The Asset

by Shane Kuhn

  “Yes. And so is she. You should have seen her last night. She can handle this guy.”

  “I hope so. For all of our sakes.”

  * * *

  Love’s dinner with Rico worked out better than expected. He had been in an especially bad mood when she came over. He told her that Lentz had killed another friend of his, a limo driver, for picking up the boss a half hour late. The man was in his sixties and Lentz’s men had supposedly dragged him to death behind the limo. It was a horrific story, but Love couldn’t help but think it would be good for their cause.

  “Soon that will be me,” Rico said gravely.

  “It doesn’t have to be,” she said, playing off his emotions. “But we need your help to put an end to this guy. And it sounds like you might need ours.”

  Love told him she was DEA and delivered her snitch sales pitch. Not only was Rico eating out of her hand, but he also didn’t even seem interested in pursuing her romantically anymore. He looked like a dog that had been on the business end of his master’s belt for far too long. Love promised him all the things she knew he was desperate for—revenge, freedom, and a return to dignity. The money she offered sweetened the pot, but in the end, she could tell he was tired of being afraid all the time and feeling powerless to help the good people Lentz was happy to destroy. He wanted in.

  Over the next two days, Juarez met with Rico and trained him on how to use the same new surveillance tech he had given Kennedy to bug airports—virtually undetectable using any known sweep tech. As a pilot, Rico was extremely gear savvy, so he learned quickly and was a natural at finding new ways to plant the devices. A week after Kennedy, Juarez, and Love left Havana, Rico had managed to bug two of Lentz’s private jets and some of the cars he brought to the airport.

  Not only could they record conversations, but they could also capture encrypted wireless data transmissions from mobile devices and any device communicating with his servers via his proprietary instant messaging app. The pièce de résistance was the GPS function that made it possible for Langley to track Lentz’s movements around the globe.

  LOS ANGELES

  Day 40

  I don’t know what to say, Kennedy.”

  Alia had been over the moon when Juarez sent her the first data dump from Rico’s taps, and she had flown to Los Angeles to celebrate with the three of them. They drank champagne on the terrace of Kennedy’s hotel suite.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Kennedy said. “I’m just happy you’re willing to take me back.”

  “Take you back?” She laughed. “My dear, you’ve fucking cracked this caper for me, in the parlance of so many hokey spy novels. Do you know how many years we’ve been trying to do what you did in a few days?”

  “I’m glad I could be of help . . . finally.”

  “Humility is a fine quality, but now is not the time nor the place. You are extraordinary, and to top it all off, you’ve brought me a gift in your lovely friend.”

  “Stop, I’m turning all red,” Love said, blushing.

  “You’re some kind of rock ’n’ roll Mata Hari,” Alia gushed.

  “Hmm, I like the sound of that,” Love said.

  “How would you like to stay on the team for a while?” Alia asked, refilling Love’s glass. “Provided that’s all right with our team leader.”

  Kennedy raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected Alia to ask about Love joining up with them beyond Cuba.

  “I think I’d like that very much,” Love said, looking to Kennedy for approval.

  The more he thought about putting her in harm’s way, the more he had second thoughts about bringing her into the fray. He hated the idea that she might get hurt. But then he thought about how she’d handled Rico, as if she’d been doing that kind of confidence work for years. She never buckled under the pressure, and her instincts with Rico were spot-on. In fact, without her, he wouldn’t have been sitting there drinking champagne, celebrating his reinstatement. And he knew damn well that Belle would’ve wanted him to let her be a part of the team.

  “You’re a natural,” he said, forcing a smile. “Welcome to Red Carpet.”

  “Good. I have some ideas about how we can use Love’s unique talents and personality,” Alia said. “But our first priority is to get you back into the field.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that,” Kennedy said. “I have some thoughts about how to approach the equipment upgrades at the airports without raising red flags with Homeland. I have a feeling Tad Monty is going to upgrade his pain-in-the-ass status.”

