скачать книгу бесплатно
If for nothing but pragmatic reasons, the agent should have learned through his training that torture was never called for. First and foremost, physical torture wasn’t a reliable way to obtain the truth. Men being beaten told those beating them whatever they thought was most likely to halt the beating. Sometimes that was the truth. Other times it wasn’t.
Bolan turned to Urgoma. “Can I see you in the hall for a moment?” he asked.
“Certainly.”
“You, too, my friend,” the Executioner added, turning toward the CIA agent.
The CIA man dropped the butt of his cigarette on the floor and ground it out with the heel of his shoe.
Bolan opened the door. “Tell your men to take a brief break, will you, Colonel?”
Urgoma nodded, turned toward the table and said something in Arabic. The other two uniformed men nodded, then walked to the wall and leaned against it, both pulling their own cigarettes from shirt pockets.
When they were in the hallway with the door closed again, the Executioner turned toward the CIA man. “What’s your name?” he demanded.
“Sims,” the man said, still grinning. “Bill Sims.” He paused for a moment, the smile staying on his face but turning more sarcastic than happy. “And you must be the hotshot superagent we got the call about from our director. The one who’s so damn good we’re supposed to just follow him around like puppy dogs.”
“It sounds like you have a smart director,” Bolan said. “One who listens to the President.”
Sims snorted. “What was your name again?” the CIA man asked.
“Brandon Stone. And I’ve got just one question for you.”
“Shoot,” Sims said.
Bolan stepped forward and shot a hard right fist into the CIA operative’s belly.
Sims doubled over as if he’d been cut in two.
The Executioner slammed the CIA man against the wall, straightened him back up and said, “What did you say your name was?”
Sims was red-faced and choking, trying to catch his breath. “Sims,” he finally sputtered.
“No, it isn’t,” Bolan said, and hit him in the abdomen again. “It’s Cash. Johnny Cash.” Grabbing a handful of the man’s hair, he forced Sims’s shoulder blades against the wall again. “Let me hear you say, ‘Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.’”
“But my name’s—”
A third punch, this time in the sternum, caused the last remaining air to rush from Sims’s lungs. The Executioner’s fists were painful, and would probably leave Sims with some sore abdominal muscles the next day. But none of the Executioner’s blows would do any permanent harm.
Bolan waited while the vacuum in the man’s chest cleared, then repeated himself. “Say it. ‘Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.’”
“Hello,” Sims said in a faint whisper. “I’m…John…ny…Cash.”
The Executioner stepped back a pace, then turned to Urgoma. “Do you get my point?” he said.
The colonel nodded. “I do,” he said. “Torture can make a man say anything you want him to say.” His face reflected no sign that he had taken the demonstration as an insult. Instead, he looked slightly embarrassed. And as if he had just learned a valuable lesson that he would put it to good use in the future.
Bolan reached forward and straightened Sims back up yet again. “Get lost,” he told the red-faced CIA man. “And don’t get in my way. I don’t want to see you again while I’m here in Sudan. Understand?”
Sims nodded, then staggered off down the hall.
“You are a very direct person,” Urgoma said, chuckling.
The Executioner nodded. “Do me a favor, will you?”
“Anything you like,” Urgoma said.
“Assign a couple of men to Sims. Make sure he doesn’t burn me.” Bolan paused for a moment, then said, “You understand the term burn? ”
“Expose you,” Urgoma said.
“Exactly,” the Executioner said. “I’ve already had too much exposure.”
“I will tell the men inside this room,” Urgoma said, nodding toward the door, “to change into plainclothes and tail Sims. That way, we will keep the number of my own men who know you are here down to a minimum.”
“Good thinking,” the Executioner said. “But is there some particular reason—some suspicion you have—to make you want to play this close to the vest?”
Urgoma lowered his eyes to the floor for a moment, then raised them again. “I have, for some time now,” he said, “suspected that there is a rogue element operating within the law-enforcement community and other governmental offices in Sudan. And I suspect they have a mole right here. In my own Sudan National Police.” He paused a moment, then said, “That is why our government called your President for help. We do not know exactly who can be trusted and who can’t.”
Urgoma was regaining Bolan’s respect quickly with his fast thinking, and the honesty he displayed even when it was embarrassing to him personally. And as far as the beatings of the men inside the next room went, the Executioner had to remind himself that he was in a part of the world where torture had been used, and accepted as just another part of life, since the dawn of time. Urgoma might be Western-educated but he had been born, and had grown up, here in North Africa. It was impractical to think that the man would have vaulted, head-first, into the twenty-first century in every area of life.
