Blood Vendetta

“We thought of that,” Brognola said. “Solid theory. We don’t have the intel to back it up, though. But we have someone working that angle.”

“That someone is?”

“David McCarter.”

“McCarter’s in London? My apologies to the queen.”

Brognola grinned. “David was already over there, buying a Jaguar that had been buried under some tarps in a garage somewhere. We thought it might help having someone on the ground to act as—” Brognola made quotation marks with his fingers “—a liaison between MI5, Scotland Yard and the U.S.”

“God help us.”

“Yeah, we needed a diplomat, but we got McCarter. Imagine.”

“The Brits will appreciate his deft touch.”

“Look,” Brognola said, “here’s the upshot of all this. As you can imagine, the U.S. government finds itself in a unique position here. Officially, the government doesn’t condone vigilantes. We don’t condone stealing money from people, even if they’re criminals and terrorists, unless it’s part of a sanctioned intelligence operation.”

“There’s a ‘but’ coming.”

Brognola downed some coffee and nodded. “Absolutely. What this person has accomplished is pretty damn amazing. As best we know, she or he has no governments backing her.”

“Which means no government-imposed constraints.”

“As I said, what Nightingale has been able to accomplish is nothing short of amazing,” Brognola said. “This person has acquired account numbers and pieced together complex financial networks. He or she knows lots of things, and we want to know how.”

Bolan’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “Look, if you want someone to plug a leak.”

“Hardly,” Brognola replied, shaking his head vigorously. “Frankly, we want to recruit this person. Nightingale could fill in gaps in our knowledge. There’s a place for those skills.”

“Off the books, of course,” Price interjected. “But we can offer full legal protection, a new identity, the works.”

“What leads do we have?” Bolan asked.

Kurtzman gestured at the stack of photos in Bolan’s hand.

“Look through those,” he said, “stop when you find a picture of a white-haired guy.”

Bolan found a close-up of a round-faced man with pink cheeks, pale green eyes and white hair trimmed down to stubble. He studied the photo for a couple of seconds, then tossed it, face up, on the tabletop. “This the guy?”

“That’d be him,” Kurtzman said. “His name is Jonathan Salisbury. He’s British by birth, but moved to the United States in the early 1970s and eventually became a citizen. Did a lot of computer work for the Pentagon, all highly classified. Guy was a genius.”

“Was?”

“He’s dead,” Kurtzman said. “Poor bastard asphyxiated himself in a garage. Neighbors found him in the car while it still was running. Hadn’t been dead long. I have a file I’ll give you with some clips about him. It was big news in the Beltway when he died.”

“I’ve never heard of him. He famous in computer circles?”

“More like infamous,” Kurtzman said. “Technically, he was in deep shit with the Feds.”

Bolan sipped his coffee. “Isn’t that like being a little pregnant?”

“I knew the guy,” Kurtzman said. “We weren’t friends, but I knew him. I knew his work. To say he was brilliant would be an understatement. His depth of knowledge when it came to computers and cybersecurity was nearly unmatched.”

“Except by you.”

“There are maybe three dozen people with this guy’s chops. Me and thirty-five others.” Kurtzman allowed himself a grin, though it faded almost immediately. “That said, the guy was branded a traitor.”

“Because?”

“He tapped into the Defense Intelligence Agency’s computers, dug up some records on a Russian guy, Mikhail Yezhov, and passed it along.”

“Passed it along to whom?”

Kurtzman shrugged. “Nobody knows for sure,” he said.

“That’s a pretty big deal.”

“Sure,” Kurtzman said. “I’m not saying otherwise. I’m not suggesting otherwise. But there were extenuating circumstances. His wife was killed. Not by Yezhov, but a couple of his shooters. At least that was the working theory of the Russian investigators. Not a far-fetched theory, either. But the Russians didn’t want to go after Yezhov, so they let the whole thing go. Salisbury’s wife was a criminal justice professor and taught at Georgetown University. She’d written a couple of papers on Yezhov’s network and then she turned up dead.”

“The Justice Department tried to get the Russians off the dime on this thing,” Brognola added, “but they wouldn’t budge. Apparently, Yezhov rates top-level protection in his country.”

“You think Salisbury got pissed off enough to steal information?” Bolan asked.

