"Commie Buster Vs the Red Widow"
May. 18th, 2022 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"Commie Buster vs the Red Widow"
11/6-11/10/2006
I.
It was just getting dark when Jeremy Bane headed up Cornell Street in Queens and found Silverberg's Swap Shop. He had known the owner years earlier back in Times Square but had never been to this location before. First, he had circled the block suspiciously on foot and studied the windows on the opposite side of the street and watched for men sitting in parked cars. Not that he had any particular reason to suspect a trap, but he had been in the Midnight War most of his life and doing a recon of the area was a strong habit by this point. Satisfied for the moment, Bane approached the hock shop. For a second, he studied the variety of items in the windows. Machetes and swords, bongo drums and guitars, stacks of CDs and DVDs, a nice olive-green tool box. An accordion and a camcorder. All had hand-lettered signs promising the items could not be found cheaper anywhere.
The Dire Wolf shrugged and went inside, making the bell at the top of the door tinkle as he went through. It was not cold enough yet for a topcoat, he was comfortable in his usual outfit of black slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket.
"Jeremy!" yelled Stan Silverberg from behind the counter. "Look at you. I swear you look exactly the same as you did ten, fifteen years ago."
"Hi, Stan," replied the Dire Wolf quietly. "Good to see you again. Queens is out of my normal turf, you know."
As Silverberg came around the counter to offer a hand, Bane saw that the man had put on at least thirty pounds. The round belly was bisected horizontally by a belt pulled high, and he wore a black vest over a white dress shirt. The moonface was open and friendly, with a smile that still won people over. Silverberg had never been good-looking but he was likeable.
Bane shook the man's hand firmly and clapped that forearm with his free hand. "What exactly did you call me about, Stan? You were vague on the phone."
"Ehhhh, it may be nothing. But ya never know, and I remember you are interested in the weird stuff. Listen. Three times in the past month, a beautiful woman has come in here to pawn antique gold jewelry. She is shrewd, she demands a good price. I am curious. I call a few of my friendly rivals in the trade and I find she has been to see them, too. So I end up calling everything, pawn shop and old coins and jeweler in the whole metropolitan area."
"She's been to all of them?" Bane guessed.
"Yes! A busy young woman. In the past month or two, she must have unloaded fifty thousand dollars worth of items. But only a little at each location. Suspicious, eh?"
"A little bit," Bane admitted. "It makes me curious. How about a description?"
"Gorgeous young woman, maybe thirty years old at most. Tall, almost six foot, with a nice trim figure. Long shiny black hair. She speaks with just a hint of an accent as if she has tried to lose it but I am from Poland and I will never forget. Definitely Russian...from Georgia!" Silverberg shook his head angrily. "Russians...!"
"There's something more you haven't told me," the Dire Wolf prompted him.
"Yes. Usually this woman has on a full-length white topcoat, buttoned up to the collar. But today, when she was here, it fell open when she picked up her keys off the floor. Jeremy, I saw a bright red military uniform with a tunic and jodhpurs and polished black boots. And across the front, bold as hell, was a yellow Hammer and Sickle!"
"Really. That's not something you see much of anymore."
"Tell me about it. As a Polish Jew, I don't know what I hate more, the swastika or the hammer and sickle."
Bane's pale grey eyes had suddenly sharpened and his voice was more intense. "Now I'm interested. Just what is this mystery woman up to? Did she sign anything?"
"Yes, a slip in case she wants to reclaim the items. Post office box in Leonia New Jersey for an address, Sophie Lee for a name. Both fake, I'm sure." Silverberg leaned closer and smiled at the expression on his friend's face. "Now THERE'S the Dire Wolf I remember! You are ready for the hunt, aren't you?"
"Yes," Bane said simply. "Thanks, Stan. This might lead to something more important than either of us realize. I'll let you know what I find out."
"I owe you more than a little," Silverberg answered. "You chased those hoodlums out of my 8th Avenue shop when they were demanding money and you scared them so much they never came back. If I can return the favor even a little, I will."
The Dire Wolf headed for the door, pausing to give a friendly wave. "I'll keep you posted." As he stepped outside, he did not inform Silverberg that Comrade Natalia would have to be at least eighty years old.
II.
Leaving his Subaru Outback in the IMPERIAL GARAGE on 40th Street, the Dire Wolf walked briskly up Third Avenue. He was starving as usual, the variation that gave him his enhanced reflexes also left him burning calories nonstop. Before reaching his office, he stopped at a deli and got a corned beef on rye, a big bag of Doritos, a container of egg salad and a bottle of seltzer. By the time he reached the four-story yellow brick building where his office was located, only half of the seltzer was left.
The double glass doors opened automatically. EMERGENCY ONE on his right was open until eleven, after which those doors would be locked by security. Bane went past the staircase and down the short hallway which ended in the metal door EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. On the wall to his left was the plain wooden door with its brass plaque DIRE WOLF AGENCY. He unlocked it, passed through the tiny waiting room and into his office. He flicked on the lights, placed the seltzer bottle on his desk and began pacing restlessly.
The Dire Wolf kept going over what little he knew about Comrade Natalia. She was a Russian spy and assassin back during the Cold War. She headed a small squad of KGB agents. But she had last been reported in 1954. Bane only knew any of this because she had clashed once with Mark Drum and he was familiar with Drum's career. There was something else, though. Suddenly he remembered Mike Stockbridge, the US government's top counter-intelligence agents. Commie Buster.
It all seemed more than a little silly, it was so long ago and the battles had been over something that was only history now. The grimmest days of the Cold War had been before he was even born. He knew in an abstract way that the secret conflicts between Russian spies and American spies were still going on, as brutal and bitter as before. None of that explained why someone was showing up around the NYC area disguised as the Red Widow. Why on Earth would anyone do that? Who would even know about her at this point? Bane could not get even a wild guess going.
Finally, he made himself go to his desk and grudgingly take his seat behind it. Maybe there was nothing to it. Maybe this woman was pawning off family gold and jewelry after her grandmother died, maybe she was wearing a crimson uniform with a hammer and sickle as some rebellious fashion statement. No. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he rejected it. All his instincts told him there was big trouble brewing. The Bane could not think of any of his army of observers who might be helpful about this.
Grabbing his laptop from it hung charging in a satchel by the side of his desk, he started searching. Trom Girl had made so many modifications to the computer that he had trouble using it any more but it could slip through firewalls and past the toughest security barriers. After a few false starts, he got into Moscow's sealed Records and set it to translate into English. It took a few more minutes but suddenly he was reading a page with grey letters against a light yellow background. NATALIA LOTTE KATYCHENKO, born January 20 1925 in southern Ukraine. She had been recruited while still in school where her family had sent her to study medicine and had been forcibly indoctrinated- brainwashed, basically- to be a spy. Natalia had been top of her class at the Black Rose Academy, where she had to kill a target to graduate. She did not know it at the time, but the target had been warned his life was in danger to make the assignment more difficult for him.
For almost five years, she had worked all over Eastern Europe, then the UK and then America, stealing secrets and murdering targets as ordered. The only times she had failed had been once against Mark Drum and three times against Mike Stockbridge. In late 1954, she had arranged a trap for Stockbridge but neither had ever been seen again. The cold minds in the Kremlin regretfully concluded that Comrade Natalia and Commie Buster had killed each other and had closed her file.
Bane dug a little further. Her parents were dead, as was her only sibling. The only other relative left was a great-niece. No leads to be found there. He closed the windows, erased the search and started a security scan on the laptop. As that ran, the Dire Wolf exhaled sharply and began drumming his fingers on the desk. This was getting him nowhere. When the computer had cleared and was ready again, he repeated a search but this time he looked for Commie Buster.
The results were more informative in some ways. MICHAEL LOUIS STOCKBRIDGE had been born December 1, 1920, had served in the Marines in the Pacific and had gone into intelligence work toward the end of the war. When the CIA had been founded, Stockbridge had established himself as a dedicated agent who was at his best in the field. After a spectacular gunfight with a KGB man near the Pentagon, Stockbridge picked up the nickname "Commie Buster" which he loved.
Digging deeper, Bane found that Stockbridge had left no widow, no children. But there was something else interesting. The Commie Buster had worked with a support team of four CIA officers and one of them was still alive. Carl Flanders, aged 81 now, last known address in Nyack, NY. Three sons. The Dire Wolf got his address and phone number and studied a map of the area. Yes. He glanced up at the clock on the wall behind his desk and saw it was almost ten. Again, he erased his searches and set the laptop to scan itself, then put it away. Now he felt he had an opening to begin exploring.
He straightened up, stretching, and left his office. As he turned out the overhead light and closed the door behind him, he heard the click and buzz of Trom alarms arming themselves. The lobby was empty. Bane stepped out into the chilly November night and turning right, walking the few blocks to his apartment. First thing in the morning, he would head up to Nyack and see if he could learn anything from Stockbridge's partner. Bane could not know that, even as he approached the unimposing building which held his apartment, a man was being tortured for asking questions about Red Widow.
