Death Gamble Read online

  “They should have known about the Mob ties way before I came on the scene,” Bolan growled. “As for the disappearance, tell him I’m working on it.”

  “Already did, Striker. It’s probably the only thing keeping him sane. Or me for that matter.”

  “The first step is finding Talisman. Do we have anyone here who might know how to get me connected?”

  Brognola paused for a few seconds. Bolan heard him shuffling through some papers.

  “Ronald Moeller,” Brognola said. “He does a lot of ground intelligence work for the State Department. Listens for seismic shifts in public opinion for or against the United States. Monitors for potential threats against the embassy. That kind of thing.”

  “You got an address?”

  Brognola gave it to Bolan. He wrote it down in his war book.

  “Stay in touch Striker.”

  “Will do.” Bolan severed the connection and set the phone on the table.

  “We need to talk,” he said, “about what happened to you in Moscow.”

  Rytova’s eyes softened for a moment. Then the steel returned and her cheeks burned red.

  “I’ll tell you nothing. In fact, I demand to be let go. You have no jurisdiction over me,” she said.

  Bolan put an edge in his voice. “Lady, that wasn’t a question. You know who Talisman works for and I need that information.”

  “I’m Russian intelligence,” the woman insisted.

  “Moscow says otherwise. They’ve disavowed any knowledge of you, period.”

  Bolan figured it was time to bluff. “So I guess if you were to disappear, no one would be the wiser,” he said.

  “You do not mean that.”

  “You saw me in action earlier,” Bolan replied. “I’m here for a reason, and I’ll take it all the way to reach my goal. I’d rather we work together, but I can have you on a military flight to the United States within an hour. With one phone call, you’re off to a federal prison, locked up under a sealed indictment. That would definitely cramp your style.”

  Rytova rubbed at an invisible spot on the table and stared at her hand as she did. She seemed to draw within herself and her voice flattened as she spoke.

  “His name is Nikolai Kursk,” she said.

  Bolan ran the name through his mind and came up blank.

  “Never heard of him,” he said.

  “No reason you should have,” Rytova replied. “He was one of the KGB’s best covert operators—a government-sanctioned killer. He had more than 150 confirmed kills in Afghanistan alone. But he’s much more than an assassin. He’s a brilliant behind-the-scenes player, what you would call a power broker. He owned people in the Kremlin. Everything he had, he got through intimidation and blackmail. When the Soviet Union fell, he funneled huge sums of money out of the country, enough to last him five lifetimes.”

  “Okay, so what’s your tie to him?” Bolan asked.

  “Until five months ago I was with the SVR,” she said. “So was my husband, Dmitri. I was an analyst, he was an agent. Kursk had already left government service and was smuggling weapons and uranium out of the country. Dmitri heard about it and started an investigation. He pushed harder than anyone within the agency to bring Kursk down. But everywhere he turned, he hit a wall, most of them erected by the government.”

  Her voice caught for a moment. She continued staring at the table, almost unaware Bolan was in the room. Her eyes softened with a deep sadness.

  “He kept fighting. That was Dmitri. He was a warrior. He would do the right thing, even if it killed him. Eventually it did.”

  Bolan knew where the story was going, and his heart went out to the woman. But he kept his expression stony. “What happened?”

  She shrugged, brushed a lock of hair from her eyes. “My father was a police officer in Moscow, and Dmitri respected him very much. The two met in a tearoom to discuss Dmitri’s problem. Kursk was tailing Dmitri, but Dmitri had become too obsessed to notice. He got that way sometimes, you know.”

  She never looked at Bolan, but a smile played across her lips for a moment as she apparently got lost in memory. Bolan had noticed her curves earlier, but her innate beauty became glaringly obvious when her features softened. An instant later, the vulnerability drained away, replaced by the hardened battle mask to which Bolan was accustomed.

  Her voice again flattened as though she were reading from a book. “Anyway,” she said, “Kursk’s people threw two fragmentation grenades into the tearoom. The blast killed Dmitri, my father and ten other people.”

