“It is.”
“And what went wrong, exactly?”
“You were not informed?”
“I’ve told you—”
“Then, by all means let me break the news. Our package went astray tonight. Four of my men attempted to retrieve it.”
“And…?”
“You’ll get an invitation to their funerals.”
“All four?”
Now Chaliapin was surprised. He had supplied a name to Sokolov, a flight number, and then had washed his hands of it. He’d wanted to know nothing more about the problem unless Sokolov discovered something that affected Chaliapin personally. He had regarded that as an unlikely circumstance.
But now…
“All four,” Sokolov said, confirming it.
That meant more paperwork for Chaliapin, poring over field reports of four deaths presumed to be Mafiya-bound in some way. It would be busywork, at best.
Chaliapin could play stupid with the best of them.
But he was curious. “How did this happen?” he inquired.
“Another person claimed the package,” Sokolov replied. “Ran off with it, in fact. My men…protested. They were unsuccessful in asserting ownership.”
“Apparently. This other person—”
“Was a woman.”
“That is most unusual,” he granted.
“It’s unheard of,” Sokolov corrected him. “Unless she was official.”
“What? You can’t mean—”
“Do you not have female agents?” Sokolov demanded. “Certainly. But—”
“And it’s possible that some other department might be operating at cross-purposes to yours?”
It was entirely possible. Within the FSB, he constantly competed with the Military Counterintelligence Directorate and the Service for Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight against Terrorism. Beyond that lay competing agencies—the Federal Protective Service and the militia. Both employed women as agents.
“I will look into it,” Chaliapin said.
“I know you will, Maksim. And find the bitch that I need to kill.”
THE “HARDWARE STORE” that Bolan needed didn’t carry saws, hammers or nails. It wouldn’t keep the hours of a normal Moscow shop, and definitely wouldn’t advertise in print, or through the broadcast media. Its reputation—its existence—would be carried on the whisper stream that underlaid so-called police society in every nation of the world.
The hardware store he sought carried the tools of death.
“In Moscow,” Pilkin informed him, “there are several outlets for the merchandise you seek.”
“There always are,” Bolan replied. “Take me to one that offers quality as well as quantity. I don’t want rusty junk from Chechnya, much less Afghanistan.”
“Perhaps Iraq would suit you better?” she replied.
“Nothing immediately traceable,” he added, carefully ignoring her remark.
“Such dealers are…how do you say it in America? Connected? They won’t hesitate to sell you out if anyone with influence comes knocking.”
“Sell who out?” he countered. “The only introduction I’m supplying is a roll of cash. Unless the guy you have in mind knows you.…”
“No,” Pilkin replied. “We’ve never met.”
“Sounds good, then,” Bolan said, and settled back to wait.
They found the dealer’s shop west of downtown, a block north of Povarskaya Street. A stylish jewelry store filled the ground floor, with living quarters upstairs.
A wise man kept an eye on his investments.
Lights were on in the apartment windows when Pilkin rang the bell downstairs. A voice responded on the scratchy intercom, bantering back and forth with the woman for something like a minute, then switched off.
“He’s coming down,” she told Bolan.
“No problems?”
“None so far.”
The man who finally arrived to let them in was forty-something, stocky, with slicked-down hair and bushy eyebrows that resembled Leonid Brezhnev’s. Unlike Brezhnev, he smiled—albeit cautiously—for paying customers he’d never met and likely wouldn’t see again.
When they were safely locked inside the shop, its owner introduced himself as Fedor Tsereteli. He spoke fluent English without asking why it was required, and Bolan saw him file that fact away for future reference.
So be it.
“You have need of special merchandise,” he said.
“That’s right,” Bolan replied.
“Please follow me.”
He led them from the main showroom into an office, where a bank of filing cabinets stood against one wall. At Tsereteli’s touch, two of them swung aside, revealing a smallish door secured by a locking keypad. Tsereteli blocked their view with his bulk while he punched in the code, then opened the door. Beyond it, stairs descended to a darkened cellar.
Tsereteli found a light switch, and fluorescent fixtures came alive downstairs. Bolan ducked his head, going through the doorway, and made his way down to the gun vault.
The place had something for everyone: assault rifles and submachine guns, light machine guns and squad automatic weapons, shotguns and pistols, RPGs and rockets, crates of ammunition and grenades. Bolan browsed, taking his time.
His final selections included a Steyr AUG assault rifle, a familiar Beretta 93-R selective-fire pistol with sound suppressor, a Mikor MGL 40 mm grenade launcher, plus spare magazines, ammunition and a selection of hand grenades from Tsereteli’s stockpile. Accessories included a shoulder rig for the Beretta, a tactical vest and a Cold Steel Recon Tanto dagger with a black epoxy finish on its seven-inch blade.
“All this?” Pilkin asked him, surveying his selections with a raised eyebrow.
“You’re traveling a little light yourself,” Bolan replied. “Want something for the road, on me?”
Or, rather, on the two Colombians he had relieved of half a million dollars when he punched their tickets outside Baltimore, two days before his meeting with Brognola in D.C.
With visible reluctance, Pilkin checked Tsereteli’s wares and chose a Vityaz submachine gun, model PP-19-01. It resembled an AKS-74U compact assault rifle, but the Vityaz was chambered in 9 mm Parabellum, fed from 30-round box magazines, with a cyclic rate of 750 rounds per minute. Its stock folded against the gun’s left side when not in use, and special clips held a spare mag in place beside the one in use.
“That’s it?” Bolan asked.
“Everything my heart desires,” Pilkin told him, frowning.
“Then,” he said, “we’re good to go.”
LEONID BEZMEL wasn’t woken by the purring telephone. A nocturnal creature by disposition and necessity, he rarely went to bed before sunrise, and then didn’t wake until noon, unless some dire emergency compelled it.
“Hello,” he said without enthusiasm.
“Have you found out any more yet?” Gennady Sokolov asked.
“Nothing beyond what we discussed,” Bezmel said.