Peacekeepers (1988) (17 page)

"What's in the bag?" the ugly little leader demanded.

Pavel shrugged carelessly. "Junk. It's worthless."

"Yeah?" The leader flicked a knife from the sleeve of his jacket and snapped it open. The slim blade glinted in the light of a distant streetlamp.

"Hand it over."

"Not to the likes of you, my friend," said Pavel.

The other two pulled knives.

"It's worthless junk, I tell you," Pavel insisted. "Not even a balalaika."

"Open up the bag."

"But . . ."

"Open it up or we'll open you up."

Pavel sank to one knee, slung the bag off his shoulder and unzipped it. Opening it wide so that they could see it was fencing gear and nothing more, he grasped one of the sabers and got to his feet.

The two oafs stepped back a pace, but their leader laughed. "It's not sharp, it's for a game. Look."

They grinned and moved toward Pavel.

"I'm warning you," Pavel said, his voice low, as he retreated slowly, "what happens next is something you will regret."

The leader laughed again. "One against three? One toy sword against three real knives." His laughter stopped.

"Slice him up!"

Pavel darted to his right, away from the promenade railing, where there was more room for maneuver. The first of the big thugs swung toward him and Pavel made a lightning-fast lunge. His blunted saber, thin and flexible as a whip, slashed at the oaf's hand and sent the knife clattering across the cement of the walkway.

The thug yelped in sudden pain. His companion hesitated a moment, and Pavel gave him the same treatment, ripping skin off his fingers.

The ugly little leader had circled around, trying to get behind Pavel. But Pavel danced backward a few steps and easily parried his lumberingly slow jab, then riposted with a slash at his cheek. He screamed and backed away.

The first one had recovered his knife, only to have Pavel disarm him again and whack him wickedly on the upper arm, shoulder and back: three blows delivered so fast they could not follow them with their eyes. Then it was back to the leader again.

He faced Pavel with blood running from his cut cheek and eyes burning with hatred.

"I'll kill you for this," he snarled.

Pavel extended his arm and pointed the blunted tip of his saber toward his face. "I'll blind you with this," he said, as calmly as a man asking for a pack of cigarettes. "I'll take out your eyes, one by one."

The little hoodlum glanced over at his two accomplices.

One of the thugs was sucking on his bleeding knuckles. The other was wringing his pain-racked arm. The light faded from the ugly one's eyes. He backed away from Pavel.

Wordlessly the three of them turned and started walking back the way they had come.

"Jackals!" Pavel called after them.

He retrieved his bag and zipped it up. But he kept the saber out and held it firmly in his right hand as he strode the rest of the way to his dormitory room.

Two days later Pavel was in a luxurious Aeroflot jet airliner, winging southward, away from wintry Moscow and toward the sun and warmth of the Mediterranean.

He still felt uneasy.

"It is a mission of utmost importance," the bureau director had said, "and of the utmost delicacy."

Pavel had sat on the straight-backed chair directly in front of the director's desk. The director himself had called for him, a call that meant either high honor or deepest disaster, all other chores were handled by underlings.

He was a slim, bald man with a neat little goatee almost like that of Lenin in the gilt-framed portrait hanging on the wall behind his desk. But there the resemblance ended.

Pavel imagined Lenin as a vigorous, flashing-eyed man of action. The director, with his soft little hands, his manicured nails and tailor-made Hungarian suits, looked more like a dandy than a leader of men. His most vigorous action was shuffling papers.

To the director, Pavel looked like a cat tensed to spring.

A strikingly handsome young man, not quite twenty-three, yet he comes stalking into my office like a cat on the prowl, all his senses alert, his eyes looking everywhere. That is good, the director thought. He has been trained well.

Pavel's life history was displayed on the computer screen atop the director's desk. The screen was turned so that only the director himself could see it. Only child; mother killed at Chernobyl; father "retired" from his duties as Party chairman of Kursk due to alcoholism. There is nothing in his dossier to indicate romantic entanglements. Best grades in his class, a natural athlete.

