Don Pendleton - Hard Passage

“I do not believe you,” she said. “I know these people. They are my friends.”

“Time to find some new friends, Sonya.” Bolan leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “You act like this is some kind of country club you belong to. I have intelligence that these supposed friends of yours are in bed with members of the Jemaah al-Islamiyah. Are you familiar with that group?”

Vdovin shook her head.

“Well, let me give you a clue. The JI is one of the most influential terrorist organizations in Southeast Asia. They’re responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent people.”

Vdovin took a long drag off her cigarette, sat back and folded one arm across her body defensively, holding the cigarette high in her opposing hand. “I do not believe you.”

“Whether you believe me or not isn’t important,” Bolan said. “And it doesn’t change the fact the JI is active in places like Afghanistan, the Philippines and Indonesia, to make no mention of the campaigns they sponsor in a half dozen other countries.”

“My friends fight against those people. They stop them from coming into our country and stealing jobs and murdering our people.”

Bolan’s smile was frosty, at best. “I think you’re confused, Sonya. The SMJ has made some kind of deal with the JI. Now I don’t know what it’s for, but Rostov and Cherenko know. That’s why your friends in the SMJ want them dead.”

“Leo betrayed the code of silence,” Vdovin insisted. “Anything that was done to him or is done to him is because of that. And in the course of betraying the Sevooborot, he brought down Sergei, as well.”

“I’m not part of these people. Why did they try to kill me?”

“Because you came to kill them.”

Bolan shook his head. “No dice. We came looking for you, not them. The man you were with tonight. Who was he?”

“I have told you before, I will not betray my friends.”

“What about Kisa?” Bolan said. “You said she was your friend.”

“And so she is.”

“Who do you think arranged to get Rostov and Cherenko out of the country?” Bolan replied. “You don’t think your precious revolutionaries won’t try to kill her once they find out?”

“They will probably do nothing,” she said. “She is not even part of the Sevooborot.”

“Really,” Bolan said. “Then I guess it would surprise you to know they’ve had her under surveillance for some time now.”

“How do you know this?”

The Executioner decided to go for broke and play his only trump card. “The same way I knew how to find you. Listen, Sonya, you don’t have to believe anything I say. But two good men have already died at the hands of your friends, and I’m here to make sure nobody else falls. Now I can do that with or without your help, but in any case you need to wise up and see what’s going on around you.”

“I have already told you that I don’t know where to find Leo and Sergei.”

“But Kisa confided in you,” he said.

“Yes.”

“If she were in trouble, where would she go for help? Would she come to you?”

At first, Vdovin didn’t answer—she just sat and stared—and Bolan wondered if she had finally decided to shut down and not answer any questions. Slowly, he realized that she was thinking about what he’d said. Something had dawned on her, some small bit of their discussion had taken hold, and she was now beginning to see Bolan had told her the truth.

Finally, Vdovin shook her head. “No. There is only one person she would go to for help. Her father.”

Bolan nodded grimly and replied, “Tell me where to find him.”

Kisa Naryshkin’s parents greeted her warmly but tiredly when she arrived at their home.

After summoning a house servant to put on a pot of tea, they adjourned to the parlor where Kisa’s father lit a fire. She watched him work with the same fascination she always held for him, and her mother watched her with same amusement she always had when Kisa watched her father. Tolenka Valdimirovich Naryshkin had served with the GRU, the main intelligence arm of the General Staff, Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Tolenka’s distinguished career began in 1962 where he served as adjutant to a low-level officer in the supply distribution logistics arena. The GRU promoted him quickly through the ranks and he worked with both Soviet signal intelligence and field reconnaissance before being transferred to the Division of Human Intelligence. On several occasions during the eighties and nineties, a number of foreign intelligence services had approached Tolenka Naryshkin with offers to perform counterespionage activities against his own country, but according to Kisa’s mother he refused every offer and reported it immediately to his superiors. This was something Kisa had learned very early in her life about her father: no matter how much it might benefit him, monetarily or otherwise, he would not betray his friends or his country.

Another thing that separated Tolenka from other men in his position was his sense of justice. Kisa had grown up—an only child as complications during her birth had left her mother sterile—hearing her father say regularly that he believed in the general goodness of most people. While many considered this naïveté, an odd trait for a military intelligence officer, Tolenka preferred to call it “natural humanistic optimism” and refused to offer any explanation or defense for his beliefs. What many failed to understand, although his daughter knew this simply by watching her father’s interactions with others, was that Tolenka Naryshkin had a way of bringing out the very best in people. This had made him both a successful intelligence gatherer and administrator in the GRU.

The traits of steadfastness, truth and fairness that Kisa had come to know about her father made it all the more difficult to tell him what she was about to tell him. Certainly he would view her actions as unethical, maybe even as betrayal. All she could do was to hope he would understand. That didn’t make it any easier when he sat next to her on the sofa and watched her intently with his gray eyes.

Tolenka smiled. “I wondered when you would come to us with whatever’s been troubling you these past two months. I have to admit I didn’t expect a visit at such a late hour.”

Kisa smiled and shrugged, lowering her eyes and looking briefly at her mother for support.

“What I have to say is difficult, Father,” she began.

“You know you can tell me anything.”

“I do,” she said, and quickly added, “and I know you love me.”

“What’s troubling you, Kisa?” her mother prompted.

“Please, don’t interrupt me again or this will become too difficult,” she said. “I have done something of which I am ashamed. But it has gone very wrong, Father, and I don’t know what to do. So I am coming to you to admit of my indiscretions and ask you to help me.”

Tolenka’s eyes narrowed slightly for only a moment, then he nodded.

“About five weeks ago, I used contacts inside my office to arrange defection of two men to the United States.” Kisa’s mother took a sharp, inward breath and looked at Tolenka, who didn’t react. “One of these men was Leonid Rostov, the man I’d been dating. You met him once. You remember?”

Tolenka nodded.

Kisa took a deep breath and plodded on. “He had a friend, Sergei Cherenko, who I also helped get out of the country because both of their lives were endangered by the same people.”

“Who, dear?” her mother asked.

Kisa fixed her mother with a level gaze. “Leo and Sergei were members of the Sevooborot.”

Now it was Tolenka Naryshkin’s turn to react. He stood and shoved his hands in the pockets of his smoking jacket, marched to the fire and stared with a steely expression at the growing flames. Kisa could tell he’d become angered by her mention of the revolutionary organization. Her father considered them traitors to the country, murderers and dissenters who refused to let the revolution die. Things had improved vastly in Russia over the past nine years, particularly in their part of the country. People no longer had to fear being yanked out of their bed by the secret police in the dead of morning for their political affiliations, or fret over the possible repercussions when a volume of family members suddenly went missing. While things weren’t perfect, not by far, they were much improved.