The Judas Project. Don Pendleton

BOLAN COMPLETED his reading of the file presented by Hal Brognola. He glanced around the War Room conference table.

      “It points to something that needs checking out,” he said. “There are too many facts to be labeled coincidence.”

      “It’s the way we all saw it,” Price said. “I was on board as soon as Aaron showed me the initial data he’d pulled together and got the team’s backup.”

      Bolan tapped the file. “Priority is to assess what a possible operation might consist of. We have to work on the assumption that whatever was planned could still be online, just waiting for someone to issue the green light.”

      “We’re digging deep trying to get a handle on it,” Kurtzman said. “One problem is, we have no idea how covert this might be. We don’t even have the luxury of a name for the damn thing.”

      Akira Tokaido opened a folder. “I may have something for you on that,” he said, sliding photos of the tattoos found on the dead men.

      “They tell you something?” Price asked.

      Tokaido nodded. “The writing in the tattoo design turned out to be an obscure Cyrillic alphabet.” He picked up one of the remotes that controlled the wall-mounted monitors and clicked on a screen. “On the left are the original three tattoos. Worked into the entwined snakes-and-scorpions design are number and letter sequences. Two of the tattoos have the same number-letter sequence. The third is different. Two different sequences come from the dead men from Spokane. The remaining one is Grand Rapids. If you look on the right, here, I’ve laid out all three sequences, this time in English.”

      They all studied the sequences. Even in English the lines didn’t make much sense.

      “Computer codes?” Bolan asked.

      “I don’t think so,” Kurtzman said. “Not the sort of configuration that makes any sense. We’ll run them but I can’t see them giving us much.”

      “Maybe a number-letter code,” Delahunt said. “I can check them against the FBI code-breaker data, but they don’t seem to have anything I can get a hook on.”

      “Lena Orlov did find something that might offer us a starting point,” Tokaido said. He highlighted a curving banner that sat over the main design. It was identical on each tattoo. “In English it means Black Judas.”

      “Great work,” Brognola said. “We all understand Judas. The disciple who betrayed Jesus. Give anyone a thought?”

      “Not immediately,” Delahunt admitted.

      No one else had any flashes of inspiration, so they spent some time going over what they had, pushing theories back and forth.

      “Did Akira’s suggestion about the three dead men being into computing go any further?” Bolan asked.

      “Yes. He did find out they were all familiar with the latest technology. Systems. Security advances. They took every IT course they could log onto. These guys were heavily into it. You have an idea?”

      “Pretty loose at the moment,” Bolan stated. “We have three dead men. It’s becoming more than likely they were foreign agents sent to the U.S. to assimilate into society and stay low. Each has a tattoo that appears to contain some number-letter sequence, meaning unknown at the moment. Our guys were all into finance-based employment and also heavily into computer knowledge, which in today’s climate isn’t suspect in itself, but could be.”

      “Don’t forget Judas,” Tokaido prompted.

      “My next piece of the puzzle. Judas walked with all the other disciples. Passed himself off as one of them, while all the time he was working against them. Just what a sleeper does. Then Judas broke his trust and betrayed those who saw him as a good guy.”

      “Okay,” Price said. “The Judas analogy works fine. But where is the betrayal here? Were our sleepers here to betray someone? Set him up as an assassination target?”

      “Think about that.”

      “Why so many men?” Price asked. “An assassination wouldn’t need that many, would it?”

      “Good point,” Bolan said. “And a hit against a current figure doesn’t gel with a sleeper put in place for a long period. People and situations change over the years. Your assassin is more likely to be inserted in the short term.”

      “So no individual hit?”

      Bolan shook his head. “Not someone. I’m thinking something. This looks like a complicated operation. A killing is a relatively simple matter. A target. A weapon. An operator. I believe these guys were going after something bigger, and not a bomb or a bioweapon.”

      “Striker, even my head is starting to spin,” Brognola said. “Is there a payoff here?”

      “Speculation at the moment. Theorizing. But I’m looking at the special interest in computers and the financial backgrounds all these guys had. And then Black Judas. I remember one of Katz’s favorite words when he was building scenarios—extrapolation, making an educated guess at a possible conclusion once facts were brought together. In this case I’m linking Black Judas to Black Monday. I think we all remember that day in ’87 when the stock market went haywire.”

      “Okay,” Brognola said, pushing to his feet. He took a moment to consider what he was about to authorize. “I believe we have enough to initiate an initial probe.”

      “More than enough,” Kurtzman said.

      “Okay, people. I need to bring the Man up to speed. He’s going to grumble about the possible effects on U.S.-Russian relations. I’ll have to put the emphasis on possible illegal Russian presence within our borders. I guess that should convince him we have enough to look into this. Press the Go button, Barb. We need to be on the starting blocks. You ready to move out, Striker?”

      Bolan picked up his copy of the file. “Give me an hour to run through this again and I’ll suit up.”

      “Any thoughts where you might be heading?” Price inquired.

      “Spokane first, then Grand Rapids. See if I can pick anything up from the crime scenes. Liaise with the local P.D.”

      “I’ll set up flights,” Price said, “and arrange for rentals at each airport.”

      “If you get to talk to the cops, check out whether they got hold of the victims’ computers,” Kurtzman said. “If they have them, I could do with downloading whatever’s stored. Might add to our information.”

      “You’ll be going in under Justice Department cover,” Brognola added. “I’ll call ahead and tell them we would appreciate their help. Aaron, what do you need?”

      “Internet link is all. I can go in and pull out what I need from that.”

      “If they know we’re downloading data, the cops might start asking questions,” Bolan said. “Cooperation is one thing. Downloading from a victim’s computer might hit their suspicion button.”

      “Tell them all you need is ten minutes to have a look at their e-mails,” Kurtzman said. “My program can worm inside and download without even showing on screen once you get me Internet access. Nothing will be deleted and they won’t know.” He grinned broadly. “Sneaky, am I not?”

      “You have no competition,” Bolan said. “Okay, Hal, set it up.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Natasha Tchenko had flown from Moscow to Heathrow Airport, in the UK, where she had been met by a cousin she hadn’t seen for many years. She spent almost a week in London, and carried out the first part of her plan by tracking down one of the men she had been looking for. She had gotten his name from the hired thug who had attacked her in the basement garage under her apartment. Before she had rendered him unconscious she had extracted the name of the man who had given him instructions on how to find her. She kept that part to herself, planning to