by Seeley James
Yuri leaned his butt against the counter and folded his arms. He spoke in a low, conspiratorial voice. “What do you know about Brad?”
Roman stared at the wall in front of him. “Nothing. Only that whoever sends us the databases has coded messages from him in it.”
“What do they say?”
“To keep an open mind and wait for contact.”
Yuri took a deep breath and thought. “What do you think, FSB? CIA maybe? Strangelove?”
“At first, I thought, freedom. But after we talked, I see what you mean. Now, I’m worried. The data has been handled by ten people before it reaches us.”
Yuri put a tea bag in a cup and passed it to Roman. “Have you made progress on your list?”
Roman looked up quickly and pursed his lips. “List?”
“Enemies, allies.” Yuri dropped to a whisper. “To whom do you trust your life?”
Roman relaxed and almost laughed. “Then you are with us. You are thinking we need to break—”
“Thinking can get you killed.” Yuri’s anger hissed through his words. “You have tested your list, yes or no?”
Roman frowned and glanced behind him. “Yes. Everyone in the banda except one is ready. We all kept passports from our old days. We all have a small fund stashed away.”
“You’ve been hacking Americans for cash on the side?”
Roman shrugged. “It is our nature.”
Yuri weighed the likelihood that Strangelove knew about their extracurricular activities. There was a chance the old man let them think they were accumulating money but monitored their accounts as a method of leverage. And that made him consider his personal stash, Alexi’s account with several million in it. He’d moved it three times. Opened and closed companies in Luxemburg that bought each other. The trail was long and complex. He’d relied on all the techniques used by the oligarchs. He was safe. Maybe.
“Who is not with us?” Yuri asked.
“Vasili.”
Which confirmed what he’d learned from his conversation with the lieutenant.
He reached in his pocket for Brad’s phone. “Make a copy of this SIM card, then send it and the phone to Strangelove. I want all the call logs, activation information, everything and anything.”
“I heard my name.” Vasili stood an arm’s length from them.
Yuri’s heart nearly stopped. “I asked him if you could hack a SIM card, but he offered to do it for you.”
Vasili’s gaze darted back and forth between them. All three of them knew Vasili couldn’t hack a SIM card.
Roman poured the tea, then scooped up the phone. “I’ll get right on it.”
For several seconds after he left, Yuri and Vasili stared at each other. Yuri sipped his tea without breaking eye contact.
He set the cup on the counter. “What is it, Vasili? You are troubled. Speak.”
The lieutenant looked left and right and over his shoulder. “The men are talking about abandoning their posts. I’ve heard them. They talk about becoming stateless citizens. Desertion. Insubordination.”
“They are always talking about fantasies and conspiracies.” Yuri waved his arms, keeping his voice light. “The oligarchs do this, and the Kremlin does that. Nationless hackers. International banks. I can’t keep up.”
“We must report this development to Strangelove.”
Yuri leaned back and scowled. “You have emails? Recordings? Evidence?” When Vasili shook his head, he continued. “You want to ruin your career over their hallway fantasies? We’re getting noticed, my friend. Strangelove said people in Moscow are paying attention to our methods. Don’t derail our success just because the workload has grown.”
“You’re right.” He bit his knuckle as he thought. “I’ll monitor their calls, their emails, the sites they visit. They could be moving cash—”
Yuri grabbed the man’s shoulders. “Vasili, you know what Strangelove will do to them? He’ll kill their youngest child, their sister, mother. He will stop at nothing to make us fear him.”
Vasili glanced at the thick bandage beneath Yuri’s shirt. His face drained.
“Leave them alone for now. I’ll do some checking.” He let go of the lieutenant. “Say, have you finished your assignments? Have you tracked Sabel or the other guy, Stearne? Have you found an insane Mexican in New York City?”
Vasili straightened up, saluted smartly, and went back to work.
Yuri had his own research to do. He returned to his desk and checked the records his team had hacked from the US Government years earlier. They were old, but they held the one he needed.
