The Hunt

by Jack Arbor

  After discussing delivery arrangements, the two men parted ways. As Victor walked east at a brisk pace across the plaza, Max couldn’t shake the feeling that the former KGB man was playing him.

  He put his Blackphone to his ear. When Sammi’s voice cackled through, thick with an accent and garbled from the transmission, Max said, “Remember that thing we discussed yesterday?”

  “That’s an affirmative, sadiqi.”

  “We’re a go.” Max disconnected the call and picked up his extinguished cigarette butt and put it in his pocket before joining the crowds exiting the piazza.

  Time to find out what Dedov is up to.

  Thirteen

  Rome, Italy

  Two things struck him while he strolled along Via della Conciliazione to the Tiber river, his hands jammed in his jacket pockets. The first was a haunting vision of the exquisite Katrina Zabat who he first met during a post-job vodka bender in a rose-lit bar in Rome’s Monti neighborhood. He couldn’t walk the streets in this city without thinking of her. The second was a glimpse of the raven-haired girl.

  The woman strode along the opposite side of the street, dodging pedestrians, on a beeline to somewhere. Not fast, but not slow either. Slightly ahead of Max, traveling in the same direction. A leather backpack bounced on her shoulders as she walked. It’s the boots. The same boots. Western style, chunky heels. American’s call them harness boots. He scanned the sparsely populated streets but recognized no one else. Dodging a woman riding a motorcycle and bundled in a scarf, he crossed the street and matched steps with the raven-haired woman.

  It’s probably nothing.

  His long legs easily kept up. They passed a café where a couple sat in a window enjoying foam-topped coffees, crossed Via dell’Erba, and continued past the Brazilian embassy. The woman gave no indication she knew she was being followed.

  As the Tiber came into view, she darted left, bounded up four concrete steps, and disappeared into a church. Max slowed to decide his next move—lose her or risk exposure by following her into the building. His need to get a good look of her face settled it. He took the steps two at a time and yanked open the heavy oaken doors.

  His eyes grew accustomed to the dim interior as he made his way through the foyer and into the nave. Gold gilded walls towered a half dozen stories over his head, and arched passages led to transepts on both sides of the altar. Caramel-colored pews with maroon cushions stood empty on either side of a wide aisle. Dark and light tile in concentric squares led to an ornate altar. The church was empty.

  Pretending to admire the intricate frescos lining the walls, Max strolled through the nave and toured the transepts while searching for the raven-haired girl. She had vanished.

  Side doors led to interior sections of the church. He opened one to reveal a set of descending stairs. A second led to a storeroom packed with hymnals, cushions, candles, folding chairs, tables, paper goods, and other church accoutrements. A third door opened to a short hallway with a closed door at the end. No sign of her. She was probably a student late for a Bible study or had a job working in the church kitchen. Strolling the length of the center aisle, he stopped long enough to dip his finger into the holy water in the stone font by the door, crossed himself, and pushed open the double doors.

  And ran smack into a tall woman, her face and hair covered by a cream scarf.

  He stepped back. “Excuse—”

  She grabbed him by the jacket and pushed him back into the church’s entry foyer. Another shove sent him sideways into a darkened corner.

  Catching himself, he brought his hands up in hiraken, knuckles outstretched, and looked for his attacker.

  She appeared wraithlike in the shadows, her beige overcoat flowing in the sparse light. With a flourish, she removed her scarf to reveal a familiar face.

  “Julia. What the—”

  She grabbed his wrist. “No time. We have to go. Follow me.”

  Light flashed as she went through the double doors with Max on her heels.

  What on earth is this all about?

  A white motorcycle rested on its kickstand next to the church steps. Julia swung her leg over the leather seat and fired up the engine and he slid on behind her. Wait, isn’t this the motorcycle he dodged while he pursued the raven-haired girl? What the hell is going on?

