LITMIR.BIZ

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a button on his PDA. “I’ve already transmitted a call for an ambulance. Hang on and the paramedics can stabilize you.”

      “It would just be surviving, my friend,” Alexandronin told him. “Not living.”

      He coughed, blood foaming on his lips. Bolan stroked the dying man’s forehead, frowning. “Give Catherine my love when you see her again, Vitaly.”

      Alexandronin smiled weakly. “The dead all know the love meant for them unspoken in the hearts of the living. We do not need revenge to prove that fealty.”

      “What plot these men are protecting, it needs to be stopped,” Bolan said. “I’ll end it.”

      Alexandronin clapped Bolan on the shoulder. “It is your way. It’s why I called you. You will protect others from suffering as I did when Catherine was taken away from me.”

      Sirens sounded in the distance. “Take your prisoner, Mikhail. Those are police, not paramedics.”

      Alexandronin closed his eyes, his last breath a deep sigh.

      “Sleep well, my friend,” Bolan whispered, lowering Alexandronin’s head gently to the ground.

      The Executioner hauled the unconscious assassin over his shoulder and darted down a causeway to reach his rental car. He left behind the ghosts of the friendly dead to their much delayed reunion.

      The warrior intended a different gathering for the damned souls he was about to pass judgment on.

       CHAPTER THREE

      Opening up the interface to the Russian Intelligence Agency’s GUI system, Kaya Laserka noted that she had twenty-four new e-mail messages. The field agent, assigned to the Moscow Organized Crime Interagency task force, clicked on the tool bar, taking her to her electronic Inbox. Most of the mail was one form of memo or another, mostly tedious reminders and uninspiring trinkets like tenure awards or daily positive reinforcement sayings.

      The header of one e-mail, however, brought a chill to Laserka’s spine.

      “Catherine was murdered,” it read in bold, blocky font.

      Laserka waited what seemed an eternity as her slow T1 connection, burdened by the equivalent of Third World technical issues, struggled to load the message. There was a link to a London newspaper Web site that carried the report of a brutal, coma-inducing beating of Catherine Rozuika Alexandronin. There was also an appended note that she had been taken off her life support when her husband, Vitaly, was informed that she had been rendered brain dead. The return e-mail was to a free online service, one she didn’t recognize. However, the title Outcast 1995, contained the year her mentor and training officer, Vitaly Alexandronin, left Russian Intelligence amid a government scandal. Laserka had no doubt who the sender was.

      Almost a decade and a half before, Laserka had been a fresh young rookie to Russian Intelligence, and Alexandronin had given her a wealth of lessons and experience that carried her across the intervening years. Laserka fired off a response e-mail, but the server spit back a “message not deliverable” response.

      The mail had been sent four days earlier, Laserka noted. She had been stuck on an investigation and away from her work terminal. She’d only just returned to Moscow the previous night after a week in the field, running a surveillance operation. She’d had no urge to go to the office. She had been tired, sweaty and hungry, and only wanted to scrub her auburn hair clean of the stink of perspiration, stale coffee and an ever-hanging cloud of cigarette smoke trapped in her locks. Laserka was as fit and trim as when she was just a raw recruit, but closing in on the latter half of her thirties meant that she didn’t have the same reserves of energy to make a quick trip down to the office after the end of a stakeout detail.

      Running her knuckle across her full, wide lips, Laserka tried to interpret the disappearance of Alexandronin’s e-mail account. It was probably a security ploy on her old mentor’s part, using a one-time temporary address, then closing it down. Alexandronin was still a reviled name in the halls of the RIA because of his interference with an effort to put things back to what many KGB veterans felt was a finer time and way of doing business. Laserka had escaped the prejudice of the old hard-liners by being young, pretty and a hard worker. A short hospital stay during the time Alexandronin was offending the old guard also conveyed a cloak of anonymity to the lady agent.

      Whenever Alexandronin wanted to get in touch with his former student and partner, he would create a temporary, easily disposable and recognizable e-mail address that would last only long enough for a brief, anonymous exchange. This kept Laserka from getting into trouble with her superiors, but kept the friendship the pair shared alive and vital. Sometimes, the two gave each other news of prevailing politics that would affect her career or his exile, as far as they could determine.

      The death of Catherine did not appear to be a random act of violence. That Catherine and Vitaly both were targets of bitter old enemies was not news to Laserka. Husband and wife both kept themselves armed, contrary to Great Britain’s inane and ineffectual firearms laws. Laserka had noted several instances of violence over the years that the English nanny legislation had failed to prevent.

      On a whim, Laserka performed a quick search, entering the keywords “Russian, violence and London” into the news database. Almost instantly, several article links popped up on the screen, detailing a violent battle that had left eight dead in the London docks, only a few hours before. The only person with identification was a Russian national. The name was not a surprise to Laserka, though reading “Vitaly Alexandronin” plunged a dagger of sadness between her ribs. She tried to blink away the beginnings of tears, swallowing hard to remove the knot of a forming sob from her throat.

      Laserka closed the search engine and hurried to the washroom after shutting down her computer.

      Though they had been separated for almost fifteen years, the man had been like a surrogate father to her. She barricaded herself into the toilet stall and took a seat, allowing the tears inspired by the death of a dear friend and his wife to flow. Being in the minefield of RIA office politics had given her the ability to smother her sobs to inaudible squeaks and deep breaths, but her eyes cast forth a torrent of weeping. Laserka was glad that department regulations frowned upon the wearing of mascara at the office. At least now she didn’t have to mop streaks of black left in the wake of her tears.

      She could imagine Alexandronin chiding her for being so lazy and mannish about her appearance, happily giving in to regulations rather than spend a few moments beautifying herself in the morning. A chuckle broke through where sobs had been held silent and at bay. Her mentor had always been one to find the positive in life. It was a trait that the cold war veteran had developed to keep himself sane through years of Soviet oppression. The gentle memory of friendly admonishment felt like a message from the ghost of her mentor, reaching between the worlds of the living and the dead to give her a bit of comfort.

      It took a few minutes for the tears to pass, toilet tissue sopping the wetness from her cheeks. Finally, Laserka took a deep breath, checked her reflection in the mirror and returned to her desk. No one paid attention to her; a pair of reading glasses swiftly perched on her nose hid her eyes somewhat. They wouldn’t have a good chance to see the redness in them. She fired up her computer again, keeping herself buried out of sight inside her drab, gray cubicle.

      Laserka had paperwork on the surveillance operation to complete, and the sooner it was done, the sooner she could go back home to her Spartan apartment and mourn for her friend and mentor, preferably with a bottle of vodka. The quiet goodbye ceremony would be a proper send-off for Alexandronin and his beloved wife.

      Laserka opened her notebook to enter her data into the GUI when she noticed a small warning flag on her screen. She clicked on it and opened up a new window.

      “Unauthorized Web search activity, Laserka, K., scanning articles pertaining to Vitaly Alexandronin,” the pop-up declared. Laserka bit her lower lip in concern, cursing her curiosity and decrying the snoopiness of the RIA information technology team.

      “Report to Supervisor Batroykin for debriefing,” a new pop-up informed her.

      Batroykin

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