“Tell me one thing before we go back inside,” Bolan said, leaning an elbow against the wall next to the door.
“I will be happy to do so,” Urgoma said. “What do you wish to know?”
“Did you learn anything from Sims? Anything the CIA might have found out that you, yourself, weren’t aware of?”
Urgoma frowned and the wrinkles in his forehead extended up onto his bald pate. “He did let one thing slip,” the colonel said.
“And that was…?” Bolan asked.
“I cannot remember exactly how it came up,” Urgoma said. “But I gather that the CIA has been following the progress of Sudan’s nuclear program closely.”
Bolan nodded. Every Third World country on the planet seemed to have a nuclear program in progress these days. Although they all claimed it was to harness energy for nonviolent purposes, in many cases, Sudan being one of them, it was the equivalent of cocking a loaded gun and then handing it to a child. But there was no point in saying anything more on the subject at this time. So he simply filed the information away in the back of his mind for future use. Somehow—he didn’t know in exactly what way yet—this so-called passive nuclear-energy program was linked to the two men in the interrogation room and the shipment of plutonium coming into Sudan to which they’d already admitted.
“Tell me more about this rogue operation,” the Executioner said.
“I would if I knew more,” Urgoma said, “but they are very secretive. Also, very violent in the way they view the Ethiopians who are encroaching on our borders. They would not be against just sending in troops and killing everyone who stepped over the line from Ethiopia to Sudan, I do not believe.”
“Do you think they’re tied into this plutonium shipment in any way?” Bolan asked.
Urgoma shrugged. “I cannot say,” he told the Executioner. “But it is hard for me to imagine that any group of my own fellow countrymen—regardless of how unhappy they are with the current Ethiopian government of the CUD rebels—would go to such extremes.”
“I’ve seen far worse extremes in my time,” Bolan said. “I think it’s a possibility we need to keep in mind. This plutonium is most likely going one of three places. The Ethiopian army, the CUD rebels or to this rogue element within Sudan.”
Urgoma just looked at him. The expression on the colonel’s face told Bolan he still hated to believe it was a possibility.
“And, I think,” the Executioner went on, “the answer to that secret—the who, why, where, when and how—lay somewhere in the limerick which the Sudanese CIA informant handed off to the young American reporter. Now. Let’s go back inside and try a new line of questioning, shall we?”
The colonel opened the door and again ushered Bolan in first. The look on his officers’ faces showed confusion as he gave them their orders to follow Sims in Arabic. But they nodded and quickly left.
Bolan sat down across the table from the two blood-soaked men. Quickly, he surveyed the damage to both faces. It wasn’t as bad as it had looked at first—certainly nothing permanent. “Colonel,” he said over his shoulder, “do you have someone who can get these men some towels? They’ll need a little medical attention, too.”
Urgoma lifted the phone receiver from the table and spoke into it. A few minutes later, another officer carrying a first-aid kit entered the room. The Executioner and the colonel waited silently as the officer slid rubber gloves over his hands, then dotted and dabbed at the cuts and bruises on both faces with cotton balls soaked in rubbing alcohol. Both men winced as the alcohol stung their wounds.
After applying several small bandages here and there, the man with the first-aid kit turned to Urgoma, nodded and left the room again.
The “good cop, bad cop” technique was the oldest trick in the book, the Executioner knew. But the stage had already been set so he decided to take advantage of it. “Do either of you speak English?” he asked the two men wearing the bandages.
Both heads nodded. “A little,” the man with the mustache said.
“Good,” Bolan said. “Then we’ll speak English. If there’s any misunderstanding, Colonel Urgoma can translate and help us out.”
The heads nodded again.
“I’ve got a few questions for you,” the Executioner said. “And I’d like you to answer them. But even if you don’t, you’re not going to get hit anymore. Do you understand that? Is that clear?”
The two men turned to look at each other in confusion. They obviously weren’t used to such kind treatment, and couldn’t quite figure out what Bolan was up to.
Then the clean-shaved man turned back to the Executioner. “If we do not answer, and you do not hit us, then what do you plan to do?”
Bolan shrugged. “Just get up and leave, I guess,” he said. He glanced at the door. “You’ll both be held on murder charges, so I’ll know where to find you if I decide I need to come back.”
The two men in the bloody suits turned to each other yet again. They suspected that more officers with leather gloves and saps might take this big American’s place if he left unsatisfied, and it showed on their faces.
“What do you wish to know?” the man with the mustache asked.
“First, why did you kill the old man?”
