by Seeley James
“Remember the old visas Pozdeeva gave you?” Dad poured a refill for Tania as he spoke. “You and I traveled to St. Petersburg with Roche.”
He took a deep breath and composed himself. “When I was trying to build Sabel, I couldn’t get capital. Banks don’t loan money to startups operated by single dads fresh out of grad school. And I had no idea how to find investors. At the time, Chuck Roche was a high-flying playboy who inherited billions in refineries. Out of nowhere, an old professor called and said Roche wanted to meet me. I was ecstatic and went to see him right away. Roche didn’t want to invest, but he introduced me to venture capital people in St. Petersburg. They were enthusiastic about my company.
“They gave me hundreds of millions of dollars. The company took off. Then, when the company could’ve made them billions going public, the VCs sold their stake to a company in Zurich. That company turned around and sold it to a company in Cyprus called Santalum. Santalum was owned by a cellist in the Moscow Symphony.” Dad sipped his drink, set it down, and looked at Pia. “The cellist paid a dollar for a three hundred million investment.”
“I could l-l-learn the cello,” Tania said. “What I gotta do?”
“The Luxembourg guys wrote off all that money?” Pia asked. “Was the company sinking?”
“It’s called offshoring.” Dad stirred his lemonade. “In a kleptocracy, where government insiders are taking public assets, like oil, nickel, aluminum, or diamonds, they need to get the money out of the country.”
“Why?”
“In case of a revolution. And when you’re robbing the public trust, the likelihood of a revolution rises as fast as your eventual falling out of favor with the dictator.”
Pia felt her gut tighten. Nausea crept over her. Sabel Industries, in which she was the majority shareholder, had been built on laundered money.
“How do they make money, then?” Pia asked.
“At that point, the cellist owned virtually all of Sabel Industries. The next step for them was to sell my company to the highest bidder, take the laundered cash and bank it in Panama. With a few mirrored trades, they could have it back in Cyprus for the next opportunity.” He paused. “Businesses are bought and sold all the time, so I didn’t worry about it until the auditors came. We had several government contracts. The auditors were supposed to be looking over the books to make sure the cellist was getting his money’s worth. But I found them digging through our intellectual property. They were auditing our science and engineering. I kicked them out.”
The jet banked hard to the right. The pilot announced they were in a holding pattern.
“The next day,” Dad continued, “Strangelove came to see me. He had photos of you on the soccer field and at school. He’d been watching you for a week.”
Pia had been unnerved by overzealous soccer fans during her career. Creepy stalkers who hung around the team hotel at three in the morning. But a Russian general taking pictures of her? Invisible spiders crawled over her skin. She shivered.
“Is that when you started Sabel Security?” Pia asked.
“No, first I turned to Roche Security. They made a great show of keeping the Russian auditors out. But a few months later, I discovered the Russians had been there the whole time.”
“Roche Security was h-h-helping them steal your trade secrets?” Tania asked.
Alan nodded.
“Chuck Roche was working for them all along,” Pia said. “That’s why you hate him.”
“Was he working for them? Did he have any idea what low-level guards ten rungs down the corporate ladder were doing?” Dad sighed. “I can’t prove what he was doing then or now. When I kicked his people out of our company, he was less than magnanimous about it.”
“Yet you remained on friendly terms.”
“There’s no point in making enemies,” Dad said. “It only makes a bad relationship worse. However, you’ll notice that I never did business with him again. And I warned you not to do deals with him.”
“Was he helping Strangelove or not?”
“I’ve never found proof. Back then, I had an investigator looking into the death of your parents. The man was murdered after rifling through Roche’s records. I took his murder as a message from Strangelove that I was getting too close.”
“Wait a minute.” Pia felt like her chair was a bottomless canyon and she was falling backwards into it. “When we lived in the old house, we were on the back porch having lemonade, and someone lobbed a rock with a message tied to it.”