  “That’s your world, so we’ll do it your way this time,” Alia said.

  “What’s my assignment?” Love asked excitedly.

  “For now, I’m going to send you out with Kennedy,” Alia said. “You’ll be a new hire in his consulting business, learning the ropes. While you’re along for the ride, you can use your considerable skill for distraction to assist Kennedy’s operation.”

  “What’s going on with the rest of the team?” Kennedy asked.

  “I have Nuri and Trudeau standing by for a briefing,” Alia said.

  She and Juarez opened military field laptops, and Nuri and Trudeau appeared on the screens in videoconference windows.

  “There’s my boy!” Nuri said to Kennedy. “Turn around. Let me look at you.”

  “Hi, Nuri,” Kennedy said amiably.

  “And is this our new recruit . . . Hey, you’re hot,” Nuri said to Love.

  “Um, thank you,” Love said. “Nice to meet you both.”

  “Can we get on with it?” Trudeau said, annoyed.

  “Right,” Nuri said. “Progress. Okay, so you know those big pink trucker pills that keep you up for hours? Well, ever since Kennedy made Lentz his bitch, I’ve been taking those babies so I can keep up with the data analysis.”

  “How long have you been awake?” Kennedy asked.

  “I lost track after what I thought was Wednesday turned out to be Sunday.”

  “Jesus,” Alia said.

  “That’s what I said when I saw him five minutes ago,” Nuri said. “Anyway, aside from all the piles of data gold you’ve heaped upon us, I found something better at the end of this rainbow a few hours ago . . . Our first cross-reference to the JFK data.”

  “Which is why Trudeau is here,” Alia added.

  “I was beginning to wonder,” Trudeau said.

  “It appears Lentz has been making large weapons purchases from a Russian supplier none of us has ever heard of,” Alia continued.

  “Oh dear.” Trudeau swallowed. “Any specifics?”

  “Not on the inventory. Only the location—some godforsaken place called Norilsk,” Nuri added.

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” Trudeau said. “The reason you haven’t heard of them is because they don’t exist—at least not as any kind of conventional arms dealer. They’re purely black market.”

  “Russian mob?” Juarez asked.

  “An offshoot of sorts. I don’t know much about them. No one does. What I’ve heard is they are former Russian military, willing to supply the latest tech to anyone who can pay their exorbitant prices. A lot of ­people in the arms circle think they’re the ones that supplied the Buk missile Russian-­backed mercenaries used to shoot down the Malaysia Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine.”

  “They seem like the perfect bedfellows for Lentz,” Alia commented.

  “Indeed,” Trudeau said. “Their autonomy and mob connections enable them to make quite a killing running arms. Mob launders the cash so clean that their sales are nearly untraceable. Since you’ve tapped Lentz’s transaction at the source, I’d say that’s quite a score.”

  “I try to be humble, but it’s pretty much impossible,” Nuri said.

  “Yes, well you had the easy job,” Trudeau snarked. “I get to go there to find out what kind of nightmare they sol
d Lentz and try not to get my throat cut. Now you get to watch a real field agent work.”

  “Fucking chauvinist.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Juarez said. “Sending our best global arms analyst into a pit of Russian mob vipers doesn’t necessarily sound like the right play.”

  “I tend to agree,” Alia said. “We need special operators to—”

  “Who could the CIA possibly send that they would not sniff out immediately, especially in a city accessible only by air with maybe ten incoming flights a day?” Trudeau asked. “They know everyone in the arms industry, and anyone approaching without a reputation is a dead man.”

  “That’s exactly what you would be too,” Juarez said.

  Trudeau looked at Juarez and smiled sardonically.

  “Money talks with them. If I approach with a sizable enough purchase, I will be drinking vodka and turning down dates with single daughters.”

  “Charming,” Love said.

  “Am I missing something?” Kennedy asked Trudeau. “You may have worked in the industry at one time, but they’re going to know you’re CIA now.”

