The Hunt

by Jack Arbor

  “Mikhail, if you’re seeing this, it means I’m dead and you’ve succeeded in tracking me this far. I’m proud of you. Indeed, my son, in some ways, this moment was preordained. I knew in my heart that your childhood training would prepare you for this very moment.”

  Max rolled his eyes. You always liked the melodramatic, papa.

  Andrei took a puff on the cigar. “I pray that some members of our family have survived. You must do everything in your power to keep them alive. More on this in a minute, but you’ll need their help. Especially your half sister, Arina. If she dies, all is lost.”

  What’s this, more melodrama?

  Another puff on the Havana. “By now you’ve figured out that Julia Meier is your birth mother. I wish I could tell you to trust her. Asking a son to spy on his own mother is difficult to do, but ask it I must. We had a beautiful love affair, and I adore her to this day, but I never knew her intentions. Eventually the mistrust and the nature of our professions drove us apart.”

  Max looked up and Cindy raised an eyebrow at him. He flashed a smile at her and directed his attention back to the movie.

  “I hope someday you will forgive my indiscretions. Your mother—I mean your surrogate mother—is a wonderful woman who deserves a far better man than I. She stuck with me through the relationship with Julia, for what reason I’ll never know. Maybe she realized men are fallible, imperfect. Maybe she had her own affairs. I’ll never know, and I don’t want to know. Regardless, you must forgive her for the way she treated you while you were growing up. You didn’t deserve it. It’s not your fault you were born out of wedlock. She did the best she could.”

  Andrei Asimov blew smoke at the ceiling. “And Raisa. Ah, Raisa. What can I say? A beautiful woman, but a lost soul. I wanted to help her, but she wouldn’t let me. I pray she’s found peace.”

  A lump formed in Max’s throat.

  His father coughed and sipped clear liquid from a tumbler. “Now on to the business at hand. This information is for your ears only. While what I’m going to tell you is not the full breadth of my knowledge of the consortium, it is a key piece of the puzzle. I hope you understand that for my safety and yours, I’m required to break my knowledge into multiple parts. I’ve hidden those parts in ways only you can find. Others cannot hope to assemble this information without your help. Putting the entire puzzle together will tax your brain and your stamina, but you must stay strong, as I know you will. Despite our differences, I know you’ve become a far better operative than I ever was.”

  “The forces aligned against you are vast with many resources at their beck and call. They will not tire; you must outlast them. They will rest at nothing less than putting the entire Asimov family into the ground, a result that you cannot let happen for reasons that will eventually become clear. Trust me when I say it’s more than just vanity or patriarchy. They know I’ve assembled this dossier. They know that the keys to unraveling its mysteries lie within the Asimov family. They know that by eliminating us they can bury the information forever. You must not let that happen.”

  Max’s stomach turned over at the thought that his patriarchal instincts for keeping his family alive served more than just a familial desire to keep their blood line alive.

  Another puff of smoke from his father. “With that said, let me get to the subject of this missive.” His father took another drag on the cigar and let the smoke trail from his lips while staring at something off camera.

  “Kate Shaw.”

  Max dropped his Blackphone on his lap.

  Cindy put her hand on his knee, where it remained longer than necessary. “What is it?”

  Max waved her away as he retrieved the phone.

  On the video, Andrei waved a meaty hand clenching the cigar. “By now you’ve met Kate. You must forgive her for concealing our partnership, but I implored her to reveal it only at the right time.”

  Max’s fatigue-addled brain attempted to process what he was hearing as his father continued. “When things fell apart with Julia and German intelligence, the nature of the information I uncovered meant I needed to find another partner. There was only one other group I could think of, even if my contact with them might spell my own demise. As you know, traitors to Mother Russia are treated with harsh punishment.”

  “Before contacting the CIA, I considered following in Edward Snowden’s footsteps and using an outlet like WikiLeaks to expose everything to the public. But the information I uncovered is only useful to an organization that will know how to use it. Simply airing it to the public would be ineffective, especially in this day and age of the public’s tendency to believe anything their leaders tell them. So I decided to go through an intelligence agency.”

