Critical Intelligence

Now it was Klegg’s turn to shrug. “Tie up the knots that can’t tie you back. Call it acceptable.”

Like a scene out of Faust, Milosevic leaned forward and extended his hand.

IT WAS COLD in the alley outside the Kiev nightclub.

Klegg’s and Svetlana’s breath plumed up between them as they kissed furiously. The American plunged his hands inside the woman’s ankle-length fur coat. Her eyes were glassy marbles as they kissed. He ran his hands over her body underneath her coat, stroking her up to a fever pitch of excitement.

She moaned as his fingers worked at her.

The back door to the nightclub was just a few yards away and the muted sound of the dance beat music rattled the blacked-out windows in their frames. The alley smelled strongly of the urine of drunk and stoned patrons. Garbage overflowed out of battered old cans and three giant green bins.

Rats, braving the frigid chill to get the remnants of greasy food, swarmed across the refuse and watched the humans with glittering eyes.

Though thousands of citizens of Kiev went about their lives within little distance of couple, it was as if they were alone in a vast, urban wasteland of empty windows, rubbish and deep shadows. It called to Klegg’s mind the poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.

“I’ll show you fear in a handful of dust,” the lawyer thought idly. It made no sense but his mind was starting to click with adrenaline.

“Now,” Svetlana whispered in his ears. “I want it now.”

“Now?” Klegg asked, his heart starting to beat even faster.

“Yes, yes,” she breathed.

“Okay.” He laughed. “But remember, you asked for it.”

The American psychopath stepped back from the Russian woman, leaving her gasping. Her glassy, red-veined eyes opened in confusion.

Klegg grinned like a maniacal clown.

His hands went to the small of his back underneath his coat. He emerged with a pair of nunchaku.

The martial-arts weapon was designed from the width of a single, slightly thicker than average handle cut smoothly down the middle, allowing for more compact and thus easier surreptitious carrying. The handles on the thicker edges were octagonal, presenting a variety of sharp edges for contact when swung.

“My favorite movie when I was growing up was Enter the Dragon,” Klegg explained, speaking fast as his breath continued coming harder and faster. “Nylon cord and teak wood. I walked right through airport security with this.”

He assumed the rear defense stance. Dramatic, almost cinematic in nature, with most of his weight resting on his outstretched forward leg while his torso was held back, arms up, nunchaku held along the outside of his right arm.

“W-what?” Confusion. The beginnings of fear.

“I’m not going to lie,” Klegg snorted. “I like this weapon ’cause it’s so fancy. Does a lot for my self-esteem.”

He exploded into motion, whipping the segmented clubs around through an intricate pattern of moves: reverse shoulder swing into a figure-eight swing, down into an underarm grip.

He was grinning so wildly now his smile threatened to split his face. He forcefully exhaled and performed a cross-back swing too fast for the eye to follow, and Svetlana, at last understanding what was about to happen, opened her mouth to scream.

The end of the nunchaku whipped around and slapped the woman across the jaw. Her head snapped to the side and her scream was cut short by the impact. Blood painted the dirty snow in stripes of scarlet. She stumbled back, long heels sliding on the icy ground, only the alley wall keeping her up.

Klegg, eyes burning, moved in, the nunchaku cycloning through its figure-eight pattern. He struck her again, then caught the stick under his arm on the rebound. Her head snapped back and this time teeth flew like tumbling dice.

She sagged to her knees and her ruined face poured blood out in a hot, sticky puddle beneath her.

Klegg lashed out again and again. His skill was not simply that of a choreographed dancer; he could swing the arcane weapon with deadly force. The teakwood handle made sickening crunching sounds like cracking ice as it slapped into Svetlana’s skull and jaws over and over.

Blood splatter painted the walls, painted the ground, soaked the woman until her face was a mask of it. She couldn’t find the strength to scream, couldn’t drag in enough air to cry out before she was struck again.

She could only whimper.

Klegg’s smile was a horrible rictus on his gleaming face. His breath came in short, hard pants like a man having sex. The concussive shock of each blow traveled back up his arm with each strike.

Finally one of the octagonal edges of the striking club caught the ravaged woman a glancing blow along her temple and she was knocked unconscious. She sagged face-first to the ground, still as a slaughtered carcass. Klegg struck the back of her head two hard snaps and more blood matted her once silky hair.

Gasping for breath, he moved around behind her and took each side of the nunchaku in an underhand grip. He bent and looped the nylon cord under her chin then twisted. He twisted until he felt her larynx crumple like an empty soda can under his heel and he rose, dropping the weapon to lie beside Svetlana’s rapidly cooling corpse.

He took off his gloves and ran a hand through his hair. He straightened and smoothed his overcoat. He reached down and adjusted his still prominent erection in his slacks.

Without hurry he lit a cigarette and blew smoke out in twin streams from his nostrils. Slowly his heart slowed and his breathing calmed. His erection began to fade.

He smoked half the cigarette down, then dropped it to the ground. It landed in a sludgy pool of snow and blood, instantly extinguished.

He turned and walked calmly from the alley to hail a taxicab. He had no fear of the police. Kiev was a wide-open, dirty city and he was under the protection of Milosevic, the biggest villain of them all.

Things were working out just right, he decided.

Stony Man Farm

BARBARA PRICE sat at her desk in the Annex.

She had three computer screens open in front of her, each with a spreadsheet showing expenditures for separate areas of the Stony Man operation. She had itemized ledgers for the armory, for Transportation and for Buck Greene’s security projects. Requisition forms for jet fuel alone were enough to make clerks from the Governmental Accountability Office gray with shock.

Price looked at the tally and shook her head as she typed in her authorization code.

The public was always in some outcry about thousand-dollar hammers or eight-hundred-dollar toilet seats. The truth was the number crunchers at the GAO would never have made such oversights. Those inflated purchase orders were designed to hide covert-action expenditures for clandestine units and projects just like Stony Man.

There was a knock on the office door and she looked up. Carmen Delahunt stood in the entrance, a tired look on her face and a manila file folder in her hand.

“Got a second?” the redhead asked.

Price pushed herself back from her desk. “Sure,” she said. “What’ve you got?”

“Multiples of Seven.”

“Really?” Price arced an eyebrow.

Delahunt entered the room and took a seat across from Price at the desk. She laid out her folder showing several computer printings and a couple of glossy jpg enlargements.

Delahunt began leafing through them, talking fast, the way she always did when she was onto something.

“I started cross indexing intelligence estimates and after-action reports like you’d asked,” she explained. “Looking to see if anything relating to Seven came up.”