  They sped away from the church at top speed. He leaned into the curves with her and held lightly onto her hips as she dodged lorries, weaved around pedestrians, and missed bumpers by a hair’s breadth. They crossed the Tiber and were soon lost among the mazelike streets of central Rome. He stole several glances back but saw no one following. After another thirty minutes of navigating traffic, Julia stopped under the portico of the Palazzo Manfredi. She tossed the keys to a bellman, and Max followed her through the lobby, up a set of sweeping stairs, and down a hall.

  Once they were in the hotel room, she flung her overcoat onto the king-sized bed and whirled to close the curtains. “You’re getting sloppy, Max.”

  The furniture had a pleasant patina, like someone had worked hard to remove its newness without it looking dingy. Max stepped to the bar cart. Fancy hotel, someone put fresh ice in the bucket. “Good to see you too, Julia.”

  Although raised by his father Andrei and Andrei’s wife, Max’s true mother was Julia Meier, a women he met only months before. His father left a picture of Julia in a go-box buried in the dirt floor underneath a butcher’s shop in Minsk, knowing Max would find it. Julia, an agent of the German BND intelligence service, and Andrei had a long and stormy affair while she ran Andrei as a double agent. It was this betrayal that Max surmised had led to the consortium’s contract on the Asimov family.

  “Come on, Max. You have to watch yourself.”

  “The raven-haired girl?”

  Julia adjusted the drapes. “She’s been on your ass the whole time you’ve been in Rome.”

  Max examined each of the bottles on the cart. “And you know this how?”

  Feet planted, her arms were crossed over her chest. “I’ve been following you, waiting for you to finish talking to that pecker-head Dedov.”

  “How did you find me?” It dawned on him. “Goshawk. She’s the only one who knows where I am.”

  A corner of Julia’s mouth curled up. “Except, apparently, that girl in the leather jacket.”

  Max grabbed two tumblers, poured gin into a shaker, added ice, splashed in some vermouth, and shook. He clinked ice in the glasses and poured a measure of the alcohol mixture in each. Tossed two olives in each and handed one to Julia.

  They clinked glasses, and Max asked, “Who is she?”

  Julia peeked between the curtains. “Never seen her before.”

  “Was she alone?”

  Still looking through a slit in the curtains, Julia took a minute to respond. “Best I can tell.”

  “You spooked her.” Max tried to look past her shoulder out the window. “Which is why she disappeared through the church. Any sign of her?”

  A shake of her head. “She’s not what I’m looking for.” As Julia held the curtains closed, the butt of a pistol protruded from her open sport coat.

  For the first time since the flight from the church, Max got a good look at Julia’s face. Deep lines creased her brow and dark circles hung below her eyes. Her makeup, usually applied perfectly, was smeared in places. “Julia, what’s wrong? Why are you here?”

  Her eyes welled up and she brushed away a tear before taking another peek through the curtains. She talked while looking out the window. “I can’t stay here.”

  He stepped around the bed. “What do you mean? Stay where? What’s going on—”

  A gasp and her drink fell to the floor, splashing alcohol onto the carpet. “Shit. They’re here.”

  He moved to the window, but she held the curtain closed with a tight fist. “Julia, who’s out there?”

  She pulled out her pistol, her eyes wide. “I have to go.”

  He grabbed her wrist. “Talk to me, Julia. Who’s down there on th
e street? Why did you want to see me? Who’s after you?”

  Julia resisted his grip, and fought to keep the curtains closed. “I only have a few seconds. I can’t tell you now. You’ll learn everything in due time. You have to trust me.”

  His grip tightened on her wrist. “Who is it, Julia? I can help.” He strained to release her fingers from the curtain.

  “Max, stop.”

  He let go. Why was she preventing him from seeing outside?

  She blocked him from getting to the window. “I have to disappear.”

  “What do you mean, disappear? Why?” He set his glass on the bar cart.

  A tear rolled down her cheek. “Things have taken a turn for the worse. Things I can’t control.”

  He spread his arms. “What things? What are you talking about, Julia?”

  She wiped at the tear. “I wanted you to see me with your own eyes, to see that I’m well and fine. And to tell you that I’m disappearing. My choice. I want you to know I’m alive, but I’m going away for a while.” She placed her hand on his shoulder. “Okay?”

