The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume One (56 page)

“I agree,” Number Seven said, shining the flashlight in the direction Khan had indicated. The incandescent beam exposed the arched entrance of a decaying, subterranean corridor stretching away into the shadows lying beyond the reach of the light. Stagnant puddles of filmy water created iridescent reflections of the radiance emanating from the American’s flashlight.

“I was not asking,” Khan asserted. Raising the hilt of his dagger, he shattered the dingy lightbulb at the foot of the stairs. “To inconvenience any who follow.” Fragments of broken glass crunched beneath the tread of his boots as he led the party into the gloomy, timeworn tunnel. His shining blade slashed at the cobwebs across their path like a machete cutting through dense underbrush, yet shredded wisps of webbing still clung to Komananov’s face and hair as she trudged grimly down the tunnel, a few meters ahead of Number Seven and his electric torch.

After they had marched for several minutes, a tense and uneasy
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si
lence hanging over the group, they came to an intersection where two deserted tunnels met at right angles, beneath an unadorned groin vault whose upper reaches were cloaked in shadows. A thin trickle of water ran down the nearest brick wall, irrigating slimy layers of mold and algae. Mice and insects burrowed in the niches between the decrepit bricks, where all or part of the mortar had crumbled away over time. In the middle of the crossing, a squat stone well, covered by a rusty metal lid, fed corroded lead pipes running along the bottom of the tunnel walls. Sludge leaked from the pipes, pooling in the cracks between the floor stones.

“This will do,” Khan declared, raising his hand to halt the mute procession. The
chakram
upon his upper arm caught the light of Number Seven’s torch, as did the engraved steel band upon his right wrist. He turned on Komananov and advanced toward her, knife in hand, backing her up against a damp, ooze-encrusted wall, whose inhospitable chill seeped into her bones even through the heavy wool layers of her greatcoat. Khan kept on coming, until his chiseled, sparsely bearded face was only a finger’s length away from hers. “Now then, Colonel Anastasia Natalya Komananov, of the Committee for State Security, Third Chief Directorate, I want you to tell me everything you know about the plot to disrupt the summit conference now being held in Reykjavik.” He pressed the tip of the blade against the hollow of her throat. “Refusal is not an option.”

Ordinarily, she would have laughed at the notion that she, a high-ranking member of the world’s most feared intelligence agency, could be intimidated by a teenage boy scarcely past puberty. But Khan, it was obvious, was no ordinary youth. His dark brown eyes held an intensity and firmness of purpose far beyond his years. Nor did she sense that he was bluffing; that icy determination left little room for mercy or squeamishness. “I do not know what you are talking about,” she said, swallowing hard, which caused the sharpened tip of the dagger to scrape minutely against the taut flesh of her throat. “I know of no such plan.”

Khan’s expression darkened. “Do not toy with me, woman,” he hissed, baring flawless white teeth. “I know that you and your
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confederates have a scheme to derail the summit meeting between Gorbachev and Reagan, endangering the safety of the entire world merely to keep your precious Cold War alive.” His left hand clamped on to her wrist, squeezing it hard enough that she feared her bones might snap. “What I do
not
know are the exact particulars of your plot, but you will tell me those ... now.”

Khan twisted her wrist and Komananov winced in pain. In desperation, she looked past Khan’s shoulder at Number Seven, who stood a few paces away, his stolen AK-74 still slung over his shoulder. His knitted brow and disapproving frown gave her hope that he might call a stop to her brutal interrogation. “Khan,” he said sternly, taking a step toward Khan and the colonel.

The youth did not deign to look back at his American ally. “You may avert your eyes if you wish, old man. I know that doing what is necessary is sometimes too much for your humane and oh-so-civilized sensibilities.”

Biting down on her lower lip, to keep from giving voice to her pain, Komananov prayed that Number Seven would not be so easily rebuffed. She could use a good cop right now, no matter what the American’s ultimate agenda was.