Jacob Stearne was a decorated veteran who’d switched battalions several times to get more tours in war zones. He loved danger. The Americans placed no limit on battle deployments. The record number of tours was fourteen by a Ranger, a contemporary of Stearne’s, who died in Afghanistan.
Yuri searched his files for a Pentagon study conducted in 2010 called Red Book. It concluded that soldiers who had three or more tours were “a growing high-risk population of soldiers engaging in criminal and high-risk behavior with increasingly more severe outcomes, including violent crime.” Stearne had eight tours and had seen action on multiple missions each tour.
Yuri smiled. Strangelove was right: this was not a man to be taken lightly. A highly skilled killer who was going off the rails. This assignment was so much better than some billionaire hiding behind a wall of bodyguards. This challenge was the bodyguard himself. It would keep him occupied while he made arrangements to get free of Strangelove.
Roman texted Yuri with the information from the SIM card. He found the billing information and nothing else. There were no calls made on the phone. It was made in China but sold in Italy.
Yuri’s desk phone rang. The caller ID was his own phone number. An easy trick for a hacker. He clicked on without saying anything and listened.
“You never called me.” Brad’s voice. “Don’t tell me you trust Strangelove. You’re not a stupid man.”
“You’re not high on my priority list. Our research shows your phone is paid for by a company in Cyprus called Santalum, but they don’t have any employees.”
“They told me you were smart. They must not know you’re slow.” Brad clicked off.
Yuri stared at his phone for a long time before getting online and researching Santalum’s public records. Brad’s insult stung. Yuri was not slow. He had more important things to do than tracking spy handlers.
With a minimal search, he found lists of Santalum’s board members going back ten years in the Panama Papers. The Panama Papers was a trove of eleven million documents leaked by a disgruntled employee from a Panamanian law firm. It detailed shell corporations used by billionaires the world over for fraud, tax evasion, and dodging international sanctions.
Santalum’s current board read like a who’s who of Russian billionaires, the lead director being Mikhail Yeschenko, the slippery youngish billionaire and deal maker. But the board was all new, having served for a little over a year. The previous board had been unchanged for over a decade. Then Yuri saw the previous lead director and nearly choked.
Viktor Popov.
That sealed it for him. Brad was connected to Popov, which meant he was connected to Strangelove, which meant he could not be trusted.
Yuri and Vasili worked through dinner and into the night. The men went home, leaving them alone.
Yuri dove back into Stearne’s heavily redacted records. On his first tour, he had been just another Matrosov, an expendable infantryman, until he wiped out a company of Iraqi Republican Guards—singlehanded. Instantly a legend, his heroics exploded to the point of disbelief. One report cited him for saving an American general by killing an Afghan major in the middle of a joint military ceremony. But something was amiss. If the Army thought so highly of Stearne, why were his psychological evaluations redacted? Why did he have a slew of assessments after saving the general? Why did he leave the service to attend a culinary school? Even more puzzling, why did he
graduate as a respected chef only to join Sabel Security the next day?
Yuri knew a thing or two about soldiers. When he thought about it, he didn’t need the evaluations to piece it together. Stearne had cracked on his last deployment. Stress crushed the hero. The man came home shattered and tried to rebuild his life. He was probably struggling with his sanity on a daily basis. It was merely a matter of time before he went on a rampage. Stearne was the most dangerous of adversaries, a man so hooked on danger that his addiction transcended his survival instinct. He could explode at any moment and destroy any perceived threat… real or imagined.
“Something happened in France,” Vasili’s voice woke him from his thoughts. “There was an attack on Alan Sabel. Several Russian soldiers were shot or drugged.”
“That can’t be right.” Yuri rolled his chair to Vasili’s workstation and leaned over his shoulder. “We haven’t deployed our men yet. We haven’t even finished our intel—”
The two men looked at each other. Without a word, they understood the implication. Strangelove had put them in competition with another banda. The general had given them three weeks to complete the task and challenged someone else to do it in less. Had the other banda succeeded, Yuri’s failure could have ended his career. It was only by luck that the other banda had failed.