“And pass it along to Nightingale? Yeah, I do. That’s the theory. And our two dead friends have links to Yezhov, too.”

“Clearly,” Brognola said, “we think Salisbury killed himself. The forensic evidence says so. His coworkers and friends confirmed that he was despondent after his wife’s murder. That he couldn’t at least get a little closure likely only made things worse.”

“So he takes matters into his own hands,” Bolan said. “He gets caught and loses his security clearance and his reputation. And kills himself.”

“Right,” Brognola said.

“A month before the ceiling fell in on the guy, he took a trip to London,” Kurtzman said. “We’re assuming he took the intelligence he stole to England and passed it to someone else.”

“But we don’t know who for sure?” Bolan asked.

“No,” Kurtzman said, “we don’t. But we are hedging our bets that it was Nightingale. Yezhov likely sent these two thugs out to exact a little revenge, but they obviously underestimated Nightingale’s skill.”

“Will you take the assignment, Striker?” Brognola asked.

“What if I find Nightingale and he or she tells me to go to hell?”

“Then they do,” Brognola said. “Technically, the Nightingale is a fugitive. But you’re not a cop. Besides, I am guessing you have no interest in strong-arming someone just because Washington wants a chat with them.”

“Good guess.”

“You can say no,” Brognola said.

Bolan nodded. He’d always kept an arm’s-length relationship with the federal government and could turn down assignments that came his way. But his gut told him this one was important. He agreed to take it.

Chapter 2

Mikhail Yezhov wanted to smash something.

The man who stood before him, armpits of his shirt darkened with perspiration, breathing audible, seemed to sense it. Yezhov, fists clenched, a deep scarlet coloring his neck, circled the man, staring at him. The occasional flinch, or flicker of fear in the man’s eyes, caused a warm sense of satisfaction to well up inside Yezhov.

Decked out in a five-thousand-dollar suit, surrounded by shelves of leather-bound books, and mahogany wood-paneled walls, Yezhov looked like a Wall Street investment banker or a shipping magnate. He was neither. Though he had once posed as a stockbroker in London as an agent with Soviet intelligence during the waning days of the Cold War. But his background wasn’t in business; he’d been a Soviet soldier and a military intelligence officer during his brief career. Once the Communist state went belly up, he’d moved into the private sector, where he could use his talents as a spy to whip up mayhem for his clients against their competitors. He always guaranteed results and, on the rare occasions when he couldn’t deliver, it made him see red.

Like the present.

Like Yezhov, the man who stood before him was Russian. That was where the similarities ended as far as Yezhov was concerned. This foot soldier—was his name Josef or Dmitri?—had a slight frame compared to Yezhov’s bulk, big eyes that made him look surprised even in the calmest moments and acne that would embarrass a fourteen-year-old boy. His suit jacket hung limply from his narrow shoulders and beads of sweat had formed on his upper lip. All this only intensified his air of akwardness, in Yezhov’s opinion. When the man swallowed, his Adam’s apple popped audibly in the deathly quiet room.

Yezhov moved in front of the man, stopped circling. He pinned the guy under his gaze.

“What now?”

“Our sources in Scotland Yard said they identified the two bodies,” the man said.

“Hardly a surprise.”

“Sir?”

“You hired known criminals to kill this woman. Neither was high-profile, but both had criminal records. It’s no surprise the police identified them. It was only a matter of time.”

The man opened his mouth to protest, apparently thought better of it, and slammed his jaw shut.

“Now, we have two corpses and a home that has been shot all to hell.”

“Yes.”

“And the woman lives.”

“Yes, she does.”

“And we have no idea where she is.”

The man paused, studied his black wingtip shoes for a couple of seconds before nodding in agreement.

“We have people looking for her,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time—”

“Before you mess this up even more.”

The man replied, but Yezhov didn’t bother to listen. He turned and saw his own reflection in a mirror that ran the length of the wall behind his desk. The rectangular mirror stretched from about the middle of the wall up to a foot short of the ceiling. It was one-way glass, on the other side of which was a small room packed with a console that controlled an array of audio and visual recording equipment. While he didn’t record every meeting, this one included, the setup came in handy when he gathered with high-level business executives and government officials from Russia and other countries, allowing him to gather blackmail material on the participants. As he’d said in rare unguarded moments, he had no business partners, only future victims.

