He rose, stole quietly to the grille, held up his hand. They could hear a voice, amplified, speaking in Russian.
It seemed to come from the slope of hillside below the huts.
"It is essential," the speaker emphasized, "that what you are doing appears to be a routine, something you are used to doing. Groups A and D therefore will be sinking exploratory holes farther out on the headland; Group C will list analyzed samples of the cores they have brought up; Group E will be working the upper trial gallery and Group B will remain with myself and the Comrade Admiral, supervising and acting as interpreters."
Bolan frowned. The voice was familiar. It stirred an echo in, his memory. But like the face of the professor in the tavern, he could not place it. He eased up the catch of the grille. There was a heavy metallic click. Very slowly he began to drag back the iron gate. The wheels on their runway shrilled protestingly as the latticework shivered.
"Most vital of all is the shaft," the voice was saying. "We cannot hide the fact that we have sunk a shaft the pithead gear spells that out for everybody. We shall therefore make a point of showing them that shaft. But we shall conceal the details of its depth. So far as they are concerned it goes no deeper than the lower trial gallery. The elevator is on no account to drop below that level. There is enough there and above to convince them that we are doing what we claim to do. They must not know the full extent of the workings; the fact that we have established a connection between the shaft and the caves is to remain a total secret."
Bolan hauled the gate open another few inches. The opening was now wide enough to allow them through.
Cautiously he peered out. On the grassy slope below the huts, engineers, laborers, overseers and guards were drawn up in front of a raised wooden platform. On it stood a tall, lean man in the uniform of a Soviet admiral. Beside him, addressing the Russians through a bullhorn, was a heavyset man with a shaven skull.
Bolan caught his breath. "Now I've seen it all," he muttered.
"What is it?" Bjornstrom's voice was a whisper.
"That man. His name is Antonin. A KGB colonel. He was one of the top brass, ruthless and cruel. Comrade Antonin and I are old enemies. The fact that he's here makes it'll the more urgent to spring Erika."
"How do we know ?"
Bolan laid a finger to his lips. He was scanning the line of huts and the terrain immediately beyond. The huts were clearly sleeping quarters. Behind them rose taller structures sheds full of excavation equipment, a rock crusher, a glass-roofed mineralogical laboratory. Higher up the slope a wooden mess hall stood by what looked like a headquarters block.
And behind the gantry, half hidden by the shack housing the pithead machinery, a square brick building with the legend in Russian above the door Chief Overseer. A single guard with a Kalashnikov AKM stood outside at the top of a short flight of steps.
"That's where she is," Bolan murmured.
"Are you certain?"
"Damn right I am. They're putting on a show. Everyone's being told the role they have to play. Only one guy's left to block a doorway. Why would he be there if there wasn't a prisoner inside?"
Bjornstrom nodded. "Guess you're right." He looked at his watch. The minute hand was well past the hour. "She will be waking now."
Swiftly Bolan surveyed the terrain.
Antonin was still talking, turning the bullhorn this way and that across the ranks of men before him. The admiral gazed impassively ahead over his folded arms. They were both turned slightly toward the pithead. Beyond them the land dropped away toward the dark water of the fjord. The sunshine, pale but bright, would be directly in their eyes. If Bolan and his companion could steal out of the elevator without attracting their attention and make the shadow between the two nearest huts.
The Russian colonel droned on. But the briefing could stop at any minute and the workers disperse to their positions.
Bolan tiptoed toward the bar of shadow.
Bjornstrom followed him out into the sunshine.
The Executioner had estimated that the guard outside the overseer's of lice would be hidden from Antonin, the sightline blocked by the last hut in the row. From the shadow he saw that he was right.
Bjornstrom joined him between the two huts.
Bolan made his decision. He whispered instructions. Bent low, the two black-suited frogmen figures slipped around behind the huts and sped silently uphill toward the mess hall and the HQ block.
Behind the block they were invisible both to the guard and the assembly below. On a raveled apron in front of the entrance there was a black ZIL limo with diplomatic license plates and a consulate flag above one front fender.
Bolan crawled gingerly over the granite chips until he was level with the front wheels. He raised himself high enough to peer over the top of the hood. Around the corner of the overseer's office, the guard was just visible, perhaps seventy-five or eighty yards away.
At that range the assault rifle would be more accurate.
But Bjornstrom's Ingram was silenced.
Bolan beckoned the Icelander forward. He pointed to the guard and then drew his finger across his own throat. Bjornstrom nodded. He raised the compact SMG.
Erika Axelsson was spread-eagled naked on a scrubbed wooden table in the back room, her wrists and ankles strapped to the four table legs. She opened her eyes to see two expressionless heavies standing on either side of her. The blue-jowled, balding one held a cheap cigarette lighter in his hand. The blond with pale, red-rimmed eyes poised a surgeon's scalpel as if it was a pen he was about to write with.
There was a sheet of typescript in his other hand.
Blue Jowls slapped Erika's face heavily three times. She gasped and jerked away her head, striving to clear her mind from the effects of the drug. Her body ached all over, and there was a burning sensation in one wrist where the strap bit into a sore spot, but otherwise she was undamaged.
"At last," the blond goon grated. "You kept us waiting long enough. Now there's a list of questions you have to answer..." he held up the paper "...but first we are going to hurt you a little to show that we mean what we say, to give you a sample of what will happen to you if you fail to answer correctly."
The girl bit her lip. So this was it.
The pill had only brought her a respite. She hoped the zen training she had received would permit her to rise above the pain, the humiliation. She hoped she would be strong enough to resist using the second pill, the cyanide one that could be tongued out of a hollow tooth.
Blue Jowls was leaning over the table, his forearm resting between her spread thighs. "They tell me the singeing of hair is very much the fashion among Western beauty specialists," he said conversationally.
"It can be cut out by the roots," said the man with the scalpel.
"Yeah, but singeing is quicker," Blue Jowls said. He thumbed the lighter into flame.
Erika screamed.
The door burst open.
At first the Norwegian woman did not realize who the two helmeted, rubber-clad figures were. She screamed again when Bjornstrom's hand clamped down to extinguish the smoldering hair at her loins, thinking it some psychological twist in the tormentors' game.
Then she recognized the cold blue eyes and inflexible features of the Executioner.
Bolan sprang for the guy with the scalpel as Bjornstrom whirled to attack Blue Jowls.
The scalpel gleamed wickedly, scything through the air in search of flesh. Bolan dropped to one knee and whipped the commando knife from his boot. The scalpel blade, sharper than ten razors, ripped the sleeve of his wet suit from shoulder to wrist, opening a ten-inch gash in his forearm.