“That’s why I bought Sabel Gardens. You can’t see the house unless you’re inside the Garden walls.” Alan nodded. “Roche Security was working with Strangelove. So, I did some digging. Chuck Roche had blown through his inheritance in the ’80s and went bankrupt. No one in North America would loan him a dime.”
“He took money from Russian oligarchs, laundered it, and rebuilt his empire.”
“Maybe.” Dad tossed up his hands. “But not exactly Russian money. Santalum bought up a series of loans through ventures in Cyprus, Luxembourg, and Panama.”
“We can’t let him become president. We have to take your story to the press.”
“I did.” Dad took a long sip. “Way back then. I wanted to bury him for letting spies into my operations. National security depended on it. Despite people crying and whining about the biased press, the press double-checks stories to make sure they’re true. They wouldn’t print anything unless I could prove it. I went looking for confirmation, sources, emails, documents, anything. It took a lot of work, but I found some.”
“And Strangelove s-s-showed up?” Tania asked.
“Any self-made man will tell you,” Alan said, “at one critical juncture in his career, his great leap forward was the result of a single stroke of luck. I collected the documents I needed and went to your soccer game. Kindergarten or first grade, I forget. Anyway, Strangelove showed up. He followed us home, looking for an opportunity to kill us both. Bobby Jenkins of Jenkins Pharmaceuticals ran a red light and plowed into our car. We lived through the crash. Strangelove had been following us. Luckily, the cops were only a block away. If they had arrived a couple minutes later, Strangelove would’ve killed us and made it look like part of the accident. As it was, Bobby Jenkins was riddled with guilt. He became my mentor. He helped arrange bank loans, got us clear of Santalum, helped me get Sabel Security started, and just like that, we were clean.”
Pia felt herself breathing again.
The jet’s nose tilted down, the engines throttled back.
“But you have proof.” Pia took a big sip of lemonade.
“Had.” Dad sighed. “Strangelove managed to steal everything while pretending to pull us from the wreckage. While the paramedics were treating us by the side of the road, Strangelove waved the briefcase and told me, ‘I’ll keep this safe. If you forget about it, you and I are good. If you go digging again…’ and then he looked at you. He was offering a stalemate, and I accepted.”
All three sank back into their seats, each thinking through the story.
“Pozdeeva showed up, and you ran away. Why?” Pia tilted her head.
“He didn’t show up—he was murdered at your feet. By coming to us, Pozdeeva unintentionally gave Strangelove reason to think I was digging into things again. And then Jacob invaded the Russian Embassy. I had no choice but to pick up where I left off decades ago. I hoped to draw his attention away from you.”
“Who were the men in Barcelona?”
“As I told you then, they were looking to renegotiate an old deal. They represented Strangelove. They delivered his declaration of war.”
“And Strangelove owns Chuck Roche?” Pia asked.
Alan shrugged. “It’s no small secret that he’s been doing business with Santalum for decades, but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone.”
“That’s why you said Roche is no longer our biggest threat.”
“Roche is either a genius, a fool, or a traitor. But that’s a long-term problem. We have to prioriti
ze the threats against us.” Alan finished his drink. “Pozdeeva gave us ammunition to use against all three of them, but we can’t wait around to decode it. We must crank up our operations.”
The jet touched down, tires squealed, the engines reversed thrust. The jet taxied to the executive terminal. Another Sabel jet sat on the tarmac. Waiting next to it stood a tall woman, a broad-shouldered man, a mixed-race woman, and the Major.
“Body doubles,” Pia said. She felt a little pride growing inside her along with a combination of angst and excitement. She’d always wanted to work on an important project with Dad.
“Why?” Tania asked. “Where we g-g-going?”
“We’re taking the first step.” A smile crossed Pia’s face. “We’re going to track down Strangelove.”
CHAPTER 13
I faced the Metro’s Transit Authority officer with my hands up. She trained her shaky pistol on me. Miguel stepped sideways to get clear of her field of fire. Even though they’re trained for this kind of encounter, few law enforcement officers are ready for them. Life-threatening danger leaves them scared as hell and flooded with adrenaline. She wasn’t mentally prepared to confront heavily armed men duking it out on the nice clean platforms of the Capitol’s mass transit system a minute before closing time.
