Harry's Rules

by Michael R. Davidson

  Whoever was stealing the Russian money was doing the same – scraping small amounts with a small spoon. But even so, given enough time, the thief could get all the dough. Yudin needed to get ahead of them. He did not look forward to the marathon travel that lay ahead, but he could not afford to wait. As it was, he was alone in Marbella, and his only tools were a single telephone and his computer. With funds deposited as far away as the Cayman Islands, he would be weeks at his task. He toyed with the idea of taking Barbara with him. She would find it exciting, and Arkadiy could use the company. Fucking her at 30,000 feet in Zhenya’s jet would be stimulating.

  Dragging his thoughts away from that lofty reverie, he forced his attention back to the task at hand. There were several accounts he had not yet been able to check. A great deal of the money in his charge was invested in private companies and international projects, such as oil exploration in Iraq. These investments, he knew, were safe because they were not liquid. Yudin put his face in his hands, rubbing his tired eyes, and remained that way for a few moments. He would send another message to Moscow Center immediately, he decided. Zhenya must send the jet to Malaga.

  When he looked up again, a tall man who looked vaguely familiar stood just inside the doorway of the study pointing a gun with a silencer directly at him.

  “Nye dvigaysya, don’t move,” the man said in excellent Russian. His voice was calm, but commanding. Once he had swallowed his surprise, Yudin’s first thought was to push the alarm button on the console in front of him.

  “Place your hands flat on the desk, Arkadiy Nikolayevich,” the man said, advancing toward him, “and don’t move them again unless I tell you.”

  Yudin froze. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the gun. His mind locked on an image of a bullet travelling at high velocity straight at his head. He did as he was instructed, but his thoughts were spinning out of control. Was this Morozov’s man? Had the intelligence chief sent an assassin to murder him? True, the situation was bad, he thought, but it was not his fault. He had nothing to do with losing the account information. Why would Morozov do this? Regardless of the reason, Yudin knew that if Morozov wanted him dead, he soon would be.

  “Where is the disk?” The tall man was now in front of the desk, directly across from Yudin, and he suddenly recalled where he had seen him before. This man was not Clint Eastwood, but bore a striking resemblance.

  Yudin’s eyes flicked involuntarily to the laptop computer. His mouth opened and closed repeatedly, but no sound emerged, like a fish out of water gasping for oxygen.

  At that moment Barbara stumbled through the study door, shoved roughly from behind by a strikingly beautiful woman with ash blond hair. The blonde was holding Barbara’s arm twisted painfully behind her back, and she held a pistol to the Spanish girl’s head.

  “Everything under control?” the tall man asked the blonde – in English! So he was not Russian, after all!

  “Yes,” replied the woman in the same language. “There is no one else in the house. I found this one upstairs in the biggest damned bathtub I’ve ever seen.” Yudin belatedly took in the fact that Barbara was dressed only in a large terry robe.

  The blonde pushed his girlfriend into a chair against the wall and secured her hands to the arms of the chair with what looked like bands of plastic. Barbara struggled against the restraints, but a threatening gesture from the blonde quieted her. The Spanish girl’s eyes were wide with fright.

  “W-who are you,” Yudin finally managed to stammer, this time in English. This was the language he and Barbara used with one another.

  The pistol remained aimed unwaveringly at Yudin. “My name is Harry, and you and your friends have given me a hell of a time over the past couple of days. But they’re dead now. I’ve gotten pretty good at killing Russian scum. I thought I’d bring the war home to the boss. I’m tired of dealing with lackeys.”

  This news shocked Yudin, and he was not sure he believed it. How could the feral assassin, Drozhdov, have been defeated?

  Despite her fear, Barbara had been listening intently. “Arkadiy, what is this man talking about? What do they want?”

  The blonde slapped Barbara sharply across the cheek, leaving a red mark. “Keep quiet!”

  The Spanish girl began sobbing quietly.

  “Are you going to kill me?” Arkadiy’s voice rose in pitch. The sudden violence against Barbara frightened him even further.