“Should we put the Mexican project on hold?” Vasili asked.
Yuri’s eyes never stopped scanning the report. “Nothing stops. Strangelove will not allow it. He’s given us three tasks. I’m sure more are on the way. Any failure will not be accepted.”
“He’s setting us up to fail.” Vasili’s voice cracked. “He’s looking for an excuse to have us executed.”
“Calm down.”
“I told you the keylogger was a bad—”
“There is no time for blame.” Yuri’s voice echoed in the empty office.
Vasili stood. “You don’t care. You don’t have any children.”
Yuri rose to face him. “And neither will you if we don’t focus on the problem.”
“The problem is you. You never take responsibility. I have a wife and family. They are my responsibility.”
“I understand.” Yuri put his hand on Vasili’s shoulder and pushed him back in his chair. “But we have to execute our missions.”
Vasili looked up with fear and anger.
“If someone figured out where Sabel was going, so can we. What did we miss?” Yuri patted his junior officer. “He only travels on his jet.”
“Private jets change flight paths all the time.” Vasili shook his head. “They must have deployed the men there in advance.”
“How did they know Alan Sabel was heading for this man’s house in France? And who is he?”
Vasili drummed his fingers on the desk. “What if they tracked the tail number, the same way you can track a commercial flight?”
Yuri took his seat next to Vasili. “Pull them up. Where are they?”
Vasili tapped and checked and tapped some more.
Yuri rolled over to his workstation and checked his own sources. They stayed silent for a long time, clicking away in their searches.
“I found them.” Vasili nearly jumped out of his chair and cast a glance at Yuri. “They landed in Malmö a few hours ago.”
“Malmö?” Yuri looked up the map. “Are there Sabel offices?”
“Only Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Oslo.”
“It couldn’t be…” Yuri measured the distances and looked at the clock. “Would they be going to Svaneke?”
Vasili brought up the surveillance cameras on Svaneke. Yuri spun his chair behind the lieutenant. The dark landscape showed nothing. Dark gray on darker gray. Vasili adjusted the contrast and brightness until they could make out shapes. Waves rolled across a rock outcropping in front of the lighthouse tower. Tree leaves blew across an empty yard. The sliding glass door slid open. A ghostly shape darted inside.
“That’s not Alan Sabel.” Vasili tapped the screen. “But they were flying on Sabel’s jet. Then it must be the other one, the favorite guard, Stearne.”
“What luck.” Yuri slapped Vasili’s back. “They took the bait.”
Chuck Roche padded down the hall of the Hyatt Regency Pittsburgh in his best suit. He waved off the Secret Service agent following him and knocked on room 1068. No one answered. He knocked again.
The lock clacked, and David Watson’s bloodshot eyes peered through a crack in the door.
Roche pushed it open and barged in. “What the hell took you so long? A thousand supporters are lining up for my rally hours before the doors even open. Those are dedicated people, Watson. But you—just look at you.”
“Sorry, sir.” Watson plopped on the crumpled bed and rubbed his face. “Ambassador Givens drove me to the Barcelona airport and put me on a redeye. Coach.”
“Are they on to you?”
“Jacob has his suspicions, but that’s all they are. There’s no way the Russians talked.”
“I don’t care about her serfs.” Roche stormed to the window, his hands behind his back. “What about Pia?”
“I never saw her. I don’t know what she thinks.”
“I’ll handle her.” He faced Watson. “Listen up. Things are moving quickly. There’s a damn good chance we can pull this off. My new campaign manager rehabilitated a Third-World dictator and got him reelected. This guy is good.”
“What do you need, sir?”
“Alan Sabel is trying to ruin me. He’s traveling the world, looking for proof of my ties to Santalum. You need to find some dirt on that guy and make him spend the election defending his reputation instead of attacking mine.”