  His eyes welled up, a sensation he hadn’t experienced in a long time. “Have they added you to the list?”

  Her eyes cleared as she smiled. “Mikhail, I’ve always been on the list.”

  “So, what is it?”

  Julia smiled again. “At some point, you’ll know. Or we’ll both be dead and it won’t matter.”

  She let go of the curtain and, gun in hand, wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. As she did, she whispered in his ear. “Your father had a secretary. Her name was Raisa. Last I heard, she’s in Moldova. Find her. If anyone knows what your father was up to, it was her.”

  Brushing his cheek with a kiss, she pushed herself away and disappeared out the hotel room door.

  When the door slammed shut, Max glanced through a slit in the curtains and saw an empty and quiet street. He exited the room, took the stairs down two at a time, pausing at each landing, but saw no one. In the lobby, an elderly couple argued with the valet while a young blonde in a short skirt fiddled with her phone. After exiting through the front door, two boys ran past him chasing a dog. Cabs blared their horns, trucks trundled by, and commuters on bicycles wove through traffic. Julia was nowhere in sight, nor were any pursuers.

  Was she lying about being chased? And if so, why?

  Fourteen

  London, England

  Freezing rain spit from a gunmetal sky and the occasional gust of icy wind cut through Max’s thin leather jacket as he made his way along the darkened city street. He wore a black scarf around his neck and lower face and a flat cap on his shaved skull. Black leather gloves—he called them his mafia gloves—completed his meager winter wardrobe. A Walther PPK was snug in a shoulder holster. One could never be careful enough, especially because the last time he was in London, he was the most wanted fugitive in the world.

  He ran a long surveillance detection route that took him through half a dozen London neighborhoods while he sampled some of the city’s heartiest food. Roast with gravy. Yorkshire pudding. A couple pints of ale. His brief encounter with Julia ran through his head dozens of times, but he was unable to make sense of her behavior. Was she just paranoid? Or was it all a trick?

  Here in London, three pedestrians braving the storm stuck in his mind during his SDR. A mature man in a stocking cap and wool overcoat carrying a newspaper, a student toting a backpack, and a woman of indeterminate age in a Burberry jacket. None of them resembled the raven-haired girl. None of them reappeared during his long and meandering route through central London.

  Icy water sloshed on his boot as he stepped into a vacant street. Spencer’s abrupt departure from Corsica concerned him, and he questioned his decision to let him go on his own. The former CIA man was a capable operative, and even though he might be distracted by his love and paternal tendencies toward Kate, he knew how to take care of himself. There was still no word from Spencer. I hope you can forgive me, my friend.

  Victor Dedov was a distraction. Max had supplied Sammi with specific instructions regarding the shipment of weapons, and now he waited. He put it out of his mind.

  Julia’s whispered instructions were another matter. That his father might have left a clue with his secretary matched the elder Asimov’s method of operation. The photo in the box underneath the butcher shop floor. The thumb drive hidden in the family picture. The elder Asimov had established a pattern from beyond the grave.

  For the first time, he felt lost among the swirling tide of events. A much larger conspiracy was underway, the events of which he only had an inkling. With Spencer’s disappearance, Kate’s incarceration, and his birth mother running for her life, he had few places to turn, which is what brought him to London in the middle of an ice storm.

  From the dawn of his training, from the very genesis of his evolution into a spy, agent, and KGB-sponsored assassin, Max always operated alone. His father drilled into his head the folly of faith and how he should trust no one, no agency, no government, and no individual. Everyone has their own agenda, he liked to say. Laugh with many, my son, but trust no one.

  Agitation niggled at the back of his neck as he made his way through the frozen rain, splashing through slush puddles, his hands jammed into the pockets of his leather jacket. He tightened the scarf over his face and tugged on the brim of his cap in a futile effort to protect himself from the frozen pellets that hit his face. Turning sideways, he slipped through a hedge, darted across a dark backyard, and stopped in front of a wooden fence as tall as his shoulders that looked new and smelled of fresh pine. Tall oaks and junipers grew in front of the fence, and a row of trimmed jack pines towered on the far side. A warm glow emanated from the other side of the wall, as it had the previous night when he cased the neighborhood.

