Rebel Force

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“I’m hungry. I know a place where we won’t be interrupted and the help knows how to mind their own business.”

“I imagine you know quite a bit about the restaurant scene,” Bolan remarked.

“Screw you.”

Kubrick navigated Grozny efficiently, using diplomatic credentials to pass quickly through security checkpoints. The Chechen insurgents had, for the most part, been pushed into the Caucasus Mountains and the bulk of combat operations were taking place along the Georgian border.

Bolan looked out the tinted windows of Kubrick’s Mercedes. He watched landmarks slide by they drove across the busy, modern streets of the city center. He had a feeling Kubrick didn’t spend too much time in the slums or out in the bush.

He and Kubrick were like two bulls in a field and butting heads came naturally to them. Bolan was an interloper on Kubrick’s turf, and Lich’s for that matter. Bolan had done his homework at the safehouse, and he was nominally well versed in the history of both men.

Lich had come up through the ranks old school. He’d been a logistics officer for Air America operations in the Asian theater during the sixties and had then been assigned to Berlin, running counterintelligence operations against Communist incursions on all levels. He’d made his bones working the iron curtain and he’d stayed there.

Other than that cursory background, Brognola hadn’t been able to access Lich’s agency file—a fact the big Fed had found very troubling. Lich’s background was buried so deep that Bolan, through Brognola, had been frozen out.

Kubrick was a different story. He was a classic Agency success story. He’d combined adequate fieldwork with a talent for playing the sycophant. He’d started out doing interrogation of captured North Korean infiltrators with the Defense Intelligence Agency before getting assigned to Berlin under Lich in the early eighties.

He bounced around playing the role as Lich’s number two for decades. Like Lich, he was rumored to have a considerable financial portfolio built using information gleaned during classified operations. The pair of them were known as down and dirty operators who brushed the line often—but as of yet no one had suggested that the duo had actually crossed it.

But Sanders had jeopardized his operational security to place that call from outside of station control.

Bolan mulled it all over while Kubrick drove. After about fifteen minutes they pulled up to a valet parking lot in front of a moderately expensive-looking restaurant in the International District. Such a place was real luxury—in a place like Grozny. A smiling employee in a red suit, took the keys from the massive Kubrick and gave him a paper ticket.

“This is on your expense account, not mine,” Bolan said, playing his part, as they entered the restaurant.

Once they were seated and had ordered food and coffee, the game was ready to begin.

“What do you know?” Kubrick demanded.

“I’m here to learn,” Bolan said, sidestepping. “Just start at the beginning. Walk me through it like I was a child.”

“Not much of a stretch,” Kubrick grunted.

“Then it should be easy,” Bolan said with a shrug.