“His last name, Sean, what is it, you never told me.”
“Serov, Iosef Andreyevich Serov . . . Russian . . . KGB chap . . . Bekaa Valley . . . years ago.”
“Well, he gave us good information on this Rainbow mob. didn’t he, Sean?”
“How many did we . . . how many . . . ?’
“Ten, Sean, we killed ten of them, and we got away, but you were shot on the escape in your Jaguar, remember? But we hurt them, Sean, we hurt them badly,” Bellow assured him. “Good . . . good . . . hurt them . . . kill them . . . kill them all,” Grady whispered from his gurney.
“Not quite, asshole,” Chavez observed quietly, from a few feet away.
“Did we get the two women? . . . Jimmy, did we get them?”
“Oh, yes, Sean, I shot them myself. Now, Sean, this Russian chap. I need to know more about him.”
“Iosef? Good man, KGB, got the money and the drugs for us. Lots of money . . . six million . . . six . . . and the cocaine,” Grady added for the TV Minicam that sat on a tripod next to the bed. “Got it for us, at Shannon, remember? Flew in on the little jet, the money and the drugs from America . . . well, think it was America . . . must have been . . . the way he talks now, American accent like the television, funny thing for a Russian, Jimmy. . . ‘
“Iosef Andreyevich Serov?”
The figure on the bed tried to nod. “That’s how they do names, Jimmy. Joseph, son of Andrew.”
“What does he look like, Sean?”
“Tall as me . . . brown hair, eyes . . . round face, speaks many languages . . . Bekaa Valley . . . nineteen eighty-six . . . good man, helped us a lot. . .”
“How we doing, Bill?” Clark whispered to Tawney.
“Well, none of this can be used in court, but-”
“Fuck the courts, Bill! How good is this? Does it match with anything?”
“The name Serov doesn’t ring a bell, but I can check with our files. We can run these numbers down, and there will be a paper trail of some sort, but”-he checked his watch= “it will have to wait until tomorrow.”
Clark nodded. “Hell of an interrogation method.”
“Never seen this before. Yes, it is.”
Just then Grady’s eyes opened more. He saw the others around the bed, and his face twisted into a question. “Who are you?” he asked groggily, finding a strange face in this dream.
“My name is Clark, John Clark, Sean.”
The eyes went wide for a second. “But you’re . . .”
“That’s right, pal. That’s who I am. And thanks for spilling your guts. We got all of you, Sean. All fifteen dead or captured. I hope you like it here in England, boy. You’re going to be here a long, long time. Why don’t you go back to sleep now, lad’?” he asked with grossly overdone courtesy. I’ve killed better men than you, punk, he thought, behind a supposedly impassive mien that in fact proclaimed his feelings.
Dr. Bellow pocketed his tape recorder and his notes. It rarely failed. The twilight state following general anesthesia made any mind vulnerable to suggestion. That was why people with high security clearances never went to the hospital without someone from their parent agencies nearby. In this case he’d had ten minutes or so to dive deep inside and come back out with information. It could never be used in a court of law, but then, Rainbow wasn’t composed of cops.
“Malloy got him, eh?” Clark asked on his way to the door.
“Actually it was Sergeant Nance,” Chavez answered.
“We have to get him something nice for this job,” Rainbow Six observed. “We owe him for this. We got a name now, Domingo. A Russian name.”
“Not a good one, it’s gotta be a cover name.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, John, don’t you recognize it? Serov, former chairman of KGB, back in the60s, I think, fired a long time ago because he screwed something up.”
Clark nodded. It wouldn’t be the name on the guy’s real passport, and that was too bad, but it was a name, and names could be tracked. They walked out of the hospital into the cool British evening. John’s car was waiting, with Corporal Mole looking rather pleased with himself. He’d get a nice ribbon for the day’s work and probably a very nice letter from this American pseudo-general. John and Ding got in, and the car drove to the base stockade, where the others were being kept for the time being, because the local jail wasn’t secure enough. Inside, they were guided to an interrogation room. Timothy O’Neil was waiting there, handcuffed to a chair.
“Hello,” John said. “My name is Clark. This is Domingo Chavez.”
The prisoner just stared at them.
“You were sent here to murder our wives,” John went on. That didn’t make him so much as blink either. “But you fucked it all up. There were fifteen of you. There are six now. The rest won’t be doing much of anything. You know, people like you make me ashamed to be Irish. Jesus, kid, you’re not even an effective criminal. By the way, Clark is just my working name. Before that, it was John Kelly, and my wife’s maiden name was O’Toole. So, now you IRA pukes are killing Irish-Catholic Americans, eh?” It’s not going to look good in the papers, punk.”
“Not to mention selling coke, all that coke the Russian brought in,” Chavez added.
“Drugs? We don’t-”
“Sure you do. Sean Grady just told us everything, sang like a fucking canary. We have the number of the Swiss bank account, and this Russian guy-”
“Serov,” Chavez added helpfully, “Iosef Andreyevich Serov, Sean’s old pal from the Bekaa Valley.”
“I have nothing to say.” Which was more than O’Neil had planned to say. Sean Grady talked. Sean? That was not possible – but where else could they have gotten that information? Was the world totally mad?
“‘Mano,” Ding continued, “that was my wife you wanted to kill, and she’s got my baby in her belly. You think you’re going to be around much longer? John, this guy ever going to get out of prison?”
“Not anytime soon, Domingo.”
“Well, Timmy, let me tell you something. Where I come from, you mess with a man’s lady, there’s a price that has to be paid. And it ain’t no little price. And where I come from, you never, ever mess with a man’s kids. The price for that’s even worse, you little fuck. Little fuck?” Chavez wondered. “No, I think we can fix that, John. I can fix him so he ain’t never gonna fuck anything.” From the scabbard on his belt, Ding extracted a Marine-type KBar fighting knife. The blade was black except for the gleaming quarter-inch edge.
“Not sure that’s a good idea, Ding,” Clark objected weakly.
“Why not? Feels pretty good to me right now, man.” Chavez got out of his chair and walked up to O’Neil. Then he lowered his knife hand to the chair. “Ain’t hard to do, man, just flick, and we can start your sex-change operation. I ain’t a doc, you understand, but I know the first part of the procedure, y’know?” Ding bent down to press his nose against O’Neil’s. “Man, you don’t ever, EVER mess with a Latino’s lady! Do you hear me?”
Timothy O’Neil had had a bad enough day to this point. He looked in the eyes of this Spanish man, heard the accent, and knew that this was not an Englishman, not even an American of the type he thought he knew.
“I’ve done this before, man. Mainly I kill with guns, but I’ve taken bastards down with a knife once or twice. It’s funny how they squirm – but I ain’t gonna kill you, boy. I’m just gonna make you a girl.” The knife moved tight up against the crotch of the man cuffed to the chair.
“Back it off, Domingo!” Clark ordered.
“Fuck you, John! That’s my wife he wanted to hurt, man. Well, I’m gonna fix this little fuck so he never hurts no more girls, ‘mano.” Chavez turned to look at the prisoner again. “I’m gonna watch your eyes when I cut it all off, Timmy. I want to see your face when you start to turn into a girl.”
O’Neil blinked, as he looked deep into the dark, Spanish eyes. He saw the rage there, hot and passionate-but as bad as that was, so was the reason for it. He and his mates had planned to kidnap and maybe kill a pregnant woman, and there was shame in that, and for that reason there was justice in the fury before his face.