  His agitation was replaced by an edginess he didn’t understand. He was alone, his surveillance detection route had ensured that. So why the unease? He hunched by the wall and waited. Nothing moved.

  In addition to the new wood aroma of the fence, he caught another odor—the acrid stink of feces. Max withdrew a small cylinder from his pocket which he clenched in his teeth before grasping the top of the fence and vaulting over. When he landed, his feet sunk into mud, and he grasped the cylinder and readied it for what he knew was coming.

  Movement disturbed the stillness in the yard. He whirled and raised the metal canister as a dark blur sailed at him through the air. He depressed a button, and a mist of capsaicin mixed with propylene glycol hit the moving blur. Max shifted his weight enough so the flying hunk of fur and muscle deflected off his arm and into the mud, where it landed and turned on him, snarling. Max gave the dog another dose of pepper spray, and she whined and rubbed her face in the mud. When he stood, he found a shotgun stuck in his face.

  Beads of water clung to the gun’s matte black barrel, and it was held rock steady. The voice on the other end of the gun was pinched. “You came prepared, I see.”

  The man behind the double barrels wore a disheveled yellow slicker, and his goateed face dripped with freezing rain.

  Max put his hands in the air. “Hello, Callum.”

  The shotgun didn’t waver. “Look what the cat dragged in.” Callum Baxter poked Max in the chest with the double barrel.

  “Callum, it’s me. Max. You can put the gun down.”

  The man’s eyes squinted at him through the rain, bushy eyebrows furrowed, the finger tight on the trigger. “I’m picturing the headline now. Famous Russian assassin gunned down in London. MI6 officer awarded knighthood.”

  Max rolled his eyes before waving his hands in the air to disguise a slight shift to a more athletic stance. “How about MI6 officer overpowered in his own backyard while his attack German shepherd dozed in the flower bed.”

  Baxter’s face slackened, but he took a step back. The gun was steady, while the rain came down in sheets. “You burned down my office and almost took the house with it. You obliterated my files, my life’s work. You and your computer
hack somehow erased terabytes of information stored on MI6 computers. You can’t just waltz in here—”

  Max hit the barrel with the heel of his left hand while turning his body sideways, sweeping Baxter’s feet from under him, and plucking the shotgun from the MI6 agent’s hand. Baxter thumped down on the water-soaked lawn as a splash drenched Max’s boots. Ejecting the shells from the gun, he stuffed them in his pocket before offering Baxter a hand.

  “Got any tea in that new office of yours?”

  Fifteen

  London, England

  Baxter’s yard was large and well landscaped, and even in the encroaching winter months, the care with which the trees, shrubbery, and tended flower beds was evident. A hulking ivy-covered brick and stone Tudor home sat in darkness on the far end of the yard, while a deck jutted into the yard. To his left was a small outbuilding, also built of brick, its style matching the house. A row of windows ran under the outbuilding’s eaves, casting light over the yard.

  The newly built office offered a warm respite from the weather. Inside was appointed with new leather furniture, and a modern desk chair sat in front of a big desk piled high with books, files, and papers. A laptop computer was perched on a stack of notebooks, and a large ashtray held two pipes and a pile of ash. The inside smelled of Frog Morton tobacco and smoke from a woodstove. Along one wall were two large monitors showing video feeds of the yard from security cameras, and a third monitor showed muted news from the BBC.

  Max shed his jacket and plopped down on the leather couch, resting the shotgun across his knees. “I like what you’ve done with the place. Quite an upgrade.”

  Callum Baxter, senior officer in Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, knelt to pour bottled water on the German shepard’s face to rinse off the pepper spray. She curled up in front of the fireplace, snout on her front paws, red eyes blinking at Max. Baxter hung his rain jacket on a coat-tree and fiddled with a pipe, all the while keeping his back to Max. When he finished and faced Max, unlit pipe clenched in his teeth, his face was red, and his eyes blazed. “Something tells me I should have shot you while I could.”