III.
Bane surprised himself by sleeping eight hours straight. He normally only did this if he had been severely beaten or shot, he was used to four hours sleep at most. That was an effect of his enhanced metabolism as well. But he had eaten a late meal, watched the local news at eleven and gone to bed, and now it was eight o'clock in the morning. He stretched, got out of bed and went into the living room.
Wearing only underwear and a plain white T-shirt, the Dire Wolf bowed to his Teacher Chael at Tel Shai, farther away than miles could measure. Starting slowly with stances and poses that grew more difficult, he sped up the pace until he was blurring through assorted kicks and punches and counters that whipped out faster than an unskilled eye could follow. His face grew calm and almost blank. Then the blow and strikes slowed into poses and stances again until finally he was standing with feet together and fists at his waist. His body was covered with a thin film of sweat but his breathing had hardly quickened.
This was the Doh Ra form, devised individually for each Kumundu student. Bane tried to never miss going through it every day. It was physical conditioning, stretching and training, martial art practice and meditation all within forty minutes or so. Again, he bowed gratefully to Teacher Chael. With a satisfied sigh, he went back into his bedroom with its enclosed bathroom for a hot shower and shave.
When he emerged, it was in a fresh uniform of the inevitable black slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket. Beneath his clothes, he wore the flexible Trom armor that left only his head and neck, hands and feet exosed. His jacket carried its dozen little gadgets in hidden pockets and slits, and of course the matched silver daggers were sheathed on his forearms beneath his sleeves. Bane felt rested, warmed up and ready for any crisis. As he reviewed what he had learned about Natalia and Stockbridge, the Dire Wolf scrambled four eggs with some slices of Swiss cheese in them and devoured the whole mass almost in one bite. He cleaned up, looked around the apartment as if memorizing the location of every item and went out in the hall. The door locked automatically behind him, and the familiar click of alarms going armed reassured him.
Heading down to the street, Bane found it was chillier than the day the before but his body adjusted quickly and he hardly noticed. He hurried down Third Avenue, past the building where his office was located and went to IMPERIAL GARAGE. There in its spot on the lower level, directly in front of a security camera, sat his dark green Subaru Outback. He saw the tiny blue and green lights on the driver's sunvisor were blinking steadily. Bane got in and headed up the ramp to the street, nodding to the attendant as he exited.
On his way north, the Dire Wolf realized he didn't know much about the Cold War. He had almost no formal schooling. Although he was expert in many practical skills, his grasp of real world history was sketchy. After World War II, America and Russia didn't go to a real war because they both had nuclear bombs, he knew that much. So the two super-powers fought through espionage and through small proxy wars in other countries. Stockbridge and Natalia had been on the front lines of the bitter unseen battles between US and USSR spies. In a way, it reminded him of his own Midnight War.
Soon he was in a quiet residential neighborhood with well-kept yards and well-maintained cars. Bane spotted numbers on the houses and pulled over near the end of one block. Across the street from him was a small red brick house with a new Dodge Caravan parked in its short driveway. In front of the house was a black Toytota. From where he sat, the Dire Wolf studied the layout out of the house like a general planning a battle, figuring out possible escape routes and attack angles. He memorized the plate numbers on the Dodge but couldn't see the Toyota's. A large American flag waved in the cold November wind over the front door of the house.
Reaching into the back seat, Bane took his field suit helmet and lowered it over his head. When he closed the visor, the inner heads-up display lit up. This involved functions he seldom used and he had a little difficulty operating the controls. When he studied the area under infrared, he saw that the hood of the Toyota was warm, it must have arrived there recently. There was no one sitting in either vehicle. Infrared body images could not be discerned well through brick walls, but he clearly saw two figures moving past a curtained picture window. Turning up the audio sensors, Bane had to fiddle with the directional controls until he could hear voices from within the house without also being deafened by cars going past.
The conversation seemed innocuous enough. An old man's voice was saying he did not need a housekeeper coming by, he was fine on his own. A middle-aged man's voice argued it was just a suggestion. Bane listened to them for another few minutes and still heard nothing suspicious. Deactivating the helmet, he placed it on the back seat again and got out of his car. He crossed the street, walked up to the front door and pressed the doorbell.
In a few seconds, the inner door swung inward and a hand pushed the outer screen door open a inch. A broad weathered face peered at him suspiciously. "Help you, mister?"
Holding up his worn leather billfold, Bane showed him his Private Investigator license. "My name is Bane. I have some information about Michael Stockbridge you need to hear."
Staring at the license, the middle-aged man blinked. "Jeremy Bane? I've heard of you. All right, come on in."
The Dire Wolf stepped into a stuffy, oppressively hot living room. It was also overly bright in there, with six lamps all lit. For a second, even he was confused by the sheer amount of decoration on every available surface. American flags of different sizes, models of Mount Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty on counters, framed photos of military scenes, a stuffed bison head on one wall... it was a lot of detail to take in. Sitting in a wheelchair just out of arm's reach, a withered old man with no hair reached in his bathrobe and came out with a Colt 45 revolver in both bony hands.
As soon as the old man's hands came up with that weapon, Bane's full attention was focused on him and, in that instant, something hard struck him on the back of the head with murderous force.
IV.
Even from a concussion like that, Bane did not entirely lose consciousness. Decades of a tagra diet from Tel Shai had boosted his healing factor beyond what medical science could explain. Dimly, as if from far away, he heard two voices argue.
"You shouldn't have killed him, Mike, we don't know what his intentions were."
A deeper, gruffer voice snarled, "No one knows I'm back but that Red bitch. He must be tied in with her somehow. Anyway, he just stirred and moved his right arm. Look. He'll be trying to get up next. Give me a hand here."
Bane felt himself being turned over onto his stomach, then his hands were pushed together and something was pulled tight around them. As his head began to clear of the fog and pain, he realized he was being hauled over to be propped up against a wall. In a few more seconds, his vision cleared and he was almost back to normal. A regular person struck in the head hard enough to be knocked unconscious would experience nausea and vomiting, dizziness, blurred vision and a crippling headache for days. He went through none of this. He had bounced back from trauma that would kill an average human being, and he had come to expect it.
"I can't believe he's coming out of it that fast," the deep voice said. Bane saw it belonged to a huge man, several inches over six feet tall and wide enough to fill a doorway. He was wearing a white trenchcoat tightly buckled shut, its collar up, and he had a white fedora pulled low over his face. In one big mitt was an Army 45 automatic. "He must have moved his head just before contact."
Wriggling and sitting more upright, Bane managed to get one foot under him. The top of his boot was right next to his fingers. Great. It felt like ordinary clothesline around his wrists. Eyeing the big man steadily, he said, "Michael Stockbridge would be eighty-six years old today. Who are you really?"
The blue eyes were furious and hateful. "You don't know what happened to me. I lost decades of my life in stasis. Without my consent. I have to pay them back for that. But you're not the one asking questions here!"
"Sure I am," said Bane with quiet confidence. He had pulled a single-edged razor blade from its slit at the top of his boot and was slicing at the clothesline. Every time he had to do this, he cut his hands and wrists but it was worth it. "So someone put you in suspended animation? Does that mean the woman running around the city is the real Comrade Natalia also? Hard to believe!"
Stockbridge stepped closer, not catching on yet that the Dire Wolf was stealthily cutting through the clothesline. "You said you were a PI, buddy. But my guess is that if you know about that woman, you're working on her side. Your orders come from Moscow, too."
"Wrong wrong wrong," Bane answered. "I'm just another New York detective looking into a mystery. I don't even have a client." Behind him, the razor blade dropped to the carpeting as his hands came free.
"You're going to talk. We can do it this the easy way or the hard way." He glanced over at the other two men. "We're going to have to use the kitchen. Get a tarp and put it down to catch the blood. Well, pal, hard way or easy way?"
A remarkably feral grin spread over Bane's narrow face. Something about the expression in those pale eyes made Stockbridge hesitate. The prisoner was not afraid at all. Shifting his weight a little, the Dire Wolf said, "Tell you what, we'll do this MY way."
In a lightning blur, he was up on his feet and lunging faster than a real wolf. A left cross and backfist from the same hand swung Stockbridge's head back and forth. As the big man fell to his knees, Bane crouched low and swung around. The old man had raised a 32 revolver from his lap blanket but he didn't have the strength to raise it and fire without both hands.
The Dire Wolf snatched the pistol away from the old man and pivoted to face the third man, who was moving toward him with both fists raised. Bane kicked him in the middle of the chest, driving the air from his lungs with a gush. As the man fell to the floor, the Dire Wolf wheeled around to take in the scene. The old man in the wheelchair was no threat, Stockbridge was kneeling in a daze and the third man was gasping for breath.