  “And no one believed Kursk was involved,” Bolan said.

  The woman stiffened. “Many believe it. They just won’t admit it. Through either money or intimidation, Kursk owns lots of people. And so I am alone in this mission.”

  The woman’s story reminded Bolan of the searing losses he suffered several lifetimes ago.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Even as the words came out, he realized how insignificant they sounded.

  She shrugged again. “I’m sorry, too. But I will feel much better when Nikolai Kursk is dead.”

  “I won’t discourage you from that path,” he said. “But you might want to think twice before you devote your life to it. It’s a hard road to walk.”

  The woman gave him a cold look. “You cannot know how I feel.”

  “I have a better idea than you know.”

  “Have you been married?” she asked.

  “No.”

  The woman crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a cold look. “Then you know nothing of my loss.”

  Bolan decided to let it go. He didn’t have time to play counselor. “You got any other names?” he asked.

  The woman thought for a moment. “Cole. The man who shot me. He sounded American. I heard him speak on the radio set I stole from one of the men at the compound.”

  Bolan grabbed the satellite phone, raised Kurtzman again and gave him the new information. “I’ll check back later,” Bolan said and killed the connection.

  “So where’s Kursk now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look, lady…”

  Rytova’s eyes narrowed. “I really don’t. He has safehouses all over the world and moves a great deal. He’s hard to pin down. But I am hearing disturbing things about him.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “My sources say he’s got something big in the works. Perhaps it was taking this Dade you speak of, perhaps something else. I know nothing about that matter. But I do know that Kursk has been amassing troops for months.”

  “He has to have a place in Africa.”

  “Somewhere, yes. He also spends a great deal of time in Colombia and Israel. But he’s extremely active in this continent’s diamonds, weapons and fuel trade, so I’m sure he has a hideaway somewhere.”

  “Would Talisman be able to point us in the right direction?” Bolan asked.

  “I had hoped so. That’s why I was at the compound,” she replied.

  Bolan nodded. His head still hurt from the glancing blow from the rifle butt. Otherwise his body felt like it was in fighting shape. He hoped the same was true for Rytova; he might need her knowledge of Nikolai Kursk and he wanted to take her with him.

  “You okay to look around a little?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  He stood and started for the door. “Then let’s go find Talisman.”

  RONALD MOELLER STUFFED the unloaded Uzi into his suitcase, covered it with a mateless white tube sock and a wadded red T-shirt. He’d grab a couple of magazines for the weapons later, but first things first. He needed to pack up and get the hell out of Freetown.

  The message from his handlers had been brief: expect company. A U.S. intelligence agent probing a recent executive kidnapping was on his way. The guy apparently wanted to pick Moeller’s brain about a local weapons and diamonds smuggler, learn anything he knew. So he was to sit tight and wait for the guy’s arrival.

  Like hell. That was all the excuse
Moeller needed to start packing his things and get out of Dodge.

  The way he figured it, the Feds were coming for him. To complicate matters, Talisman was due to make his final payment of rough diamonds to Moeller for his services over the past few days. Moeller had considered telling him to stay away, perhaps even warn him about the U.S. agent coming to call, but had decided against it, figuring Talisman would just use the information as an excuse either to kill him or skip the final payment.

  Moeller planned to get out of this sinkhole before morning and maybe put a bullet in the maniac’s brain—just out of principle. But he’d have his diamonds in his pocket before he left. Those little bits of rock had been the only things keeping him going the past few days.

  He stared at the suitcase and asked himself for the fifth time in as many minutes whether this was a good idea. Disappearing was risky. The caller had purposely been vague, and Moeller wasn’t sure his bosses knew of his indiscretions. If they didn’t yet, they’d figure it out damn quick when he came up MIA. Sierra Leone had become too hot to think otherwise.

  Fuck them. Even if they did realize he was a turncoat, they’d never find him.