Yezhov saw plenty in his reflection to admire. Though he stood a couple of inches below six feet, he was broad in the chest and shoulders, straining the fabric of his shirt. Arms crossed over his chest were thick, corded with muscles created with an exacting exercise regiment and anabolic steroids. His head was shaved clean. Small hazel-colored eyes, set far apart, peered out from his wide face, and were separated by a large nose that had been broken twice, once in combat and once in a bar fight.

For some reason, the annoying buzz of the other man’s words reached Yezhov, prompted him to turn back around and face the man.

“We’ll find her,” he said.

“No,” Yezhov said, shaking his head, “we’ll find her. You’ll have no part in this.”

Surprise registered on the other man’s face.

“Sir?”

“You’re done.”

“But—”

“But nothing. You had a location. You had a name. You had money, my fucking money. You fucked it up. You’re done.”

The man opened his mouth to speak. Yezhov silenced him with a gesture.

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” he said. “This was a simple operation. A snatch-and-grab. One woman. The bitch was a banker, not a soldier. You hired two criminals, neither of whom apparently was up to the challenge.” He came around the desk and put himself between it and the other man. “I sent you to solve a problem, one fucking problem. Instead, you created more for me.”

“Sir...” the man began.

Yezhov, who’d been resting his backside against the edge of the desktop, arms hanging loose at his sides, made his move. His arms snaked out. The man flinched, but had no time to move before Yezhov’s fingers encircled his throat, thumbs levering down on the man’s windpipe. A pitiful gurgle escaped the man’s lips and he brought up his own hands, grabbed at Yezhov’s forearms. For a skinny man, his grip was surprisingly strong, Yezhov thought. Yezhov rewarded the man’s efforts by pressing harder against his throat. More seconds passed before the man’s body went limp. When Yezhov finally was satisfied that his failed employee was dead, he released his grip and let the man’s limp body strike the floor with a thump in a boneless heap.

Yezhov turned and motioned for one of his guards to step forward. That the guard, a combat veteran who’d killed Chechen militants without fear or conscience, hesitated pleased Yezhov. The Russian leader pointed at the body lying on the floor.

“Get that thing out of here,” he said.

The man nodded. Stepping forward, he knelt next to the corpse and raised the dead man’s torso at an angle, rested it against a bent knee. Grabbing the dead man from under his arms, the guard stood and dragged the limp form from the room.

“Lovely,” Yezhov muttered under his breath as he watched the whole thing.

A glance at the other guards situated around the room told Yezhov they were trying hard not to look at him, making a show at staring into their drinks or at one of the flat-screen televisions positioned throughout the room. That they were scared made him feel all the more powerful. But, he told himself, it wasn’t just about venting his anger. He wanted to teach these bastards a lesson. The price of failure in his organization was steep. And in his latest venture, with its high stakes, failure needed to be dealt with quickly and severely, not just because it made him feel good, but as a practical matter. Everyone needed to function at the highest levels possible.

Turning, he went back to his desk and hoisted the receiver on a secure telephone that stood there. Going from memory, he punched in a series of numbers. After a couple of seconds, it began ringing, his impatience growing with each ring. Finally, a familiar voice answered.

“What?” the man rasped.

“It’s me.”

A couple of seconds passed. “Okay.”

“I have a job for you.”

“A job for me?” Dmitri Mikoyan’s voice sounded incredulous. “Go to hell.”

“Look, you ungrateful—”

“Ungrateful? Remember Tajikistan? You almost got me killed ten times over. I’m grateful to be away from you.”

“I need you to run an operation,” Yezhov said. Mikoyan said nothing, but Yezhov heard him clucking his tongue on the other end of the connection. From experience, Yezhov knew that sound meant Mikoyan was thinking. Yezhov wasn’t even sure whether the other man even was aware of the noise, the habit.

“How much money?” Mikoyan asked.

“Don’t you want to hear the job first?”

“No. I know you. If you called me, it’s a crap job. The details don’t matter because the job will suck no matter what. So tell me about the money first and I’ll decide whether it’s worth my time.”

“Trust me, it is.”