Pocketing the revolver, Bane stepped over and wrenched the Colt 45 from Stockbridge's big paw. He put that gun in his other side pocket and noticed wryly how heavy his jacket now felt. The Commie Buster started to get to his feet, blinking rapidly. Bane did not try to stop him.
"Okay, I figure we're even now," the Dire Wolf said. "Maybe we can start from scratch."
"How can you move like that? Navy SEAL? Special Forces?" grunted Stockbridge uncertainly. He stood up and swayed a bit but held his ground.
"Natural talent," Bane said. "Look. I'm American, born and raised in Manhattan. I don't care about politics to be honest. I'm investigating Red Widow because it's a little weird she's still alive and seems to be about thirty when she should be a great-grandmother."
Stockbridge did not answer for a long minute. "Let's parley. I know the world has changed since I was put on ice. Carl and Sean here have been filling me in, but frankly it's a lot to digest. You're after the Red bitch because she's a mystery, eh?"
"That's my calling," Bane said. "First, who was it that put you two in suspended animation? Why were you revived?"
The Commie Buster went over to the couch against the far wall and gingerly lowered himself on it. Bane glanced over to the middle-aged man, whose name seemed to be Sean, had gotten his breath back but seemed inclined to remain sitting on the floor for the moment.
"It was the Mandate. Maybe you never heard of them, they're a covert government agency FDR set up to deal with people with unusual abilities."
"I've had to deal with the Mandate," Bane snapped. "They can't be trusted, except to do what's in their interests. What was their problem with you, Stockbridge? I'd think you were their hero back then."
The Commie Buster slowly took off his fedora, revealed a close-cropped head of jet black hair. He stared glumly at the floor. "There was a shoot-out near the Lincoln Memorial. Me and my team, Natalia and her squad. Some citizens got killed in the crossfire. June 2nd, 1954. When I was being patched up at headquarters, the bastards sedated me and wheeled me to some sub-basement. I was locked in a big metal mummy case with hoses feeding into it. The last thing I saw before blacking out was Comrade Natalia being stuffed into an identical container. She was bandaged up as much as I was, which made me happy."
"The Mandate has always had technology ahead of everyone else," Bane said. "I haven't found out where they get it. So they fed you IVs and lowered your temperatures and basically kept you hibernating for sixty years."
"That's right. The world went on without us. Of my team of Patriot Warriors, only Carl is still alive. He raised three boys after his wife died in 1968, and he brought them up to love freedom and democracy as much as I did. As I still do." Stockbridge smiled over at the old man. "It's unfair that he aged and I'm still the same, but I didn't want it this way."
"What happened to Natalia's team?"
"No survivors. We were just better shots." Stockbridge heaved a heavy sigh. "A month ago, I woke up. The chamber was cold and dark, my mummy case had been unlocked and I struggled to get out of it. I wasn't weak, my muscles hadn't atrophied but I don't know how they did that. The other container was empty. I found some clothes in a locker that almost fit and made my way outside. It was a warehouse down by the Battery, boarded up and closed for years."
"We need to check that place out for clues," Bane said. "Why was the power off? Who freed Natalia? If they were her friends, you'd think they would have killed you while you were helpless."
"I've been wondering all this myself. But my contacts are long gone. No one in Washington knows me, they'd think I was crazy if I showed up and told them what happened." The big man scowled. "I'm not used to being without a plan."
The Dire Wolf took the guns from his jacket pockets and handed the 45 automatic to Stockbridge, the revolver to Carl. "Seems to me we have some common goals. We need to set up some ground rules," he said, "But I think we can work together on this."
V.
The rest of the day was spent at the building where Stockbridge and Natalia had been kept in stasis. It had been emptied of any of the devices the Commie Buster had mentioned, but scrapes along the concrete floor showed that heavy objects had been dragged out of there recently. Hours of searching had turned up nothing useful. Bane had used his Link to find out who owned the property but only found a corporation named Swift Information, which he figured was a dummy company. He was sure the Mandate was behind it, but couldn't get evidence.
As they went back to Bane's Subaru, Mike Stockbridge was more sullen than usual. "Sixty years stolen and no way to make anyone pay for it."
The Dire Wolf studied the area. A few blocks down, men were unloading furniture from an 18-wheeler truck but otherwise the neighborhood was almost abandoned. "I can not figure out the Mandate's game. Going to them never gets answers unless you're willing to fight for some. They lie as a matter of policy."
"And I can't go to the Agency. If I tell them who I am, it's the lunatic asylum for me." Stockbridge got in the passenger side and slammed the door with more emphasis than was really necessary.
"Now it's time for standard detective work," Bane said. He pulled away from the empty building and made a turn to head back uptown. "Lots of phone calls and visits to the pawn shops where Red Widow has been selling the gold. Where is she getting that stuff anyway, do you think?"
Stockbridge snorted. "Buddy, that Red tramp has always had caches of money and weapons and clothing hidden wherever she worked. I suppose she had a trunk full of gold buried somewhere and she dug it up as soon as she thawed out. Her Commie stooges are long dead so she must be hiring regular two-bit hoods, she always works with a squad of gunmen."
Going into Time Square, Bane had been quiet for some moments. "You know, by now she must have learned that the Soviet Union broke up twenty years ago. The Cold War is over. The big fear Americans have today is Middle East terrorists. How is she going to handle this?"
"I've thought about," Stockbridge said. "My feeling is that she's rationalizing like crazy. Everything she sees on TV or in the papers is propaganda from the US government in her eyes. Even if she calls someone in Mother Russia, she'll think it's just someone in Washington trying to fool her."
"Makes sense. Okay, I'm leaving the car here at IMPERIAL garage. There's a dozen pawn shops within walking distance and we can start asking questions."
"I'm good at standard investigations," Stockbridge said. "It's boring but it's gotta be done."
Everything was closing up around nine, and they had only gotten one morsel of information. One pawnbroker on Ninth Avenue had been in the doorway when Natalia had left his store. She got in a black Ford Escape with tinted windows. The man had not noticed license plates numbers, he was checking out Natalia on a personal level. He only recognized the car model because his brother owned one.Thanking him for his help, Bane led Stockbridge back down toward 40th Street.
"Okay, not much of a lead," the Dire Wolf admitted. "Tomorrow is going to mean checking with every damn car dealership in the area to see if a woman answering her description bought or leased a black Escape. I figure she needed a week or two to raise the money, so the purchase should still be fresh in the dealer's mind."
As they walked down to Bane's car, Stockbridge grumbled. "Fine. You know what, I'm going to work the other angle. She is renting a house somewhere. The Red Widow can't gather her usual team of four or five men and keep them all in a fleabag apartment. She needs a regular house. For someone that hates capitalism and our American way of life, she always seem to make herself comfortable."
Pausing at the entrance to IMPERIAL GARAGE, the Dire Wolf studied the big man's weathered face. "Sounds sensible. We'll cover more ground that way. But we have to contact each other as we find things out. We'll make more progress working together."
The Commie Buster lit another cigarette. He smoked a little over a complete pack of Lucky Strikes a day. This annoyed Bane but not enough to mention. As the Commie Buster blew two streams of smoke from his nostrils, he looked at the Dire Wolf. "Tell the truth, pal, I'm impressed with your approach. You're a pro. And I remember the way you slugged me, damn you're fast as a cobra." Stockbridge paused, then added, "What I'm saying is, I'll be a little glad to have you on hand when the showdown with the Reds gets serious."
V.
After driving Stockbridge back to his aide's house in Nyack, it was past midnight before Bane finally got back to his apartment. Tugging off his boots and throwing his jack over the back of a chair, he sank onto his couch and turned over the day's events in his mind. He was wondering what they would do with Comrade Natalia if they caught her. There was no statute of limitations on murder, of course, but he realized it would be impossible to convince a court that a woman who looked and acted thirty was actually over eighty, or that she had been a KGB terrorist in the 1950s. Early on in his career, he had been laughed out of a judge's chambers after trying to press charges about something obviously supernatural.
If the Red Widow surrendered, it was hard to say what should be done with her. Most of Bane's enemies were usually trying to kill him when he confronted them, so he could kill them and reasonably argue it was self-defense. Well, he'd have to decide when the time came. Taking out his Link, he patched into the Verizon system and started making some phone calls. It was almost one in the morning but he knew gamblers and con men and nightclub owners who were up all night every night as part of their careers.
Soon he began getting some interesting tidbits. Spanish Eddie had heard of two strongarm thugs who mentioned they might be working for a dame who was new in town but who seemed to be flush with money. Fatboy the poker player had actually seen a tall woman with black hair and green eyes asking around dives for possible recruits and yes, she had a foreign accent. Then there was the owner of the Garden of Eden club who gave Bane the most alarming news. A small-time thug called Dip Burton had been trying to find this strange Russian woman with hopes of landing a job. Somehow he seemed to offend someone by doing so, because his body had been found in a dumpster with so much mutilation he was identified by his dental work. So the owner cautioned Bane that maybe this was one target he should skip.