  For the past several months, Moeller had risked his career and his life to get to this point, and he wasn’t about to let it all turn sour on him. So he’d take his meager belongings, his recently acquired wealth and flee this armpit of a country. Several cigarette cartons stuffed with rough diamonds held the promise of a lazy life. Moeller just needed to get to Antwerp, Belgium, where he could trade the gems for currency. From Belgium, he’d travel to the Caribbean, hook up with a plastic surgeon who specialized in identity changes, put on a new face and surround himself with sun, daiquiris and women as he healed. Then he’d spend his remaining days as a rich man.

  Screw the God-and-country routine. Out here it was every man for himself.

  Some might call it treason—Moeller considered it self-preservation.

  He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and sopped up the sweat from the bald crown of his head. With the first two fingers of his left hand, he pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose, clenched his jaw and wondered what else he should pack. Guns came first in Africa. He pulled a SIG-Sauer from a desk drawer, checked the load. He sheathed and secured the pistol in his shoulder holster and slipped extra clips into the pockets of his baggy jeans. Pulling a light Oxford-style shirt from the couch, he slipped it on so it covered the pistol.

  The weight of the handgun felt reassuring to Moeller. He preferred murder by proxy, of course. But he’d draw blood if it came to that. He had already fingered the State Department agents so that Kursk’s bloodthirsty jackals could take the men down. And he considered the intelligence agent’s trip more than an unhappy coincidence.

  To hell with them. The State Department had driven him to this point, sending him to this cesspool. During fourteen months, he had grown to hate Freetown.

  He grabbed a laptop from his desk and stuffed it and some cords into a black nylon carrying case. Before he left, he’d torch his PC, reduce it to a pool of molten slag, destroying any incriminating evidence it might contain. He’d burn down the apartment building and everyone in it if it meant getting out of here.

  Moeller retrieved a final cigarette carton from his bedroom and slipped it into the suitcase. He zippered the bag shut, hefted it and the computer case, lugged both to the door, then set down the suitcase to free a hand. He cracked open the door, peered into the hallway, saw it was empty and pulled the door open the rest of the way. He’d store the luggage in his car, be back upstairs before Talisman arrived. He could get his final diamonds and be gone before the American arrived.

  The PC chirped behind him. Moeller swore. Another e-mail.

  He considered ignoring it but decided not to. If the message was urgent, a delayed answer might raise an eyebrow. Or maybe not. He’d missed other e-mails. Was he getting paranoid? Maybe. That didn’t mean they weren’t out to get him.

  Jesus, he was thinking like a fool. He’d better check his e-mail just to put his mind at rest.

  Slipping the computer case from his shoulder, he set it on the floor and pushed the door shut without latching it. He returned to his desk and seated himself.

  As he gripped the mouse, swiped it around the mouse pad, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise and scratch the collar of his shirt. A door hinge squeaked from behind, betraying someone’s approach. Moeller’s hand shot underneath the shirt, fingers scrambling for the SIG-Sauer.

  A cold voice, almost certainly American, said, “Don’t do it, Ron.”

  Moeller stopped in midreach.

  “Hands up. Then turn toward me,” the voice said.

  Moeller complied. A cold feeling in his stomach told him he wouldn’t like what he’d see.

  His gut was right.

  NIKOLAI KURSK SMELLED fear and it satisfied him. He watched as Trevor Dade fidgeted in his chair, relentlessly wringing together his hands and crossing and uncrossing his legs. His expensive but dirty clothes hung loosely from his emaciated frame. Puffy, bloodshot eyes peered through thick glasses resting slightly askew on the man’s nose as he cautiously regarded his Russian host.

  Kursk displayed a nasty gash of a smile. “Welcome, Trevor Dade.”

  “Cut the crap, Kursk. I’ve hardly slept since I left the United States. I’ve been stuffed into helicopters, planes and trucks. Flown all over the damn world. Ivanov promised me first-class treatment. I end up stinking like a pig. Tired. Pissed off. This better not be how you treat the talent.”

  Kursk feigned concern, his voice taking on a placating tone. “You are displeased? How very unfortunate.”

  Dade scowled. “Whatever. You got any blow?”