“What is it the Americans say? Money talks. Bullshit walks. Give me numbers.”

Yezhov said an amount, twice Mikoyan’s usual fee.

Mikoyan laughed. “What am I? A bag lady? That is crap pay!”

“It’s also my only offer.”

More tongue clucking sounded from the other end of the line.

“Okay, I’ll take it.”

“I need you to snatch someone—a woman.”

“Sounds horribly complicated,” Mikoyan said, sarcasm evident in his voice.

“You’ve heard of the Nightingale?”

“Nightingale? Sure, I’ve heard the stories. Total bullshit. No one can steal all that money and get away with it.”

“It’s not bullshit.”

“Sure it is,” Mikoyan insisted. “It’s a story some crooked accountant cooked up after he embezzled money from the wrong guy. Did it to save his own ass. Don’t tell me you’ve bought in to this fairy tale.”

“I have.”

“Please—”

“She stole from me.”

“How much?”

“It doesn’t matter. It was a lot. The point is, she stole from me. I can’t tolerate that.”

“You want the money back.”

Yezhov shrugged even though the other man couldn’t see him. “I have little hope that will happen.”

“Why?”

“Think about it. You think she has dollars sitting around in suitcases somewhere? My guess is she takes what she steals, splits it into a dozen or so accounts and makes it all disappear. The last thing she wants is for someone to track her or take what she has stolen.”

“Okay, you don’t want the money. What do you want?”

“I do want the money—I just don’t have much hope I’ll get it back.”

“Fair enough.”

“I want her. I want her alive, Dmitri. I want to kill her with my bare hands.”

“To send a message.”

“Yes.”

“Consider it done.”

“I sent two other men to do it. Or, more to the point, one of my employees sent two men.” Yezhov glanced at the spot on the carpet where the recently removed corpse had fallen. “Make that a former employee. Anyway, they both ended up dead.”

“Should’ve called me first.”

“Maybe. I’ll send a courier with more information.”

The line went dead and Yezhov slammed down the phone.

A single, soft knock sounded against his office door. He looked up in time to see the door swing open and a woman enter. As always, her fire-red hair, which cascaded past her shoulders, caught his attention first, followed by her jade-green eyes. Her full lips spread into a wide smile, lips parting enough to expose even white teeth.

“Tatania,” he said, returning the smile. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Yes,” Tatania Sizova said.

Crossing the room, she walked to him, reached up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Stepping back, she eased herself into one of the wingback chairs that stood in front of Yezhov’s desk. Crossing her legs, she placed her folded hands into her lap.

Yezhov looked at his guards and dismissed them with a nod. One by one, they filed from the room. He finished making her drink—a gin and tonic—and handed it to her.

She thanked him for the beverage and, looking at him over its rim, sampled it.

“Lovely,” she said.

“Good.”

“I’ve seen little of you this week. You’ve been up early and working late into the night.”

He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s the woman,” Sizova replied.

He glared at her. If she felt threatened, though, she didn’t let it show. Instead, she sipped from the gin and tonic again, then set it on a small table.

“You’re obsessed with the woman,” she said. “She’s pissed you off.”

“Nonsense! There’s no room for that in my operation. Stakes are too high.”

“Of course.”

Yezhov detected something in her voice.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m worried, that’s all.”

“Worried? About?”

“You.”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you? You’re focused on this woman. We’re in the middle of something so much larger and you are worried about her, about revenge.”

“I’m focused on the mission.”

“The mission doesn’t include chasing shadows or drawing attention to us with ham-handed kidnapping attempts.”

“Don’t tell me what the mission is,” he said, an edge creeping into his voice.

Sizova sat back in her chair, as though stung. Her lips pressed together in an angry line and her eyes narrowed. Yezhov had seen the look before and knew he had crossed a line. He also was angry enough not to care.

“Don’t speak to me like that,” she said.

“Don’t tell me how to run my operation,” he said. “I have this under control.”

Her angry look turned to one of mild amusement.

“I can tell,” she said.

He fought the urge to come out of his chair and hit the woman. Experience told him not to. Sizova, outwardly gorgeous and delicate, had been trained since her teen years in the dark arts of hand-to-hand combat, as well as with weapons. Even if he did take her, he’d pay a price for his victory—a lost eye or an ear torn from the side of his head. That was the best-case scenario.