  “Maybe,” the man shrugged, “Maybe not. It depends.”

  “I don’t know what you want,” the Russian whined. “You’ve made a mistake!”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. He leant menacingly over the desk and placed the end of the silencer directly against Yudin’s forehead. It hurt.

  “It’s you who made the mistake,” his voice still soft and menacing. “How do you think I found you? One of your friends told me who you were before I put a bullet into his ugly face. I shot him right in the eye.” He moved the pistol from the middle of Yudin’s forehead to his left eye. “Maybe I should do the same with you right now.”

  “Please, no!” Yudin shouted. “Yes, I admit it. I know the one called Drozhdov. But he does not work for me. I gave him no orders. He only delivered the disk to me.”

  “So, you DO have the disk.”

  “Th-the disk?” Yudin was stammering again. He knew how much depended on the information on that disk. Without it, without the account numbers and pass codes, the cash might never be recovered. “I gave it to someone else. I don’t have it anymore.”

  The man stood back. “You’re lying. The disk is right here in this room. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet it’s slotted into this computer.”

  The man bent down, keeping his pistol aimed at Yudin, and pressed the release button on the computer’s floppy drive. A blue disk popped out, and the man retrieved it. “Several people died for this, and one of them was a friend of mine.”

  “I d-don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  This stranger held the key to billions of Voskreseniye dollars in his hand. Yudin was horrified.

  “OK. Let’s take a look.” The man turned to the blonde. “Come on over here and see what’s on this.”

  He returned his attention to Yudin.

  “Get up. Keep your hands in the air.”

  He gestured with the gun, and Yudin rose from his seat. The man shoved him hard across the room and pushed him down into a chair next to Barbara where he bound him with the same kind of plastic strips the blonde had used on Barbara.

  The blonde took a seat behind Yudin’s desk and slipped the disk back into the floppy drive, concentrating on the computer’s screen. When the request for a password appeared she typed in a series of numbers without hesitation, and the screen lit up with columns of names and figures.

  “This is it,” she said.

  The man had not moved his eyes from Yudin.

  “It looks like you were lying to me, Arkadiy. What do you think I should do with you?”

  Before the Russian could reply, two men burst through the door of the study, guns in hand.

  CHAPTER 49 – Gunfight

  Gunfight

  Ivan Dimov’s Spetsnaz-trained eyes immediately assessed the situation as they rushed through the door. Nikitin had burst into the room just ahead of him. Nikitin was rash, but this suited the more circumspect Spetsnaz veteran. Just as a wary old roebuck allows a younger one into the forest clearing first, Dimov left rashness to the young. In any case, the undisciplined vor v zakonye was not good at following orders.

  There was a pistol on the desk beside the blonde working with the computer and she presented no immediate threat. The tall man standing beside Yudin held a pistol, but their sudden appearance had taken him completely off guard, yielding the advantage to Dimov and Nikitin.

  The latter -- always one to shoot first and ask questions later -- fired at the man who launched himself sideways onto the floor underneath the trajectory of the bullet, which lodged itself instead into the chest of a half-dressed, dark hai
red girl tied to a chair beside Yudin. The white terry cloth of her robe blossomed red, and her head flopped back, dead eyes frozen wide open, staring beyond death.

  Yudin began to scream.

  The man rolled on the floor away from the chairs and his silenced Glock coughed twice; one of the rounds caught Nikitin in the abdomen and exited his back, leaving a hole the size of a grapefruit. Nikitin doubled up and fell to the floor clasping his mid-section as the shooter swung his pistol towards Dimov.

  The Russian’s reflexes were very fast, and he snapped off a shot with automatic precision. His bullet found its mark and the man’s gun spun from his hand and skittered across the tiled floor. Dimov had shot to kill, but his target had been moving, and he saw that the man had been hit in the side but was still alive. He could have double-tapped him then and there, but there was a second target in the room, and she was now reaching for the pistol on the desk.

