by Jeff Gunhus
Father Spiros stopped on a rock near Scarvan, choosing one that made him tower over him and Misha’s dead body. He looked neither surprised nor disturbed by the sight.
“What did you see?” Scarvan asked.
Father Spiros slowly turned his eyes from Misha to his killer. “I saw the instrument of God’s will do what had to be done,” he said. “I knew it the moment I saw you on the beach. God has brought you here for a purpose. There is divine reason that you possess such power and skill. Don’t you see? All of this pain inside you? All of this anger? It’s from God, my son. And it serves His purpose.”
Scarvan was shocked to find the world blur from the tears in his eyes. Something in what the old man said touched him. An entire lifetime that felt like a series of tragedy and misfortune suddenly put in the context of a greater calling.
“You’ve been having dreams, haven’t you?” Father Spiros asked.
How did the old man know? Yes, he’d had dreams unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Vivid images. Sometimes of his past victims come back to torment him, but others as well. Even more disturbing. Filled with religious imagery. Angels descending from bloodred skies. Flesh torn from bone by violent winds. Blaring trumpets, announcing the end to all things on the Earth.
He simply nodded.
“I’ve heard you talk in your sleep,” the old monk said. “The messiah has spoken to you as he has spoken to me. You can see it. I know you can. The only question is, what you will do about it? Will you strike me down here as you did with Misha? Will you run and deny the path God has chosen for you? Or will you stay and use God’s gifts to do his will?”
A feeling tore through Scarvan unlike any he’d felt before. Perhaps it was the adrenaline of the kill at his feet. Or the festering betrayal by his country. Or the sense of mortality from his brush with death and his aging body. Whatever the cause, he felt something reach into his chest and take hold of him. Something strong, so powerful that it demanded his acquiescence. It demanded his fear.
Then Jacobslav Scarvan did something he’d never done in front of another man before.
He fell to his knees and sobbed.
CHAPTER 22
Mara checked her watch and did a quick calculation. Less than an hour before she landed in Paris. That meant her dad was on Mt. Athos by now, either getting information or getting kicked out. It could really go either way.
“How’s Dreslan reacting to the threat?” Mara asked into the secure line.
“The president has been advised, but you know how that goes,” Rick said.
She loved hearing his voice, especially when he was on duty. It took on a matter-of-fact, take-charge quality that she found appealing. It wasn’t quite as good as the husky sound of his voice when they made love, but she guessed she wasn’t going to hear that any time soon, secure line or not. His work voice would have to do.
“You guys know how real this is, though,” she said.
There was a pause and for a second she thought that she’d lost the connection. When Rick spoke, he adopted a slow Southern drawl. “Ma’am, are you trying to tell this Secret Service agent how to do his job?”
This was Rick’s reaction when he didn’t like something. A joke. A different voice. It’d taken a while for her to pick up on it. She tried to imagine how she’d feel if Rick questioned whether she was taking a professional issue seriously enough. Not well. Still, this was too important not to press the point.
“I’m just saying, you guys deal with threats from nation-states, terrorist organizations with backing from oil-rich countries giving them nearly unlimited funds. I could see how a single man in his seventies might not press all the red panic buttons.”
She heard Rick clear his throat on the other end of the line. Another tell when he was agitated. “We try not to ever panic,” he said.
“You know what I mean.”
“Jim Hawthorn came over and delivered a brief to the team,” Rick said. “The message was received.”
“He’s a real threat, Rick.”
“And what is it you think we face every day?” he said, his voice rising, his exasperation at the conversation now in the open.
“Nothing like this guy,” Mara said. “I’m telling you.”
“And I’m telling you that we’re taking it seriously,” he said. Then his voice softened. “I just hope you’re following your same advice. I don’t know where you are, but I expect it’s somewhere you think Scarvan might be.”
Mara glanced out of the window. The sprawl of suburban Paris stretched out in all directions beneath her as the plane descended. She had an urge to tell Rick where she was, what her target was, but she knew she couldn’t. She was surprised to discover how much that bothered her.
“I’m taking all necessary precautions,” she said.
“If you cross paths with this asshole, be smart,” Rick said. “Choose your ground, only engage if you have an advantage. Heroes get memorial services, but they don’t get to enjoy them.”
“This coming from a guy whose job description literally includes blocking bullets with his body.”
“Never said I was smart,” Rick said. “Counting on you to carry that water in this relationship. Or as my pal, the master of soul, Freddie Scott, would say . . .”
“Oh no,” Mara said.
“Oh, baby, yoooou, you got what I neeeeed . . .” he sang softly. “You got everything I need . . . You’re like medicine to me . . . ” She heard other male voices in the background chime in on the chorus and Rick stopped. Laughter broke out, men busting each other’s chops. She heard Rick say he’d wrap up the call and be right with them and her heart sank.
“The guys don’t like your singing?” she asked.
“They like the Biz Markie version,” he said. “No class at all.”
A pause. They both knew what came next.
“Be safe,” she said.
“You do the same. And Mara.”
“Yeah?” She expected he might have one more song for her, or at least a sweet parting thought. Instead, he was deadly serious.