  “I considered the Mossad, but I had no contacts there.” Another puff. “Despite us being on opposite sides, I’ve known Kate since her days on the Soviet Desk in Moscow and at the embassy in Minsk, in Budapest, in the Czech Republic, and in Belgrade. I found her to be a straight shooter, someone I could trust. She was a natural choice when it came time to divulge my findings.”

  Misty smoke from his cigar swirled around his face, obscuring his eyes. “I cannot overstate the sensitive nature of the information I uncovered. It’s enough to take down a regime and expose conspiracies that illuminate the very core of Russia and the Soviet Union before it.”

  “Despite my best efforts, there are factions that know about various pieces of the puzzle. I couldn’t assemble this amount of information and hide it without some of it seeping out. The Russians are the most aware, and I believe the Germans are after the dossier to gain the upper hand over Russia, as is a rogue faction in the CIA, who probably learned of it through a leak in Kate’s team.”

  Max hit pause on the playback. No wonder everyone wants to find Kate. Cindy caught his eye, but he ignored the glance and hit play.

  “You’re probably wondering how much Kate Shaw knows.” His father winked. “The answer is only some. I tested her by giving it to her in bits and pieces, some of it is true, some of it is false. Turns out, while I could trust Kate, some of the information leaked out through her team. A leak I have only recently uncovered. If you follow the clues, the leak will eventually be revealed.”

  “Due to the leak, there are various groups looking for it—the Chinese, for instance—as well as others. You must act with all due haste, my son, before a competing group puts the picture together. If that happens, all is lost.”

  “Your job, should you choose to accept it”—his father winked again—“is to reassemble the various pieces of this file. Once you do, you will know what to do.” His father’s eyes darted to something behind and above the camera before he glanced at his watch.

  Who’s in the room with you?

  Andrei Asimov leaned close to the camera and gestured with his cigar. “I have to wrap this up, Mikhail. Your first task is to find Kate, if you haven’t already. You must earn her trust. She has a piece of the puzzle you need. A piece I hid in Kate’s mind using a method we developed in the KGB back in the fifties.”

  Max’s eyebrows shot up.

  His father spoke to the camera. “I embedded some information in Kate’s mind using a hypnosis technique. There is only one way to unlock this information, Mikhail. Find Kate and get the information. With the right trigger, Kate will reveal the information buried in her mind. I can’t reveal the trigger. You must discover that for yourself. To reveal that here is simply too dangerous in case this video ever falls into the wrong hands.”

  His father leaned two beefy arms on the desk. “Get with Kate Shaw, Mikhail. She is your ally. Find her. Trigger her memory. You’ll know what to do.”

  The video screen went black.

  Twenty-Nine

  Unknown Location

  Heavyset was too kind a word for the obese man making his way along the dirt corridor. His tent-like white Oxford shirt was drenched with sweat and was translucent where it clung to his pale rolls of fat, and a leather bag was slung over one massive shoulder. As h
e lumbered along the passageway, he mopped his brow with a handkerchief while muttering to himself in Spanish between loud raspy breaths.

  The man walking behind the fat man was as thin and gaunt as the lead man was rotund. Dark skinned and bookish, wearing a neat suit despite the heat, the slim man carried a medical bag and nothing else.

  The procession was watched through one eye by a craggy-faced man wearing an eyepatch. He called himself the warden, and knew his staff called him the pirate behind his back, a moniker he found appealing. The warden stood with feet planted in the middle of the dank hallway. “You’re late.”

  The thin man said, “Traffic was hell.”

  The warden addressed the fat man. “Clock’s ticking, Diego. Is today the day?”

  Diego shrugged his massive shoulders and spoke in Spanish. “These things cannot be rushed. The subject was close to catatonic when you brought me here. I cannot work miracles.”