After a few hours, the Dire Wolf put his Link away. Some clues pointed toward Long Island. The woman was not named by anyone but her description matched and Spanish Eddie said she had been seen getting into a black Ford with tinted windows. It was the torture and murder of Burton that clinched Bane's determination to catch this murderous gangleader. The Cold War of 1954 seemed ages ago, but there was a body in the morgue tonight she had just sent there.
At four o'clock, Bane turned off the lights and went into his bedroom. He stripped down, hung up to Trom armor to air and slipped naked between the flannel sheets. The matched silver daggers hung in their sheaths by his head. Breathing deeply and slowly in a Tel Shai pattern, he was asleep within seconds.
At a few minutes before eight, he stirred and was completely refreshed and full of energy again. A hot shower, a fresh uniform of black slacks and turtleneck from the dozen that filled the closet, and he was out in the living room eager to get going. He got his sport jacket from the chair where he had left it and started out the door, then paused and got his long cloth coat off its hook on the wall. Each day had been colder than the one before, and the grey lowering sky he saw through the window hinted at snow.
Heading down to the street, the Dire Wolf reflected that he was once again breaking the cardinal rule for a PI, always have a paying customer before lifting a finger. Although he did not live like the millionaire he was, Bane was wealthy enough to have owned the apartment building outright. Kenneth Dred had left him a fortune and many deceased enemies had contributed their fortunes to his war chest. The Dire Wolf Agency was in some ways a front to explain why he undertook investigating murders and disappearances, but he did not do it for the money. It was his nature. Many had told him that his taking the name 'Dire Wolf' was no coincidence.
Stopping at a deli, he bought a fried egg on a hard roll, a bag of cashew nuts and a bottle of cranberry juice. Before he reached the next block, he had devoured all of it and dropped the refuse in a basket. Bane reached the yellow brick building and went through the automatic glass doors, pausing only to pick up his mail from the bank of boxes to the left. He shuffled through the pile as he walked, saw nothing urgent and opened the door to the office to drop the mile in its basket on his desk.
He got to work on the phone right away, calling one car dealership after another. Finding who had purchased a black Ford Escape within the past month should not have been difficult, especially since the buyer had been a gorgeous brunette with an accent, but by late afternoon he had gotten nowhere. There were a lot of dealerships in the metropolitan area and he was not always reaching the managers.
Getting disgusted, Bane got up and started pacing to gather his thoughts. He hadn't heard from Stockbridge. He was not convinced he could trust the Commie Buster an inch, despite their common goals. Taking out his Link, he called Carl Flanders up in Nyack. The thin elderly voice answered and explained that Stockbridge was on his way to a town on the eastern edge of Long Island. Apparently he had spoken to a real estate agent who was suspicious of what a Russian woman was doing with a crew of tough-looking mugs in the house he was renting to her.
Bane got the exact address, thanked Flanders, and ran out of his office. The doors locked and armed automatically behind him, and he was pulling on his coat as he was halfway across the lobby.
VI.
With a cold anger he seldom felt, Jeremy Bane stood trembling over the body of Mike Stockbridge. The Commie Buster had been tied down with wire to a sturdy wooden chair and his death had not been easy. Blood was everywhere. There was not much left of his face, eyes and nose were gone and only a few broken teeth remained in the open mouth. The fingertips were swollen pads without nails. Burns marks showed on the skin of the chest where the shirt had been ripped open.
The Dire Wolf inhaled slowly and deeply, trying to calm himself. All the horrors he had seen in the Midnight War, all the massacres and atrocities, and he found he was still capable of being shocked and outraged. Maybe it was a good thing. It showed he was not completely jaded himself. Bane stared at the corpse and shook his head slowly. He knew the Red Widow was in the next room. His Kumundu training caught her breathing, the creak of the wood fibers in the floor as she moved stealthily toward the door.
"You might as well come out," he said in a normal unemotional voice. "I'm sure you've got me covered."
In the doorway to the bedroom, the Russian woman emerged with a Parabellum steady in one hand. She was wearing the bright crimson military tunic and jodphurs, with the black boots gleaming. Across her chest was a yellow hammer and sickle emblem, and on her billed cap was a yellow star. Beautiful as she was, the cruel gleam in her blue eyes made her look demonic.
"He must have talked," Bane said. "No matter what training he had, the human body can only handle so much."
"Da, he talked," Natalia answered, aiming the barrel at him with a hand that was completely steady. "He confirmed how the world has changed. The Soviet Union DID break up, the glorious march of Communism has halted and perhaps it will not start up again."
"So you've learned what you didn't want to hear," the Dire Wolf snapped. "Now what? Your whole mission in life was for nothing. What you did to this man was for nothing!"
Natalia Katychenko grinned. "How little you know of the world, Mr Bane. There will always be spies and the game will always go on. Maybe the KGB is not what it was in my day but it will still have a place for me." She looked past Bane for an instant as headlights shone in the window behind him. "Ah, my men have returned. Good. You will go with them. They will drop you off miles from nowhere and by the time you reach a phone, I will be in a private plane leaving this decadent Zionist country."
Casually as if he were not standing three feet away from an assassin holding a pistol on him, Bane folded his arms. "Who are you kidding? When have you ever left witnesses alive? Your men are waiting to shoot me."
Still smiling, Comrade Natalia tilted back her cap with her free thumb. "You're right. Of course. So you have a choice. You can step outside and my men will fill you with bullets. Death will be quick. Or you can defy me and my first bullet will not kill you. Nor the second. Even with your knees shattered, you will live and suffer to crawl outside."
"You," Bane said slowly, "are a lost soul. Now I don't feel bad about what I'm going to have to do."
The meaning of his words had just started to sink in but she did not have time to react. Faster than she could follow, the Dire Wolf leaped across the space between them and slammed the heel of his hand up under her chin, swinging her head back so far her neck creaked and nearly broke. As she fell, he seized the gun from her hand and stuck it in his belt.
The Russian masterspy had dropped onto her back, moaning and breathing heavily as she fought to remain conscious. Bane had used fine judgement to not only leave her alive but to leave her only stunned. Moving quickly, he shrugged off his black sport jacket and dropped it behind him. From his right sleeve, he drew one of the silver daggers and yanked Natalia up to a seated position. He slit her tunic down the back and tugged it off her. Throwing her cap to one side, he seized her glossy black hair and sliced it cleanly off above the neckline in the back.
At five foot eleven and slim rather than buxom, Natalia Katychenko was close enough to Bane's general height and build. He got his own jacket on her, pulled her to her feet and hauled her toward the door. All this had taken only a few seconds. As he threw the front door open and shoved her roughly into the yard outside, she regained enough consciousness to be suddenly aware of what was happening. There was a bare instant to feel cold terror.
She did not have time to shout. Standing by their black Ford Escape, her four thugs opened fire as soon as they glimpsed a figure with black hair, wearing a black jacket. They had heard enough stories about the Dire Wolf to not be inclined to take any chances. The Red Widow convulsed wildly as a dozen heavy slugs punched into her body. She spun completely around, dying even as she fell.
"Is that.. is that the Dire Wolf?" whispered one of the gangsters in the sudden silence. They edged cautiously closer and suddenly recognized the face on the corpse.
"Oh Jeezus, that's the boss. We killed our boss!"
"Yeah, and thanks," came a mocking voice from the cabin doorway. As the men swung their heads up, Bane fired five times and caught each man squarely in the chest. They dropped where they stood. The fifth bullet caught one of the gangsters who seemed to still be able to start raising his own gun before dying.
For a long minute, the Dire Wolf surveyed the scene. He satisfied himself that each of the thugs was dead before exhaling slightly and lowering Natalia's weapon. That had played out more neatly than he had expected. He went to tug his jacket off the body of the Russian woman, finding it hopelessly shredded and bloodied. Still, he could not leave it on her. Dropping it to one side for a moment, he took a silicon cloth and wiped the Parabellum thoroughly before folding Natalia's limp hand around around its grip. He made sure her index finger was inside the trigger guard. How the police would reconstruct the scene was beyond him, but that was not his problem. More likely, the Mandate would claim Federal jurisdiction and take over.
Going to where his car was parked under the trees, he got a plastic trash bag from the trunk and put his jacket inside it, to be disposed of later. Not getting Natalia's blood on his hands took some care. Standing by his Subaru, Bane studied the scene for a few more moments. Nothing he could do for poor Stockbridge. The Commie Buster had finally caught up with his greatest enemy, even if the outcome had not been what he expected.
As he got behind the wheel, Bane suddenly felt tired. The adrenalin was fading from his system as his body recognized the danger was over. He backed up, turned around and headed away from the scene. A vague sense of poetic justice passed through his mind as he reflected that the Red Widow had ended up being killed the very way she had set up for him to be. A little irony was always satisfying.