The Russian with the bloody nose, slumped against the shiny Metro car beside me, would regain his senses shortly. If he resumed the fight where he left off, there was a good chance that he’d pull the trigger on his PSS, a silent assassination pistol developed by the Spetsnaz during the Cold War. Which would probably make the brave cop pull her trigger. With her arm shaking like that, it was anyone’s guess as to who would catch the bullet.
Mercury leaned his elbow on the cop’s shoulder. Dude, this is so not-awesome. You survive the professional assassin only to get wasted by the subway guard? That just not be worthy of my believers, brutha. Jumping on a nuclear bomb and riding it to glory, now that would be cool.
I said, Help me get out of this or shut up.
Why you gotta be so salty? Mercury asked. Scary Spice here is looking to get off work, not fill out three hours of paperwork and spend the next six weeks talking about it with a therapist.
“My brother’s a drug addict,” I told the subway cop. “Mom sent me to find him. I’ll take him home.”
She relaxed her shooting stance.
The Russian bear-man stirred. Like any good soldier, the first thing he thought about was his weapon. He tightened his grip. His eyes remained closed.
Not good.
“Is it all right if I take his gun away from him, ma’am?” I asked.
She looked at me down the sight of her pistol, then aimed at him. The PSS is a funny-looking pistol. It’s stubby, with mechanicals above the barrel instead of below. A piston in front of the standard gunpowder charge transfers energy from the blast to the bullet. But the piston stops at the end of the barrel, trapping the explosion—and the noise—inside the gun. It can kill at a distance of up to fifty feet without a sound. Which is why the Commies used it for assassinations. Which is, presumably, what the bear had in mind for me.
“You can have the weapon.” I began to lean toward him while still looking at her.
She nodded. I put my foot on his wrist and twisted the hunk of metal away. Holding it with two fingers, I handed it to the cop. She took it.
The Russian said something unintelligible and rocked back and forth.
“Does he need an ambulance?” she asked.
“Only if they carry an antidote.”
She holstered her sidearm and nodded over her shoulder at the exit. “Get him out of here. If I ever see you guys again…”
She walked away, shaking her head.
Miguel and I each grabbed an arm and pulled the guy to his feet. He staggered a couple steps with us. I put a shoulder under his armpit, and Miguel grabbed him by the neck. We pushed our man down the ramp toward the Grosvenor Metro parking lot.
Outside the station, we sat him down on a bench and popped a Sabel Dart in his leg. It’s a projectile the size of a bullet filled with a nonlethal dose of Inland Taipan snake venom backed by a heavy sedative. The venom produces instant flaccid paralysis long enough for the sedative to put our victim to sleep. Once we had him propped up, we called Dhanpal for a ride.
Twenty minutes later, the three of us shoved the Russian’s dead weight into the back of Dhanpal’s Porsche Cayenne. After we closed the hatch, I admired the car for a noticeably long moment.
“Pia didn’t like it,” Dhanpal said. “So, she gave it to me.”
Ms. Sabel gave me a Volkswagen after I saved her life. A few months later, a not-very-nice guy blew it up with a homemade bomb. No word yet from my favorite billionaire about a replacement. Some things are below her radar, I guess. I glanced at Miguel, who drove a Mercedes SUV—also given to him by our generous boss.
“You keep drooling over her McLarens and Lambos, man.” He shrugged. “She keeps those for herself. If you want a cast-off, mention an SUV. She hates them.”
I sorted through the Russian’s personal items. According to his passport, his name was Ivan something-unpronounceable. His phone had what I was looking for: Viktor Popov’s mobile number.
Viktor answered his phone with a question in Russian.
“I hate to disappoint you,” I gloated, “but Ivan the Terrible isn’t coming home tonight. If you want him to live, have your people drop you off—alone—at the Grosvenor Metro station.”
He ranted a threat laced with Russian obscenities.
I hate sore losers. I never listen to them. I clicked off and tossed the phone across the parking lot.
