sentence trail off.

  Now Bolan returned the smile as he said, “I spoke with my boss only a few hours ago,” he said. “And he instructed me to reward you accordingly.”

  “Excellent!” Kasparak said. “Now, I know all of the important posts are filled, and that’s far more than I expected anyway. What I was thinking was—”

  Bolan held up his hand. “Not so fast,” he said. “Don’t you want to hear about all of the work Luiza did and where it led us?”

  The deputy commissioner’s face reddened and he said, “Yes, forgive me. I was being rather selfish, wasn’t I? Please. Do tell.”

  Bolan began to run down what had happened over the past three days, telling the man behind the desk about Rabashka, Ontomanov, Smith-Williams, Navrozoz and Nemets. With each name he mentioned, a little more of the color faded from Kasparak’s face. The Executioner saved Akhmatov and Zdorovye for last, and watched the deputy commissioner’s face finally settle on a pale gray tone. He finished with the story about the sword in Zdorovye’s office, and ended it with, “Which of course, led me back here to you, Gregor.”

  Rutherford B. Kasparak sat stunned for a moment. But like any decent undercover mole, he recovered his composure quickly and tried one last gamble. “Excuse me?” he said, his hand waving back and forth across the desk. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly. Gregory, did you call me? Actually, my first name is Rutherford—Rudy to my friends, and you’re certainly welcome to—”

  Bolan merely shook his head and that was enough to stop the man in midsentence. “It’s over, Gregor,” he said. “But I’ve got to hand it to you, it was a brilliant scam while it lasted. The Soviet Union sets you up in New York City and you rise to a position where you c
an create havoc within one of the largest correctional systems in the world. You have access to police, and some military and other federal government intelligence, and who knows where you might have gone from here.” He kept staring at the man behind the desk and said, “When the Soviet Union went belly up, you simply switched allegiance to the other former Soviet officials who went into the drug-smuggling business.” The Executioner looked around the room, taking in the office. “This also explains why the inmates had such good access to Luiza when they tried to kill her, and how the other gunmen knew to hit us so fast at her gallery. In fact, it explains just about everything.”

  Kasparak started to speak, but Bolan said, “One last thing, then I’ll let you have your say.” He uncrossed his legs again. “The name, Kasparak. Czech, isn’t it?”

  The deputy commissioner nodded.

  “Nice touch,” the Executioner said. “I haven’t checked it because there wasn’t any need. But I’d guess your phony bio includes escaping Czechoslovakia sometime in your teenage years and coming to the U.S. That would cover the occasional word you accidentally drop with an Eastern European accent. I began to think I’d heard your voice before somewhere when we talked on the phone. Then when Zdorovye gave you up, it all came together.” He stopped, then said, “Okay, what was it you wanted to say?”

  Kasparak had settled back in his chair, and the shock of being exposed had worn off. He looked confident, even cocky now—not a thing like the nervous bureaucrat he had masqueraded as when Bolan first met him. Now he came out with the gravely chuckle the Executioner had learned to associate with Gregor, and when he spoke his accent was the same he had used as Gregor on the phone. “Why protest it here and now? I will say this once, and never again. You are correct. But you will never prove it in a court of law, Agent Cooper.”

  Bolan sighed as he stood. “No, Gregor, I won’t.”

  Two steps took him to the edge of the desk where he leaned over and grabbed the mole by the tie. Bolan jerked up and back, pulling the man over the desk. With his other hand, he drew a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and drove it up under the man’s chin, through the soft palate, and into the brain.

  Rutherford B. “Gregor” Kasparak was dead long before Bolan shoved him back into his chair.

  The Executioner stepped out of the office, closing the door behind him. The secretary wasn’t at her desk. She must be on her lunch break. Good, Bolan thought. He’d be long gone before anyone discovered Gregor’s body.

  Bolan picked his guns up from the locker, walked to the Highlander and drove out of the parking lot and back over the bridge from Rikers Island. He thought of Polyakova, and smiled. Soon the whole nightmare would be behind her, and she’d reopen her business in Greenwich Village, and never fear for her safety again.

  As he drove toward the highway leading south toward Stony Man Farm, Bolan wondered what the rest of the day would bring. He had talked to Hal Brognola by phone right before driving back to Rikers.

  All he knew at the moment was that Jack Grimaldi was warming up the plane.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-7400-9

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jerry VanCook for his contribution to this work.

  SOVIET SPECTER

  Copyright © 2004 by Worldwide Library.

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