5/15/2015
11/6-11/10/2006
I.
It was just getting dark when Jeremy Bane headed up Cornell Street in Queens and found Silverberg's Swap Shop. He had known the owner years earlier back in Times Square but had never been to this location before. First, he had circled the block suspiciously on foot and studied the windows on the opposite side of the street and watched for men sitting in parked cars. Not that he had any particular reason to suspect a trap, but he had been in the Midnight War most of his life and doing a recon of the area was a strong habit by this point. Satisfied for the moment, Bane approached the hock shop. For a second, he studied the variety of items in the windows. Machetes and swords, bongo drums and guitars, stacks of CDs and DVDs, a nice olive-green tool box. An accordion and a camcorder. All had hand-lettered signs promising the items could not be found cheaper anywhere.
The Dire Wolf shrugged and went inside, making the bell at the top of the door tinkle as he went through. It was not cold enough yet for a topcoat, he was comfortable in his usual outfit of black slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket.
"Jeremy!" yelled Stan Silverberg from behind the counter. "Look at you. I swear you look exactly the same as you did ten, fifteen years ago."
"Hi, Stan," replied the Dire Wolf quietly. "Good to see you again. Queens is out of my normal turf, you know."
As Silverberg came around the counter to offer a hand, Bane saw that the man had put on at least thirty pounds. The round belly was bisected horizontally by a belt pulled high, and he wore a black vest over a white dress shirt. The moonface was open and friendly, with a smile that still won people over. Silverberg had never been good-looking but he was likeable.
Bane shook the man's hand firmly and clapped that forearm with his free hand. "What exactly did you call me about, Stan? You were vague on the phone."
"Ehhhh, it may be nothing. But ya never know, and I remember you are interested in the weird stuff. Listen. Three times in the past month, a beautiful woman has come in here to pawn antique gold jewelry. She is shrewd, she demands a good price. I am curious. I call a few of my friendly rivals in the trade and I find she has been to see them, too. So I end up calling everything, pawn shop and old coins and jeweler in the whole metropolitan area."
"She's been to all of them?" Bane guessed.
"Yes! A busy young woman. In the past month or two, she must have unloaded fifty thousand dollars worth of items. But only a little at each location. Suspicious, eh?"
"A little bit," Bane admitted. "It makes me curious. How about a description?"
"Gorgeous young woman, maybe thirty years old at most. Tall, almost six foot, with a nice trim figure. Long shiny black hair. She speaks with just a hint of an accent as if she has tried to lose it but I am from Poland and I will never forget. Definitely Russian...from Georgia!" Silverberg shook his head angrily. "Russians...!"
"There's something more you haven't told me," the Dire Wolf prompted him.
"Yes. Usually this woman has on a full-length white topcoat, buttoned up to the collar. But today, when she was here, it fell open when she picked up her keys off the floor. Jeremy, I saw a bright red military uniform with a tunic and jodhpurs and polished black boots. And across the front, bold as hell, was a yellow Hammer and Sickle!"
"Really. That's not something you see much of anymore."
"Tell me about it. As a Polish Jew, I don't know what I hate more, the swastika or the hammer and sickle."
Bane's pale grey eyes had suddenly sharpened and his voice was more intense. "Now I'm interested. Just what is this mystery woman up to? Did she sign anything?"
"Yes, a slip in case she wants to reclaim the items. Post office box in Leonia New Jersey for an address, Sophie Lee for a name. Both fake, I'm sure." Silverberg leaned closer and smiled at the expression on his friend's face. "Now THERE'S the Dire Wolf I remember! You are ready for the hunt, aren't you?"
"Yes," Bane said simply. "Thanks, Stan. This might lead to something more important than either of us realize. I'll let you know what I find out."
"I owe you more than a little," Silverberg answered. "You chased those hoodlums out of my 8th Avenue shop when they were demanding money and you scared them so much they never came back. If I can return the favor even a little, I will."
The Dire Wolf headed for the door, pausing to give a friendly wave. "I'll keep you posted." As he stepped outside, he did not inform Silverberg that Comrade Natalia would have to be at least eighty years old.
II.
Leaving his Subaru Outback in the IMPERIAL GARAGE on 40th Street, the Dire Wolf walked briskly up Third Avenue. He was starving as usual, the variation that gave him his enhanced reflexes also left him burning calories nonstop. Before reaching his office, he stopped at a deli and got a corned beef on rye, a big bag of Doritos, a container of egg salad and a bottle of seltzer. By the time he reached the four-story yellow brick building where his office was located, only half of the seltzer was left.
The double glass doors opened automatically. EMERGENCY ONE on his right was open until eleven, after which those doors would be locked by security. Bane went past the staircase and down the short hallway which ended in the metal door EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. On the wall to his left was the plain wooden door with its brass plaque DIRE WOLF AGENCY. He unlocked it, passed through the tiny waiting room and into his office. He flicked on the lights, placed the seltzer bottle on his desk and began pacing restlessly.
The Dire Wolf kept going over what little he knew about Comrade Natalia. She was a Russian spy and assassin back during the Cold War. She headed a small squad of KGB agents. But she had last been reported in 1954. Bane only knew any of this because she had clashed once with Mark Drum and he was familiar with Drum's career. There was something else, though. Suddenly he remembered Mike Stockbridge, the US government's top counter-intelligence agents. Commie Buster.
It all seemed more than a little silly, it was so long ago and the battles had been over something that was only history now. The grimmest days of the Cold War had been before he was even born. He knew in an abstract way that the secret conflicts between Russian spies and American spies were still going on, as brutal and bitter as before. None of that explained why someone was showing up around the NYC area disguised as the Red Widow. Why on Earth would anyone do that? Who would even know about her at this point? Bane could not get even a wild guess going.
Finally, he made himself go to his desk and grudgingly take his seat behind it. Maybe there was nothing to it. Maybe this woman was pawning off family gold and jewelry after her grandmother died, maybe she was wearing a crimson uniform with a hammer and sickle as some rebellious fashion statement. No. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he rejected it. All his instincts told him there was big trouble brewing. The Bane could not think of any of his army of observers who might be helpful about this.
Grabbing his laptop from it hung charging in a satchel by the side of his desk, he started searching. Trom Girl had made so many modifications to the computer that he had trouble using it any more but it could slip through firewalls and past the toughest security barriers. After a few false starts, he got into Moscow's sealed Records and set it to translate into English. It took a few more minutes but suddenly he was reading a page with grey letters against a light yellow background. NATALIA LOTTE KATYCHENKO, born January 20 1925 in southern Ukraine. She had been recruited while still in school where her family had sent her to study medicine and had been forcibly indoctrinated- brainwashed, basically- to be a spy. Natalia had been top of her class at the Black Rose Academy, where she had to kill a target to graduate. She did not know it at the time, but the target had been warned his life was in danger to make the assignment more difficult for him.
For almost five years, she had worked all over Eastern Europe, then the UK and then America, stealing secrets and murdering targets as ordered. The only times she had failed had been once against Mark Drum and three times against Mike Stockbridge. In late 1954, she had arranged a trap for Stockbridge but neither had ever been seen again. The cold minds in the Kremlin regretfully concluded that Comrade Natalia and Commie Buster had killed each other and had closed her file.
Bane dug a little further. Her parents were dead, as was her only sibling. The only other relative left was a great-niece. No leads to be found there. He closed the windows, erased the search and started a security scan on the laptop. As that ran, the Dire Wolf exhaled sharply and began drumming his fingers on the desk. This was getting him nowhere. When the computer had cleared and was ready again, he repeated a search but this time he looked for Commie Buster.
The results were more informative in some ways. MICHAEL LOUIS STOCKBRIDGE had been born December 1, 1920, had served in the Marines in the Pacific and had gone into intelligence work toward the end of the war. When the CIA had been founded, Stockbridge had established himself as a dedicated agent who was at his best in the field. After a spectacular gunfight with a KGB man near the Pentagon, Stockbridge picked up the nickname "Commie Buster" which he loved.
Digging deeper, Bane found that Stockbridge had left no widow, no children. But there was something else interesting. The Commie Buster had worked with a support team of four CIA officers and one of them was still alive. Carl Flanders, aged 81 now, last known address in Nyack, NY. Three sons. The Dire Wolf got his address and phone number and studied a map of the area. Yes. He glanced up at the clock on the wall behind his desk and saw it was almost ten. Again, he erased his searches and set the laptop to scan itself, then put it away. Now he felt he had an opening to begin exploring.
He straightened up, stretching, and left his office. As he turned out the overhead light and closed the door behind him, he heard the click and buzz of Trom alarms arming themselves. The lobby was empty. Bane stepped out into the chilly November night and turning right, walking the few blocks to his apartment. First thing in the morning, he would head up to Nyack and see if he could learn anything from Stockbridge's partner. Bane could not know that, even as he approached the unimposing building which held his apartment, a man was being tortured for asking questions about Red Widow.