“Remember what I said. If you face this guy, make sure everything’s in your favor. If it’s not, don’t engage. You have a team behind you, including me. Trust that we have your back.”
She heard someone call his name in the background.
“Have to go. Talk soon.”
And then the phone went dead.
“Talk soon,” she said to the empty plane.
She watched Paris get closer, allowing herself a little more time to think about Rick, about the last night she’d spent with him. About all the nights ahead that were possible.
She wasn’t about to let Jacobslav Scarvan screw that up.
Opening her phone, she pulled up the file on Stefan Nochek. She had good intel on his location. A CIA advance team had him under surveillance. The images on her phone were less than thirty minutes old.
He was scheduled to meet with two men. One was unsurprising, Oleg Manisky, the most recent oligarch to pay Nochek handsomely for his services. The other caught Mara’s attention as she was certain it had for the higher-ups at the Agency and in the financial crimes group at the Bureau.
Marcus Ryker, genius, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist. It was his own favorite description of himself as a real-world Tony Stark from Marvel’s Iron Man series, albeit without the metal suit to turn himself into a superhero. Although there were rumors he’d spent millions of dollars on a secret project to rectify that situation.
For a man who’d been known to have his own PR people tip off the paparazzi about where he was going to be, his arrival into Paris had been low-key. Unless they’d been pulling out all the stops to track Nochek, she doubted Ryker’s meeting with Manisky would have been noticed.
The shroud of secrecy intrigued Mara, but she suspected it would turn out to be just some business deal. Like most international business, much of it was done in varying degrees of gray when it came to legality.
The issue was that
if Scarvan struck, he likely wouldn’t care if one of the wealthiest and most well-known men in the world was collateral damage.
She rechecked her Glock and the other weapons she had stashed on her body. Something told her she’d come to the right place. Her intuition told her she was about to meet Scarvan for the first time. And her intuition was rarely wrong.
CHAPTER 23
Nochek knew he shouldn’t be at the meeting.
He shouldn’t be anywhere. His best course of action would have been to find the darkest hole in the middle of a jungle somewhere and bury himself in it until the Americans took care of Jacobslav Scarvan.
How the hell could the man be alive after all of these years?
He could have understood if he’d appeared a year after he was left for dead. If the kill was unsuccessful, it was unsuccessful.
But twenty years?
It made no sense.
Fortunately, those two decades had treated Nochek well. The rise of the political beast called oligarch had been perfect for a man with his mix of connections, abilities, and ruthlessness. Not quite well connected enough to be offered any of the sweetheart deals dispensed by Moscow directly, he’d facilitated the transfer of massive power and money from the State into the hands of his employers.
And he’d been rewarded handsomely in the process.
With a net worth approaching one hundred million dollars, stored safely in offshore accounts and in assets held in the United States, Nochek was wealthy by normal standards in the world.
But in the world in which he operated, he was a small fish surrounded by sharks. There was a saying that if you gave a man a hundred million dollars all you’d get is a frustrated would-be billionaire.
And that was why he had to be here.
Besides, Marcus Ryker had insisted. And so Nochek had no choice but to agree.
He wondered why Ryker needed the oligarch. Oleg Manisky had once been a respected military general but was now little more than a crime boss. When it came to reading people, weeding out those who were stealing from him or attempting to infiltrate his organization from law enforcement, he had almost preternatural instincts. Nochek had witnessed the man’s legendary savagery firsthand when dealing with such things. In Russia, an oligarch was free to be judge, jury, and executioner among his own people. Manisky enjoyed the executioner role above all else.
Nochek hadn’t told his boss about Scarvan. Didn’t want to spook him. But he also wanted the man to increase his protection detail. Not that he worried about Manisky being a target, but if they were going to be together, Nochek wanted to benefit from the oligarch’s muscle.
So, he’d manufactured a threat by one of the Chechnyan extremist groups who hated Manisky for his role in the brutal suppression of the country years before. This had been enough to get his boss to increase his personal guard and take extra precautions. Most of the men on the team had protected heads of state around the world. There was no honor in their new job, but Manisky paid a lot more.
“Do you think Ryker has the stomach for real business?” Manisky asked. They were in a bulletproof Range Rover with essentially the same armor and safety specifications as the limo used by the president of the United States. It could take an RPG round and keep on going.
“Don’t let his public relations team fool you,” Nochek said. “That public persona is a character, purposefully cultivated as a distraction.”
He watched Manisky pull at his collar. The man was fat, like a tick engorged with blood. His face was swollen and prone to flushing red with the barest of exertion. The doctor’s warnings had done nothing to slow the man’s rampant consumption of red meat, vodka, and women. Ryker was a health nut, exercising each day and eating only food carefully prepared by his nutritionist. Rumors were that he was part of all the latest hacks designed to prolong life: cryochambers, human growth hormone, stem cell injections, young blood transfusions. There was nothing Ryker wouldn’t do to extend his life.
