Night's Reckoning by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2012-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

The two men passed each other outside the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. A studious Chinese tourist with his guidebook and a heavyset Serb with a limp and the look of someone who had been in a bar fight. They passed the building on the sidewalk that lay across the busy road from the building’s entrance.

As they crossed paths, the Chinese man dropped his guidebook, and the Serb bent down to pick it up—a random act of kindness as he handed it back.

“Thank you,” Xiao Li said simply. “You have had an accident?”

“Funny. You’re a funny man, anyone ever say that to you? I’d be really surprised if they had.”

“Such bitter sentiments are uncalled for. Would you care for coffee? Personally, I don’t drink it, but you Westerners are all the same. ‘Mad for it,’ I believe is the term.”

The Serb scowled. “I don’t like you when you’re in a good mood. I don’t know why you should be, given that we fucked up again. I’d be furious. I am furious, if it comes to it. And I get jumpy when we meet in the open, in a place like this.”

“‘Hide in plain sight’ is another of your phrases from the media of which I am fond,” Xiao commented. “I want you to take a good look at this place, as the next time you see it, you will be leading an assault on it.”

The Serb stared—it was all he could do not to laugh with disdain. “You’re a fucking madman,” he stated simply.

Xiao’s face did not betray the amusement he felt inside. “Perhaps, but perhaps not. If you allow me to outline a possible course of action for you, which I have already taken the liberty of assuming you will agree with, then you may change your mind.”

The Serb’s brow furrowed. “After the beating we’ve got from that bastard in black and with the Koninklijke up our ass, I’d say we don’t have much choice.”

* * *

BOLAN FELT LIKE climbing the walls. Thirty-six hours in a cell—for that was what this safe house was, after all—with the aging warlord, and he was nearly at the point where he could happily turn him over to anyone who wanted him.

The thing that grated was the assumption on Grozny’s

part that he and the soldier were cut from the same cloth. Maybe that was true in a certain sense. Both men had been soldiers for their country, and had believed in that nation and its values, and both men had fought willingly for those beliefs. But that was where the similarity ended.

Bolan did not believe in the sanctity of human life—how could he? The number of men he had dispatched over the years made that clear. Yet each of them had been engaged in practices that had been designed to ruin and destroy lives. Whether those practices had been fueled by political ideology or by the desire for power and cash, the result had been the same. Innocent people had been killed, maimed or tortured.

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