Yezhov exhaled.

“I have this under control,” he repeated. “Taking her out isn’t an aside from our mission—it’s a major piece of our mission.”

Her expression softened.

“What do you mean?”

Yezhov stood up and walked to the small bar. Grabbing a clear glass tumbler, he turned it over and reached for the vodka.

“What do I mean?” he said, unscrewing the bottle’s cap. “I mean, she knows. Or she will know what we’re up to.”

“Stop being so damned cryptic!” she said.

Satisfied with the amount he had poured into his glass, he put the top back on the bottle and set it aside. Picking up the drink, her turned and looked at her.

“I mean she knows. She knows more than my fucking bank balance. When she hacked into our system, she stole all kinds of information.”

Sizova had paled slightly.

“Our deal,” she said.

“Yes, our deal,” he said. “The Sentry project, the antisatellite technology—she has that information.”

“Maybe she hasn’t seen it.”

Yezhov shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. She stole tons of data. It’s possible she hasn’t had time to look through it yet. But it’s also likely she has. At some point, she will comb through all of it, exploit the information for further attacks on us. Regardless, we have to proceed as if she knows.”

“Meaning—”

“Meaning we have to kill her. And anyone who’s helping her. But first we must find her. Luckily, I have a plan for that.”

Chapter 3

Bolan and McCarter met outside the headquarters of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency. The fox-faced Briton, a Coke in his grip, was leaning against an iron railing and staring out at the Thames River, swollen from a recent rain. The Executioner noticed his old friend wore a black trench coat and a red necktie that occasionally lashed out from beneath the coat. A black leather valise stood on the concrete next to McCarter’s leg.

Seeing Bolan from the corner of his eye, McCarter turned and shot the Executioner a lopsided grin and a small wave.

“Welcome to paradise, Yank,” he said.

“Glad to be home?” Bolan asked.

McCarter shrugged. “Longer I’m away, the less it feels like home. Good to be here, though. I did get a hell of a deal on a Jaguar. Sweet little black number.”

“Love to see it.”

“See it from a distance, if it’s all the same,” McCarter said. “The cars you touch tend to end up pocked with bullet holes or blown to smithereens. I’d at least like to race this one once or twice before it ends up in the scrap heap.”

“Fair enough,” Bolan said, a smile ghosting his lips. “Our friends at MI5 playing nice?”

“Nice as can be expected, considering I just swooped in from across the pond and asked to see the family jewels. The bloke here, Damon Blair, seems decent enough. Balked a little at first, but got on board once he found out we have some heavyweights behind us.”

Bolan nodded. “Good, let’s go see what he has to say.”

* * *

BLAIR’S OFFICE WAS on the top floor of Thames House and had a window that overlooked the river. Blair was a small man, with straw-blond hair that was unkempt, a wide nose and large ears.

Bolan identified himself under his oft-used alias, Matt Cooper. Blair gestured for the two men to sit.

Bolan lowered himself into a chair that stood in front of Blair’s desk. McCarter took the seat next to him. Leaning forward, Blair laced his fingers together and set them on the desktop.

“Welcome to our fair city, Mr. Cooper,” Blair said.

“Matt,” Bolan replied.

“David says you’re looking for information.”

Bolan nodded.

“You want information on the Nightingale.”

Bolan nodded again.

“Man of few words, eh?” Blair said. “Well, not sure what I can offer you. As you can understand, we can’t—and I won’t—tell you specific sources.”

“Sure.”

“And the Americans probably have a lot of the same raw intelligence on this as we do. So I’m not sure what I have to add.”

Bolan crossed his legs, right ankle balanced on left knee.

“Fair question,” the big American said. “And, you’re right, our two countries probably have a lot of the same information, since we share so much. But you have two advantages. One, you’ve been following this individual for—what?—a couple of years now. And, two, you actually are on the ground. The shootings happened in Bayswater, just a stone’s throw from here. I’m guessing you’ve seen all the latest information on the shooting, including any police reports and other intelligence gathered. You know the area. You might have some insights into Nightingale’s behavior that a guy like me, someone who just parachuted into town, would miss entirely.”