  The gaunt man with the medical bag cleared his throat, and the warden signaled with his hand. A jangle of keys was followed by the clunk of a door lock and the metal door swung open. The man with the medical bag disappeared into the room flanked by the two guards, leaving the other two men in the hall. Diego kept his eyes on the ground.

  “How much longer, Diego?”

  Again, Diego shrugged. “It depends.”

  The warden clenched his fists and stepped so his chest touched the interrogator’s immense stomach. “We’re out of time. My people want results.”

  The fat man fell against the cinderblock wall. “You cannot rush the artiste. You refused my request for a cleaner, more comfortable place in which to talk. You torture her when I’m not here. You—”

  “Nonsense! We do no such things.”

  “I know what you do. I can tell. These things that you do undermine my abilities.” He dropped the leather bag in the dirt. “I’ve submitted my report to—”

  The warden’s knife was out and pressed against Diego’s fleshy neck. “You did what? You’ll get results, fat man, or I’ll cut you into tiny pieces and feed you to my prisoners. You hear me?”

  Before Diego could react, the man with the brown skin returned to the hall and the warden made the knife disappear.

  “No change physically,” the tiny man said. “Blood pressure is low. She’s dehydrated. Other vitals within normal range. She looks thinner than before, if that’s even possible, and I understand she’s not eating. You should get her to eat. Maybe some fresh fruits and vegetables instead of the—”

  The warden held up his hand. “Enough. We’ll handle the food. Your job is to keep her alive.”

  “If you want her to stay alive, she needs fruits and vegetables—”

  “You’re done. Now get outa here.”

  The little man shook his head as he walked away.

  The warden followed Diego into the interrogation room. The chamber resembled something out of an insane asylum. The walls and floor were covered in dingy and chipped tile. Mold covered the grout, and moisture dripped from somewhere. Dried and crusted fluids made the floor tacky to walk on. Rust stained pipes crisscrossed the ceiling, and a drain was centered in the floor. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead casting the room in an icy blue luminance. The patient, as Diego called her, sat in a chair, head lolled back, eyes closed, chest moving with a shallow breath. She was naked, and her mottled skin was splotched with blood and dirt.

  Diego spun. “I told you to get her some clean clothes.”

  The warden shrugged. “We haven’t located any yet.”

  The interrogator’s face turned beet red before he reeled off a string of Spanish expletives. “I can’t work in these conditions. If you want results, you will follow my instructions. Do I make myself clear?” Diego shuffled to the table and set his leather case down, where he opened it and removed a syringe and vial of clear liquid. He turned to glare at the warden. “Do you mind?”

  With a bow of his head, the warden left the room and walked to a room several doors down with a desk, chair, a coffee maker, and a set of monitors, where he settled in to watch.

  The Ferris wheel cranked and sputtered in what felt like a fruitless effort to turn. Around them, getting smaller as their basket rose higher and higher, the fairgoers enjoyed hot dogs and cotton candy while wandering among decrepit rides and food stalls. The air was warm and heavy with that damp Atlantic Ocean salt while the aroma of boiling grease and sugar wafted up from the fairgrounds.

  Her hands gripped the safety bar with white knuckles, but she sat on the edge of the seat to get the best view. Her stepmother sat rigid next to her and stared straight ahead. Kate wanted to yell out in excitement. It was only the reprimand that would come from her stepmother, a tightly wound woman of stern comportment named Andrea, that held her back.

  Instead she bounced in her seat and hoped her friends saw her. That summer she enjoyed the growth spurt that the other kids experienced the previous winter, which allowed her to ride the Ferris wheel for the first time. After weeks of pleading, Andrea finally relented. Now Kate wanted everyone to see her in all her glory. Unable to control herself, she let out a whoop, attracting the attention of several kids on the ground.

  “Kathleen Shaw. Hush, now. Hush your voice.”

  She wanted to stick her tongue out at her stepmother but didn’t want to risk the inevitable slap—the slap she dared not tell her father about. She leaned far out over the bar so her torso hung in midair and waved to her friends. Her wave was greeted by hoots and hollers from the ground.