III.
Bane surprised himself by sleeping eight hours straight. He normally only did this if he had been severely beaten or shot, he was used to four hours sleep at most. That was an effect of his enhanced metabolism as well. But he had eaten a late meal, watched the local news at eleven and gone to bed, and now it was eight o'clock in the morning. He stretched, got out of bed and went into the living room.
Wearing only underwear and a plain white T-shirt, the Dire Wolf bowed to his Teacher Chael at Tel Shai, farther away than miles could measure. Starting slowly with stances and poses that grew more difficult, he sped up the pace until he was blurring through assorted kicks and punches and counters that whipped out faster than an unskilled eye could follow. His face grew calm and almost blank. Then the blow and strikes slowed into poses and stances again until finally he was standing with feet together and fists at his waist. His body was covered with a thin film of sweat but his breathing had hardly quickened.
This was the Doh Ra form, devised individually for each Kumundu student. Bane tried to never miss going through it every day. It was physical conditioning, stretching and training, martial art practice and meditation all within forty minutes or so. Again, he bowed gratefully to Teacher Chael. With a satisfied sigh, he went back into his bedroom with its enclosed bathroom for a hot shower and shave.
When he emerged, it was in a fresh uniform of the inevitable black slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket. Beneath his clothes, he wore the flexible Trom armor that left only his head and neck, hands and feet exosed. His jacket carried its dozen little gadgets in hidden pockets and slits, and of course the matched silver daggers were sheathed on his forearms beneath his sleeves. Bane felt rested, warmed up and ready for any crisis. As he reviewed what he had learned about Natalia and Stockbridge, the Dire Wolf scrambled four eggs with some slices of Swiss cheese in them and devoured the whole mass almost in one bite. He cleaned up, looked around the apartment as if memorizing the location of every item and went out in the hall. The door locked automatically behind him, and the familiar click of alarms going armed reassured him.
Heading down to the street, Bane found it was chillier than the day the before but his body adjusted quickly and he hardly noticed. He hurried down Third Avenue, past the building where his office was located and went to IMPERIAL GARAGE. There in its spot on the lower level, directly in front of a security camera, sat his dark green Subaru Outback. He saw the tiny blue and green lights on the driver's sunvisor were blinking steadily. Bane got in and headed up the ramp to the street, nodding to the attendant as he exited.
On his way north, the Dire Wolf realized he didn't know much about the Cold War. He had almost no formal schooling. Although he was expert in many practical skills, his grasp of real world history was sketchy. After World War II, America and Russia didn't go to a real war because they both had nuclear bombs, he knew that much. So the two super-powers fought through espionage and through small proxy wars in other countries. Stockbridge and Natalia had been on the front lines of the bitter unseen battles between US and USSR spies. In a way, it reminded him of his own Midnight War.
Soon he was in a quiet residential neighborhood with well-kept yards and well-maintained cars. Bane spotted numbers on the houses and pulled over near the end of one block. Across the street from him was a small red brick house with a new Dodge Caravan parked in its short driveway. In front of the house was a black Toytota. From where he sat, the Dire Wolf studied the layout out of the house like a general planning a battle, figuring out possible escape routes and attack angles. He memorized the plate numbers on the Dodge but couldn't see the Toyota's. A large American flag waved in the cold November wind over the front door of the house.
Reaching into the back seat, Bane took his field suit helmet and lowered it over his head. When he closed the visor, the inner heads-up display lit up. This involved functions he seldom used and he had a little difficulty operating the controls. When he studied the area under infrared, he saw that the hood of the Toyota was warm, it must have arrived there recently. There was no one sitting in either vehicle. Infrared body images could not be discerned well through brick walls, but he clearly saw two figures moving past a curtained picture window. Turning up the audio sensors, Bane had to fiddle with the directional controls until he could hear voices from within the house without also being deafened by cars going past.
The conversation seemed innocuous enough. An old man's voice was saying he did not need a housekeeper coming by, he was fine on his own. A middle-aged man's voice argued it was just a suggestion. Bane listened to them for another few minutes and still heard nothing suspicious. Deactivating the helmet, he placed it on the back seat again and got out of his car. He crossed the street, walked up to the front door and pressed the doorbell.
In a few seconds, the inner door swung inward and a hand pushed the outer screen door open a inch. A broad weathered face peered at him suspiciously. "Help you, mister?"
Holding up his worn leather billfold, Bane showed him his Private Investigator license. "My name is Bane. I have some information about Michael Stockbridge you need to hear."
Staring at the license, the middle-aged man blinked. "Jeremy Bane? I've heard of you. All right, come on in."
The Dire Wolf stepped into a stuffy, oppressively hot living room. It was also overly bright in there, with six lamps all lit. For a second, even he was confused by the sheer amount of decoration on every available surface. American flags of different sizes, models of Mount Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty on counters, framed photos of military scenes, a stuffed bison head on one wall... it was a lot of detail to take in. Sitting in a wheelchair just out of arm's reach, a withered old man with no hair reached in his bathrobe and came out with a Colt 45 revolver in both bony hands.
As soon as the old man's hands came up with that weapon, Bane's full attention was focused on him and, in that instant, something hard struck him on the back of the head with murderous force.
IV.
Even from a concussion like that, Bane did not entirely lose consciousness. Decades of a tagra diet from Tel Shai had boosted his healing factor beyond what medical science could explain. Dimly, as if from far away, he heard two voices argue.
"You shouldn't have killed him, Mike, we don't know what his intentions were."
A deeper, gruffer voice snarled, "No one knows I'm back but that Red bitch. He must be tied in with her somehow. Anyway, he just stirred and moved his right arm. Look. He'll be trying to get up next. Give me a hand here."
Bane felt himself being turned over onto his stomach, then his hands were pushed together and something was pulled tight around them. As his head began to clear of the fog and pain, he realized he was being hauled over to be propped up against a wall. In a few more seconds, his vision cleared and he was almost back to normal. A regular person struck in the head hard enough to be knocked unconscious would experience nausea and vomiting, dizziness, blurred vision and a crippling headache for days. He went through none of this. He had bounced back from trauma that would kill an average human being, and he had come to expect it.
"I can't believe he's coming out of it that fast," the deep voice said. Bane saw it belonged to a huge man, several inches over six feet tall and wide enough to fill a doorway. He was wearing a white trenchcoat tightly buckled shut, its collar up, and he had a white fedora pulled low over his face. In one big mitt was an Army 45 automatic. "He must have moved his head just before contact."
Wriggling and sitting more upright, Bane managed to get one foot under him. The top of his boot was right next to his fingers. Great. It felt like ordinary clothesline around his wrists. Eyeing the big man steadily, he said, "Michael Stockbridge would be eighty-six years old today. Who are you really?"
The blue eyes were furious and hateful. "You don't know what happened to me. I lost decades of my life in stasis. Without my consent. I have to pay them back for that. But you're not the one asking questions here!"
"Sure I am," said Bane with quiet confidence. He had pulled a single-edged razor blade from its slit at the top of his boot and was slicing at the clothesline. Every time he had to do this, he cut his hands and wrists but it was worth it. "So someone put you in suspended animation? Does that mean the woman running around the city is the real Comrade Natalia also? Hard to believe!"
Stockbridge stepped closer, not catching on yet that the Dire Wolf was stealthily cutting through the clothesline. "You said you were a PI, buddy. But my guess is that if you know about that woman, you're working on her side. Your orders come from Moscow, too."
"Wrong wrong wrong," Bane answered. "I'm just another New York detective looking into a mystery. I don't even have a client." Behind him, the razor blade dropped to the carpeting as his hands came free.
"You're going to talk. We can do it this the easy way or the hard way." He glanced over at the other two men. "We're going to have to use the kitchen. Get a tarp and put it down to catch the blood. Well, pal, hard way or easy way?"
A remarkably feral grin spread over Bane's narrow face. Something about the expression in those pale eyes made Stockbridge hesitate. The prisoner was not afraid at all. Shifting his weight a little, the Dire Wolf said, "Tell you what, we'll do this MY way."
In a lightning blur, he was up on his feet and lunging faster than a real wolf. A left cross and backfist from the same hand swung Stockbridge's head back and forth. As the big man fell to his knees, Bane crouched low and swung around. The old man had raised a 32 revolver from his lap blanket but he didn't have the strength to raise it and fire without both hands.
The Dire Wolf snatched the pistol away from the old man and pivoted to face the third man, who was moving toward him with both fists raised. Bane kicked him in the middle of the chest, driving the air from his lungs with a gush. As the man fell to the floor, the Dire Wolf wheeled around to take in the scene. The old man in the wheelchair was no threat, Stockbridge was kneeling in a daze and the third man was gasping for breath.