  Dimov swept his weapon towards the woman. Everything transpired in the course of just a few seconds, and Dimov quickly covered the space between them. He could easily kill her before she could retrieve her weapon and take aim, and the woman obviously knew it.

  She hesitated for a fraction of a second, eyes blazing, and then carefully raised her arms and stepped back from the desk. She stood perfectly still and didn’t say a word.

  “Pick up your weapon with two fingers only, place it carefully on the floor, and kick it into the corner,” Dimov ordered.

  She obeyed, never removing her eyes from him.

  “Now, come out from behind the desk. Keep your hands in the air.”

  Yudin was hysterical gaping at the girl’s body slumped in the chair at his side. Her head lolled back and her dead eyes stared blankly at the ceiling as blood puddled beneath her.

  “They were going to kill us! They know about the disk.”

  Dimov knew nothing of any disk. His assignment had been only to protect Yudin. He looked at the intruders. The man, in evident pain, had pulled himself to a sitting position against the wall, one arm hugging his side. There was something familiar about him.

  “Who are you?” demanded Dimov.

  The man hesitated for a moment, and Dimov raised his pistol to point it directly at the woman’s head.

  The man said, “My name is Harry Connolly, CIA. Who are you?”

  Dimov immediately recognized the name. He looked more closely now at Connolly. His appearance had been altered but not enough to make him completely unrecognizable from the photograph he had been shown before being sent to Vienna.

  “Yes, I can see who you are now. You got away from me in that hotel in Vienna, Connolly, but it won’t happen twice. And you are in no position to ask questions. Why are you here? Who sent you?”

  Yudin yelled, “He said he killed Drozhdov.”

  Dimov raised his eyebrows. He knew Drozhdov from his Spetnaz days. This soft American razvedchik had managed to kill two of his colleagues in Vienna. Could he really have taken out a trained operative like Drozhdov, as well?

  “Now how did you ever do that?” he asked in a soft voice.

  Nikitin was in a fetal position, groaning and bleeding all over the floor, his blood running along the grouted grooves between the square Spanish tiles. The American nodded toward him.

  “Just about the same way I got your comrade over there.”

  Dimov studied the American for a moment. “I think I’m going to enjoy interrogating you. I hope you continue trying to lie to me for a long time. It will make the questioning much more interesting, and I can think of a LOT of questions.”

  He kept one eye on the woman as he spoke.

  CHAPTER 50 – Death

  I sat slumped against the wall pressing my hand tightly to my side as blood seeped through my fingers. Where the hell is Ronan? The Russians’ pistols were not silenced, and the Israeli had to have heard the shots. Had the two toughs already killed the big Mossad officer? There had been no warning before they burst in, and I didn’t think the Ronan could have been taken silently.

  It felt like the slug had broken a couple of ribs, and the wound burned like hell. There was a lot of blood, but it wasn’t fatal. The guy who had shot me, however, might. How do we get out of this?

  The Russian with the pistol was about 5’ 8”, muscular, closely cropped blond hair. Unmistakable military bearing. He was dressed in jeans and a black leather jacket over a dark sweater.

  Maybe I could distract him long enough for Sasha to reach her pistol. I tried to rise, keeping eyes on the man still with his weapon at Sasha’s head. She had said nothing since the two Russians had burst into the room and now stood very still with her hands in the air. My pistol had come to rest against the wall at least ten feet away, too far.

  The thug on the floor emitted mewling, gurgling sounds. Blood dribbled from his mouth and his face had long since gone white. He was clearly out of commission for a while, possibly dying. Judging from the widening circle of red under him, he might well bleed out in a very few minutes. His companion showed no concern as he concentrated all his attention on Sasha and me.

  I looked toward Yudin and noticed for the first time that the Spanish girl had been shot. She did not appear to be breathing. Yudin was glaring at me with a combination of terror and malevolence.

  The Russian kept his pistol aimed at Sasha’s face and ordered her out from behind the desk. Her expression was inscrutable. I wondered what was going on in her mind. She must be wondering about Ronan, too.

