Don Pendleton - Blood Testament

He briefly weighed the options of permitting them to live for, say, six hours, giving Bolan one more opportunity to risk himself on their behalf. All things considered, though, the man from the CIA did not believe that live bait would be necessary to his plan. As long as Bolan thought they were alive, he would feel honor bound to make the futile, ultimately fatal, gesture. Logic cast its overwhelming vote for death, and Cartwright seconded the motion with a scowl.

The order should have gone through Grymdyke, but his second-in-command was now a problem in his own right. If the Bureau hadn't tumbled to him yet, his hours were numbered all the same, and while he lived he was a threat to everyone around him. Typhoid Grymdyke, bet your ass. Except that his disease was many times more lethal than a virus of the flesh. Exposure. Public condemnation. Loss of power in official circles. Death was infinitely preferable to embarrassment in the clandestine service — most especially if the death was someone else's.

Someone, say, like Grymdyke's.

Cameron Cartwright harbored nothing in the way of animosity against his second-in-command. Eliminating Grymdyke was a way of making up for damage that the man himself had caused through negligence. If he should disappear without a trace, the Justice probe would languish at his doorstep, starved for information that would never be forthcoming from above.

The odd man out was Nicky Gianelli, and the very thought of him made Cartwright clench his fists in anger. Twenty-seven years of honorable service — more or less — was hanging in the balance for him now, because of Gianelli's wild vendetta. While the capo possessed the crucial files containing Cartwright's name, the evidence against him, he would never be entirely free.

While Gianelli lived...

Of course there were a thousand ways to take him out, but it must be accomplished with discretion. Nothing that would smack of CIA involvement, certainly. Perhaps a word to other, rival mafiosi, urging them to carve a slice of Washington from Nicky's pie. It would be simple, once the reigning capo was removed.

That left the files, and Cartwright knew that he could never trust a rival mafioso to deliver them intact. A bargain might be made, but once another capo took the throne, once he deciphered the importance of the files, then Cartwright would be right back at square one. He might waste weeks or months and millions of illicit dollars, winding up with someone who was worse than Gianelli.

A replacement would never be the problem. Any time a ruling capo went to jail or bit the bullet, there were half a dozen heirs apparent standing by to take his place. The key was simply dumping Gianelli, and recovering the files that would be always close at hand. It was the kind of job the CIA was made for, and there were professionals on staff to handle every phase of the procedure, from assassinating Gianelli to location and removal of the documents. No sweat, provided Cartwright picked the team himself, avoiding stumble bums like those who left their carcasses at Arlington.

Eliminating Gianelli had its risks, of course. If Cartwright should blow it, if the greasy bastard tumbled to his plan and then survived, there would be hell to pay. It was unlikely that a contract would be let upon a ranking officer of the CIA, but nothing was impossible. More probably, selective information would be circulated to the media — the goddamned Post, the frigging networks — and before you knew it there would be another round of hearings, blue-nosed senators forgetting where their campaign contributions came from, looking for a little mileage at the Agency's expense.

It had been bad enough when Hoover's files had surfaced some years back; at least the old man had been dead and gone before they started dumping on him. But Hoover's antics at their worst would look like Halloween amusements next to Dallas and Los Angeles. Before the snoops had finished with him, Cartwright would be lucky if they let him bite the bullet — and he knew that no such mercy would occur to the inquisitors.

He could almost hear Lee Farnsworth's voice, a dusty whisper in his memory. The moral of the story is: don't miss! When he was ready for the move on Gianelli he would have to make it stick the first time out. There would not be a second chance, and Cartwright could not tolerate the obvious alternatives to victory.

He didn't count on any problem with the syndicate, provided his initial move on Gianelli was successful. Nicky's "brothers" in the outfit were a bunch of cutthroat bastards who would sell their mothers if the price was right, and if his sources were correct, they cherished no enduring love for Gianelli. There would be some confusion at the outset, capo blaming capo for the hit, the old dogs watching one another warily before they fell on Gianelli's rackets like a pack of jackals, but their petty palace politics held no significance for Cartwright. If he needed any cover for his move, it had already been provided, courtesy of Nicky's private little war.

The Executioner would handle Gianelli for him, and if evidence was needed, the technicians in Clandestine Ops could muddle through the details. It was known that Bolan had a certain style, a preference for certain hardware, which amounted to a signature of sorts. It shouldn't be too difficult to sell the media or Nicky's fellow goombahs on the notion that the Executioner had struck again, perhaps in grim retaliation for the murder of DeVries. As for Brognola's family, the wild-assed warrior had abducted them upon exposure of his one-time friend's connection to the syndicate. It was regrettable that they could not be saved, but if their sacrifice illuminated Bolan's state of mind, his swift degeneration into madness, then perhaps their deaths were not in vain.

It was a neat scenario, and it covered all the bases. He could even pass off the Arlington disaster as an attempt to trap the Executioner, a valiant effort that had cost the lives of eight outstanding agents in the field. The media would buy it, grudgingly at first, but with renewed enthusiasm once the Agency produced some solid "evidence." He knew the Mob would buy it, after all the grief that Bolan had bestowed upon them through the years. And with a bit of luck the boys at Justice just might buy it, too.

Except for Hal Brognola.

He would never buy it in a million years, no matter how they recreated history or tried to sugarcoat the bitter pill. With the elimination of his family, the man had nothing left to lose, and he would blow the whistle loud enough to wake the dead at Arlington.

Through no fault of his own Brognola had become a liability to Cameron Cartwright, and the man from the CIA decided instantly that there would have to be another corpse. Another victim of the Executioner, perhaps: a civil servant linked to underworld corruption, and who had paid the price of his divided loyalties in blood.

It was poetic justice, when you thought about it long enough.

But Cartwright did not have the time for poetry tonight. His heart and mind were on the firing line, intent on salvaging a victory from disaster.

One more chance to do it right.

And if he blew it, Cartwright knew, he would be a long time dead.

It was a fifteen-minute drive to Alexandria, and Bolan used the time to sort out the pieces of the puzzle that he had already managed to acquire. The gunners who had taken out DeVries were Mafia, most likely part of Gianelli's private stock, while those who bought the farm at Arlington were past or present CIA. He didn't like the implications, the malignant odor that his nostrils had detected early on, but in the last analysis he had no choice. If he was going to retrieve Brognola's family intact, he would be forced to hold his nose and forge ahead.