“I’m disappointed, Khan,” the older man said, shaking his head. His voice had the tone of an elder chiding an upstart child. “Your intellect is as impressive as ever, but you’re still too quick to resort to violence, too easily caught up in the adolescent bloodlust of conflict and battle.” He patted the leather attaché case in his grip, calling Khan’s attention to the crucial item. “This case, which you overlooked in your eagerness to wage a one-man war against the entire Soviet Army, may tell us everything we both want to know about the conspiracy against Gorbachev—and without descending to savagery.”

For an endless moment, Khan stood as silent and immobile as a statue, the point of his knife remaining at his captive’s throat. Komananov held her breath as the youth sullenly mulled over Number Seven’s words, too proud to admit any error, yet too intelligent not to recognize the rationality of the older man’s suggestion. Komananov’s heart pounded; she was afraid that the militant young
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Sikh would sooner cut her to ribbons than lose face in front of Number Seven.

Instead, he withdrew his blade and returned it to his belt. Then he sulkily unwound his turban and used the durable strip of saffron-colored fabric to bind the KGB officer’s hands behind her back. “So be it,” he stated sourly, his thick black hair tied in a ponytail at the back of his neck. Leaving Komananov against the fungus-covered wall, he turned and nodded at Number Seven. “Let us see what you have then.”

Komananov was tempted to make a break for it while Khan’s attention was momentarily elsewhere. Realistically, however, she knew that she stood little chance of outrunning the incredibly athletic youth, especially once she got beyond the indispensable radiance of the flashlight. The prospect of racing blindly through total blackness, her hands tied behind her back, perhaps stumbling without any way to break her fall or even to get back up again, was not an appealing one. Better, perhaps, to wait for another, more promising opportunity.
Besides,
she reminded herself,
I cannot leave without the case and its papers.

Number Seven laid the slender attaché case down upon the sealed stump of the abandoned well, wisely refraining from provoking Khan further. “I had a glimpse of the contents earlier,” he informed his teenage ally. “What I saw was most disturbing. I believe Colonel Komananov and her colleagues intend to do far more than merely derail the negotiations in Reykjavik.”

He fumbled briefly with the clasp on the case, which Komananov had carefully relocked after recovering it from Number Seven the first time. “This might take a moment or two,” he commented to Khan, “unless you’d care to give me back my servo now.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Khan replied darkly. Snatching up the case before the older man could protest, he ripped the lid off the case with his bare hands. “There,” he announced, throwing the severed lid onto the moldering stones at his feet. He smugly placed the bottom of the case back onto the top of the well. “I trust that was not too violent a solution.”

“No,” Number Seven conceded, a trifle wryly. “Sometimes the
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di
rect approach can be very effective.” He lifted a folder from inside the ruptured case and started leafing through several pages of classified documents. “Just remember, Khan, some Gordian knots take more effort to untangle.”

Khan grunted dubiously, choosing to ignore the American’s unsolicited advice. “Let me see those,” he said simply, reaching out for more of Komananov’s private papers. The KGB officer winced to see her carefully guarded secrets handled so cavalierly.
If only I hadn’t stopped at Lenin’s Tomb,
she agonized,
instead of going straight to the Presidium!

Number Seven handed over the folder to Khan, while picking up another sheaf of documents from the case. “Do you read Russian?” he asked the teenage assassin.

“Do not insult my intelligence,” Khan answered indignantly

Apparently undaunted by the Cyrillic alphabet, both men rapidly skimmed through the notes, memos, and timelines that Komananov had once thought safe enough to transport in person. Trading the papers between them, their simmering rivalry momentarily placed on hold by the enormity of what they found in the illicitly acquired papers, Khan and Number Seven nodded in unison as they grasped the true dimensions of the operation.

“Do you see what I mean, Khan?” the American said finally, raising his eyes from a confidential fax. “We are talking here about nothing less than the deliberate assassination of Mikhail Gorbachev—sometime tonight, followed by an immediate military coup, imposing martial law upon the nation in response to the general secretary’s death.” He cast a censorious glance at Komananov. “According to the plan, the colonel here was to take control of the executive offices of the Supreme Soviet, before the civilian government had a chance to rally against the coup.”