For long moments the director leaned back in his big leather chair and studied the young man before him. Pavel returned his gaze without flinching. The director smiled inwardly and thought of the eternal game of chess that was his career. He may be the man we need: not a pawn, exactly. More like a knight. One can sacrifice a knight in a ploy that will advance the game.

Pavel finally broke the lengthening silence. "Could you explain, sir, what you mean?"

The directly blinked rapidly several times, as if awaking from a daydream.

"Explain? Yes, of course. We can't expect to send you on such an important mission blindfolded, can we?" He laughed thinly.

Pavel made a polite smile. "As you know, sir, I had applied for the International Peacekeeping Force."

The director gestured toward his computer display screen. "Yes, of course. A good choice for you. And you may eventually get it."

"Eventually?"

"After you have completed this mission—successfully."

The director leaned back in his chair again and tilted his head back to gaze at the ceiling. "In a way, you know, this mission is somewhat like being with the IPF."

He is trying to stretch my nerves, Pavel realized. To see how far I can go before I lose my self-control. Very casually, he inquired, "In what way, may I ask?"

Still staring at the ceiling, "There is a certain Mr. Cole Alexander, an American, although he has not set foot in the United States in more than six years."

Pavel said nothing. He glanced upward, too. The ceiling was nicely plastered, but there was nothing much of interest in it, except for the tiny spider-web the cleaning women had missed off in the comer by the window draperies.

The director snapped his attention to Pavel. "This Alexander is a mercenary soldier, the leader of a band of mercenaries."

"Mercenaries?" Despite himself, Pavel could not hide his surprise.

"Yes. Oh, he claims to be hunting for the infamous Jabal Shamar, the man responsible for the Jerusalem Genocide. But he spends most of his time hiring out his services to the rich and powerful, helping them to oppress the people."

Pavel had heard rumors about Shamar.

"Is it true that Shamar took a number of small nuclear weapons with him when he disappeared from Syria?" he asked.

The director's brows rose. "Where did you hear of that?" he snapped.

Pavel made a vague gesture. "Rumor . . . talk here and there,"

Tugging nervously at his goatee, the director said, "We have heard such rumors also. Until they are clarified, all nuclear disarmament has been suspended. But your mission does not involve Jabal Shamar and rumored nuclear weapons caches."

"I understand, sir."

"You will join Alexander's band of cutthroats," the director continued. "You will infiltrate their capitalistic organization and reach Alexander himself. And, if necessary, assassinate him."

The airliner landed at Palma, and Pavel rented a tiny, underpowered Volkswagen at the airport. He did not look like the usual tourist: a smallish, athletically slim young man, alone, unsmiling, studying everything around him like a hunting cat, dressed in a black long-sleeved shirt open at the neck and an equally somber pair of slacks, carrying nothing but a soft black travel bag.

Using the map computer in the car's dashboard, he drove straight across the island of Mallorca, heading for the meeting that agents employed by the Soviet consulate had arranged with a representative of the mercenaries.

Across the flat farmlands he drove, seeing but not bothering to take much note of the fertile beauty of this warm and ancient land: the green farms, the red poppies lining the roads, the terraced hillsides and tenderly cultivated vineyards. But he noticed the steep hairpin turns that scaled the Sierra de Tramunta as he sweated and cursed in a low, angry whisper while the VW's whining little electric engine struggled to get up the grades. A tourist bus whooshed by in the other direction, nearly blowing him over the edge of the narrow road and down the rugged gorge.

When he finally got to the crest of the range, the road flattened out, although it still twisted like a writhing snake.

And then he had to inch his way down an even steeper, narrower road to the tiny fishing village where he was supposed to meet the mercenaries.

Pavel was drenched with sweat and hollow-gutted with exhaustion by the time he eased the little car out onto the solitary stone pier that jutted into the incredibly blue water of the cove. He turned off the engine and just sat there for a few moments, recuperating from the harrowing drive.

The smell of burned insulation hung in the air. Or was it burned brake lining?