Chuck Roche turned back to the window and opened the curtains. A hundred reporters and crew meandered in the parking lot. He stepped back.
“How do you know what Sabel is doing?” Watson’s voice sounded like a wounded animal. “I’m working there, and I have no idea what they’re up to.”
“Why not?” Roche glanced at Watson. “Haven’t you worked your way inside?”
“Why even worry about the Sabels?” Air travel is dehydrating. Watson stared at the last bottle of water on the dresser as if he were thirsty. “I mean, shouldn’t you be focused on the campaign?”
Roche grabbed the water bottle and held it between them. When he caught Watson’s gaze, he ripped the cap off and took a sip. “Don’t tell me how to run my business, boy. You think I’m handing out trophies for participation? My success in business doesn’t come from being the fastest guy in the race. It comes from destroying my enemies before they cross the finish line. You kneecap a guy, and everyone else hangs back like horrified little sissies.”
“Sorry, boss. I’m jetlagged.” Watson eyed the water in Roche’s hand.
Roche walked near the window but stopped short of being seen. He craned over his shoulder. “Jetlagged enough to check in with your real name?”
“No sir.” Watson’s parched lips rubbed against each other like sandpaper as he spoke. “What do you need done?”
“Find some dirt on that guy.” Roche took another sip. “If you can’t find it, make some.”
Watson watched the hypnotic bottle, his tongue clicking in a mouth as dry as a sand dune in the desert. “What do you have in mind? Bribery or drunk driving?”
“Hell no.” Roche’s anger exploded. “Think big. He adopted a little girl. Why? Why did he build a multibillion-dollar company and just give it to her? Is that why she never filed charges?”
Watson looked confused. “Are there any facts or evidence to support—”
“You don’t need any goddamn evidence. You’re not in the FBI anymore. All you need to do is ask the question.” Roche looked out the window. “If you accuse, you need evidence. If you suggest, all you need are imaginative listeners.”
“You’re a genius, sir.” Watson swallowed hard. Then he stared at the wall. “Where’s your cane, sir? You might be seen without it.”
“I broke it. Don’t worry about who took the bl
ow. It’ll be fixed in an hour.” Roche’s face turned crimson. “Get your mind in the game, damn it. You have work to do. Get one of Sabel’s maids to say something you can use. Get moving.”
Watson shrank back.
“What’s the matter with you?” Roche leaned over, letting half the bottle spill on the floor.
“It’s just that…” Watson swallowed again and looked at the remaining water.
“What is it? Speak up, boy.”
“She’s a tiger, sir. She’ll—”
“I love tigers!” Roche spun around with excitement. “Especially in chains.”
CHAPTER 24
An hour before landing in DC, Pia rubbed her tired eyes. Hours of staring at Pozdeeva’s clues made her hazy. Then a noise erupted at the back of the jet.
Agent Tania was in Olivier’s face.
“Sure.” Tania’s shrill voice pierced the cabin. “In sci-fi, the traitor who t-t-turned the good guys over to the evil empire is inexplicably redeemed, b-b-but that’s not how it goes down in my hood.”
Pia took her friend by the shoulders and swapped places in the aisle.
“The way I p-play the game,” Tania continued shouting while leaning around Pia’s back, “the traitor gets tossed out the c-c-cargo door!”
Pia faced her friend. “Back off.”
Tania shook her head and marched to a seat farther forward.
Pia returned her attention to Olivier, who sat at a table facing Alan. Behind them, on the sofa, Olivier’s three teenagers looked scared and cold. She joined the men at the table.
“You really have to get Tania under control,” Dad said.
“TBI increases agitation, Dad.” She looked at Olivier. “While I agree with her in principle, no one’s getting tossed out of the jet.”
Olivier shot his cuffs and looked out the windows. “Where are we going?”
“Wherever you stashed the documents Dad requested.”
He glanced her way. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your ‘personal guarantee of security’, but I’d rather take my chances with the Russians.”
Alan pounded the table. “I trusted you. I need those documents—”