  “Kathleen Shaw, by Jove, sit straight in the seat. I will haul you off this ride in an instant if you don’t behave.”

  By this time their passenger car was at the top, high above the ground. Kate scooched back an inch, but her waist was hinged over the bar. She was intent on seeing her friends and showing them what a big girl she was.

  Her stepmother grasped her by the belt loop and yanked. “Kathleen! I swear—"

  As Andrea yanked, two things happened at once. The Ferris wheel shuddered, and her belt loop ripped. As her stepmother lost her balance, the rickety contraption shuddered again, and the basket tipped. Her stepmother, without a firm grip, tumbled from the basket. Kate, who grasped the basket’s safety bar with both hands, flew out into the open air before she was jolted back into her seat by the momentum of the basket. She watched in horror as her stepmother plummeted through the air and hit the ground.

  “Andrea!” Kate screamed. “An…dre…a!

  Diego had just jabbed a third needle into his patient’s right deltoid when the yelling began.

  “Andrei, Andrei! Andrei!”

  The screams made the hair on Diego’s arm stand up. He staggered but held the needle in her shoulder and forced the plunger down. Pulling out the needle, he dropped it into his open briefcase, and fell into a chair. The screaming stopped, and the patient opened her glassy and unseeing eyes.

  “Welcome back, my darling,” Diego said. “How was your sleep?”

  In the room with the monitors, the warden slopped hot coffee into his lap when he sat up at the captive’s screams.

  “Andrei, Andrei! Andrei!”

  The name meant only one thing. A breakthrough.

  He grabbed his mobile phone and touched a preprogrammed number. It rang twice before it was answered. “Do we have progress?”

  Breathlessly, the warden relayed the information until the voice cut him off. “Excellent. It will only be a matter of time now before she breaks and we have the information we need. I’ll send a team.”

  The line was severed.

  Thirty

  Corsica, France

  Unlike the hacker world portrayed in the movies, where alphanumeric characters stream across colorful screens and cybercriminals sweat profusely while they pound on keyboards and utter angsty expletives, the real hacker world is much more mundane. It’s more hurry up and wait than nonstop action. The hacker writes some code that gives instructions to a bot or spider and sends the agent into the internet. Often the
hacker has time to kill while waiting for a result, which is why many are also voracious computer gamers.

  Goshawk didn’t play computer games, because she wanted her mind sharp, not addled by the kaleidoscope of blinking lights and colors that make up modern online games. She preferred long walks along the beach or following a faint trail through the maquis, letting the Corsican sun warm her tan skin. Stripping down and wading into the warm Mediterranean surf or taking a long soak in her outdoor tub with a glass of wine.

  With sunburned shoulders and sand between her toes, Goshawk entered her tiny cottage to the urgent dinging of an alarm on her computer. Ignoring the chime, she padded into the kitchen, made a cup of hibiscus tea, dropped ice cubes in it, and perched in her desk chair. After waking the screen saver, she entered a twelve-digit security key, checked the status of her firewalls, and activated a virtual private network. Only after she was satisfied her systems were secure did she read her messages. A chat window blinked at her.

  Achurincro: I know this Bluefish

  Goshawk, who received dozens of false positives, people fishing for information, or quick-buck artists, rolled her eyes and tapped the keyboard with one finger while sipping her tea.

  0DD17Y: Prove it

  Her tea was almost gone by the time she received a response.

  Achurincro: 100 BTC

  A quick calculation in her head told her 100 bitcoin was a little more than $400,000 US dollars at today’s prices. A ridiculous bounty to pay, even for this kind of job.

  0DD17Y: Fuck off

  Goshawk was about to shut down her computer when the chat window dinged again.

  Achurincro: 80 BTC via Occam’s Escrow

  She tapped a nail against her mug. $300,000 was more reasonable, but the escrow idea intrigued her. Most smaller Dark Web transactions were made on the honor system—honor among thieves, if you will. But a neutral middleman was helpful with large amounts. Occam’s Escrow was a service on the Dark Web made for just this sort of thing.