Colony Of Evil

“I’m a little out of practice,” he admitted.

“I hope so.”

She wore a jumpsuit with a zipper down the front, running from chest to somewhere south of modesty. As Bolan watched, she gripped the tab and lowered a fraction of an inch, teasing.

“I was about to have a shower,” Bolan said.

She smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Bogotá

They left the shooting scene in Gabriella Cohen’s car, with Guzman slumped in the backseat, holding a scarf against his bloody temple.

“That’s pure silk, you know,” Cohen said as she drove through downtown Bogotá toward some point she had yet to clarify. “I’ll never get the blood out.”

“I’ll buy you a new one,” Bolan told her. “First, though, could you tell me where we’re going?”

“What? Didn’t I tell you that already?”

“No,” Bolan replied. “I’d have remembered it.”

“Sorry. I thought your friend could use some patching up, a little quiet time. I have a small house in the Teusaquillo district, just a few miles farther on. The neighbors mind their own business.”

“I hope so.”

“I’d be more at risk than you, if they did not.”

“You think so?”

“Well…perhaps not more, but just the same. The DAS hates foreign spies. Can you imagine? And from Israel, oh my God! Due process is a fairy tale they heard when they were children, then forgot.”

“You’re pretty far afield,” Bolan replied.

She flashed a winning smile. “I like to, um…how do you say it in America—go where the action is?”

“That’s how we say it,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t think there’d be much action for Mossad in Bogotá.”

Another smile. “Not like tonight, you mean?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m glad you happened by—”

“You make assumptions now,” she interrupted him. “You think I’m simply driving past old factories and hear gunshots, then tell myself, ‘I simply must go join the fight, and maybe find a handsome man’?”

Bolan ignored her sarcasm and said, “Well, if it wasn’t a coincidence, you should explain yourself. If you were trailing us—”

“Not you,” she cut him off again. “The men who tried to kill you. I’ve been watching them for three weeks. Now, because of you and my softheartedness, they’re dead. My time is wasted.”

“You were tracking them?”

“Why are you so surprised? We do watch out for Nazis, young or old. Some still owe debts from their participation in the Shoa. Others must be stopped before history can repeat itself.”

Bolan had no quarrel with eliminating fascists, but he asked her, “What’s the Shoa?”

“You, perhaps, call it the Holocaust. In Israel, we say Shoa. It is Hebrew for ‘catastrophe.’ In Yiddish, it is Churb’n. Yom ha-Shoa is our Holocaust Remembrance Day, in April. We do not forget.”

“Nobody should,” Bolan replied.

“Our interest in Colombia, therefore, is not mysterious. The Nazis here, including very old ones from the Reich, are well established and protected. They grow richer by the day from sale of drugs and push the enemies of Israel toward extremist action that results in loss of life.”

“Especially in the last few days?” Bolan asked, playing out a hunch.

No smile this time as Cohen quickly glanced at him, then pulled her eyes back to the road in front of them. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she answered rather stiffly.

Bolan showed another card. “Acid in New York City. Murder in Miami Beach and Mexico. Somebody with an antique typewriter who wants the credit for his work but doesn’t have the guts to sign his name. Ring any bells?”

They covered two blocks before Cohen spoke again. “Those aren’t the only cases,” she replied, checking her rearview mirror as if someone might be crouching at her shoulder, eavesdropping.

“Where else?” Bolan asked.

“In Madrid and Athens. Two murders, a week apart. One victim was a secretary from our consulate, stabbed in a marketplace with people all around. Of course, no one saw anything. The other was a diplomat’s young daughter. An apparent hit-and-run, the rental car abandoned. Greek police considered it an accident until—”

“The note arrived?”

“Yes.”

“Same typewriter and postmark?”

“Erika Naumann Model 6,” she said, with small chips on the A and W. They also need to clean the O and Q. And, yes, the letters both were mailed from Bogotá.”

“Somebody showing off, but still feeling secure,” Bolan observed.

“Someone who may be legally untouchable,” Cohen said, “but not by other means.”

It was unusual to hear the aim stated so plainly, by a foreign agent whom he’d barely met. Still, Israel made no bones about the fact that it reached out around the world to punish terrorists and those who murdered Jews. From Adolf Eichmann to the architects of Munich’s cruel Olympic massacre, Mossad had kidnapped or eliminated mortal enemies of Israel. One unit, active during the seventies, had been nicknamed the Wrath of God. And it had lived up to its name.

“I’ve shocked you now,” she said.

“Surprised,” Bolan corrected her. “And by your candor, not the thought.”

“Then may I ask what brings you to Colombia, and why the Nazis want you dead before you have a chance to change clothes from your flight?”

He took another leap of faith. “I’d say we’re in the same line, coming at it from a slightly different angle.”

“You, of course, desire to keep such nasty business out of the United States.”

“Of course, there’s that,” he granted.