He got out on shaky legs and let the warm sunshine start to ease some of the tension out of him. The village looked deserted. Houses boarded up. Even the cantina at the foot of the pier seemed abandoned, its whitewashed cement walls faded and weathered. Not a single boat in the water, although there were several bright-colored dories piled atop one another at the foot of the pier.

He took his black overnight bag from the car and slung it over his shoulder, then paced the pier from one end to the other. He looked at his watch. The time for the meeting had come and gone ten minutes ago.

He heard a faint buzzing sound. At first he thought it was some insect, but within a few moments he realized it was a motor. And it was getting louder.

A black rubber boat came into view from around the mountains that plunged into the sea, a compact little petrol motor pushing it through the water, splashing out a spume of foam every time the blunt bow hit a swell. A single man was in it, his hand on the motor's stick control. He wore a slick yellow poncho with the hood pulled up over his head.

Pavel watched him expertly maneuver the boat into the cove and up to the pier. He looped a line around the cleat set into the floating wooden platform at the end of the pier.

"What's your name, stranger?" the man called in English.

"Pavel."

"That's good. And your last name?"

"Krahsnii." It was a false name, of course, and the lines they had exchanged were code words that identified them to one another.

"Pavel the Red," said the man in the boat, grinning crookedly. "Fine. Come on aboard."

So he understands a bit of Russian, Pavel thought as he trotted down the stone steps onto the bobbing platform and stepped lightly into the rubber boat.

"That's all you've got?" The man pointed at Pavel's bag.

"It's all I need," Pavel said as he sat in the middle of the boat. "For now."

"Want a poncho? The sun's pretty strong here." He lifted another yellow slicker from a metal box at his feet.

Pavel shook his head. "I like the sun."

"You could get skin cancer, you know," he said as he unlooped the line and revved the motor. "Damned ultraviolet—ozone layer's been shot to hell by pollution."

With a grin, Pavel shouted over the motor's noise, "Let me enjoy one day of sunshine, at least. In Moscow we don't see the sun from September to May."

The man grinned back. "Suit yourself. Red."

As they bounced along the waves Pavel thought he was more in danger of drowning than sunstroke. The spray from the bow drenched him thoroughly. His shirt and slacks were soaked within minutes. Pavel sat there as mute as a sainted martyr, enduring it without a word.

I have heard of new agents receiving baptisms of fire, Pavel said to himself. This is more like the baptism of an ancient Christian.

"But I'm not an assassin," Pavel had blurted.

The director had smiled like a patient teacher upon hearing an obvious mistake from a prize pupil.

"You are," he corrected, "whatever we need you to be. You have been trained to perfection in all the martial arts. Your skills are excellent. Is your motivation lacking?"

Pavel suddenly saw an enormous pit yawning before him, black and bottomless.

"I am a faithful son of the Soviet Union and the Russian people," he repeated the rote line.

"That is good," said the director. "And if the Soviet Union and the Russian people require you to assassinate an enemy of the people, what will you do?"

"Strike without mercy," Pavel said automatically.

The director's smile broadened. "Of course."

"But . . ." The young man hesitated. ". . . Why?"

The director sighed heavily. "We are in a time of great upheavals, my young friend. Enormous upheavals, everywhere in the world. Even within the Soviet Union, changes are coming faster than they have since the glorious days of the Revolution."

Pavel had been taught all that in his political indoctrination classes. And the fact that his father was allowed to retire peacefully and seek therapy for his addiction, instead of being sent to some provincial outpost in disgrace, was a more concrete proof of the changes sweeping the Party and the nation.

"The Soviet Union helped to create the IPF and has led the way toward true disarmament," said the director almost wistfully. Then he added, "But this does not mean that we have entirely foresworn the use of force. There are situations where force is the only solution."

"And this American represents one of those situations?"

"All that it is necessary for you to know will be explained to you in your detailed mission briefings. For now, let me tell you that this capitalist warmonger Alexander is working some sort of scheme to undermine the regime in Libya. We are the friend and protector of the Libyan regime. We will protect our friend by getting rid of his enemy. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

The man in the poncho cut the motor. The world suddenly became silent; the drenching spray ceased. Pavel unconsciously ran a hand through his soaked hair.