  “Very good, Dick Tracy, you may earn your decoder pin yet,” Trudeau snapped. “I will not attempt to conceal my affiliation. CIA makes illicit buys of rogue weaponry all the time.”

  “Perish the thought,” Juarez said.

  “That will be the reason I’m there—to buy some kind of untraceable evil the US government plans to use on someone they don’t like while maintaining plausible deniability. Isn’t it funny when the truth is so fucked-up it makes the best cover?”

  “Hilarious,” Kennedy said.

  “Then we’ll send you in for a buy,” Alia said. “A type of buy they won’t question. And we’ll scramble some local field support to assist, so when you’re in, you can go to work on whoever has the information we need. Let me know what you need for money. Juarez will handle logistics.”

  “Out of curiosity, how was this Russian intel connected to data collected by my airport feeds?” Kennedy asked Nuri.

  “It looks like Lentz has operatives embedded in airports around the country. They’ve been communicating with him quite regularly about handling the cargo coming in from Russia.”

  SIBERIA

  Day 42

  Hell has frozen over.

  This was Trudeau’s first thought as he walked out of Alykel Airport in the Siberian city of Norilsk and waited for the car service the Russian arms dealers had promised to send. It was snowing, and heavy gray flakes swirled through the phosphorous haze. The air was thick with the putrid stench of sulfur dioxide. Breathing was like wearing a gas mask full of rotten eggs and fish guts. Soot-black snowdrifts were piled twenty feet high in places, some of them winter burial grounds for broken-down cars. It was midday and the sun was already committing suicide behind a range of dark, jagged mountains looming over the city.

  A GAZ-2975 armored military vehicle, the Russian version of a Humvee, rolled slowly through the passenger pickup lane. Trudeau was the only one standing out there freezing his nuts off and coughing up a lung, so he got very nervous that they had potentially intercepted his communications with the arms dealer and were going to arrest him. If they did, he would surely end up dying in a barrel full of gasoline while they used a lit match to coerce his confession. The GAZ slowed down to a crawl, and its deep-tinted windows stared at him like a snake’s eyes. Trudeau casually lit a cigarette and pretended to look at his phone. The vehicle rolled to a stop.

  “Fuck this,” he said under his breath and went back inside the airport.

  When he got inside, he looked back and saw two Russian soldiers jogging out to the GAZ from the airport with their duffel bags. When they got in the truck, he breathed a sigh of relief. When the military vehicle left, a black Range Rover drove up and stopped in its place.

  “How do you like Norilsk so far?” someone asked behind him.

  Trudeau whipped around, and a man who looked like the exhumed corpse of Peter Lorre was standing there smiling at him with brown teeth. He chuckled lightly at Trudeau’s startled reaction and patted him on the shoulder. When Trudeau glowered in anger, the man offered his hand.

  “Smile, you’ll live longer. My name is Laika, after the bitch from Sputnik Two. I’ll be your gracious host today.”

  “Pleasure,” Trudeau said, shaking Laika’s bloodless, greasy hand.

  “The pleasure is all mine, sir, provided you came bearing gifts.”

  “How do I know—”

  “You don’t. Our ride is waiting.”

  He motioned to the black Range Rover outside. Trudeau looked at it, hesitating. He had insisted Juarez not send any US paramilitary support to protect him, arguing that they would surely put the arms dealers on the defensive and either kill the deal or get him killed. Juarez had reluctantly agreed, and now Trudeau wished he hadn’t. He was completely exposed, and the only local support he had was a Russian field agent he’d never met before, who was supposed to assist him with the arms dealers at their compound.

  “The boss is very particular about punctuality. I’ve seen him castrate a man with his salad fork for arriving five minutes late for dinner.”

