“Who’d you say gave this to you?”
“One of the kitchen hands, sir.”
Michaels wadded up the piece of paper and threw it in the trash. Without hesitating, he stormed into the kitchen.
“Who sent that note to me?” Michaels demanded as he pushed through the swinging door.
However, instead of finding a staff busily preparing food for the next meal, Michaels noticed just one lone chef whacking off the fat from a large steak with a butcher’s knife.
“I take it you received my note,” the man said in a thick Russian accent.
“Who are you? And how’d you get in here?” Michaels demanded.
“My name isn’t all that important, though if it makes you feel better, you can call me Ivan or Boris or whatever you wish.”
“This is one of the most secure locations in the world. How’d you get in here?”
The man laughed before chopping off another strip of fat and tossing it to the side.
“You act surprised, Mr. President. Were you under the impression that being here makes you safe?”
“What do you want?”
“I’m not here to hurt you, but I am here to deliver a message from a mutual friend of ours—Ms. Katarina Petrov.”
“I’m not really inclined to hearing anything she has to say.”
“Mr. President, did you know that there are almost 19 billion chickens on earth? That’s nearly three times as many chickens as people. You would think the chickens would revolt when they realize what is happening to them. They’re simply being raised to fill the bellies of man and women, boys and girls. If the chickens are well fed and modestly cared for, the chickens remain happy even as they’re led to slaughter.”
“Your point, Boris?”
“There’s only a handful of government bureaucrats able to control the American people. And as long as you keep the people rich and well fed, you can control them. But what happens when they wake up and realize that they aren’t rich any longer, that the American dream was—and always has been—a big lie? They won’t be so easily controlled. It will be your worst nightmare, this much I can promise you.”
“I’m going to call for the Secret Service if you don’t hurry up.”
The butcher didn’t look up, keeping his eyes focused on the meat lying across his cutting board. He swung the knife down hard, trimming a thin slice of fat along the left edge.
“Ms. Petrov would like to strongly urge you to reconsider your position on the one-world currency,” the Russian said. “The execution of her plan is going along as expected with one exception—you. If you continue to prevent the U.S. from joining, there will be dire consequences for both you and your country. However, if you change your mind, you’ll be compensated handsomely for your efforts. The Chamber holds fast to the belief that happy leaders make the best leaders.”
Michaels shook his head. “More like the most compliant ones . . . as you lead them to slaughter.”
“President Michaels, feel free to draw any conclusions that you so desire from our conversation, but know that this offer will not remain on the table for very long.”
The butcher came down even harder on the meat again.
“Sorry, not interested.”
“It’s a shame that you are making such a curt dismissal,” the Russian said. “It will be tragic for you once you leave office. All that money that you saved up will be gone, rendered as worthless as the paper it is printed on. On the other hand, Ms. Petrov can secure a wealthy future for you by way of this deal.”
“And how does she intend to do that?”
“A favorable exchange rate should suffice.”
“How much are we talking about here?” Michaels asked.
“Now you’re asking the right questions, Mr. President. I knew you’d come around. I’m sure the equivalent of a hundred billion dollars should suffice.”
“So, what do you want me to do?”
The butcher trimmed the last side of the piece of beef in front of him.
“Why, Mr. President, I never thought you would ask.”
CHAPTER 5
Istanbul, Turkey
KATARINA PETROV FLICKED HER LIGHTER and ignited another cigarette. She took a long drag and threw her head back as she blew a long plume of smoke into the air. She ran her tongue across her top teeth and leaned forward at the table, peering at the laptop in front of her.
“What exactly am I looking at here?” she asked.
Bartu Kemal scooted closer to her and pointed at the screen.
“This is a list of all the files that we know Ahmet Polat accessed,” Kemal said. “However, we were able to recover the flash drive he used to download all the files and didn’t find any trace of them on his computer.”
“So, what you’re saying is that he never knew that you switched his flash drive?” Petrov asked.
“That was our goal. We monitored him for several weeks and once we learned of his connection to Blunt, we lured them in.”
Petrov took another drag and released the smoke out the side of her mouth.
“And yet we still have no idea how successful your operation was. It’s still possible that he was able to get a copy of the device to the Americans, no?”
“It’s highly unlikely,” Kemal said. “He was a trained analyst with a background in computers, not a highly-skilled operative. He would’ve had to have given my men the slip one night and figured out a way to mail the drive back to Blunt, all without us seeing, knowing, or suspecting anything. The chances that happened are extremely rare.”
“So what you’re saying is that you had eyes on him all the time?”
“Ears too. We had a surveillance team listening around the clock. There were no phone conversations. I don’t even think Polat had any friends. The only people who came by his house were people delivering food. And we vetted them all. Nothing.”
“This whole situation still makes me nervous,” Petrov said. “It’s a loose end and you know how much I hate loose ends. We need to tie it off quickly.”
“What do you suggest?” Kemal asked.
Petrov stared pensively out of the window as she filled her lungs with smoke. She then exhaled slowly. The smoke rolled out of her mouth and settled in a low-hanging haze above the table.