“To get the envelope, of course,” the clean-shaved man answered. One of his bandages covered part of his upper lip, and it caused his words to come out with a slight lisp and a slur that sounded as if he’d been drinking.
“What did the envelope contain?” Bolan asked. He knew about the limerick, of course. But he wanted to know if they did. And there was always a chance that if they did, they’d also know the code to break down the words and make sense out of them.
“We did not know what was in the envelope,” the man with the mustache replied. “And we still do not know. We had only just learned that the man who was carrying it was an informant, working for your CIA.” He glanced toward the corner where Bill Sims had stood earlier, then back to the Executioner. “May I ask you a question?” he said.
“Certainly,” Bolan said.
“Are you CIA, too?”
“No,” Bolan said promptly.
The answer seemed to satisfy the man, and he visibly relaxed.
“What happened to the envelope?” Bolan asked. Again, he knew. But he wanted to know if they did.
“Just before we shot him, the old man gave it to a very young man,” the clean-shaved man said. “He was American. Or maybe European. But somehow, I did not get the impression that he was a CIA man. Perhaps that was because of his age.”
“Why didn’t you go after this younger man?” the Executioner asked. “Like you did the older one?”
“We did,” the man with the mustache said. “But, like has already been said, he was very young. And fast on his feet. He escaped.”
Bolan turned to where Urgoma stood against the wall. “Do you have the death penalty here in Sudan?” he asked.
“Indeed, we do,” the colonel said, quickly picking up on the Executioner’s direction. “And these men will likely receive it for the murder they have committed.”
“No,” the man with the mustache said. “You cannot do that to us.” The clean-shaved man was shaking his head in agreement.
“And why can’t he?” Bolan asked.
“Because we were only doing our jobs,” hissed the man with the bandage half-covering his lip.
The Executioner frowned. “What jobs?” he asked. “What do you mean you were just doing your jobs?”
The two prisoners looked at each other again, whispering in Arabic.
“We are,” the man with the mustache said slowly and hesitantly, “both agents with the Department of Defense.”
For a second, silence reigned over the room. Then Urgoma said, “What Department of Defense?”
“The Sudan Department of Defense, of course,” the man with the bandaged lips replied.
The Executioner looked up from his chair as Urgoma straightened.
The colonel looked surprised, but not as surprised as he might have.
The Executioner nodded toward the door, opened it and they went out into the hall. “Where’s this reporter who turned the limerick over to Sims in the first place?” he asked.
“Just down the hall in a holding cell,” Urgoma said.
“You jailed him?” Bolan frowned.
“At Sims’s request.” Urgoma nodded. “Besides, he is a material witness to a murder. And we could not be certain he would stay in the country. Particularly considering the fact that we were afraid another attempt would be made on his life.”
Bolan nodded. It might not have been the way things would have been handled in the United States but it made sense. “Did Sims run any kind of background check on him?” he asked. “Anything that might lead us to believe he’s reliable or isn’t? And make him understand that we can get any information we need? Coax him into helping us?” The young man appeared to be a journalist, and journalists by nature seemed to almost always be uncooperative with police and government-intelligence agents.
Urgoma nodded. “Sims may be a prick, but he is still a very thorough agent for your country. He did, indeed, check into this man’s background, and it appears he was able to learn a lot about him in a very short period of time.”
Bolan nodded. “Let’s go talk to him,” he said. “You can fill me in on the details on the way.”
Colonel Urgoma reached back, locked the door to imprison the two murderers still in the interrogation room and started off down the hall. As they walked, he briefed the Executioner on what Sims’s background investigation had turned up.
R ONNIE C ASSETTI SAT on the hard steel platform that served as a bed in the holding cell. Leaning back, he felt the cold concrete wall through the thin material of his tank top and especially on his arms and shoulders where the shirt didn’t cover his skin. His life had been turned upside down, and he had yet to have time to really sit down and make any sense of it.
But he had time to do that now. Plenty of time. More time than he needed or even wanted.
Cassetti had gone to the American Embassy in Khartoum, the limerick safe in its envelope in the side pocket of the sport coat he’d thrown on over his tank top after the cab had returned him to his hotel. First, he’d had to talk the Marines on guard at the gate into escorting him inside. That hadn’t been an easy task to begin with, and now he wished it had failed altogether. But in any case, after he’d cleared the metal detector the Marines had taken him to an outer reception area where he’d asked to see a CIA representative.
By the look on the face of the woman behind the desk you’d have thought he’d just asked her to lie down and take off her clothes. She’d told him that no CIA agents worked out of the embassy, of course, and at that point he had suspected he was about to be thrown back out on the street again.
