“Tonight? Police will have the neighborhood staked out and locked down tight.”
“Perhaps tomorrow, then. Or we can get another car. As for your clothes—”
“About those limousines,” he interrupted her. “What did you mean?”
“I know Cako’s buyers,” Volkova replied. “Every one of them a foreigner, like me. They won’t fly out tonight, for Hong Kong, Bogotá, wherever they come from. First they will wish to shout at Cako, then relax and sleep. Perhaps, when they have slept, even complete the business that they came to do.”
Bolan considered it. Something to hope for, anyway. Better than abject failure.
“Are you on to something?” he inquired. “Or is this wishful thinking?”
“I can tell you where the customers are registered,” Volkova said. “A few calls will confirm if they’ve gone back to their hotel rooms. And if not, I know where Cako is most likely to conceal them.”
“And the women?” Bolan asked.
“They’re valuable merchandise,” she said. “Why throw it all away, if he can make a profit for his masters, after all?”
New Jersey Pine Barrens
LORIK CAKO HAD stepped outside his house to make the call, smelling the pitch pines all around him. He was glad now that he’d left to come outside, as Arben Kurti’s shouting through the cell phone made his ear ache.
“What do you mean, you don’t know who’s responsible?”
“Arben—”
“I have police already calling me, now on their way with questions. What am I supposed to tell them, Lorik?”
“Tell them nothing, Arben. You know nothing. It’s true! They can’t break you on that.”
“Break me? Break me? No one breaks me, you punk!”
Cako cringed and answered, “No, sir. Of course not.”
“What about the women, then? Are they safe?”
“The buyers were my first concern.”
“It should have been security,” Kurti replied. “You’re sure these weren’t police?”
“Impossible,” Cako replied with perfect confidence. “American police don’t come in shooting. They bring warrants, helicopters, lights and cameras. Reporters follow them. It’s not at all the same.”
“Which leaves my question still unanswered,” Kurti said.
“I’ll find out who it was,” Cako assured his lord and master. “You can trust me.”
“I’ve already trusted you,” Kurti said. “Now I wonder if I should regret that choice.”
“I cannot tell you what to think,” Cako replied, bluffing it out. “But if you let me prove myself, you won’t be disappointed, sir.”
Kurti considered it and offered no direct response. Instead, he said, “The sale is ruined, I suppose. We’ll have to pay the clients back for traveling so far for nothing.”
“I believe we can proceed,” Cako suggested, “once I’ve calmed them down. Some discounts may be necessary, but I think that they would hate to go home empty-handed.”
Kurti spent another silent moment on the line, then said, “Do what you can with them. The merchandise cost nothing, after all. Disposing of it may create more problems than a discount sale.”
“My thought exactly, sir.”
“And find the people who caused me this headache,” Kurti said. “I want them alive if it’s possible. Dead, just as good. But be sure, understand?”
“Absolutely.”
“Your job now depends on it. As does your life.”
“Understood.”
Despite the warm night, Cako felt goose bumps rise on his arms, as a chill snaked its way down his spine. Before he had the chance to speak again, try ending their talk on a slightly more positive note, Kurti broke the connection. Cako heard the dial tone buzzing in his ear and killed his cell phone.
He couldn’t fault Kurti for his anger. All Cako could do now was fulfill his promises and hope that his success restored the confidence he had enjoyed before tonight.
First, calm his buyers and persuade them to permit another showing of the merchandise, perhaps at bargain prices. He would have to lay on more security, assure them of their safety—but where better to conduct the sale than in the vast Pine Barrens, shielded from the eyes of man and God alike?
Next, Cako knew he had to identify the bastards who had stormed his home, humiliated him and put his life doubly at risk. They’d failed to kill him outright, as was plainly their intent, but he was still in danger from his own captain if he could not find some swift way to rectify the situation.
Failure in this case was not an option.
It was do or die.
And when it came to agonizing death, Lorik Cako believed that it was best to give, rather than to receive.
THE ROOM WAS SMALL but tidy, had a lived-in look about it and smelled pleasantly of Volkova’s perfume. Bolan was no connoisseur of ladies’ fragrances, but thought this one had some kind of flower etched on blue glass bottles, which presumably helped to boost the price.
Whatever. Under different circumstances, he imagined it would do the trick when skillfully applied to someone who resembled his companion.
In the full light of her motel room, Natalia Volkova lived up to Bolan’s first impression—and then some. She was what the British tabloid page-three writers like to call a “stunna,” see-worthy in any setting.
But this night she was all business.
“You know the Pine Barrens?” she asked, while Bolan sipped a cup of halfway decent java from the coffeemaker that the motel provided for its guests.
“I know of it,” he said. “Pine trees and cranberries, with very few inhabitants than anybody bothers counting. Something like a million acres of it is a national reserve. Odd animals. Some say the Jersey Devil hangs around out there.”
She smiled and asked, “Are you afraid of monsters, Mr. Cooper?”
There’d been no harm he could see in giving her the standard cover name. Bolan had plentiful ID to back it up—a valid driver’s license, passport, credit cards—but she’d made no attempt to verify his name.
In fact, she likely didn’t care.
For all he knew, her real name could be Anna Khrushchev or Josefina Stalin. As long as she was fairly straight with him and they were moving in the same direction, toward a common goal, what difference did it make?
The cover world was all about illusions, anyway.
“The monsters I’m familiar with are human beings,” Bolan said. “They haven’t scared me yet.”
That wasn’t strictly true, of course. A soldier who denied ever experiencing fear was either lying or a stone-cold psychopath. Her could have been more accurate and said the human monsters in his past had never scared him off a mission, but Natalia got the point.
“Cako has a house in the Pine Barrens,” she informed him. “Not on state land, but nearby. There are no neighbors. It is his retreat, what you might call a home away from home, yes? He can do things there that might be dangerous in East Keansburg. I’m confident that he will be there now, perhaps with those who came to see him for the auction.”
“And the women,” Bolan said.
“Most probably. Whatever he decides to do with them, tonight has taught him