  They walked to the SUV, which was full of men who looked even scarier than Laika, with shaved heads and prison-yard builds. They were all strapped with automatic weapons, and the inside of the SUV reeked of cheap cigarettes, cologne, and body odor. They drove Trudeau to a remote compound outside the city, next to a sprawling nickel mine. The compound had been a Gulag from the late 1930s to the 1950s. The arms dealers kept the grim exteriors intact—most likely to discourage unwanted visitors—but the inside was luxurious and full of modern conveniences. Hundred-thousand-dollar sports cars were lined up on the marble foyer as big as a football field. The boss, a sawed-off fireplug of a man with a crew cut and a leather three-piece suit, greeted them.

  “You were right to go back inside when the soldiers arrived at the airport.”

  “Why is—” Trudeau started to ask.

  “Don’t speak unless the boss asks you to,” Laika snapped.

  Trudeau nodded. The boss poured himself a pint glass of vodka and gave Trudeau the same. Trudeau waited for the boss to drink half his glass, then took a sip himself. It tasted like hair spray smelled and felt like it was scorching everything it touched, all the way to his stomach. He had to hold his breath to keep from puking.

  “Do you have something for me?”

  Trudeau looked at Laika, who nodded impatiently.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t be shy.”

  Trudeau opened his jacket slowly and unbuttoned his shirt. He was wearing a vest that resembled body armor. The men in the room perked up and fondled their holstered weapons. Trudeau released the front of the vest from four side clips and handed it to Laika, who examined the pouches stuffed with stacks of hundreds. Trudeau removed the back of the vest and two long packets taped to his legs, also full of cash. After a few minutes of counting, Laika nodded and the boss smiled.

  “Party time.” Laika laughed heartily. “I’m so glad I don’t have to cut you up into little pieces and feed you to the wolves.”

  “Me too,” Trudeau said, forcing a chuckle.

  Drinks were already flowing, but Trudeau insisted, before imbibing, on seeing the goods he had just purchased. Laika and his men drove him to one of the warehouses on the compound. Trudeau was photographing everything with minuscule cameras mounted on his eyeglasses, watch, and pinky ring. The photos were being automatically uploaded to a satellite, which was completely reconstructing the compound from the photo data and beaming it back to Langley. They arrived at an even larger warehouse, filled with an arsenal of modern military weapons, and Laika showed him the Buk missile launchers he had supposedly just purchased.

  “Good quality,” Trudeau commented, impressed.

  “These
are the same ones we use in the field. We don’t sell surplus here.”

  “When will they ship?”

  “They go on the truck tomorrow and tanker in two days,” Laika said. “We can have them to your deployment zone within the week.”

  “Excellent. Now how about that drink?”

  By the time they sat down to dinner, Langley had a satellite scanning infrared heat signatures of the entire compound. Trudeau politely dined on the excellent fare the chef was offering but drank moderately. Laika and the rest of the men guzzled staggering amounts of vodka. When they were all passed out or mumbling incoherently to themselves, the boss wandered off with three twenty-something escorts, one of whom was the Russian field agent assigned to support Trudeau. That was Trudeau’s cue to retire to his own sleeping quarters.

  * * *

  An hour or so later, as the boss was enjoying the company of the escorts, plus a mountain of cocaine, the Russian agent rendered the other two hookers unconscious with sedative-laced champagne and dosed the boss with a fentanyl buccal tablet disguised as Viagra. The fentanyl immediately incapacitated him but didn’t knock him out. He was in a state of anesthetic paralysis, his muscles unable to communicate with his nervous system. He tried to speak but only drooled on his pillow and rolled his eyes in panic. That was when Trudeau walked in carrying a black case.

  “I thought I’d drop in for a nightcap,” Trudeau said.

  He sat on the bed next to the boss while the Russian agent opened the black case, revealing some nasty-looking torture implements.

  “What she’s given you is a surgical anesthetic,” Trudeau said. “That’s why you can’t move or speak. However, I assure you that you can still feel pain.”

  He took a sharp steel awl and jabbed it under the boss’s toenail, all the way to the cuticle. The boss’s eyes rolled violently and his tongue flicked like a snake’s as he tried in vain to scream.

  “You see what I mean? Now, imagine what it would be like for me to cut your balls off with this.”