  “Yes, I do. But that will come later.”

  Dade stared at Kursk like a hungry dog entranced by a steak. “I want it now.”

  “Later. First we must talk.”

  Dade narrowed his eyes at Kursk, but dropped the subject. The scientist nodded at Kursk’s cigarette. “You got any more of those?”

  With precise movements, Kursk rolled a cigarette for the American and pushed it and a stainless-steel lighter across the desktop with his fingertips. Dade grabbed both, ignited the cigarette’s tip with the blue-yellow flame and consumed it in greedy drags. He fired a column of smoke across the desktop that momentarily shrouded Kursk’s head in an eye-stinging haze. The Russian’s gaze hardened and he felt his muscles tensing, ready to propel him forward.

  Kursk took a deep breath and stood. Walking around the desk, he leaned against it and towered over Dade. The son of a Russian army commander, Kursk had inherited his father’s love of discipline, and he worshiped routine and self-development. Fortunately, the fates hadn’t burdened him with his father’s failings—patriotism and loyalty—traits that had left the old man a penniless buffoon so depressed and disillusioned that only shooting himself in the head could cure his crippling malaise.

  With forensic detachment, Kursk recalled finding the old man’s body, slumped over in a chair, his head cocked at an impossible angle, eyes propped open in the same pitiful look of surprise that had haunted them since the fall of the Soviet Union. The pistol and an empty bottle of vodka—each symbols of things the old man held most dear—lay to either side of the chair. His father had a blood-splattered picture of himself in dress uniform, posing before the Soviet flag resting in his lap. A single bullet had torn away the back of the man’s head.

  Before police had arrived to haul away the body, Kursk had snatched away his father’s pistol. He carried it with him, a grim reminder not to repeat the follies of a sentimental old fool. Besides, Kursk hated to waste a perfectly good pistol.

  The big Russian crossed massive arms over his chest and stared down at Dade. Fear flashed in the scientist’s eyes as Kursk’s shadow overtook him.

  “You have concerns about your treatment?” the Russian asked.

  Dade’s lips worked for a moment before he found his voice. When he did,
it sounded small and whiny. “I brought you the Nightwind plans. I want my money. And I want a little respect from you.”

  “You’ll get your money,” Kursk said.

  “And?”

  “Do you know of the mujahideen?” Kursk asked. Dade gave Kursk a blank stare, but the big man continued. “When Russia invaded Afghanistan, men who considered themselves holy warriors—the mujahideen—fought us guerrilla style and eventually drove us from their country. They were primitive, but remarkably tenacious. With covert help from your country, they brought a superpower to its knees. Our soldiers, even our elite troops, respected these fighters. Perhaps even feared them.”

  “What’s that have to do with me?”

  Kursk made a small sound of disapproval, stood and began to pace his office. Dade shifted uncomfortably in his chair as the Russian passed within inches of him. Kursk considered it a good sign that he already had instilled such fear in the man.

  Kursk walked to a window, stared through it at one of the high walls surrounding his compound. “I was an operative in Afghanistan. Lived there for three years. By day, I slept. By night, I raided their strongholds, killed them. Sometimes I killed entire families—mothers, sons, daughters. I left that dirty little country with 150 confirmed kills to my credit. I believe that number is low by about 50. I spilled much blood before returning to Russia. Given the chance, I would gladly have spilled even more.”

  Dade squirmed and stared at his lap. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

  Kursk turned toward Dade and shrugged. “Perhaps. But not to worry. If I wanted to intimidate you, you would know it. I’m just trying to—educate you.” He gave Dade a wicked smile.

  The scientist squirmed a bit more.

  “The point is I killed these men, killed their wives, their children, but not because they threatened my country’s security or made Russia look foolish. I did it for myself. I wanted to be a big deal in the KGB. Killing made me a big deal. So I did it often, and it took me where I wanted to go. And their fighting prowess meant less than nothing to me. I killed them without struggle or remorse. I did it because I’ve found killing is the most expedient way for me to get what I want.”