Dhanpal stayed behind to work the trap while Miguel and I took Dhanpal’s car. We laid Ivan the Terrible on the grass outside the Cabin John Indoor Tennis Courts, several miles from the Metro.
From there, we drove to Sabel Security’s Ops Center.
We marched into Meeting Room Zero, our NSA/CIA/FBI-proof room: a few indoor acres encased in concrete. No one could eavesdrop, electronically or otherwise, without walking a hundred yards to the middle where a glass table with four Aeron chairs waited under halogen lights. Miguel and I took seats and waited for our guest of honor.
After a long wait, my mission team reported from the Metro station. The Russians tried to swarm the area with only eight men. Our hastily arranged crew of thirty Sabel agents easily overwhelmed them.
They brought Viktor to us ten minutes later. Three agents wheeled him in, pushed him to the table, and removed his hood. He and I maintained a lengthy soldier-stare. I didn’t speak. He didn’t speak. His gray hair was still immaculately coiffed. His expensive watch glistened. Instead of the Brioni suit, he wore a bathrobe that barely covered his most inglorious parts. His leg was elevated. Titanium pins protruded from his skin to a two-foot-long shiny metal rig holding his damaged bone fragments in place.
It was enough to make a normal person feel bad.
“Your man tried to kill me.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “That pisses me off. Not as much as stealing my dog, but still.”
Viktor kept up his tough-guy look. He wasn’t half-bad at it, either. There was a good chance he did a couple tours in Afghanistan back when the Russians spent a decade learning why the English fought and lost three wars in those poppy fields. God only knows why the USA went there after everyone else failed.
After a long silence, Viktor shrugged.
“You know I can hurt you.” I glanced at the oil derrick holding his leg together. “Yet you send men after me. What’s up with that?”
He gave another tired shrug. “Preemptive.”
“Something happens to me, my friends will come for you.” I nodded at Miguel.
“So many try.” He gave my friend a taste of his glare.
“Let’s de-escalate things,” I said. “Tell me why you want the Pozdeeva drive. I told you there’s nothing on it.”
“The lies Pozdeeva brought you are of no concern to us. We know they are lies
.” He shifted his weight and winced. “What is true does not matter to American press. Only what is sensational. What sells papers.”
“Free press sucks, right?” I tossed the original USB drive on the table. “Here you go. Now we can walk away from each other.”
“You discover microdots, da?” He leaned forward and flicked the drive back at me. “Too late for detente.”
“They mean nothing to us.”
“What else would you say?” He leaned closer to me, shifting his titanium armature and causing himself pain that showed on his face. “Do not challenge me.”
“The only reason we had a translator take another look at them was due to your interest.”
“Forget about Pozdeeva.” Viktor sat motionless except for his lips. He controlled his breathing, but he blinked several times. “Tell your Sabels to forget about him.”
Something about the dog-napper pissed me off. Maybe it was the look in his eyes: the arrogant murderer who killed whoever he pleased to achieve his goals. Maybe it was his disrespect. Or his cold threats. Whatever it was, I wanted to shoot him right then and there. No doubt I would save the world from a good deal of pain and anguish. But I’d end up in a world of hurt as well. Killing a diplomat, even if everyone knows he’s a spy, is frowned upon in certain circles.
“See this?” I held up my stained sleeve. “This is where Ivan bled all over me. Your threats are nothing more than laundry bills to me. Tell me what’s so special about those memos, and we’ll think about letting you go.”
“You let me go anyway. It is not in your power.” He snorted. “Peasant.”
Miguel grabbed my shoulder before I leapt across the table to strangle the bastard.
My phone buzzed with a text from the front desk: “Got a small army of county, state, and Federal agents swarming the building looking for a diplomat named Popov. They have search warrants. Seen him?”
“Never heard of him,” I texted back. “Show them around. We booked Meeting Room Twelve. Probably.”
And that pissed me off even more. He had the law on his side. He was a malicious killer who was getting away with it, and it showed in his eyes.