Pocketing the revolver, Bane stepped over and wrenched the Colt 45 from Stockbridge's big paw. He put that gun in his other side pocket and noticed wryly how heavy his jacket now felt. The Commie Buster started to get to his feet, blinking rapidly. Bane did not try to stop him.
"Okay, I figure we're even now," the Dire Wolf said. "Maybe we can start from scratch."
"How can you move like that? Navy SEAL? Special Forces?" grunted Stockbridge uncertainly. He stood up and swayed a bit but held his ground.
"Natural talent," Bane said. "Look. I'm American, born and raised in Manhattan. I don't care about politics to be honest. I'm investigating Red Widow because it's a little weird she's still alive and seems to be about thirty when she should be a great-grandmother."
Stockbridge did not answer for a long minute. "Let's parley. I know the world has changed since I was put on ice. Carl and Sean here have been filling me in, but frankly it's a lot to digest. You're after the Red bitch because she's a mystery, eh?"
"That's my calling," Bane said. "First, who was it that put you two in suspended animation? Why were you revived?"
The Commie Buster went over to the couch against the far wall and gingerly lowered himself on it. Bane glanced over to the middle-aged man, whose name seemed to be Sean, had gotten his breath back but seemed inclined to remain sitting on the floor for the moment.
"It was the Mandate. Maybe you never heard of them, they're a covert government agency FDR set up to deal with people with unusual abilities."
"I've had to deal with the Mandate," Bane snapped. "They can't be trusted, except to do what's in their interests. What was their problem with you, Stockbridge? I'd think you were their hero back then."
The Commie Buster slowly took off his fedora, revealed a close-cropped head of jet black hair. He stared glumly at the floor. "There was a shoot-out near the Lincoln Memorial. Me and my team, Natalia and her squad. Some citizens got killed in the crossfire. June 2nd, 1954. When I was being patched up at headquarters, the bastards sedated me and wheeled me to some sub-basement. I was locked in a big metal mummy case with hoses feeding into it. The last thing I saw before blacking out was Comrade Natalia being stuffed into an identical container. She was bandaged up as much as I was, which made me happy."
"The Mandate has always had technology ahead of everyone else," Bane said. "I haven't found out where they get it. So they fed you IVs and lowered your temperatures and basically kept you hibernating for sixty years."
"That's right. The world went on without us. Of my team of Patriot Warriors, only Carl is still alive. He raised three boys after his wife died in 1968, and he brought them up to love freedom and democracy as much as I did. As I still do." Stockbridge smiled over at the old man. "It's unfair that he aged and I'm still the same, but I didn't want it this way."
"What happened to Natalia's team?"
"No survivors. We were just better shots." Stockbridge heaved a heavy sigh. "A month ago, I woke up. The chamber was cold and dark, my mummy case had been unlocked and I struggled to get out of it. I wasn't weak, my muscles hadn't atrophied but I don't know how they did that. The other container was empty. I found some clothes in a locker that almost fit and made my way outside. It was a warehouse down by the Battery, boarded up and closed for years."
"We need to check that place out for clues," Bane said. "Why was the power off? Who freed Natalia? If they were her friends, you'd think they would have killed you while you were helpless."
"I've been wondering all this myself. But my contacts are long gone. No one in Washington knows me, they'd think I was crazy if I showed up and told them what happened." The big man scowled. "I'm not used to being without a plan."
The Dire Wolf took the guns from his jacket pockets and handed the 45 automatic to Stockbridge, the revolver to Carl. "Seems to me we have some common goals. We need to set up some ground rules," he said, "But I think we can work together on this."
V.
The rest of the day was spent at the building where Stockbridge and Natalia had been kept in stasis. It had been emptied of any of the devices the Commie Buster had mentioned, but scrapes along the concrete floor showed that heavy objects had been dragged out of there recently. Hours of searching had turned up nothing useful. Bane had used his Link to find out who owned the property but only found a corporation named Swift Information, which he figured was a dummy company. He was sure the Mandate was behind it, but couldn't get evidence.
As they went back to Bane's Subaru, Mike Stockbridge was more sullen than usual. "Sixty years stolen and no way to make anyone pay for it."
The Dire Wolf studied the area. A few blocks down, men were unloading furniture from an 18-wheeler truck but otherwise the neighborhood was almost abandoned. "I can not figure out the Mandate's game. Going to them never gets answers unless you're willing to fight for some. They lie as a matter of policy."
"And I can't go to the Agency. If I tell them who I am, it's the lunatic asylum for me." Stockbridge got in the passenger side and slammed the door with more emphasis than was really necessary.
"Now it's time for standard detective work," Bane said. He pulled away from the empty building and made a turn to head back uptown. "Lots of phone calls and visits to the pawn shops where Red Widow has been selling the gold. Where is she getting that stuff anyway, do you think?"
Stockbridge snorted. "Buddy, that Red tramp has always had caches of money and weapons and clothing hidden wherever she worked. I suppose she had a trunk full of gold buried somewhere and she dug it up as soon as she thawed out. Her Commie stooges are long dead so she must be hiring regular two-bit hoods, she always works with a squad of gunmen."
Going into Time Square, Bane had been quiet for some moments. "You know, by now she must have learned that the Soviet Union broke up twenty years ago. The Cold War is over. The big fear Americans have today is Middle East terrorists. How is she going to handle this?"
"I've thought about," Stockbridge said. "My feeling is that she's rationalizing like crazy. Everything she sees on TV or in the papers is propaganda from the US government in her eyes. Even if she calls someone in Mother Russia, she'll think it's just someone in Washington trying to fool her."
"Makes sense. Okay, I'm leaving the car here at IMPERIAL garage. There's a dozen pawn shops within walking distance and we can start asking questions."
"I'm good at standard investigations," Stockbridge said. "It's boring but it's gotta be done."
Everything was closing up around nine, and they had only gotten one morsel of information. One pawnbroker on Ninth Avenue had been in the doorway when Natalia had left his store. She got in a black Ford Escape with tinted windows. The man had not noticed license plates numbers, he was checking out Natalia on a personal level. He only recognized the car model because his brother owned one.Thanking him for his help, Bane led Stockbridge back down toward 40th Street.
"Okay, not much of a lead," the Dire Wolf admitted. "Tomorrow is going to mean checking with every damn car dealership in the area to see if a woman answering her description bought or leased a black Escape. I figure she needed a week or two to raise the money, so the purchase should still be fresh in the dealer's mind."
As they walked down to Bane's car, Stockbridge grumbled. "Fine. You know what, I'm going to work the other angle. She is renting a house somewhere. The Red Widow can't gather her usual team of four or five men and keep them all in a fleabag apartment. She needs a regular house. For someone that hates capitalism and our American way of life, she always seem to make herself comfortable."
Pausing at the entrance to IMPERIAL GARAGE, the Dire Wolf studied the big man's weathered face. "Sounds sensible. We'll cover more ground that way. But we have to contact each other as we find things out. We'll make more progress working together."
The Commie Buster lit another cigarette. He smoked a little over a complete pack of Lucky Strikes a day. This annoyed Bane but not enough to mention. As the Commie Buster blew two streams of smoke from his nostrils, he looked at the Dire Wolf. "Tell the truth, pal, I'm impressed with your approach. You're a pro. And I remember the way you slugged me, damn you're fast as a cobra." Stockbridge paused, then added, "What I'm saying is, I'll be a little glad to have you on hand when the showdown with the Reds gets serious."
V.
After driving Stockbridge back to his aide's house in Nyack, it was past midnight before Bane finally got back to his apartment. Tugging off his boots and throwing his jack over the back of a chair, he sank onto his couch and turned over the day's events in his mind. He was wondering what they would do with Comrade Natalia if they caught her. There was no statute of limitations on murder, of course, but he realized it would be impossible to convince a court that a woman who looked and acted thirty was actually over eighty, or that she had been a KGB terrorist in the 1950s. Early on in his career, he had been laughed out of a judge's chambers after trying to press charges about something obviously supernatural.
If the Red Widow surrendered, it was hard to say what should be done with her. Most of Bane's enemies were usually trying to kill him when he confronted them, so he could kill them and reasonably argue it was self-defense. Well, he'd have to decide when the time came. Taking out his Link, he patched into the Verizon system and started making some phone calls. It was almost one in the morning but he knew gamblers and con men and nightclub owners who were up all night every night as part of their careers.
Soon he began getting some interesting tidbits. Spanish Eddie had heard of two strongarm thugs who mentioned they might be working for a dame who was new in town but who seemed to be flush with money. Fatboy the poker player had actually seen a tall woman with black hair and green eyes asking around dives for possible recruits and yes, she had a foreign accent. Then there was the owner of the Garden of Eden club who gave Bane the most alarming news. A small-time thug called Dip Burton had been trying to find this strange Russian woman with hopes of landing a job. Somehow he seemed to offend someone by doing so, because his body had been found in a dumpster with so much mutilation he was identified by his dental work. So the owner cautioned Bane that maybe this was one target he should skip.