Intelligence he’d read indicated there was a secret lab where Ryker had sequestered some of the top minds in the field to work on a true elixir of life. Others postulated that it was a project designed to reach immortality in another way, by the downloading of the human mind into a computer, or even another body.
Whatever crazy thing Ryker was working on, it matched his public profile. Only someone with a world-size ego would think the universe so desperately needed him to survive death.
Nochek wondered if, like other aspects of the public Ryker, the lab was also part of the deception.
“You like him,” Manisky said.
It wasn’t a question, but a statement. Nochek had let his wandering mind lower his defenses. He noticed now that Manisky looked at him with one eyebrow cocked. The same look he gave even evaluating an enemy. Or someone he suspected of disloyalty.
“He’s clever,” Nochek said. “The people who think he’s only hired brilliant scientists that make him look smart miss the point. He does hire the right people, but he steers their research. Breaks through when they have an impasse.”
“Smarter than the dumbshit men you normally work for?” Manisky said.
Nochek didn’t take the bait. Manisky was many things, but vain wasn’t one of them. He was trying to throw him off-balance. “Russia has some of the most brilliant minds in the world. How many do you see flying in private jets?”
Manisky laughed, deep and throaty. “This is true. There is the intelligence found in the classroom and then there is that found on the field of battle.”
“Or on the streets,” Nochek said.
“Does Ryker have this?” Manisky asked. “He appears soft to me. Unwilling to do the hard thing to get what he wants.”
Nochek fought to keep his expression controlled. If Manisky had any idea at all of Ryker’s reach and intention, he wouldn’t doubt the man’s ruthlessness. But it was not Nochek’s place to impart this knowledge. That would be Ryker’s. If he liked what he saw from the meeting. Nochek shrugged. “Is any billionaire a saint?”
“We’ll see,” Manisky said. “If this is a waste of time, I’ll be very unhappy.”
Nochek turned to look out of the window. The massive walls of the Louvre were on their left. Once a fortress, now the world’s preeminent collection of art, it was a testament to how the world changed. He knew great change was coming, and in that change, wealth would matter greatly. He intended to ensure he was ready.
Minutes later the car came to a stop in front of a tall set of double doors set at a forty-five-degree angle to the street. A small sign indicated this was La Tour d’Argent, a restaurant that was to serve as the meeting spot for the two billionaires.
Ryker had chosen the spot over Nochek’s objections. It fed Ryker’s ego, a magnificent location to fit the magnitude of the conversation. But from a security standpoint, it wasn’t ideal. The restaurant itself took up the entire top floor and all other access points except the main elevator, which had been secured by the advance team. Bomb-sniffing dogs had covered the place, as had the most sophisticated electronics sweep, performed to find any cameras or listening devices.
The problem with the location was the same thing that made Ryker want it: the main room faced a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows with a world-class view of the Cathedral du Notre Dame, the Seine, and the rooftops of Paris. Even though the cathedral was still under a massive reconstruction project from a devastating fire that had nearly collapsed the entire structure, the bell towers still formed a beautiful view. The restaurant’s windows were tempered glass, but that would do nothing to stop a sniper’s bullet.
Nochek just made a mental note to stay out of the line of fire.
While there certainly were people who wanted Manisky dead, Nochek was only worried about Scarvan.
Two of Manisky’s protective detail took positions next to the car door. It was a short distance to the front door to the restaurant and the bodyguards did a good job of blocking most potential shot angles. Still, Nochek knew Scarvan’s reputat
ion.
“Why don’t you let me go first?” Nochek suggested.
Manisky already had his hand on the car door. He looked curious. “Are you nervous about this meeting?”
“Ryker chose the location,” Nochek explained. “I didn’t control who had the information that you would be here. The interior is secure. This is just a precaution.”
Manisky removed his hand, hesitated, and then leaned back to let Nochek pass. He opened the door and climbed out, the first bodyguard looking surprised to see him. As he exited, he pretended to lose his balance and stumble forward, low to the ground. The bodyguard reached for him, just as Nochek hoped, effectively providing additional cover in case Scarvan had crosshairs on him. He made short work of the distance to the open door to Tour d’Argent and went inside.
Manisky followed behind, glaring at him. “You looked like a fool,” he growled.
Better to look like one, than to be one, Nochek thought. He allowed the big man to enter the elevator first and then followed him in. He just hoped the meeting went well and that Scarvan didn’t rear his ugly head.
CHAPTER 24
“Sky Two for Alpha,” came the male voice over the com-link.
Her waiter was delivering another espresso to her table, so she didn’t reply. The surveillance team should have picked up on that before contacting her.
She’d only met the husband-wife team briefly. They were in their mid-forties and all business. They introduced themselves as Bob and Nora Clemson, but it was understood those were not their real names. They spoke with Norwegian accents, but that, too, could have been something they adopted to further mask their identities. They were contractors, but highly trusted by both Langley and Jim Hawthorn himself.
They had set up in a perfect position on short notice. The fourth-story apartment had been rented on Airbnb the night before. It was nicely furnished, although the Clemsons’ gear covered half the living room. On entering, Mara had immediately noticed the sniper rifle cases laid out next to the electronic gear.
