Don Pendleton - Carnage Code

The “good cop, bad cop” technique was the oldest trick in the book, the Executioner knew. But the stage had already been set so he decided to take advantage of it. “Do either of you speak English?” he asked the two men wearing the bandages.

Both heads nodded. “A little,” the man with the mustache said.

“Good,” Bolan said. “Then we’ll speak English. If there’s any misunderstanding, Colonel Urgoma can translate and help us out.”

The heads nodded again.

“I’ve got a few questions for you,” the Executioner said. “And I’d like you to answer them. But even if you don’t, you’re not going to get hit anymore. Do you understand that? Is that clear?”

The two men turned to look at each other in confusion. They obviously weren’t used to such kind treatment, and couldn’t quite figure out what Bolan was up to.

Then the clean-shaved man turned back to the Executioner. “If we do not answer, and you do not hit us, then what do you plan to do?”

Bolan shrugged. “Just get up and leave, I guess,” he said. He glanced at the door. “You’ll both be held on murder charges, so I’ll know where to find you if I decide I need to come back.”

The two men in the bloody suits turned to each other yet again. They suspected that more officers with leather gloves and saps might take this big American’s place if he left unsatisfied, and it showed on their faces.

“What do you wish to know?” the man with the mustache asked.

“First, why did you kill the old man?”

“To get the envelope, of course,” the clean-shaved man answered. One of his bandages covered part of his upper lip, and it caused his words to come out with a slight lisp and a slur that sounded as if he’d been drinking.

“What did the envelope contain?” Bolan asked. He knew about the limerick, of course. But he wanted to know if they did. And there was always a chance that if they did, they’d also know the code to break down the words and make sense out of them.

“We did not know what was in the envelope,” the man with the mustache replied. “And we still do not know. We had only just learned that the man who was carrying it was an informant, working for your CIA.” He glanced toward the corner where Bill Sims had stood earlier, then back to the Executioner. “May I ask you a question?” he said.

“Certainly,” Bolan said.

“Are you CIA, too?”

“No,” Bolan said promptly.

The answer seemed to satisfy the man, and he visibly relaxed.

“What happened to the envelope?” Bolan asked. Again, he knew. But he wanted to know if they did.

“Just before we shot him, the old man gave it to a very young man,” the clean-shaved man said. “He was American. Or maybe European. But somehow, I did not get the impression that he was a CIA man. Perhaps that was because of his age.”

“Why didn’t you go after this younger man?” the Executioner asked. “Like you did the older one?”

“We did,” the man with the mustache said. “But, like has already been said, he was very young. And fast on his feet. He escaped.”

Bolan turned to where Urgoma stood against the wall. “Do you have the death penalty here in Sudan?” he asked.

“Indeed, we do,” the colonel said, quickly picking up on the Executioner’s direction. “And these men will likely receive it for the murder they have committed.”

“No,” the man with the mustache said. “You cannot do that to us.” The clean-shaved man was shaking his head in agreement.

“And why can’t he?” Bolan asked.

“Because we were only doing our jobs,” hissed the man with the bandage half-covering his lip.

The Executioner frowned. “What jobs?” he asked. “What do you mean you were just doing your jobs?”

The two prisoners looked at each other again, whispering in Arabic.

“We are,” the man with the mustache said slowly and hesitantly, “both agents with the Department of Defense.”

For a second, silence reigned over the room. Then Urgoma said, “What Department of Defense?”

“The Sudan Department of Defense, of course,” the man with the bandaged lips replied.

The Executioner looked up from his chair as Urgoma straightened.

The colonel looked surprised, but not as surprised as he might have.

The Executioner nodded toward the door, opened it and they went out into the hall. “Where’s this reporter who turned the limerick over to Sims in the first place?” he asked.

“Just down the hall in a holding cell,” Urgoma said.

“You jailed him?” Bolan frowned.

“At Sims’s request.” Urgoma nodded. “Besides, he is a material witness to a murder. And we could not be certain he would stay in the country. Particularly considering the fact that we were afraid another attempt would be made on his life.”

Bolan nodded. It might not have been the way things would have been handled in the United States but it made sense. “Did Sims run any kind of background check on him?” he asked. “Anything that might lead us to believe he’s reliable or isn’t? And make him understand that we can get any information we need? Coax him into helping us?” The young man appeared to be a journalist, and journalists by nature seemed to almost always be uncooperative with police and government-intelligence agents.

Urgoma nodded. “Sims may be a prick, but he is still a very thorough agent for your country. He did, indeed, check into this man’s background, and it appears he was able to learn a lot about him in a very short period of time.”

Bolan nodded. “Let’s go talk to him,” he said. “You can fill me in on the details on the way.”

Colonel Urgoma reached back, locked the door to imprison the two murderers still in the interrogation room and started off down the hall. As they walked, he briefed the Executioner on what Sims’s background investigation had turned up.

R ONNIE C ASSETTI SAT on the hard steel platform that served as a bed in the holding cell. Leaning back, he felt the cold concrete wall through the thin material of his tank top and especially on his arms and shoulders where the shirt didn’t cover his skin. His life had been turned upside down, and he had yet to have time to really sit down and make any sense of it.

But he had time to do that now. Plenty of time. More time than he needed or even wanted.

Cassetti had gone to the American Embassy in Khartoum, the limerick safe in its envelope in the side pocket of the sport coat he’d thrown on over his tank top after the cab had returned him to his hotel. First, he’d had to talk the Marines on guard at the gate into escorting him inside. That hadn’t been an easy task to begin with, and now he wished it had failed altogether. But in any case, after he’d cleared the metal detector the Marines had taken him to an outer reception area where he’d asked to see a CIA representative.

By the look on the face of the woman behind the desk you’d have thought he’d just asked her to lie down and take off her clothes. She’d told him that no CIA agents worked out of the embassy, of course, and at that point he had suspected he was about to be thrown back out on the street again.

Instead, he’d been told that there was a “plainclothes Marine” who might be willing to talk to him.

That was when he’d met that son of a bitch Bill Sims.

Sims, he had quickly surmised after being led into one of the rear offices, was actually CIA. At least his stiff-necked attitude reminded Cassetti of all the spook supervisors he’d seen in a million movies. Maybe that was the way CIA operatives really acted. Or maybe Sims had just seen the same movies and believed that was how he was supposed to act.

Life was either imitating art or art was imitating life. Cassetti didn’t know which, and didn’t really care. He just wanted to be out of this cage and as far away from Sudan as possible.