Khan put down a fistful of papers, then clapped his hands together softly. “A most ambitious project, madam,” he applauded her, a tinge of admiration in his voice. “I commend you for your daring, if not your reckless disregard for world peace.” He tipped his head in an ironic bow. “But unless, I am missing something, which I sincerely
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doubt, there is one crucial detail missing from your meticulous files and reports. How, exactly, is Gorbachev to be killed tonight? What is the means of assassination?”

Number Seven continued to sort through the documents, mounting concern deepening the lines of his craggy face. “I can’t find any specifics regarding the killing either,” he confessed. “Just repeated references to something code-named
Pobeditel Velikanov.
Roughly, ‘Giant-Killer,’ ” he translated. “Perhaps that designation holds some clue to what is planned for tonight.”

“We have no time for riddles!” Khan declared, sneering at the American. He fingered the knife at his side, and glared balefully at Komananov, who, shuddering, saw her brief reprieve slipping away. “Fortunately, I know an easier way to uncover the truth.”

“Wait, Khan!” Number Seven exclaimed. His hand rested on the stock of the assault rifle slung over his shoulder, but he refrained from actually drawing the weapon. “Don’t do anything rash.”

“Rash?” Khan laughed out loud. “Are you mad, Seven? The future of the world hangs in the balance and you counsel restraint?” With lightning speed, he yanked his last
chakram
off his arm and set it spinning briskly upon a raised index finger. With his other hand, he drew his curved dagger once more. A look of deadly seriousness came over his adolescent face. “Do not try your luck, old man,” he challenged the American, who had yet to unshoulder the AK-74. “I am younger, faster, and genetically superior ... as you well know.” Twirling faster and faster, primed for flight, Khan’s
chakram
was a mesmerizing, silver blur. “Put down that rifle, slowly.”

The colonel’s heart sank as Number Seven carefully discarded his weapon as requested. “Listen to me, Khan,” he exhorted his presumed protégé urgently, sounding determined to reason with the rebellious youth. “I know your ultimate intentions are good, that you have the best interests of the planet at heart, but, believe me, such barbaric means inevitably corrupt their ends. You cannot build utopia on a foundation of bloodshed and torture.”

Sadly, Komananov knew that the American was wasting his breath. In Khan she recognized a pragmatic ruthlessness not unlike her own,
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and she knew that the strong-willed teen would not refrain from torturing the truth out of her because that was exactly what she would do were their positions reversed.
A shame we could not have recruited him first,
she mused.

“That’s where you are wrong, Seven,” Khan stated confidently, confirming the colonel’s cold-blooded appraisal of his character. “Lectures on morality will not rescue Gorbachev in time, nor bring an end to the senseless chaos plaguing mankind.” His unsheathed dagger furiously slashed the air. “Only action, swift and sure!”

There is no stopping him,
Komananov understood at last, realizing that she was running out of time and options. Having supervised many a stringent interrogation in the soundproof cells beneath KGB headquarters, she had no illusions about the human animal’s ability to resist torture—or Khan’s willingness to do whatever was required to extract the truth from her. Sooner or later, he would obtain the answers he sought, even if he had to eliminate Number Seven first.

“Nyet,”
she whispered, steeling herself for what was to come. There was only one course left to her, if the operation—and the State—were to survive. “Counterrevolutionary filth!” she suddenly screamed. “Foreign adventurists!” Shrieking like rampaging Cossack horseman, she threw herself at Khan, who instinctively thrust out his dagger to defend himself. The colonel ran right into the waiting knife, deliberately impaling herself upon the cold steel blade.

“No!” Khan cried out in anger, pulling back his encrimsoned knife too late.
Da!
Anastasia Komananov thought triumphantly, feeling her lifeblood gush from her sundered heart. As her legs collapsed beneath her, and eternal darkness overcame the glare from Number Seven’s shaky flashlight, she had only one last request of fate.
Please,
she pleaded with her last dying breath,
let me be remembered in the pantheon of historic Soviet heroes, and not just as a slinky femme fatale in that tawdry spy thriller
...
!