“There is no easy answer here,” she said. “If Polat stole the information and transmitted it back to the U.S., all of our assets could be burned.”
“And if not, we’d be the ones burning them.”
She nodded. “Do you see my dilemma here? It’s very perplexing.”
“I could set up something in our server that would alert us if an outside party with access to any of our files attempted to breach our system.”
“And how long would it take you to do that?”
“I could finish it in a day or so.”
“Good,” Petrov said. “Make it happen. I don’t want to let this linger for long.”
“But that’s not the only issue we’re facing as it relates to your security,” Kemal began.
“Do you think Brady Hawk is going to come for me?”
“I’m almost certain of it,” Kemal said.
“What changed your mind? Because you dismissed my inquiry into it just yesterday.”
“Just a gut feeling I have,” he said. “I don’t really know how else to describe it.”
“So, he’s coming for me—as the Americans would say, sarcastically of course, big deal.”
“I wouldn’t be so flippant about it,” Kemal said, choosing his words carefully. “If they capture you, you will have a difficult time launching anything else in the near future, perhaps even the distant future, too.”
“I have a feeling you’re not telling me everything. What else are you holding back?”
“Nothing, I swear. I’ve just worked in this business long enough to know that the Brady Hawks of this world will stop at nothing to capture you and persuade you to think differently about your position.”
Petrov
smiled. “I welcome the challenge. It’s not as if I’m going to be laying down for him, allowing him to run roughshod over me.”
“So you have a plan?”
“It’s not fully formulated yet, but I do have an idea.”
Kemal stroked his chin and stared at Petrov. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s hear it, shall we? Your partially formed plan is better than anything I’ve come up with.”
“I won’t dispute that fact,” she said with a wry smile. She stood up and began pacing around the room.
“If Mr. Hawk is going to come for me, let him come for me,” she said. “We may not know when he’s going to arrive, but if we plan accordingly, he’ll walk right into our trap.”
“You want to set a trap?” he asked.
She nodded. “And then I want to personally dismember him slowly, piece by piece.”
CHAPTER 6
Lisbon, Portugal
HAWK SHIFTED IN HIS SEAT in the waiting area of St. Mark’s Hospital. He cracked his knuckles and looked at the ground. Then he stood up and paced around for several minutes before restarting the endless cycle of fidgeting. When he returned to his chair, he looked at the row directly across from him and noticed a young boy whose eyes drooped along with the corners of his mouth.
“It’s going to be okay,” Hawk said in Portuguese.
The boy gave Hawk a faint nod and then resumed staring blankly around the room.
Hawk cracked his knuckles again before Alex grabbed his hands.
“Maybe you should take your own advice,” she said.
“This is Blunt we’re talking about here,” he said. “It’s not just an exercise in patience. If he doesn’t make it out of this alive . . .”
She patted his hands. “You’re right. This is Blunt we’re talking about. How many times has he been in a situation like this? Three? Four? Five? He’s going to pull through.”
“That was a lot of blood at the villa. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him bleed like that.”
“Just don’t think about the terrible outcomes so much, okay? Worrying about things that haven’t happened yet is a waste of time.”
Hawk stood up. “I’m going to the chapel to pray.”
“You? Pray?” she asked.
“God knows, I’m not the religious type. But there comes a time when you realize that you need help in this messed up world.”
“And you’re just going to rub the little bottle and God will come out like a genie and make everything better?”
Hawk shrugged. “I don’t know about that, but I do know I need some peace right now. Praying is one way I find that.”
She forced a smile. “Then you go pray. Pacing around here certainly isn’t going to change anything or bring you what you need.”
* * *
ALEX WATCHED HAWK exit the waiting room before she turned to Samuels, who was hunched forward in his chair, elbows resting on knees.
“Want some coffee?” she asked.
Samuels shook his head. “I’m fine. I don’t need any jitters right now.”
“Are you as worried as Hawk?”
“I never feel completely at ease when someone is in surgery for getting shot, but it didn’t look that bad to me. Then again, I’m not a doctor. But from my experience, Hawk is probably taking this way too hard. I understand that Blunt is like a father to Hawk in some respects. And I can see how that might make it more stressful.”
“But Blunt’s going to be okay,” she said.
“Is that a question, or are you trying to convince yourself?”
“Maybe a little bit of both? I don’t know. I know he’s pulled through worse than this before.”
“The waiting is the hardest part. You always feel so helpless.”
“Sounds like you’ve spent plenty of hours in a hospital anticipating a report from a surgeon.”
Samuels nodded. “I had one of the best big brothers a guy could ask for. Matt was a godsend to me. He used to pick me up from college on the weekends and take me out to eat. He knew I was barely making it, trying to work to pay for school and keep up my grades. He graduated just before I started my freshman year at the University of Texas and started working straight out of school as a pharmaceutical rep. He used to mail me letters once a week. Some of the guys teased me about it and would say it was from my secret admirer. I guess Matt’s handwriting wasn’t exactly what you’d consider masculine, which stood in stark contrast to his 6-foot-4, 220-pound frame. But I didn’t care that they teased me about. I loved it.”