  The Russian barked an order at her.

  “Go and help your friend to his feet. I want you to tie him to a chair. Then you can release Mr. Yudin.”

  Yudin continued to glare, and his mouth now twisted into a mean triumphal grin.

  “Now, you sukin syn’,” he spat, “It’s your turn to answer questions. And then you will die, slowly, I hope, and we will have a little fun with blondie over there. What do you think of that?”

  “I think you’re a fat asshole.”

  Where the hell was Ronan?

  “Tie him up,” the Russian again ordered Sasha.

  There was nothing we could do. We were disarmed, and I was losing hope that Ronan would appear at about the same rate I was losing blood. If the Israeli were going to do anything, surely he would have done it by now.

  Sasha helped me to a chair and bound my wrists to the arms with one of the plastic zip cuffs we’d brought with us. A new wave of pain and nausea washed over me as I was forced to remove the pressure from my side. Finished, Sasha turned and faced the Russian with the gun. She still had not uttered a word.

  “Now, untie Yudin.”

  As the Russian moved menacingly toward her she raised her arms above her head and spoke for the first time.

  “No.”

  “Oho, a defiant little bitch, aren’t you.” The thug advanced quickly on her and thrust his pistol directly at her face, only inches away from her. “Do what you are told, pizda, MOVE! If you’re a good little girl, maybe I won’t shoot you in the face when the time comes.”

  Before the threat was fully out of his mouth, Sasha’s left arm slashed down and she grasped the top of the Russian’s pistol, simultaneously forcing the barrel away from herself inwards and down, towards the Russian’s groin. Before the gun was halfway through its arc she pressed its ejector button, and the clip clattered to the floor, leaving only one round in the chamber.

  With equal speed she clapped the open palm of her right hand against the Russian’s left ear. As her opponent staggered back, baring his teeth in surprised pain and anger, Sasha wrenched the pistol from his grasp and smashed her opponent savagely in the face with the grip, always moving into his body, keeping him off balance, forcing him back with slashing punches and elbows to the head and kicks that followed one another like the blows of a jackhammer. She finished him off with a crushing knee to the groin and a final crack on the side of his head with the pistol. The Russian went down hard, and she stood over him, her chest heaving. It looked as if she were deciding whether to
kill him or let him live.

  I blinked and for an instant forgot the searing pain in my side. It had happened so fast, like a conjuring trick. One minute the Russian held all the trump cards; the next Sasha was standing over his crumpled body.

  Yudin was screaming again. He could believe no more easily than I what he had just witnessed.

  “You filthy pizda! You whore. You can’t do this!”

  Sasha looked over her shoulder at the hysterical oligarch and smiled wickedly. She retrieved the clip from the floor, rammed it into the Russian’s pistol, turned and pointed the weapon at the fallen man’s head.

  “Don’t shoot!” It wasn’t that I felt any sympathy for the bastard, but this man knew who I was, and this was a stroke of luck that could guarantee the success of our plan to conceal the Israeli hand. The Russian would confirm that it was Harry Connolly, rogue CIA officer, who had mounted the raid.

  It required a couple of deep breaths for Sasha to bring her rage under control. She was clearly in a killing mode, whether aroused by the fierce hand-to-hand combat or some atavistic inner urge, but she finally lowered her weapon and settled for a vicious kick to her helpless opponent’s face that rendered him fully unconscious.

  She walked over to the still groaning second intruder, knelt and examined at him. When she stood again her face was a mask I hardly recognized as the demure girl I met only a few days ago in a Viennese coffee house.

  “He won’t last long,” she announced impassively of the man on the floor, and then she turned her attention to Yudin, “But I might let you live if you’re a good little Russian boy.”

  If I had harbored any lingering doubts about Sasha’s professional capabilities they had been erased in an entirely spectacular fashion. She was a sochen, a highly trained Israeli field agent, as lethal and ruthless as they come. That she was a cold-blooded killer, as well, was not in doubt.