After a few hours, the Dire Wolf put his Link away. Some clues pointed toward Long Island. The woman was not named by anyone but her description matched and Spanish Eddie said she had been seen getting into a black Ford with tinted windows. It was the torture and murder of Burton that clinched Bane's determination to catch this murderous gangleader. The Cold War of 1954 seemed ages ago, but there was a body in the morgue tonight she had just sent there.
At four o'clock, Bane turned off the lights and went into his bedroom. He stripped down, hung up to Trom armor to air and slipped naked between the flannel sheets. The matched silver daggers hung in their sheaths by his head. Breathing deeply and slowly in a Tel Shai pattern, he was asleep within seconds.
At a few minutes before eight, he stirred and was completely refreshed and full of energy again. A hot shower, a fresh uniform of black slacks and turtleneck from the dozen that filled the closet, and he was out in the living room eager to get going. He got his sport jacket from the chair where he had left it and started out the door, then paused and got his long cloth coat off its hook on the wall. Each day had been colder than the one before, and the grey lowering sky he saw through the window hinted at snow.
Heading down to the street, the Dire Wolf reflected that he was once again breaking the cardinal rule for a PI, always have a paying customer before lifting a finger. Although he did not live like the millionaire he was, Bane was wealthy enough to have owned the apartment building outright. Kenneth Dred had left him a fortune and many deceased enemies had contributed their fortunes to his war chest. The Dire Wolf Agency was in some ways a front to explain why he undertook investigating murders and disappearances, but he did not do it for the money. It was his nature. Many had told him that his taking the name 'Dire Wolf' was no coincidence.
Stopping at a deli, he bought a fried egg on a hard roll, a bag of cashew nuts and a bottle of cranberry juice. Before he reached the next block, he had devoured all of it and dropped the refuse in a basket. Bane reached the yellow brick building and went through the automatic glass doors, pausing only to pick up his mail from the bank of boxes to the left. He shuffled through the pile as he walked, saw nothing urgent and opened the door to the office to drop the mile in its basket on his desk.
He got to work on the phone right away, calling one car dealership after another. Finding who had purchased a black Ford Escape within the past month should not have been difficult, especially since the buyer had been a gorgeous brunette with an accent, but by late afternoon he had gotten nowhere. There were a lot of dealerships in the metropolitan area and he was not always reaching the managers.
Getting disgusted, Bane got up and started pacing to gather his thoughts. He hadn't heard from Stockbridge. He was not convinced he could trust the Commie Buster an inch, despite their common goals. Taking out his Link, he called Carl Flanders up in Nyack. The thin elderly voice answered and explained that Stockbridge was on his way to a town on the eastern edge of Long Island. Apparently he had spoken to a real estate agent who was suspicious of what a Russian woman was doing with a crew of tough-looking mugs in the house he was renting to her.
Bane got the exact address, thanked Flanders, and ran out of his office. The doors locked and armed automatically behind him, and he was pulling on his coat as he was halfway across the lobby.
VI.
With a cold anger he seldom felt, Jeremy Bane stood trembling over the body of Mike Stockbridge. The Commie Buster had been tied down with wire to a sturdy wooden chair and his death had not been easy. Blood was everywhere. There was not much left of his face, eyes and nose were gone and only a few broken teeth remained in the open mouth. The fingertips were swollen pads without nails. Burns marks showed on the skin of the chest where the shirt had been ripped open.
The Dire Wolf inhaled slowly and deeply, trying to calm himself. All the horrors he had seen in the Midnight War, all the massacres and atrocities, and he found he was still capable of being shocked and outraged. Maybe it was a good thing. It showed he was not completely jaded himself. Bane stared at the corpse and shook his head slowly. He knew the Red Widow was in the next room. His Kumundu training caught her breathing, the creak of the wood fibers in the floor as she moved stealthily toward the door.
"You might as well come out," he said in a normal unemotional voice. "I'm sure you've got me covered."
In the doorway to the bedroom, the Russian woman emerged with a Parabellum steady in one hand. She was wearing the bright crimson military tunic and jodphurs, with the black boots gleaming. Across her chest was a yellow hammer and sickle emblem, and on her billed cap was a yellow star. Beautiful as she was, the cruel gleam in her blue eyes made her look demonic.
"He must have talked," Bane said. "No matter what training he had, the human body can only handle so much."
"Da, he talked," Natalia answered, aiming the barrel at him with a hand that was completely steady. "He confirmed how the world has changed. The Soviet Union DID break up, the glorious march of Communism has halted and perhaps it will not start up again."
"So you've learned what you didn't want to hear," the Dire Wolf snapped. "Now what? Your whole mission in life was for nothing. What you did to this man was for nothing!"
Natalia Katychenko grinned. "How little you know of the world, Mr Bane. There will always be spies and the game will always go on. Maybe the KGB is not what it was in my day but it will still have a place for me." She looked past Bane for an instant as headlights shone in the window behind him. "Ah, my men have returned. Good. You will go with them. They will drop you off miles from nowhere and by the time you reach a phone, I will be in a private plane leaving this decadent Zionist country."
Casually as if he were not standing three feet away from an assassin holding a pistol on him, Bane folded his arms. "Who are you kidding? When have you ever left witnesses alive? Your men are waiting to shoot me."
Still smiling, Comrade Natalia tilted back her cap with her free thumb. "You're right. Of course. So you have a choice. You can step outside and my men will fill you with bullets. Death will be quick. Or you can defy me and my first bullet will not kill you. Nor the second. Even with your knees shattered, you will live and suffer to crawl outside."
"You," Bane said slowly, "are a lost soul. Now I don't feel bad about what I'm going to have to do."
The meaning of his words had just started to sink in but she did not have time to react. Faster than she could follow, the Dire Wolf leaped across the space between them and slammed the heel of his hand up under her chin, swinging her head back so far her neck creaked and nearly broke. As she fell, he seized the gun from her hand and stuck it in his belt.
The Russian masterspy had dropped onto her back, moaning and breathing heavily as she fought to remain conscious. Bane had used fine judgement to not only leave her alive but to leave her only stunned. Moving quickly, he shrugged off his black sport jacket and dropped it behind him. From his right sleeve, he drew one of the silver daggers and yanked Natalia up to a seated position. He slit her tunic down the back and tugged it off her. Throwing her cap to one side, he seized her glossy black hair and sliced it cleanly off above the neckline in the back.
At five foot eleven and slim rather than buxom, Natalia Katychenko was close enough to Bane's general height and build. He got his own jacket on her, pulled her to her feet and hauled her toward the door. All this had taken only a few seconds. As he threw the front door open and shoved her roughly into the yard outside, she regained enough consciousness to be suddenly aware of what was happening. There was a bare instant to feel cold terror.
She did not have time to shout. Standing by their black Ford Escape, her four thugs opened fire as soon as they glimpsed a figure with black hair, wearing a black jacket. They had heard enough stories about the Dire Wolf to not be inclined to take any chances. The Red Widow convulsed wildly as a dozen heavy slugs punched into her body. She spun completely around, dying even as she fell.
"Is that.. is that the Dire Wolf?" whispered one of the gangsters in the sudden silence. They edged cautiously closer and suddenly recognized the face on the corpse.
"Oh Jeezus, that's the boss. We killed our boss!"
"Yeah, and thanks," came a mocking voice from the cabin doorway. As the men swung their heads up, Bane fired five times and caught each man squarely in the chest. They dropped where they stood. The fifth bullet caught one of the gangsters who seemed to still be able to start raising his own gun before dying.
For a long minute, the Dire Wolf surveyed the scene. He satisfied himself that each of the thugs was dead before exhaling slightly and lowering Natalia's weapon. That had played out more neatly than he had expected. He went to tug his jacket off the body of the Russian woman, finding it hopelessly shredded and bloodied. Still, he could not leave it on her. Dropping it to one side for a moment, he took a silicon cloth and wiped the Parabellum thoroughly before folding Natalia's limp hand around around its grip. He made sure her index finger was inside the trigger guard. How the police would reconstruct the scene was beyond him, but that was not his problem. More likely, the Mandate would claim Federal jurisdiction and take over.
Going to where his car was parked under the trees, he got a plastic trash bag from the trunk and put his jacket inside it, to be disposed of later. Not getting Natalia's blood on his hands took some care. Standing by his Subaru, Bane studied the scene for a few more moments. Nothing he could do for poor Stockbridge. The Commie Buster had finally caught up with his greatest enemy, even if the outcome had not been what he expected.
As he got behind the wheel, Bane suddenly felt tired. The adrenalin was fading from his system as his body recognized the danger was over. He backed up, turned around and headed away from the scene. A vague sense of poetic justice passed through his mind as he reflected that the Red Widow had ended up being killed the very way she had set up for him to be. A little irony was always satisfying.
5/15/2015