“What happened?”
“We were at a club late one night a few months after I’d graduated and started working for this security firm in Austin. I wanted to leave early, but he wanted to stay. We were celebrating his friend’s twenty-fifth birthday and I’d had enough. I certainly didn’t want to go to work with a throbbing headache the next morning, so I caught a cab home. But Matt stayed and partied with his friends.”
Samuels paused and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly before continuing.
“The bar we were at wasn’t even in a sketchy part of town, but pipe bombs can be placed anywhere. And the shrapnel packed inside doesn’t discriminate either. Four people died aside from the coward who hurled it and then later took his own life after the cops pinned him down.”
“Who was the bomber?”
“You think this is the part where I tell you it was a Muslim kid and that’s why I wanna fight terrorism, right? But it wasn’t. Just some mentally ill bartender who’d been fired from the club they were at. He wanted to strike back at them, make them pay for what they did. In the end, all he did was make a mess of several families’ lives before losing his own. And what for? Because he lost his crappy job serving alcohol to people trying to forget about the reality of their lives for a few hours every night. There were no winners in that situation.”
“Your brother died at the hospital?”
Samuels nodded. “It was intense. Initially, they were optimistic that he’d be able to pull through, but as they opened him up in surgery, they found shrapnel had ripped through several organs creating some intense internal bleeding. There was nothing they could do in that situation. He died right there on the table.”
“You seem pretty calm right now considering what you went through,” Alex said, putting her arm around Samuels.
Samuels fought back tears and sighed. “He was your half brother, too. You would’ve loved him. He reminds me of Hawk.”
“Tough as nails?”
“A compassionate warrior. And the world is in short supply of those in this day and age.”
A doctor entered the room and studied a chart before speaking.
“Is a Mr. Hawk here?” he asked.
“I’ll go get him,” Alex said as she stood up. “He’s in the chapel.”
* * *
HAWK FINISHED HIS PRAYER and stared up at the crucifix attached to the wall behind the lectern. While Hawk proclaimed he wasn’t the religious type, he’d spent plenty of hours in church as a kid. The iconic image of Jesus reminded Hawk that even a man who lived a perfect life was tortured and mocked. Suffering was part of the journey, like anything else. But even as Hawk realized it was necessary, he loathed it.
The door to the chapel swung open and Alex strode in.
“The doctor’s here and out of surgery,” she announced.
Hawk nodded and stood up. “And Blunt?”
“The doc hasn’t said anything yet. I wanted to wait until you were done.”
“I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Hawk followed Alex while glancing at his right hand. It was trembling. Holding it steady by using his left hand, Hawk tried to keep pace with Alex. He put his shoulder into the door and pushed it open.
Alex stopped and turned around. “Are you all right back there?”
“I’ll be all right,” he said. “I’m just moving a little slow.”
Alex resumed her pace and turned sharply to the right before coming to a stop with Hawk just a few steps behind he
r. The doctor was seated in a chair against the hallway wall, studying a chart. When he realized he had company, he shut the chart and rose to meet them.
“Dr. Almeda,” he said, offering his hand to Hawk and Alex.
“We appreciate your help, doc,” Hawk said as he shook hands with the surgeon.
“Well, you’ll be pleased with the news,” Dr. Almeda said. “Mr. Blunt was incredibly lucky as the bullet went clean through him without nicking any major arteries. There was only some minor internal bleeding, but nothing that we couldn’t quickly get under control.”
Hawk sighed and cracked a faint smile. “So, he’s gonna be okay?”
“He just needs some rest, but he should be back to full strength in a couple of weeks.”
“You don’t know him like we do,” Alex said. “He’ll be fine within the next three days.”
Dr. Almeda lowered his chin and cast a quick glance at Alex over the top of his glasses.
“Even the fastest healers need plenty of rest. Discourage him from any strenuous activity for at least two weeks. His body needs time to repair itself.”
“Do you have a straightjacket we can borrow?” Alex deadpanned.
The doctor scowled and shook his head. “You can go in and see him now if you like.”
“Thanks again,” Hawk mumbled before sliding past Alex and beating her to Blunt’s room.
Hawk eased into the room and slowly peered around the corner. Propped up in bed, Blunt was hardly visible, his face covered by the large newspaper he held out in front of him.
“I told you I’m not hungry,” Blunt groused without moving the paper to see who’d entered his room.
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not bringing you any food,” Hawk said.
At the sound of Hawk’s voice, Blunt dropped the paper and folded it up before tossing it onto the bedside table.
“You care about me,” Blunt said, a smile spreading across his face. “If you agents were worth a damn you’d have already caught the bastards who did this to me.”
Hawk came around to the side of Blunt’s bed and sat in a chair next to him. Alex occupied the other seat facing the foot of the bed before Samuels wandered in.
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